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RCN

805 statements
158 feature instances
62 referencing feature instances

RCN	type	TVTItem
RCN	label	RCN
RCN	page	RCN
RCN	comment	David Drake's RCN (Republic of Cinnabar Navy) series is loosely based off the 18th century British navy, complete with spaceships that travel through hyperspace using sails. However, the sails are handled fairly realistically: stripping a ship's sails with a plasma cannon is a quick and easy way to keep it from escaping into hyperspace, the sails need to be furled and stowed before entering an atmosphere, and when deployed, interfere with the ship's realspace maneuvering and combat.In the same way that Honor Harrington is Horatio Hornblower IN SPACE!, the RCN books are Aubrey-Maturin IN SPACE!, with Daniel Leary in the role of Jack Aubrey and Adele Mundy as Stephen Maturin (only with her being the ship's comms officer rather than its surgeon).From the author's note from The Way to Glory, fourth book in the series: "The general political background of the RCN series is that of Europe in the mid-eighteenth century, with admixtures of late-Republican Rome. (There's a surprising degree of congruence between British and Roman society in those periods.)"Also known as: The "Lt. Leary" series, after the primary main character. The "Republic of Cinnabar" series, the protagonists' nation. The "Leary-Mundy" series, after the main characters. The "Lt. Leary, Commanding" series, after the title of the second book. The title of the first book, "With the Lightnings" did not lend itself to a series name. The "RCN" series is the nomenclature Drake uses, for Republic of Cinnabar Navy, the protagonists' military service..The books so far, With the Lightnings (1999). Lt. Leary, Commanding (2000). note Title on the dust cover: RCN Lt. Leary, Commanding RCS Princess Cecile. A quirk is that the "R" in "RCN" has a stylized crown, suggesting the designer for the titles didn't know "R" stands here for "Republic" rather than "Royal." The Far Side of the Stars (2004) The Way to Glory (2005) Some Golden Harbor (2006) When the Tide Rises (2008) In the Stormy Red Sky (2009) What Distant Deeps (2010) The Road of Danger (2012) The Sea Without a Shore (2014) Death's Bright Day (2016) Though Hell Should Bar the Way (2018) To Clear Away the Shadows (2019)
RCN	fetched	2023-09-24T10:13:47Z
RCN	parsed	2023-09-24T10:13:47Z
RCN	processingComment	Dropped link to ContrastingSequelProtagonist: Not a Feature - UNKNOWN
RCN	processingComment	Dropped link to Defied: Not a Feature - UNKNOWN
RCN	processingComment	Dropped link to Foil: Not a Feature - IGNORE
RCN	processingComment	Dropped link to PutOnTheBus: Not a Feature - UNKNOWN
RCN	processingUnknown	ContrastingSequelProtagonist
RCN	processingUnknown	Defied
RCN	processingUnknown	PutOnTheBus
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RCN / int_121865ac	type	Noble Savage
RCN / int_121865ac	comment	Noble Savage: Believed by Adele's mother, who was never actually amongst the "savages" to find out what things were really like outside of the relatively cloistered life the Mundy family lived, prior to the Proscriptions. Averted by the savage cultures encountered in the series, who are just as nasty and brutish as Hobbes said.
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RCN / int_153299b4	type	Boisterous Bruiser
RCN / int_153299b4	comment	Boisterous Bruiser: While many of the Sissies fit this trope, Woetjans exemplifies it, a large woman who's shy with neither a sharp tongue nor a length of pipe to use as a bludgeon if need be.
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RCN / int_1713b00a	type	Your Head A-Splode
RCN / int_1713b00a	comment	Your Head Asplode: Usually the result when Adele uses any handgun other than her personal pistol, since by habit she aims for the eyes due to the sidearm's poor penetration. Daniel once has to pick a bit of brain off his uniform after she headshots somebody near him.
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RCN / int_18867e79	type	The Metric System Is Here to Stay
RCN / int_18867e79	comment	The Metric System Is Here to Stay: Actually averted as a deliberate artistic decision. The Alliance uses the metric system but Cinnabar prefers British units, and it's not clear which is the majority measurement system. In the foreword of each book (because he's gotten so much fan mail about it), Drake notes he's just using the two different measurement systems to differentiate between the Alliance and Cinnabar, as he doesn't expect either measurement system to last over the thousand or so years between the series setting and Real Life. (It also doesn't hurt that this corresponds to the primary Fantasy Counterpart Cultures of Cinnabar as Hanoverian Britain and the Alliance as Napoleonic France.)
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RCN / int_19851b86	type	The Sociopath
RCN / int_19851b86	comment	The Sociopath: Tovera. Everyone who knows her, including herself, consider her a monster.
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RCN / int_1c263b9f	type	The Purge
RCN / int_1c263b9f	comment	The Purge: In the Backstory some members of the Mundy family became embroiled in the Three Circles Conspiracy, an Alliance-connected plot to overthrow the Republic of Cinnabar's government. In response, Corder Leary, Daniel's father and Cinnabar's head of state at the time, ordered every family member of the conspirators older than age twelve executed, including the Mundys of Chatsworth. Adele survived because she had left Cinnabar to study library science offworld a few days earlier, while some family members serving in the RCN mutinied and ran for foreign lands. Several years later the Cinnabar government issued an Edict of Reconciliation permitting certain people who had escaped the purge to be pardoned and return home.
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RCN / int_1da5941e	type	The Quiet One
RCN / int_1da5941e	comment	The Quiet One: Tovera, Adele Mundy's aide. Subverted in that she's a tiny female. So self-effacing she's ignored by police responding to murderous violence at a society garden party in Lt. Leary, Commanding, despite the fact that she's holding a sub-machine gun. Deadlier than her mistress, the Badass Bookworm. Much deadlier.
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RCN / int_1dfbbf31	type	Heterosexual Life-Partners
RCN / int_1dfbbf31	comment	Heterosexual Life-Partners: Barnes and Dasi have no known romantic intentions towards one another, but where one goes the other inevitably goes as well. Also partially averted, as both are explicitly stated to not be at all heterosexually inclined.
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RCN / int_204a1207	type	Hyperspace Is a Scary Place
RCN / int_204a1207	comment	Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: Too much time spent in the Matrix (the series' means of FTL travel, no relation to the film by that name) causes humans to hallucinate, though it's implied that in some cases they may be seeing into alternate realities rather than hallucinating.
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RCN / int_20e6a6e7	type	It Only Works Once
RCN / int_20e6a6e7	comment	In Lt. Leary, Commanding, Daniel inflicts serious damage on an Alliance battleship with his corvette-class Princess Cecile by jumping in, launching missiles, and jumping back out before the enemy can return fire. As he expects, It Only Works Once because the enemy admiral is ready for him on his second run, so the second time he opts for a high-speed pass, but then nearly can't slow down afterwards because his High Drive is damaged by the return fire.
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RCN / int_222dc873	type	Black Comedy
RCN / int_222dc873	comment	Black Comedy: Tovera's idea of humor in a nutshell. As a sociopath with limited emotions, she basically developed her sense of humor by trying to imitate neurotypical humans (mainly Adele), and will often make completely deadpan jokes about random acts of brutal violence.
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RCN / int_229c2ec8	type	Uriah Gambit
RCN / int_229c2ec8	comment	Uriah Gambit: Narrowly averted in The Way to Glory. Daniel is asked by his father Corder Leary to kill his commanding officer Commander Slidell and avenge Midshipman Oller Kearnes, whom Slidell had spaced for plotting mutiny and whom Corder believes was his bastard son (he had been having an affair with Kearnes' mother). Slidell later ends up using a plan created by Daniel on a Suicide Mission and doesn't come back. The tricky bit is, Daniel had intended to take the mission himself, but Slidell's paranoia (which had led to the earlier execution) led him to think Daniel was trying to hog all the glory and try to do it himself. Daniel later wonders what his father will think, but Adele says he acted properly (down to ensuring that Slidell's heir will be able to collect his share of the prize money quickly), and oh, by the way, RCN genetic records say Lady Kearnes wasn't just having an affair with Corder Leary: Oller Kearnes was Slidell's brother's kid.
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RCN / int_24ae6005	type	The Political Officer
RCN / int_24ae6005	comment	Lucinda Hale dies similarly in Death's Bright Day, after Daniel orders her aboard a captured rebel cruiser to ensure the loyalty of its captain. The cruiser takes a missile to the bridge in the ensuing space battle.
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RCN / int_254a6a7d	type	Earth That Was
RCN / int_254a6a7d	comment	Earth That Was: Lt. Leary, Commanding explains that The War of Earthly Aggression ended in a massive asteroid bombardment that decimated the homeworld's population and rendered it mostly uninhabitable and the continents virtually unrecognizable.
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RCN / int_2737c505	type	Shoot the Dog
RCN / int_2737c505	comment	Shoot the Dog: Adele blows up a ship full of hostages to demonstrate her resolve in In The Stormy Red Sky. Immediately subverted by Tovera noting the Fifth Bureau would have killed the hostages before surrendering as SOP.
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RCN / int_285b66d7	type	I'll Pretend I Didn't Hear That
RCN / int_285b66d7	comment	I'll Pretend I Didn't Hear That: Daniel Leary's manservant and surrogate father Hogg is given to various "ne'er-do-well" activities, but because of the friendship the two share Leary explicitly says in narration that he doesn't ask how Hogg has "acquired" what the mission needs, because if Hogg's methods did come to light Leary would probably have to fire his mentor and best friend.
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RCN / int_28d73447	type	Regional Redecoration
RCN / int_28d73447	comment	Regional Redecoration: In the backstory, The War of Earthly Aggression ended about a thousand years ago with a massive asteroid bombardment that left the planet's geography unrecognizable. The plot of book three starts out as a treasure hunt for a large diamond engraved with the pre-bombardment continents.
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RCN / int_2a3006e5	type	State Sec
RCN / int_2a3006e5	comment	State Sec: The Fifth Bureau of the Alliance of Free Stars serves the Alliance's political suppression and general populace terrorization needs.
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RCN / int_2af7961	type	Faster-Than-Light Travel
RCN / int_2af7961	comment	Faster-Than-Light Travel: The series uses a variant of the hyperspace form. After using the High Drive to accelerate up to a decent fraction of lightspeed, ships transition into the Matrix, a web of bubble universes that each have their own physical constants. The one constant common across all of them is Casimir radiation, which exerts a single consistent pressure that can be harnessed by a starship's sails. Computers can navigate it, but not as well as talented humans. Daniel is very good at this and regularly sets naval records for transit times, but by his own admission he can't hold a candle to his long-retired (later deceased) uncle Stacey Bergen.
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RCN / int_2bdae2ae	type	Awesome, but Impractical
RCN / int_2bdae2ae	comment	RCS Milton, formerly AFS Scheer, is an Alliance heavy cruiser Daniel captures in The Way to Glory and takes command of in In the Stormy Red Sky. It's noted to be a peacetime design of which only three were built, with an experimental weapons layout that's derided as Awesome, but Impractical: two pairs of 8"/20 cm plasma cannons rather than the four six-inchers more typical on a heavy cruiser. This means that while Millie packs a wallop at energy range, her point defense against missiles is handicapped. Daniel is not discouraged. Unfortunately she's hit by a missile and damaged beyond repair in the same book Daniel takes command.
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RCN / int_2be271c7	type	Hollywood Hacking
RCN / int_2be271c7	comment	Hollywood Hacking: Downplayed. While there's very few computer systems that can even give Adele trouble (usually only when the computer is physically isolated from any remote access point), the mechanics of what she does to break into them for intelligence purposes are usually glossed over.
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RCN / int_2dc0d2bf	type	Hidden Depths
RCN / int_2dc0d2bf	comment	Hidden Depths: Daniel has a zoology hobby, much like Stephen Maturin. Being mentored by Hogg, a hunter, might have had something to do with it. Tovera of all people turns out to be a surprisingly good singer in Some Golden Harbor.
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RCN / int_2f253c94	type	Glass Cannon
RCN / int_2f253c94	comment	Glass Cannon: Because of the nature of their weapons (relativistic homing kinetic-kill missiles), even a corvette like Princess Cecile can do significant damage or even outright kill ships of the line. The reverse is also true. There are also no Deflector Shields in the 'verse; the closest anyone can come is to wrap the hull with sailcloth, which will protect the hull from one direct hit of plasma cannon fire.
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RCN / int_2f94135c	type	Thou Shalt Not Kill
RCN / int_2f94135c	comment	Thou Shalt Not Kill: Lieutenant Vesey, Daniel's XO, is a navigator and ship-handler rivaling her captain, but she has too much of a hangup about killing to really make it as a naval CO in her own right.
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RCN / int_2fa6b075	type	God Save Us from the Queen!
RCN / int_2fa6b075	comment	God Save Us from the Queen!: Autocrator Irene in What Distant Deeps. When her husband had been alive, it was presumed that he was a tinpot dictator with delusions of grandeur. But after his death, it was realized that, if anything, he had been keeping his wife in check.
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RCN / int_319e4a2f	type	Even Evil Has Standards
RCN / int_319e4a2f	comment	Even Evil Has Standards: In With the Lightnings an unnamed Alliance naval officer refuses an order by an Alliance intelligence officer to summarily execute Cinnabar POWs. The spy promptly has his own people do it. While Guarantor Porra is a brutal dictator who would have no qualms over torturing children, Tovera reveals that he gets squicked at the idea of anyone doing it for sexual gratification.
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RCN / int_31c4280	type	Conscription
RCN / int_31c4280	comment	About three dozen Alliance spacers change sides to join Daniel's crew in The Far Side of the Stars, with threefold justification: Number one, spacers are noted at least twice in the novel to be a transient lot by nature, since they can only make money by shipping with either military or civilian ships. Number two, the Alliance routinely practices conscription on subject and "allied" worlds, meaning a lot of them weren't originally in Alliance service by choice. Number three, the reason they have the opportunity to change sides in the first place is because Daniel has repaired their ship to a spaceworthy state in order to attack an Alliance naval base, after disabling it earlier in the book and leaving them stranded on a nowhere rock, so he's their only ticket offworld.
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RCN / int_34dcfc96	type	Kick the Dog
RCN / int_34dcfc96	comment	In With the Lightnings an unnamed Alliance naval officer refuses an order by an Alliance intelligence officer to summarily execute Cinnabar POWs. The spy promptly has his own people do it.
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RCN / int_35ca4848	type	Antimatter
RCN / int_35ca4848	comment	Antimatter: The High Drive that provides deep space propulsion for both ships and their missiles uses matter-antimatter annihilation to produce thrust. The reaction isn't complete though, so it's only used in vacuum, as antimatter that hadn't reacted in the thrust could interact with atmospheric molecules, damaging or even destroying the engines (there are at least two instances of this in the series, one accidental, one caused by Adele hacking the control systems). Due to this, lower-powered and less fuel efficient plasma thrusters are used for atmospheric maneuvering.
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RCN / int_362bdb30	type	Out-Gambitted
RCN / int_362bdb30	comment	Out-Gambitted: In The Road of Danger during the battle between the Princess Cecile and the Estremadura, the former is constantly at a disadvantage due to the latter being able to be too close for the effective use of missiles every time they extract from the Matrix. The Princess Cecile eventually comes out on top when the Estremadura is hit by missiles Daniel had fired before their previous trip through the Matrix, and therefore hitting at terminal velocity. The only reason it worked is because the pilot of the Estremadura was so good.
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RCN / int_3909db4f	type	Failed State
RCN / int_3909db4f	comment	Failed State: The stated reason for the peace treaty signed by Republic of Cinnabar and the Alliance of Free Stars between books seven and eight is because the Forever War between the two superpowers had become so expensive that both sides were nearing economic disaster. If they hadn't made peace, they probably both would have disintegrated, likely taking most of human space with them.
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RCN / int_3ac8ba6a	type	Ignorant About Fire
RCN / int_3ac8ba6a	comment	Ignorant About Fire: In The Far Side of the Stars, Tovera and Hogg set fire to the townhouse of a rival of Adele Mundy's in retaliation for sending thugs to attack her in the street. Adele had told them not to hurt anyone and the two Hypercompetent Sidekicks deliberately planned the fire to give the owners enough time to escape, but the Upper-Class Twit lady of the house stays to grab her jewelry and the Literal-Minded Tovera goes in to retrieve her and ends up mildly burnt.
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RCN / int_3c5ae1a1	type	Schizo Tech
RCN / int_3c5ae1a1	comment	Schizo Tech: Technology can vary dramatically from one planet to another due to the chaos caused The War of Earthly Aggression and the Hiatus. Cinnabar and the Alliance are generally at roughly Information Age tech levels (with the addition of Faster-Than-Light Travel), but there's such weirdness as wooden carts powered by diesel engines and the odd backwater planet with Stone Age human inhabitants.
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RCN / int_3d948c2	type	Barbarous Barbary Bandits
RCN / int_3d948c2	comment	Barbarous Barbary Bandits: In Though Hell Should Bar the Way, Roy Olfetrie gets kidnapped from a port call and enslaved as crew aboard a freighter before being dumped off on a world inspired by the Barbary (confirmed by David Drake's foreword). He ends up orchestrating a slave revolt against the local lord to escape, rescuing Monica, a harem slave he'd fallen in love with, in the process.
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RCN / int_3e5f74c	type	Take That, Critics!
RCN / int_3e5f74c	comment	Take That, Critics!: Many of the books in the series has a detestable character with no redeeming features named "Platt" whose primary purpose is to either suffer some indignity or die messily. The real Platt "earned" this for a scathing review of Drake's Hammer's Slammers series, which Platt said wouldn't have been written as it was if Drake had actually served in the military. Drake served in The Vietnam War as an Army interrogator attached to the 11th Armored Cavalry, as stated in his official biography.
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RCN / int_3f11ef74	type	Parental Substitute
RCN / int_3f11ef74	comment	Parental Substitute: Given Corder Leary's frequent absences from the Leary household due to his political activities, Hogg serves as a substitute father for Daniel, teaching him what it means to be a man.
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RCN / int_4236acb3	type	Kid with the Leash
RCN / int_4236acb3	comment	Kid with the Leash: Adele with Tovera. Adele keeps her around partially as a reminder that nightmares are far from the worst possible consequence of her chosen lifestyle.
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RCN / int_43a045de	type	Dropped a Bridge on Him
RCN / int_43a045de	comment	Dropped a Bridge on Him: Daniel's Chief Missileer Borries is killed offscreen when Milton is hit by a missile in What Distant Deeps, obliterating the Battle Direction Center. Lucinda Hale dies similarly in Death's Bright Day, after Daniel orders her aboard a captured rebel cruiser to ensure the loyalty of its captain. The cruiser takes a missile to the bridge in the ensuing space battle.
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RCN / int_443b78cd	type	Tranquil Fury
RCN / int_443b78cd	comment	Tranquil Fury: Adele all the time
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RCN / int_44606d14	type	Becoming the Mask
RCN / int_44606d14	comment	Becoming the Mask: As of In The Stormy Red Sky Adele believes this may be happening to Tovera, who initially joined with Adele to learn how to at least act like a human with a conscience instead of an amoral sociopath.
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RCN / int_4536fd29	type	Energy Weapon
RCN / int_4536fd29	comment	Energy Weapon: Plasma cannons are what happens when you detonate a nuclear fusion explosion and then magnetically coerce it into squeezing itself out a gun barrel. They're strictly a close-range weapon, mainly used in space for point-defense to ablate kinetic missiles and knock them off course.
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RCN / int_4604fd4d	type	Worthy Opponent
RCN / int_4604fd4d	comment	Worthy Opponent: An Alliance Fleet heavy cruiser captain whom Daniel tangles with at the climax of The Far Side of the Stars, who proves his equal in astrogation and gives the Sissies a run for their money after catching up with them. After beating him in large part by luck, Daniel insists that he be allowed to surrender purely out of respect and admiration (as opposed to merely because Daniel isn't the type to kill a helpless or surrendering opponent).
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RCN / int_4672ad3d	type	Moral Sociopathy
RCN / int_4672ad3d	comment	Moral Sociopathy: Tovera tries to affect morality, among other behaviors of neurotypical humans, despite having little comprehension of it, largely because of the potential consequences. She'll still happily kill you (or in one case, castrate you) if you cross Adele, unless Adele herself tells her not to.
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RCN / int_4672ad3d	featureConfidence	1.0
RCN	hasFeature	RCN / int_4672ad3d
RCN / int_474e3977	type	You Have Failed Me
RCN / int_474e3977	comment	You Have Failed Me: Guarantor Porra does this frequently, to the point where the Alliance Fleet's top brass has more buck-passing politicians than skilled tacticians.
RCN / int_474e3977	featureApplicability	1.0
RCN / int_474e3977	featureConfidence	1.0
RCN	hasFeature	RCN / int_474e3977
RCN / int_4764ce3a	type	Military Moonshiner
RCN / int_4764ce3a	comment	Military Moonshiner: Slash is distilled from the alcohol-based hydraulic fluid used in ships' power rooms. The RCN attitude toward it seems to be benign neglect: as long as the crew aren't drunk on duty the officers are fine with it and will usually partake themselves (if offered a drink of some local brew, Daniel will usually make some remark about how he's had slash that tasted a hell of a lot worse).
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RCN / int_4764ce3a	featureConfidence	1.0
RCN	hasFeature	RCN / int_4764ce3a
RCN / int_4f23179	type	Hit-and-Run Tactics
RCN / int_4f23179	comment	Hit-and-Run Tactics: In Lt. Leary, Commanding, Daniel inflicts serious damage on an Alliance battleship with his corvette-class Princess Cecile by jumping in, launching missiles, and jumping back out before the enemy can return fire. As he expects, It Only Works Once because the enemy admiral is ready for him on his second run, so the second time he opts for a high-speed pass, but then nearly can't slow down afterwards because his High Drive is damaged by the return fire. Faced with a heavy cruiser and a cloud of rocket-armed cutters in What Distant Deeps, Daniel in Princess Cecile and two Alliance destroyers resort to Teleport Spam, whittling down the pursuing cutters with plasma cannon and staying well ahead of the slower capital ship.
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RCN / int_4f23179	featureConfidence	1.0
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RCN / int_50b05d30	type	Disproportionate Retribution
RCN / int_50b05d30	comment	Disproportionate Retribution: Tovera reacts quite poorly to a mook that was excessively and insultingly physical about searching Adele, by castrating them.
RCN / int_50b05d30	featureApplicability	1.0
RCN / int_50b05d30	featureConfidence	1.0
RCN	hasFeature	RCN / int_50b05d30
RCN / int_51300dbf	type	Fat Bastard
RCN / int_51300dbf	comment	Fat Bastard: Many of the tinpot dictators the Sissies encounter in their travels fit this trope to a T.
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RCN / int_51300dbf	featureConfidence	1.0
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RCN / int_52ab09a1	type	Hyperspeed Escape
RCN / int_52ab09a1	comment	Ship point defense mounts use plasma cannons, whose lightspeed bolts don't really work beyond relatively short ranges but are quite destructive within those ranges. Instead of destroying incoming missiles, they use ablation to try to drive anti-ship missiles off-course enough to miss.note RCN universe missiles rely solely on kinetic warheads to cause the damage, so as long as they don't connect with the target they're unable to cause damage. As a secondary use, they can strip the delicate sails used by ships to maneuver in hyperspace, to prevent a Hyperspeed Escape.
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RCN / int_52ab09a1	featureConfidence	1.0
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RCN / int_53a7089a	type	Pint-Sized Powerhouse
RCN / int_53a7089a	comment	Pint-Sized Powerhouse: Tovera occasionally displays feats of strength that are out of proportion with her petite build.
RCN / int_53a7089a	featureApplicability	1.0
RCN / int_53a7089a	featureConfidence	1.0
RCN	hasFeature	RCN / int_53a7089a
RCN / int_547b632	type	Space-Filling Empire
RCN / int_547b632	comment	Space-Filling Empire: The Republic of Cinnabar and the Alliance of Free Stars control most of human space between their territorial holdings and their client states. Though there are bevies of independent worlds, few other multi-system governments exist.
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RCN / int_556a4e20	type	The Empire
RCN / int_556a4e20	comment	The Empire: The Alliance is the typical star-conquering kind, but Cinnabar is A Lighter Shade of Grey, euphemistically referring to its Hegemonic Empire as "Friends of Cinnabar", happily interfering in their governance to ensure that relationship stays intact and generally restricting their militaries to what's needed to keep the surrounding space clear of pirates.
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RCN / int_57b80b45	type	Fantastic Racism
RCN / int_57b80b45	comment	Fantastic Racism: "Men whose idea of patriotism was that anyone not from Cinnabar was a wog with no honor and no rights." The members of the RCN feel that way about pretty much anyone not in the RCN, and not a few in it. This attitude shows up on Earth in the Aubrey-Maturin series, which RCN is based on, and is apparently Truth in Television.
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RCN / int_57b80b45	featureConfidence	1.0
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RCN / int_57d43e40	type	Fantasy Counterpart Culture
RCN / int_57d43e40	comment	Fantasy Counterpart Culture: As noted in the author's foreword in The Way to Glory, the Republic of Cinnabar is an amalgam of Regency Britain and Republican Rome. The Alliance is a stand-in for Napoleonic France, though it also has elements of Prussia.
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RCN	hasFeature	RCN / int_57d43e40
RCN / int_5989e3b6	type	Enemy Mine
RCN / int_5989e3b6	comment	Enemy Mine: The RCN and Alliance Fleet have a degree of professional respect for one another: when they have occasion to interact outside battle their officers regard each other as fellow spacers who happen to be on different sides. With Cinnabar and the Alliance having signed a peace treaty "of mutual exhaustion" in What Distant Deeps, Daniel finds himself working alongside a duo of Alliance destroyer captains to foil a conquest by a Cinnabar ally that would have imperiled the peace.
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RCN / int_5c613245	type	Thrown Out the Airlock
RCN / int_5c613245	comment	Thrown Out the Airlock: This is used as an improptu punishment for mutiny in the fourth book by a paranoid captain.
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RCN / int_5c613245	featureConfidence	1.0
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RCN / int_5e2e55e4	type	The Casanova
RCN / int_5e2e55e4	comment	The Casanova: Daniel Leary's favorite form of entertainment in port is seeking out willing women to sleep with. And he always finds them. He's stated to be good enough at seducing women to make his living at it. More recently he has settled down with Miranda Dorst.
RCN / int_5e2e55e4	featureApplicability	1.0
RCN / int_5e2e55e4	featureConfidence	1.0
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RCN / int_608bf5a0	type	Shoot the Hostage
RCN / int_608bf5a0	comment	Shoot the Hostage: The Alliance tends to take the families of captured worlds' rulers hostage to ensure their cooperation. In In the Stormy Red Sky, Adele and Tovera blow up the ship carrying these hostages to convince the other, combatant, ships in the convoy to surrender. Tovera notes that even had the convoy surrendered without a fight, the Fifth Bureau minders would have spaced the hostages anyway.
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RCN / int_608bf5a0	featureConfidence	1.0
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RCN / int_617f0563	type	Heelâ€“Face Turn
RCN / int_617f0563	comment	Heel–Face Turn: At the end of With the Lightnings, Adele is joined by a former agent of the Alliance of Free Stars' Fifth Bureau, Tovera. About three dozen Alliance spacers change sides to join Daniel's crew in The Far Side of the Stars, with threefold justification: Number one, spacers are noted at least twice in the novel to be a transient lot by nature, since they can only make money by shipping with either military or civilian ships. Number two, the Alliance routinely practices conscription on subject and "allied" worlds, meaning a lot of them weren't originally in Alliance service by choice. Number three, the reason they have the opportunity to change sides in the first place is because Daniel has repaired their ship to a spaceworthy state in order to attack an Alliance naval base, after disabling it earlier in the book and leaving them stranded on a nowhere rock, so he's their only ticket offworld.
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RCN / int_65ce79f1	type	High-Speed Missile Dodge
RCN / int_65ce79f1	comment	High-Speed Missile Dodge: A common feature of ship-to-ship fights. Missiles are guided until the point of burnout and extremely lethal when they hit: even the missiles from a corvette like Princess Cecile can do serious damage to large capital ships, so evading incoming fire is easier at long range than short, but thanks to Einstein missiles are conversely more damaging when they hit terminal velocity (about .6c) than at closer range. The main purpose of plasma cannon is to either deflect or destroy incoming missiles that cannot be outright dodged.
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RCN / int_65ce79f1	featureConfidence	1.0
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RCN / int_67e9f779	type	Teleport Spam
RCN / int_67e9f779	comment	Faced with a heavy cruiser and a cloud of rocket-armed cutters in What Distant Deeps, Daniel in Princess Cecile and two Alliance destroyers resort to Teleport Spam, whittling down the pursuing cutters with plasma cannon and staying well ahead of the slower capital ship.
RCN / int_67e9f779	featureApplicability	1.0
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RCN	hasFeature	RCN / int_67e9f779
RCN / int_680c8fd	type	Outranking Your Job
RCN / int_680c8fd	comment	Outranking Your Job: Daniel's primary command in most of the books is RCS Princess Cecile, a corvette. This is a suitable ship for the rank of lieutenant he starts out with, but not for the full commander he's promoted to in The Way to Glory, and he's promoted to captain at the start of In the Stormy Red Sky. Granted, from Some Golden Harbor on, Princess Cecile is technically privately owned by Daniel himself after being sold out of service and purchased by his family's company.
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RCN	hasFeature	RCN / int_680c8fd
RCN / int_6bda9a30	type	Meaningful Name
RCN / int_6bda9a30	comment	Meaningful Name: The name of the gunner who operates the Princess Cecile's plasma cannons is Sun.
RCN / int_6bda9a30	featureApplicability	1.0
RCN / int_6bda9a30	featureConfidence	1.0
RCN	hasFeature	RCN / int_6bda9a30
RCN / int_6e8a4791	type	Heroic Comedic Sociopath
RCN / int_6e8a4791	comment	Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Tovera is a downplayed example in the later books. With Adele's hand on her tiller, so to speak, she drifts from being a completely amoral and very frightening sociopath into a frequent source of deadpan Black Comedy.
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RCN / int_6e8a4791	featureConfidence	1.0
RCN	hasFeature	RCN / int_6e8a4791
RCN / int_6eb4e408	type	Artistic License â€“ Military
RCN / int_6eb4e408	comment	Artistic License – Military: In-Universe example. In When the Tide Rises, Adele attends a play dramatizing the mission in Some Golden Harbor and spends the whole show noting the various mistakes in the details, such as getting uniforms wrong.note They put the whole crew in 2nd class uniforms (service dress) when they should've been in utilities. Also the holographic portion of the performance, while consisting of real images from Princess Cecile's combats (which a crew member sold to the playwright so he could send the money to the families of slain and crippled crew members), actually combines every battle since Leary commandeered the ship from Kostroma in book one rather than just the fight for Dunbar's World.
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RCN / int_6fc21d06	type	Fiction 500
RCN / int_6fc21d06	comment	Fiction 500: Daniel Leary was cut off without a farthing by his rich and powerful father after the argument that prompted him to become a spacer, but he quickly becomes independently wealthy from the prize money for capturing starships (that's before he inherits his maternal uncle's stake in the family shipyard). The bajillions of florins in prize money he invariably brings in becomes one of several reasons he has an easier time recruiting crews than other RCN captains (even his enlisted crew and noncoms get rich off their shares: by What Distant Deeps one of his power room techs ends up buying the estate he grew up as a tenant on). Daniel himself could really care less about the money so long as it's there when he needs it: when he's not on duty he lives as something of a self-made trust fund baby. His banker sister handles things for him.
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RCN / int_73309776	type	Psycho Sidekick
RCN / int_73309776	comment	Psycho Sidekick: Adele's servant Tovera has no real emotions, and empathy is something that's effectively nonexistent for her. Mostly she stays with Adele to learn to at least mimic the behaviors of someone with a more normal mental state.
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RCN / int_73ef9ef3	type	Almighty Janitor
RCN / int_73ef9ef3	comment	Almighty Janitor: Adele is officially a non-commissioned officer responsible for communications and cyberwarfare. If Daniel isn't present, however, everyone on the ship including Lt. Vesey, his first officer, will defer to her judgement in almost everything except handling and fighting the ship (which she openly admits she knows nothing about). And if it doesn't involve ship operations, Daniel is equally willing to follow her lead.
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RCN / int_73ef9ef3	featureConfidence	1.0
RCN	hasFeature	RCN / int_73ef9ef3
RCN / int_76a08cd6	type	Friend or Foe?
RCN / int_76a08cd6	comment	Friend or Foe?: During a fleet action Daniel takes out a heavy cruiser by tricking it into pulling a High-Speed Missile Dodge against Princess Cecile only to run into a nearby Alliance battleship's fire.
RCN / int_76a08cd6	featureApplicability	1.0
RCN / int_76a08cd6	featureConfidence	1.0
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RCN / int_7919a45b	type	Duel to the Death
RCN / int_7919a45b	comment	Duel to the Death: Duels are perfectly legal on Cinnabar. As a result, the prospect of a duel gets mentioned often, especially in regards to Adele Mundy: her politically active father taught his entire family to be crack shots and made sure that was well-publicized in order to ward off people attempting to duel them. Adele in the Backstory killed her first victim as the result of a duel with a young man that was too scared and/or proud to apologize for an insult he gave her. Notably she only shot to wound him but misjudged the gun and blew his brains out. In the story proper, she occasionally uses the threat of dueling to intimidate people. After their first meeting, Daniel resolved to challenge Adele to a duel for dismissing his uncle's achievements. Had plot not ensued when it did, it would have been a very short book. Adele privately monologues in What Distant Deeps that if by bad luck she ever comes within shooting range of Daniel's father (the man who ordered her family killed), she wouldn't bother with the formality of a duel, but just kill him right then and there.
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RCN / int_7a4013f3	type	Deuteragonist
RCN / int_7a4013f3	comment	Deuteragonist Adele Mundy is The Gunslinger of the series, trained as a pistol duelist and a crack shot with most handguns. Her preferred sidearm is small and easily concealable, but its lower penetration leads her to aim for the eyes. She personally leads the ground assault on enemy fortifications on Dunbar's World since Daniel is piloting Princess Cecile.
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RCN / int_7bf14666	type	And Now for Someone Completely Different
RCN / int_7bf14666	comment	And Now for Someone Completely Different: After eleven books from Daniel and Adele's points of view, Though Hell Should Bar the Way switches to a new character serving aboard: Roy Olfetrie, a down-on-his-luck spacer who had planned to join the RCN but for his father being unmasked as a white-collar criminal.
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RCN / int_7d89315b	type	"The Reason You Suck" Speech
RCN / int_7d89315b	comment	"The Reason You Suck" Speech: Tovera delivers one to Vesey in In the Stormy Red Sky concerning her squeamishness over killing people.
RCN / int_7d89315b	featureApplicability	1.0
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RCN / int_7febc23b	type	Establishing Character Moment
RCN / int_7febc23b	comment	Midshipman Lucinda Hale, introduced in The Sea Without a Shore, gets an interesting Establishing Character Moment. She's mentioned when she hires onto Daniel's crew as a private citizennote She had the misfortune to graduate from the Academy right as the war ended, dooming her to half-pay and no prospects. have been on the Academy shooting team and declines Hogg's offer of a pistol... only to turn and pick up a rifle instead on grounds that she has a better chance of actually hitting something with it.
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RCN / int_835d1cd2	type	Satellite Love Interest
RCN / int_835d1cd2	comment	Satellite Love Interest: Most of Daniel and Miranda's romance takes place offscreen between books and she doesn't get a whole lot of development during. She has more of a role in the first third of Death's Bright Day due to their wedding and honeymoon, but discusses the trope towards the end of it: it's starting to sink in for her what being a Navy wife means.
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RCN / int_83856158	type	Worthless Yellow Rocks
RCN / int_83856158	comment	Worthless Yellow Rocks: RCNVerse gun barrels are made of iridium. And shoot osmium bullets. Both metals are rarer and more expensive than platinum in Real Life.
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RCN / int_83b44e80	type	Straight Gay
RCN / int_83b44e80	comment	Straight Gay: Dasi and Barnes may not be attracted to one another, and their amatory interests don't really come up as minor supporting characters for the main heroes, but in When the Tide Rises it's hinted at that they're not straight, after another character uses "pansies" to disparage a just-deposed dictator's mooks as being unable to fight armed opponents. The two are among those that Leary looks to when gathering brawlers from the crew for beating some sense into others.
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RCN / int_8485d41a	type	Interspecies Romance
RCN / int_8485d41a	comment	Interspecies Romance: Reptilian alien Fallert and Tovera are implied to have gotten intimate with one another in Some Golden Harbor; Daniel was thoroughly Squicked by the prospect.
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RCN / int_85557b38	type	Reality Is Unrealistic
RCN / int_85557b38	comment	Reality Is Unrealistic: David Drake comments in the foreword to When the Tide Rises that he based the book's major battle on the 1811 Battle of Lissa. He also notes in regard to the 1866 Battle of Lissa that it's unusable as a fictional source because the losing side was implausibly incompetent: among other things the Italian flagship's crew somehow forgot to put shells in their cannons and spent the whole fight shooting blanks.
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RCN / int_863fa679	type	What Happened to the Mouse?
RCN / int_863fa679	comment	What Happened to the Mouse?: In When the Tide Rises Daniel is sent as an adviser to a group of breakaway Alliance planets. After he wins them two high-profile victories against the Alliance, the leaders worry he could farm his popular support into a Military Coup (because they would; Daniel and Adele both know he could but he isn't planning on it). They try to forcibly remove him from command, but he breaks loose and leads Bagarian ships on a raid into the Alliance's capital system to piss off Guarantor Porra so he'll divert ships from besieging a Cinnabar base to retaliate against the Bagarians. After this the Bagarians are forgotten as Daniel joins the fleet at Diamondia to break the siege altogether; we never hear what became of their revolution.
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RCN / int_86b21114	type	Badass Boast
RCN / int_86b21114	comment	Badass Boast: "Every Alliance spacer ... knows that no matter how many ships they have, they've always got to expect us to go for their throats. Deep in their hearts, they're afraid and they know we aren't. We're the RCN." — When the Tide Rises
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RCN / int_899bb0bf	type	Space Mines
RCN / int_899bb0bf	comment	Space Mines: Mines are used as the primary tool of planetary defense networks. Unlike traditional mines they magnetic lenses focusing the blast of their nuclear warhead to turn them into what are effectively one-shot x-ray lasers, similar to the missile warheads of another space navy influenced by the Napoleonic Wars.
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RCN / int_8a6d2168	type	Beat Them at Their Own Game
RCN / int_8a6d2168	comment	Beat Them at Their Own Game: In What Distant Deeps, the enemies of the book are excellent at short-range battles and pinpoint hyperspace jumps. Which happen to be Daniel's signature tactics. When he thinks about the challenge, he uses the trope phrase almost word-for-word.
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RCN / int_8a817c2a	type	Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil
RCN / int_8a817c2a	comment	Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: In The Road of Danger Adele and Tovera kill a child predator in a deliberately drawn-out and painful manner, and Tovera remarks that while even Guarantor Porra himself wouldn't bat an eye at torturing or killing children, even he draws the line at doing it for sexual reasons (the aforementioned predator likely escaped to the fringeworld ahead of Fifth Bureau assassins).
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RCN / int_8a8c7344	type	Plasma Cannon
RCN / int_8a8c7344	comment	Plasma Cannon: Ship point defense mounts use plasma cannons, whose lightspeed bolts don't really work beyond relatively short ranges but are quite destructive within those ranges. Instead of destroying incoming missiles, they use ablation to try to drive anti-ship missiles off-course enough to miss.note RCN universe missiles rely solely on kinetic warheads to cause the damage, so as long as they don't connect with the target they're unable to cause damage. As a secondary use, they can strip the delicate sails used by ships to maneuver in hyperspace, to prevent a Hyperspeed Escape. APCs have as an armament option plasma cannons. While not so great against heavily armored targets given atmospheric dispersal, at normal operating ranges they're devastating to infantry and targets with light to no armor.
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RCN / int_8ad43dc9	type	Ragtag Bunch of Misfits
RCN / int_8ad43dc9	comment	Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The series' True Companions consist of the disowned son of the most powerful politician on Cinnabar and playboy military hero, a lethal librarian/spy who is the sole survivor of the disgraced family massacred on the order of said aforementioned politician, a sociopathic former agent of Cinnabar's main enemy, and Leary's surrogate father who uses Obfuscating Stupidity so that people don't realize the hick peasant is the deadliest person in the room (if any of the other three aren't there).
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RCN / int_8b49514e	type	Magical Computer
RCN / int_8b49514e	comment	Magical Computer: Adele's portable data unit. She uses it to do everything from looking up zoological data for Daniel's amusement to reading encrypted Alliance battle transmissions in real time.
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RCN / int_8b49514e	featureConfidence	1.0
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RCN / int_8b93a168	type	Macross Missile Massacre
RCN / int_8b93a168	comment	Macross Missile Massacre: Not to Honor Harrington standards but still somewhat frequent: battleships in the series can put forty birds in the air at a time, any one of which can seriously damage or kill a ship. Pirates often use multiple-rocket launchers, which can't usually puncture a ship but can easily shred sails to prevent a Hyperspeed Escape. Daniel for his part is more commonly on the receiving end, as Princess Cecile only has two launchers and a twenty-shot magazine.
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RCN / int_905438eb	type	Recycled IN SPACE!
RCN / int_905438eb	comment	Recycled In Space: Aubrey-Maturin is explicitly the model for the series, for both the main characters and the setting as a whole. It could be mistaken for Horatio Hornblower, but that's already been done. Drake discusses the historical influences for the individual books in the foreword or afterword of each one.
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RCN / int_92286f7f	type	Precursors
RCN / int_92286f7f	comment	Precursors: The characters encounter ruins left behind by long-vanished aliens in several books.
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RCN / int_92286f7f	featureConfidence	1.0
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RCN / int_9400b3b5	type	Questionable Consent
RCN / int_9400b3b5	comment	Questionable Consent: Defied in Though Hell Should Bar the Way. Roy fell in Love at First Sight with Monica, who was at the time being held as a harem slave (she's confirmed to have been gang-raped at least once). She reciprocates, but he initially turns her down, wanting to make sure she's sleeping with him because she wants to, not out of any sense of obligation.
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RCN / int_964ea66c	type	A-Team Firing
RCN / int_964ea66c	comment	A-Team Firing: Many of the Sissies are described as shooting with more enthusiasm than skill. Justified because as naval personnel they're not trained for infantry combat, even though they get used as Space Marines fairly often since Princess Cecile is too small to carry her own Marine contingent.
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RCN / int_97522514	type	Heel–Face Revolving Door
RCN / int_97522514	comment	Heel–Face Revolving Door: At one point Daniel recruits several crewloads of spacers for Cinnabar who had previously been recruited from Cinnabar by the Alliance after their ships were captured mere weeks ago. Justified in that spacers are a transient lot by nature: the Alliance pays as well as Cinnabar (and merchant captains pay even better: in one book the Navy Board takes to locking crewmen inside ships scheduled for scrapping to keep them from going AWOL between tours) and most enlisted spacers don't particularly care which side they're flying for as long as they get to fly at all.
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RCN / int_98d3f973	type	Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe
RCN / int_98d3f973	comment	Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: Neither Daniel or Deidre share many physical traits with their father, as Corder Leary was lean, craggy man and considerably taller than both Daniel and Deidre, who were fighting their weight.
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RCN / int_9e1548b4	type	Old Retainer
RCN / int_9e1548b4	comment	Old Retainer: Hogg has been in the service of the Learys of Bantry for a long time, serving as a Parental Substitute for Daniel due to Speaker Leary's frequent absences due to his political career.
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RCN / int_9fbe06a5	type	Badass in a Nice Suit
RCN / int_9fbe06a5	comment	Badass in a Nice Suit: One of the series' running gags is Hogg constantly having to repair Daniel's dress uniforms after he gets into fights while wearing them.
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RCN / int_a0e5667f	type	Proxy War
RCN / int_a0e5667f	comment	Proxy War: Several of the first seven books' plots deal with attempts by Alliance proxies to overthrow the governments of pro-Cinnabar planets and having to be stopped by RCN forces under Daniel Leary. In one case it costs the RCN an entire battle group after Alliance-backed rebels gain control of anti-ship missile batteries defending a harbor. Defied in book eight and later: With Cinnabar and the Alliance having signed a peace treaty of mutual exhaustion and trying very hard to avoid a resumption of hostilities, Daniel's job is turned on its head, with him trying to prevent a Cinnabar client state from invading a pro-Alliance planet, and removing a Cinnabar citizen leading a rebellion on an Alliance planet to prove the Republic wasn't involved. Death's Bright Day sees Daniel in the unusual position of intervening in a proxy war that pits the Alliance against itself. More specifically, two rival generals in the Fifth Bureau, one of whom is marginally friendlier to Cinnabar than the other, are backing opposite sides in a civil war in an Alliance client state in hopes of currying favor with Guarantor Porra.
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RCN / int_a1d4e0a8	type	Genocide Backfire
RCN / int_a1d4e0a8	comment	Genocide Backfire: Played with. In the backstory, Daniel's father, Cinnabar's former head of state Corder Leary, ordered the execution of Adele's entire family for treason (including her ten-year-old sister, who was caught up in it despite being younger than the orders allowed). Adele always carries a pistol, and once mentions in her Internal Monologue that if she ever ends up in the same room as former Speaker Leary, she won't bother with the formality of a duel. Fortunately, Daniel and his father aren't close, either, and he's only shown up once (in The Way to Glory).
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RCN / int_a30b9c71	type	LadyKillerInLove
RCN / int_a30b9c71	comment	Lady Killer In Love: Daniel develops a romantic attraction to Miranda Dorst, the sister of one of his Plucky Middies who is killed in action. Adele notes to herself that Miranda isn't his usual "type" (he usually prefers the Brainless Beauty type for one-night stands, but Miranda is described as being much smarter).
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RCN / int_a6e8221e	type	Status Quo Is God
RCN / int_a6e8221e	comment	Status Quo Is God: In the Stormy Red Sky is so far the only book in the series that doesn't feature Princess Cecile as Daniel's primary command; he's instead given command of RCS Milton, a heavy cruiser. Milton takes a missile to the stern at the climax, damaging her beyond economical repair, and between books Cinnabar and the Alliance sign a ceasefire, so Daniel is back to commanding Princess Cecile in What Distant Deeps.
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RCN / int_a7aef9ff	type	Obfuscating Stupidity
RCN / int_a7aef9ff	comment	Obfuscating Stupidity: Hogg regularly pretends to be a dull-witted hick to more effectively sucker anyone he gets into a poker game. Similarly, Daniel isn't above playing at being an Upper-Class Twit who got his position through family connections and dumb luck if the circumstances warrant it.
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RCN / int_a8af3e53	type	Secret Police
RCN / int_a8af3e53	comment	Death's Bright Day sees Daniel in the unusual position of intervening in a proxy war that pits the Alliance against itself. More specifically, two rival generals in the Fifth Bureau, one of whom is marginally friendlier to Cinnabar than the other, are backing opposite sides in a civil war in an Alliance client state in hopes of currying favor with Guarantor Porra.
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RCN / int_a9c7258a	type	Absent Aliens
RCN / int_a9c7258a	comment	Absent Aliens: In spirit. While at least three other alien species exist, interaction between them and humanity is extremely rare, since humans and aliens don't compete or trade for resources or planets because they don't use the same ones: there's a mention in With the Lightnings of an alien visitor to Kostroma who has to be ferried about the city inside a tank containing its native atmosphere. There are hints sprinkled throughout the series of aliens that lived on the same kind of worlds as humans; Death's Bright Day even has Daniel find an alien glove in a cave.
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RCN / int_aa596c58	type	The War of Earthly Aggression
RCN / int_aa596c58	comment	The War of Earthly Aggression: The Population Wars in the backstory, set off by Earth's policy of foisting its excess population off on its nearer daughter worlds without their consent. This culminated in Earth being decimated by Colony Drop, which, as Adele remarks in her Internal Monologue, ironically achieved Earth's objective to reduce its population to a sustainable level.
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RCN / int_abc60c5d	type	Harmful to Minors
RCN / int_abc60c5d	comment	Harmful to Minors: Adele's ten-year-old sister was forced into prostitution before being decapitated. The severed head was then placed on public view, in spite of her being too young to be affected by the Proscriptions that resulted in most of the Mundys being executed as participants in the Three Circles Conspiracy.
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RCN / int_b1a7cd14	type	Tap on the Head
RCN / int_b1a7cd14	comment	Tap on the Head: Daniel hits his head and is knocked unconscious when Milton is hit by a missile in In the Stormy Red Sky.
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RCN / int_b2c737e8	type	Klingon Promotion
RCN / int_b2c737e8	comment	Klingon Promotion: In Death's Bright Day when the Sissies are being commingled with the Tarbell Stars naval personnel, Woetjans is understandably incensed when the ship's bosun classes her as a landsman. When he proceeds to make a sexist crack, she responds by grabbing him by the feet and swinging him like a bat, cracking his head on the bulkhead. Much to Daniel's surprise, the captain appoints Woetjans as the new bosun (though it's indicated that he had been itching for an excuse to get rid of the old bosun).
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RCN / int_b9fc31d3	type	Victoria's Secret Compartment
RCN / int_b9fc31d3	comment	Victoria's Secret Compartment: In Some Golden Harbor, Adele and Tolvera use a false bosom used by Elemere to hide a pair of machine pistols for use in a raid on a paranoid councilor's mansion, knowing that they would be scanned for weapons on arrival, while a seemingly restrained Elemere wouldn't.
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RCN / int_bc00493f	type	Precision F-Strike
RCN / int_bc00493f	comment	Precision F-Strike: There's only about one F-bomb in the entire series, namely the Bawdy Song performed by a troupe of mummers at Daniel's uncle's funeral.
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RCN / int_bc74ef27	type	Berserk Button
RCN / int_bc74ef27	comment	Berserk Button: Anyone who thinks they can sully the honor of a Mundy of Chatsworth without repercussions is in for a nasty surprise.
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RCN / int_bcd27e37	type	Improbable Aiming Skills
RCN / int_bcd27e37	comment	Improbable Aiming Skills: Adele Mundy is an expert pistol shot, from the Mundy family's insistence that its members be able to protect themselves, and be able to survive duels that may arise from the "rough and tumble" nature of Cinnabar politics.
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RCN / int_bd4264a3	type	Slasher Smile
RCN / int_bd4264a3	comment	Slasher Smile: Tovera and sometimes Adele. In the former's case she's a sociopath aping the behaviors of a normal person, and with the latter it's simply from not being much of a people person.
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RCN / int_c19bdbe1	type	Good Cop/Bad Cop
RCN / int_c19bdbe1	comment	Good Cop/Bad Cop: In What Distant Deeps, Daniel and Adele interrogate a prisoner. Daniel plays good cop. Adele...just acts normally. For her, that is.
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RCN / int_c303f680	type	Briefcase Blaster
RCN / int_c303f680	comment	Briefcase Blaster: Tovera keeps a submachinegun in her attache case, which is rigged to hide the weapon from any but the most advanced of weapon scanners.
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RCN / int_c313d43a	type	True Companions
RCN / int_c313d43a	comment	True Companions: Leary notes to himself in What Distant Deeps that he, Adele, Tovera, and Hogg have become a weird kind of family.
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RCN / int_c3478f1d	type	Badass Bookworm
RCN / int_c3478f1d	comment	Badass Bookworm: Lady Adele Mundy, Mundy of Chatsworth, one of the First Families of Cinnabar, Signals Officer in the RCN, pistol-packing Librarian. She's not only a Bookworm who's also badass, but equally Badass as a bookworm. Once she frightened the head of Cinnabar Intelligence with her ability to penetrate Cinnabar systems, form queries, and make inferences from the result.
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RCN / int_c4942576	type	Cunning Linguist
RCN / int_c4942576	comment	Cunning Linguist: Adele is adept at mimicking accents and uses an upper-class Alliance core-world accent a number of times.
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RCN / int_c75df49a	type	Shout-Out
RCN / int_c75df49a	comment	Shout-Out: A brief reference in In the Stormy Red Sky to a medicinal plant known as "bluebrights" and grown on the planet Melpomene. The chronologically first Hammer's Slammers story takes place on Melpomene and mentions that bluebrights are the planet's only export. (The technologies used are different enough that the Slammers and the RCN cannot be part of the same future history.)
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RCN / int_c7b5445c	type	Cool Starship
RCN / int_c7b5445c	comment	Cool Starship: Both of Daniel's main commands in the series are unique. RCS Princess Cecile is a Kostroman corvette with a modular hull, as opposed to the one-piece hulls favored by Cinnabar and the Alliance. The hull is more difficult to work on, but enables the ship to repairably survive damage that would have sent a normal ship to the scrapyard. Though after the Battle of Strymon, the Sissie is sold out of service since the RCN's shipyards don't have the equipment to fix the hull. Daniel's family owns a shipyard and buys and fixes her, essentially making the Sissie Daniel's private yacht. RCS Milton, formerly AFS Scheer, is an Alliance heavy cruiser Daniel captures in The Way to Glory and takes command of in In the Stormy Red Sky. It's noted to be a peacetime design of which only three were built, with an experimental weapons layout that's derided as Awesome, but Impractical: two pairs of 8"/20 cm plasma cannons rather than the four six-inchers more typical on a heavy cruiser. This means that while Millie packs a wallop at energy range, her point defense against missiles is handicapped. Daniel is not discouraged. Unfortunately she's hit by a missile and damaged beyond repair in the same book Daniel takes command.
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RCN / int_ca4e037	type	Dude Looks Like a Lady
RCN / int_ca4e037	comment	Dude Looks Like a Lady: Elmere in Some Golden Harbor. Matters are further confused due to the way he behaves in a stereotypically feminine manner.
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RCN / int_ca95473c	type	Series Continuity Error
RCN / int_ca95473c	comment	Series Continuity Error: Characters occasionally referred to "God," singular, up until somewhere in When the Tide Rises, after which they seem to always speak of "the Gods." In the Stormy Red Sky says the Alliance dictator's name as "Jorge Porra". In What Distant Deeps, however, Porra's former mistress speaks of him as "Guillaume." Possibly this is just her name for him. What Distant Deeps refers to the Peace of Rheims ending the war between Cinnabar and the Alliance. In The Road of Danger it's the Truce of Amiens.
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RCN / int_cbd5e41a	type	Vehicular Turnabout
RCN / int_cbd5e41a	comment	Vehicular Turnabout: Enemy ships are often captured and used against them, occasionally even taken into RCN service after capture. This is in fact how Leary acquires his first command, RCS Princess Cecile, in With the Lightnings: by stealing it out of dock from the Kostroman navy.
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RCN / int_cbdd9a55	type	We ARE Struggling Together
RCN / int_cbdd9a55	comment	We ARE Struggling Together: Daniel is sent to support a group of breakaway Alliance planets in When the Tide Rises and is nearly undone by infighting among the rebels. Adele observes to herself that this is not atypical of rebellions; the ones that succeeded inevitably did in part because their enemies were even more divided. Daniel ultimately just uses them to draw ships away from a besieged Cinnabar base and then drops them like a hot potato, probably feeling a bit miffed that they tried to kill him.
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RCN / int_ccab244d	type	Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better
RCN / int_ccab244d	comment	Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Anti-ship missiles don't bother with an explosive warhead, but instead use kinetic energy from being accelerated up to a significant fraction of the speed of light by their High Drive, making explosive warheads pointless. They're also segmented to give a wider spread. On the ground, coilguns with discarding sabots, rather than firearms, are the weapon of choice.
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RCN / int_cfcabcf	type	Nuclear Torch Rocket
RCN / int_cfcabcf	comment	Nuclear Torch Rocket: Spaceships have three main types of thrusters, two of which follow this principle. Plasma rockets are used primarily in atmosphere and work by stripping electrons from reaction mass (typically seawater) and propelling it out the nozzles. The High Drive, which is used in space only, is a matter/antimatter thruster, so using it too close to a planet's atmosphere is a good way to disable your own ship: in Some Golden Harbor Daniel wins a confrontation with a cruiser in his corvette when the cruiser dips too low into Dunbar's World's atmosphere and blows out its own High Drive. Ship-to-ship missiles in the series also use matter/antimatter thrusters exclusively, which effectively makes any warship a Glass Cannon because no hull built by man can withstand that kind of kinetic energy.
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RCN / int_d19343fc	type	Glove Slap
RCN / int_d19343fc	comment	Glove Slap: Adele to a slimy (allied) intelligence officer in With The Lightnings.
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RCN / int_d45c0b86	type	Refuge in Audacity
RCN / int_d45c0b86	comment	Refuge in Audacity: While Daniel's very real skill as a spacer and Adele's intelligence-gathering abilities are major factors, many of Daniel's plans work in no small part because the sheer balls required means nobody in the Alliance is ready for them. This is lampshaded by Daniel a couple of times in a manner reflective of Admiral Lord Nelson's quotation that "No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of an enemy." Early in When the Tide Rises, Daniel is sent to report to an admiral who's in a losing battle to save a subject world from being overrun by the Alliance. Upon arriving in Princess Cecile, he sees part of the RCN group trapped by part of the Alliance group and goes on the attack. The Alliance ships bug out because they know an Alliance corvette wouldn't dare attack three sloops unless it was the vanguard of a much larger force... exactly as Daniel thought they would. Daniel Leary mounts a raid on the home star system of the Alliance of Free Stars in When the Tide Rises, relying in part on the notion that because no one would expect anyone to attack the star system with just an antiquated light cruiser and a corvette, there wouldn't be prepared plans available to handle such a situation.
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RCN / int_d99d9918	type	The Captain
RCN / int_d99d9918	comment	The Captain: Daniel Leary is clearly in charge of the Princess Cecile crew, which causes some minor tension in Some Golden Harbor when Lt. Vesey is the official CO of the ship, but everyone tends look to Leary for guidance. However, Daniel makes clear to Vesey that he wants her to be captain in truth, not just on paper.
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RCN / int_d9cf40fa	type	Screw This, I'm Outta Here
RCN / int_d9cf40fa	comment	Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In When the Tide Rises, the bulk of Daniel's fleet does this when the assault on Churchyard doesn't go as well as anticipated.
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RCN / int_d9d8fd35	type	Battle Butler
RCN / int_d9d8fd35	comment	Battle Butler: Anyone disdaining either Tovera or Hogg as a simple servant is unlikely to live long enough to regret the mistake. Porra's exiled mistress in What Distant Deeps also has a personal servant whose real duty (everyone knows) is to keep an eye on her. She and Tovera spend a great deal of time ensuring each has a clean shot at the other if necessary.
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RCN / int_dae5c997	type	Action Girl
RCN / int_dae5c997	comment	Action Girl: Any military-trained woman in this series can kick just as much ass as the men, but even then there's a few standouts: Deuteragonist Adele Mundy is The Gunslinger of the series, trained as a pistol duelist and a crack shot with most handguns. Her preferred sidearm is small and easily concealable, but its lower penetration leads her to aim for the eyes. She personally leads the ground assault on enemy fortifications on Dunbar's World since Daniel is piloting Princess Cecile. Adele's servant/bodyguard Tovera is a former assassin of the Alliance's Secret Police, the Fifth Bureau, and carries a submachine gun in an attache case. She's also adept with Improvised Weapons, once immobilizing a man by stabbing him with a writing stylus. Woetjans, Daniel's bosun, is a tall, strong woman who likes to use a length of high-pressure tubing as a truncheon. Midshipman Lucinda Hale, introduced in The Sea Without a Shore, gets an interesting Establishing Character Moment. She's mentioned when she hires onto Daniel's crew as a private citizennote She had the misfortune to graduate from the Academy right as the war ended, dooming her to half-pay and no prospects. have been on the Academy shooting team and declines Hogg's offer of a pistol... only to turn and pick up a rifle instead on grounds that she has a better chance of actually hitting something with it.
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RCN / int_dcb6d23d	type	Casanova
RCN / int_dcb6d23d	comment	Unlike Daniel, he's not a Casanova: he instead rescues a noblewoman from a pirate lord's harem after falling in love with her at first sight. When they do sleep together, she initiates it, and he declines until he's sure she's doing it because she wants to and not because she feels she owes him.
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RCN / int_dd09e7f2	type	Quantity vs. Quality
RCN / int_dd09e7f2	comment	Quantity vs. Quality: When the Tide Rises discusses this. The Alliance Fleet tends to build more, bigger, and theoretically more powerful ships than Cinnabar, but Cinnabar crews tend to be more skilled and more loyal. Guarantor Porra relies mainly on conscription to fill out the ranks, so while they don't have the manpower problems the RCN often does from having to compete with the merchant marine, many Alliance spacers aren't as good or motivated as their RCN counterparts and will sometimes even switch sides given the opportunity. The end result is that numerically superior Alliance squadrons will sometimes lose to lesser Cinnabar squadrons on the sheer skill and balls of the Cinnabars. In Daniel Leary's case, he's helped along by the fact that thanks to Adele Mundy's hacking and data-crunching skills, he nearly always has better intelligence than any opponent.
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RCN / int_e11b003d	type	Translation Convention
RCN / int_e11b003d	comment	Translation Convention: In the foreword of the first book, Drake explicitly states he has Cinnabar using imperial measurements, while the Alliance uses metric ones, to help differentiate the two polities, even though he doesn't expect either system to actually exist many centuries in the future.
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RCN / int_e28f88b8	type	Last-Name Basis
RCN / int_e28f88b8	comment	Last-Name Basis: Daniel's servant and parental substitute is only ever referred to as "Hogg", the family name.
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RCN / int_e35ab565	type	Indy Ploy
RCN / int_e35ab565	comment	Indy Ploy: Daniel prefers to plan ahead, and does it well, but it can be almost frightening watching how smoothly he adjusts if something ruins his current plan.
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RCN / int_e58dd5	type	The Jinx
RCN / int_e58dd5	comment	The Jinx: The Sissies regard Lt. Mon as this and believe that Daniel's presence is the only thing that keeps it in check. He quits the service early in the series, and Daniel hires him as a manager at his family's shipyard, which turns out to suit him much better.
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RCN / int_e73b36ed	type	Truce Trickery
RCN / int_e73b36ed	comment	Truce Trickery: At the start of The Far Side of the Stars, the Republic of Cinnabar has signed a truce with the Alliance of Free Stars. Over the course of the novel, Captain Leary discovers that the Alliance is using the truce as cover to advance its aims in far-flung areas of the galaxy and is preparing for a surprise attack, but his discovery of their machinations allows Cinnabar to resume hostilities before the Alliance can make any decisive gains.
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RCN / int_e81f5639	type	Moe Greene Special
RCN / int_e81f5639	comment	Moe Greene Special: Mundy's pistol fires ceramic pellets that don't have much penetration, so her preferred aim point is her target's eyes where there's no concern for bone deflecting the pellet.
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RCN / int_e8d46c29	type	Backstory
RCN / int_e8d46c29	comment	Adele in the Backstory killed her first victim as the result of a duel with a young man that was too scared and/or proud to apologize for an insult he gave her. Notably she only shot to wound him but misjudged the gun and blew his brains out. In the story proper, she occasionally uses the threat of dueling to intimidate people.
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RCN / int_ecee5a56	type	A Lady on Each Arm
RCN / int_ecee5a56	comment	A Lady on Each Arm: Before he hooked up with Miranda Dorst, this was not an unusual situation for Daniel.
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RCN / int_ed2bbf8a	type	You Are in Command Now
RCN / int_ed2bbf8a	comment	You Are in Command Now: In In the Stormy Red Sky, Adele finds herself thrust into command of the Milton when Daniel gets knocked out by some flying debris and Vesey experiences Heroic BSoD as a result.
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RCN / int_eef85d73	type	People's Republic of Tyranny
RCN / int_eef85d73	comment	People's Republic of Tyranny: The bad guys mostly come from the "Alliance of Free Stars", which is even less democratic than Cinnabar and amounts to a military dictatorship (it's based mainly on Napoleonic France, with elements of Prussia and the Soviet Union).
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RCN / int_ef20dac5	type	Servile Snarker
RCN / int_ef20dac5	comment	Servile Snarker: Hogg. One especially notable incident occurs in In The Stormy Red Sky just after the Sissies have captured an Alliance world and are about to accept an official surrender when Senator Forbes complains about how dust will show up on the suit she's wearing. Hogg points out that as long as she hasn't crapped herself, she'll be better dressed than anyone they meet.
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RCN / int_f05444a4	type	Once per Episode
RCN / int_f05444a4	comment	Once per Episode: Someone will assume that Daniel and Adele are romantically involved. The most hilarious instance occurs in What Distant Deeps when Adele visits the Bantry estate, in which a kid comes up to her and asks if she's Daniel's girlfriend. He's almost immediately clouted by his older sister, who then profusely apologizes for his behavior.
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RCN / int_f237981e	type	The Alleged Car
RCN / int_f237981e	comment	The Alleged Ship: Starships from Novy Sverdlovsk have a reputation for being like this, with their crews being of equally low quality. The RCN also tends to have a low opinion of Pantellarian ships, though this has more to do with the quality of the crews than the ships themselves: Pantellarian sensors in particular are as good or better than anything in Cinnabar or Alliance use, though on the other hand they also use some tri-barrel plasma turrets that are Awesome, but Impractical.
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RCN / int_f38a4690	type	Legacy of Service
RCN / int_f38a4690	comment	Legacy of Service: It's said by the narration that Hoggs have been serving the Learys of Bantry for many generations, including the one standing by Daniel Leary throughout the book series.
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RCN / int_f627b434	type	Platonic Life-Partners
RCN / int_f627b434	comment	Platonic Life-Partners: Adele will do just about anything for Daniel, to the point of manipulating the Cinnabar government to serve with him, but it's mentioned several times that neither has any romantic inclinations towards the other — and Adele has no romantic inclinations toward anybody.
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RCN / int_f818b637	type	Dude, Where's My Respect?
RCN / int_f818b637	comment	Dude, Where's My Respect?: Daniel comes in for a fair amount of guff from officers jealous of his meteoric rise through the ranks and number of medals (including the Cinnabar Star with Wreath, roughly equivalent to someone being awarded the Medal of Honor twice). They typically think he's either a Glory Hound or well-connected. (They're about half-right on the latter: he's the son of a former Cinnabar head of state and the original head of the Navy Board, Admiral Anston, took a liking to him, but Anston was medically retired in The Way to Glory and Daniel and his father haven't been on speaking terms for over a decade.)
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RCN / int_f96f188c	type	Drives Like Crazy
RCN / int_f96f188c	comment	Drives Like Crazy: Whenver Barnes pilots an aircar, the trip always ends in a controlled crash. With Hogg behind the wheel, the "controlled" in "controlled crash" doesn't enter the picture. While Tovera's driving isn't as outright bad as that of Barnes or Hogg, while she's technically trained to drive an aircar it doesn't come naturally to her, resulting in some rough flying and landings.
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RCN / int_f9f2c33	type	Running Gag
RCN / int_f9f2c33	comment	Running Gag: Daniel is bad at saluting and invariably wrecks his dress uniform. People assuming Daniel and Adele are romantically involved.
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RCN / int_fcaec6bf	type	Orbital Bombardment
RCN / int_fcaec6bf	comment	Orbital Bombardment: In Some Golden Harbor, Captain ap Glynn, CO of a Pellegrinian cruiser, apparently cracks after Daniel's people capture the Pellegrinian beachhead on Dunbar's World and starts firing missiles at ground targets (including a city), while demanding that the "pirates" surrender to the "rightful" controllers of Dunbar's World. Likely a combination of stress and not wanting to return to the Pellegrinian dictator a failure. He apparently calms down a bit after Daniel goes to get help in the Princess Cecile.
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RCN / int_fd76256a	type	Pervy Patdown
RCN / int_fd76256a	comment	Pervy Patdown: A local magnate's thug does this to Adele and Tovera during a crisis in When the Tide Rises. Neither objects at the time because they need help rescuing Daniel, who has been falsely accused of plotting a Military Coup against the Bagarian government, but once the balance of power shifts, Tovera shanks the thug with a writing stylus, then castrates him.
RCN / int_fd76256a	featureApplicability	1.0
RCN / int_fd76256a	featureConfidence	1.0
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RCN / int_fd94c4ac	type	Theme Naming
RCN / int_fd94c4ac	comment	Theme Naming: Similar to some historical navies, RCN ships often fall into theme-named classes — "Archaeologist-class cruisers" such as the Maspero and "Philosopher-class battleships" like the Lao-tze. More unusual is that although there's nothing especially German about Alliance personal names, Alliance warships above the level of destroyers almost always have German names (the most noticeable exception is named after the Alliance capital world). There is a strong Prussian feel to a great deal of the Alliance military apparatus. Ranks are German, uniforms are 'field gray' etc. In What Distant Deeps, it is revealed that the world of Adlersbild was one of the founding planets of the Alliance, along with Pleasaunce, and that this world is run by aristocrats with 'Von' in front of their names.
RCN / int_fd94c4ac	featureApplicability	1.0
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RCN / int_fea715c1	type	Feudal Future
RCN / int_fea715c1	comment	Feudal Future: A merchant princes variant. Cinnabar is a democracy only as much as 18th century Britain: while there's no nobility in the traditional sense, only members of the upper economic classes have the right to vote and there's little opportunity for social mobility except by getting rich and buying your way in.
RCN / int_fea715c1	featureApplicability	1.0
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RCN / int_ff24ad1d	type	Bawdy Song
RCN / int_ff24ad1d	comment	Bawdy Song: One of the early books opens on the funeral for Daniel's uncle Stacy Bergen, a record-setting RCN navigator who inspired Daniel to join the RCN himself. The procession includes a troupe of mummers who perform a song that includes a line about Stacy teaching young ladies "how to fuck" (one of surprisingly few times the word is used in the series).
RCN / int_ff24ad1d	featureApplicability	1.0
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RCN / int_fff371b4	type	Death Seeker
RCN / int_fff371b4	comment	Death Seeker: Adele Mundy ... unfortunately she sucks at dying.
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The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

Grand Tour Series / Fan Fic	seeAlso	RCN
RCN	hasFeature	Absent Aliens / int_f01c0730
RCN	hasFeature	Antimatter / int_f01c0730
RCN	hasFeature	Artistic License â€“ Economics / int_f01c0730
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RCN	hasFeature	Loved I Not Honor More / int_f01c0730
RCN	hasFeature	Luke, I Might Be Your Father / int_f01c0730
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RCN	hasFeature	Wooden Ships and Iron Men / int_f01c0730
RCN	hasFeature	Dramatic Deadpan / int_f01c0730

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