More Than Honor

As a final safeguard intended to prevent the monarchy from losing touch with the non-aristocratic majority of the Star Kingdom's population, Roger I and Elizabeth I insisted that the Constitution include one additional provision. The heir to the throne is required by law to marry a commoner. Other members of the royal family may marry whomever they wish, but the Crown Prince or Crown Princess must marry outside the aristocracy.

The only real challenge to the Manticoran monarchy came in 1721 pd in the so-called "Gryphon Uprising," which remains the most internal excitement the Star Kingdom has been forced to confront. Gryphon, the least congenial of the three habitable planets of the Manticore System, has by far the smallest share of First Shareholder families, as its first outpost was not placed until fifteen years after the Plague. The bulk of its aristocracy came from the Second Shareholders, who, for the most part, had substantially less credit than First Shareholders and, accordingly, received smaller "Clear Grants" (that is, land to which clear title was granted prior to improvements by the owner/tenant). The Crown, however, had established the principle of "Crown Range" (land in the public domain and free for the use of any individual) to encourage emigration to Gryphon, and by 1715, the population of Gryphon had grown to the level set under the Crown Range Charter of 1490. At that point, as the charter required, the Crown began phasing out the Crown Range, granting title on the basis of improvements made, and the trouble began. Yeomen who hoped to become independent ranchers, farmers, or miners claimed that the planetary nobility was using strong-arm tactics to force them off the land—indeed, something very like a shooting war erupted between "squatters" and "the children of shareholders," and after two years of increasingly bloody unrest, a special commission was established with extraordinary police powers and a mandate to suppress the violence and reach a settlement.

The Gryphon Range Commission's final finding was that there was sound foundation to the yeomen's original complaints, and the Manticoran Army, having pacified and stabilized the situation, then oversaw a closely regulated privatization of the Crown Range. A degree of dislike between small landholders and certain of the noble families continues to this day, but it has become something of a tradition rather than a source of active hostility.

All of the above dates are given in Terran Standard (Post Diaspora) Reckoning. Like all extra-Solar systems settled during the Diaspora of Man, the Manticore System found it necessary to create its own calendar to reflect the axial and orbital rotations of their new home, but in the Manticorans' case the situation was complicated by the fact that whereas most star systems are fortunate to have a single habitable world, their distant binary system possessed three of them, each with its own day and year.

As the rest of humanity, Manticorans use Standard Seconds, Minutes, and Hours, and Old Earth's 365.26-day year serves as the "Standard Reckoning Year," or "T-year," the common base to which local dates throughout known space are converted for convenience in dealing with inhabitants of other star systems. Like most extra-Solar polities, the Star Kingdom of Manticore's history texts follow the convention of counting years "Post Diaspora" (ie., in T-years from the year in which the first interstellar colony ship departed Old Earth) as well as in terms of the local calendar.

The Kingdom's Official Reckoning of dates is based on the rotational and orbital periods of Manticore-A III, the planet Manticore. This calendar is used for all official records, but doesn't really work very well for the seasons of any planet other than Manticore itself. Accordingly, both Sphinx (Manticore-A IV) and Gryphon (Manticore-B IV) have their own, purely local calendars, which means that a single star system routinely uses no less than four calendars (including Standard Reckoning). Needless to say, date-conversion software is incorporated in virtually every Manticoran computer.

The clocks of each planet count time in full 60-minute Standard Hours (or T-hours), with an additional, shorter "hour" called "Compensate" (or, more commonly, simply "Comp") to make up the difference. Thus the Planet Manticore's day consists of 22 hours (numbered 01:00 to 22:59) plus a 27-minute-long Comp, while Sphinx's day consists of 25 hours (numbered 01:00 to 25:59) plus a 37-minute Comp. The planetary week is seven planetary days long in each case, and Manticore's day is used aboard all Royal Navy vessels.

The official year of the Kingdom is 673 days long, with a leap year every third year. It is divided into 18 months, 11 of 37 days and 7 of 38, alternating for the first 6 and last 8 months, named (simply, if rather unimaginatively) First Month, Second Month, Third Month, etc., with a leap year (1 extra day in 4th Month) every third year. The Gryphon local year is also divided into 18 months (16 of 36 days and 2 of 37 days) with the extra days in Ninth and Tenth and one extra day in Eleventh Month every other local year. The Sphinxian year, however, is divided into 46 months, 35 of 39 days and 11 of 38 days (the shorter months fall in even-numbered months from Twelfth to Thirty-Second), with a leap year every 7 years with an extra day in 15th Month. All of these calendars are reckoned in "Years After Landing" (abbreviated al), dating from the day (March 21, 1416 pd) the first shuttle from the colony ship Jason touched down on the present-day site of the City of Landing. Obviously, this means that each planet's local year is a different "Year After Landing" from any of the others. Thus Honor Harrington's orders to Fearless, dated Fourth 25, 280 al (using Official Manticoran Reckoning, or the Manticore planetary calendar), were also written on March 3, 1900 pd (Standard Reckoning), and on Second 26, 93 al (using the local Sphinxian calendar). This plethora of dates is a major reason Manticorans tend to convert time spans into T-years even in domestic matters.

Roger I 1471–1474 pd (32–34 al) Elizabeth I 1474–1507 pd (34–53 al) Michael 1507–1539 pd (53–72 al) Edward I 1539–1544 pd (72–74 al) (boating accident; succeeded by sister) Elizabeth II 1544–1601 pd ( 74–107 al) David 1601–1642 pd (107–131 al) Roger II 1642–1669 pd (131–147 al) Adrie

Manticoran political parties began as factions in the House of Lords and, in the Lords, retain much of their original factional nature.

The Constitution adopted following the Plague intended to place government primarily in the hands of the aristocracy, who would dominate the House of Lords (the senior branch of the Parliament) and the Royal Council, but things actually worked out somewhat differently. Although Roger Winton had been a very strong planetary administrator, it is improbable that the drafters of the Constitution truly intended for the Crown to acquire a firm grip on the executive authority. Elizabeth I, however, was a very shrewd administrator, and she quickly observed that the original Manticoran peerage comprised a group of spokesmen for competing interests rather than statesmen. By playing the interests of the various factions within the Lords off against one another, Elizabeth was able to establish (among other things) that the Prime Minister and all non-hereditary members of the Royal Council served at her pleasure. The Lords had the right to advise and consent on initial appointments, but she had the power to dismiss them at any time, and she could not be forced to accept anyone else's choice for any of those positions. With that principle firmly enshrined in the unwritten portion of the Star Kingdom's Constitution, Crown dominance of the government was established.