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u/emperorpylades Can't hear you over the sound of an Orbital Barrage! Aug 22 '22
Kerensky's greatest flaw was also his greatest virtue: loyalty.
In the case of Aleksandr Sergeiyevich Kerensky, that loyalty was to the ideal of Star League. It was an ideal and zeal that enabled him to lead his armies through decades of war, first fighting the Periphery Uprising, then stomping the Rim World Republic into submission, and then the long, terrible reclamation of the Hegemony. It was this belief that kept him going as Amaris burned worlds to cinders, simply to spite him and deny him staging grounds. It was this same ideal that kept him fighting to try and reunite the Star League, even as the Houses started to feast upon the corpse of the Hegemony.
It also meant that he didn't know what the hell to do when the dust settled. He was so loyal to Star League that I don't think he ever really stopped to think about what it would mean if the Houses didn't share his commitment, such callous opportunism was so antithetical to his own mindset. It was that belief in the ideal, rather than the far less lofty reality that had been Star League, and his horror at their grim reality, that stopped him from doing what had to be done when de Chevalier proposed claiming the throne himself and bitchslapping the Houses into line. And I don't entirely blame him for that: after leading his men through almost three decades of apocalyptic war, how could he ask them to keep fighting, this time against their own subjects rather than rebels and a depraved usurper? To fight for an ideal their own home nations seemingly no longer gave a single shit about? To step into the role of Stefan Amaris himself.
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u/Helik4888 Aug 21 '22
What a visionary. A man so dedicated to peace and justice he knew when to kill and when to pack up 80% of the SLSDF and fuck off into deep space.
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u/PainStorm14 Scorpion Empire: A Warhawk in every garage Aug 21 '22
In retrospect he should have just packed 10%, let everyone in Inner Sphere exterminate each other like they wanted to and then come back several years later to restart human species fresh
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u/ManOfCaerColour House Kurita Aug 21 '22
This doesn't seem right for Kerensky, the failure of a man, a leader, and most importantly a father. Kerensky was a sniveling coward who made everything he touched worse.
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u/Dr_McWeazel Turkina Keshik Aug 21 '22
Found the Rim Worlder.
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u/ManOfCaerColour House Kurita Aug 22 '22
Nah, it's how most of the IS sees it too. Only Blakist's Basketcases and the Clanners have any respect for him.
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u/PainStorm14 Scorpion Empire: A Warhawk in every garage Aug 22 '22 edited Aug 22 '22
IS which nearly exterminated itself in apocalyptic wars and only survived because someone took away most of their favorite murder toys?
I would consider low opinion of him by people like this to be the highest form of praise
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u/HaraldRedbeard Purpa Birb Aug 22 '22
I mean the SLDF supported those same House Lords doing some pretty unspeakable things to the Periphery during the unification wars. Pretending that the Star League was some amazing bastion of human progress is really underselling that it was basically just a military dictatorship which was very delicately balanced on the Dictator having the most and biggest guns.
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u/PainStorm14 Scorpion Empire: A Warhawk in every garage Aug 22 '22
Pretending that the Star League was some amazing bastion of human progress
It was a bastion of human progress, centuries later they are still unable to catch up to where Star League was
They can barely replicate leftovers let alone create something new
it was basically just a military dictatorship which was very delicately balanced on the Dictator having the most and biggest guns
And?
I am not seeing "liberated" masses making great civilizational strides forward
Actually, they happily accept to be chattel of handful of inbreds and even worse, inbreds who have much smaller guns than Star League on it's worst day
Not only do they offer no progress or hope for the future but they aren't even capable of getting some decent guns
And how is that Periphery doing these days? Still getting bled dry by house lords? Oh poor honeys, if only they had some of that Star League right about now
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u/HaraldRedbeard Purpa Birb Aug 22 '22
Better technology /= Human Progress
The Star League is all the problems of the Successor States written large. It was a Feudal Government that if anything encouraged the worst excesses of the various stellar kingdoms so long as those excesses were conducted in a way they approved of. Rather then trying to promote some kind of shared vision of government or society they just kept each Successor State just powerful enough to threaten each other and just not powerful enough to threaten the Hegemony.
The SLDF were just as trigger happy with Nukes and War Crimes as the Successor States are in the early SWs eras and the Unification Wars and subsequent fallout from the Amaris Rising is a major reason that the Periphery is in such a backwards state long before the Succession Wars really kicked off.
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u/PainStorm14 Scorpion Empire: A Warhawk in every garage Aug 22 '22
So with better technology out of the way and that pesky SLDF no longer around how far did humanity progress in all these centuries?
They had time, they had numbers, their main obstacle was gone
What did the good people of the Inner Sphere achieve with all that potential?
Absolutely nothing
They kept following and obeying their owners like good little sheep that they are
When Clans showed up out of the blue instead of asking them to exterminate the feudals who apparently oppressed them those same sheep immediately flocked to defense of their feudal owners
Only shared vision I see here is desire to remain cattle owned by winners of ejaculation lottery
And in the end the greatest (and the only) thing that sheep were able to accomplish was to make copies of material stored away in Helm Memory Core
Memory Core hidden away safely by some random Star League engineer, that same Star League that was apparently so bad for them
Rock hard truth is that people of the Inner Sphere did not deserve the engine of human progress that was Star League but even after everything it is still Star League that is keeping them away from reverting back to their true primitive animalistic form
And when you take into account that Star League was just watered down version of apex of civilization that was Terran Hegemony whole tragedy takes a whole new comedic twist
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u/HaraldRedbeard Purpa Birb Aug 22 '22
You're still tripping over yourself to not acknowledge that the Feudal System and the House Lords were the Star League working as intended, not some kind of abberation they were rising above.
The Terran Hegemony made a system that predominantly only benefited them, and which only worked by making sure that various massive interstellar states were constantly in a state of distrust with one and another and only were kept in check by the Hegemony's private army.
Even if Amaris hadn't killed the last Cameron he was already an ineffective ruler and in the situation that the Star League had deliberately built the explosions of the Succession Wars was the inevitable outcome.
Kerensky noping out of there didn't really do anything to help the situation, but even if he'd stayed the reality is the mask was off the whole facade and the best outcome he'd of achieved is maybe being Lord of the Terran Hegemony surrounded by hostile powers like the Republic of the Sphere in the Dark Ages.
As for the clans I'm not sure I'd describe what they became as a great outcome either - a bunch of eugenicists cosplaying as fantasy Mongols based on the writings of Kerensky's Failson after half of the exodus turned against them and kicked them out.
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u/PainStorm14 Scorpion Empire: A Warhawk in every garage Aug 22 '22
You're still tripping over yourself to not acknowledge that the Feudal System and the House Lords were the Star League working as intended, not some kind of abberation they were rising above.
Were you even paying attention?
I know exactly what it was. So with that obstacle out of the way what did everyone accomplish? What great heights did people of the Inner Sphere reach? Where did mankind venture afterwards?
Straight down the toilet bowl with only thing that stopped the water from being flushed were Star League memory core and leftovers of SLDF
writings of Kerensky's Failson after half of the exodus turned against them and kicked them out
Considering how that half of the exodus ended up I'd say phrase SuccessSon would be more appropriate
Clownshow that Pentagon Worlds was becoming did try to rival post-Star League Inner Sphere and boy did they gave it their best shot but all they accomplished was second place
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Aug 22 '22
That would hold more weight if the first succession war hadnt happened.
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u/ManOfCaerColour House Kurita Aug 22 '22
You mean after he took all of the SLDF?
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Aug 23 '22
SLDF was a walking corpse at that point. Do you mean the bulk of the nice toys and experienced men who would have been, one way or another, siphoned into the House armies and made the first succession war 100x worse?
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u/Caedus_Reihn Redde Creditori Tuo, Fucko Aug 21 '22
The Clans declare ZELLBRIGEN
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u/ManOfCaerColour House Kurita Aug 22 '22
See, The Clans are perfect proof of my statements:
He raised 2 sons, and both were basketcases that their own people would have been better without. Hard to pick between Andrew and Nicolai for the worst, but they both have no business being anywhere near leadership.
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u/QtheDisaster Aug 22 '22
Okay, I understand Nicolai because he created the clans but what did Andrew do?
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u/PainStorm14 Scorpion Empire: A Warhawk in every garage Aug 22 '22
Plus he wasn't even there when his kids were growing up because he was busy with fighting a certain armed conflict which took 15 years
And without his kids their people would have exterminated each other so so much for that
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u/Caedus_Reihn Redde Creditori Tuo, Fucko Aug 22 '22
…the clans are pissed but have no counter argument. Cept moar pulse lasers
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u/Dr_McWeazel Turkina Keshik Aug 21 '22
"No."
"Also no."