History Literature / RCN

-->"The ship is to be the ''Hermes''?" Adele said, her eyes on her display ... Sand cleared her throat, "I wouldn't normally pry into your sources of information, but I had reason to believe that only two people in the human universe had that information until now. If my communications with Admiral Anston aren't secure, then I really ''must'' know that." [After Adele's explanation] "I just realized that I've apparently ... leagued with a demon. But you're the Republic's demon, and I'm ''bloody'' well not going to let you go now that I've found you!"

* TheCasanova: 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.

* DudeLooksLikeALady: Elmere in ''Some Golden Harbor''. Matters are further confused due to the way he behaves in a [[HystericalWoman stereotypically feminine manner]].

** Unlike Daniel, he's not a {{Casanova}}: [[spoiler:he instead rescues a noblewoman from a pirate lord's harem after falling in love with her at first sight. When [[TheirFirstTime 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.]]

* ''Lt. Leary, Commanding'' (2000). (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.")

* ''Lt. Leary, Commanding'' (2000).
** 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."

* AbsentAliens: 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 of 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.

* SpiritualSuccessor: Drake wrote the short story "A Grand Tour" for the Honor Harrington universe, and you can see the bones of the RCN series. Drake admitted that this series came from that story, which is appropriate, since the ''Literature/AubreyMaturin'' series was inspired by Honor Harrington's inspiration ''Literature/HoratioHornblower''.

* {{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, with his sister, a banker, handling things for him.

** Unlike Daniel, he's not a {{Casanova}}: [[spoiler:he instead rescues a noblewoman from a pirate lord's harem after falling in love with her at first sight. When TheyDo 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.]]

* TheChick: 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.

* BeatThemAtTheirOwnGame: In ''Some Golden Harbor'', 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.

* GoodCopBadCop: In ''Some Golden Harbour'', Daniel and Adele interrogate a prisoner. Daniel plays good cop. Adele...just acts normally. For her, that is.

* LaughingMad: Tovera's laugh is a very unpleasant thing to hear for any sane person. {{Justified}} by the UncannyValley: she's trying to mimic neurotypical human laughter and failing.

* LadyKillerInLove: Daniel develops a romantic attraction to Miranda Dorst, the sister of one of his {{Plucky Middie}}s who is killed in action. Adele notes to herself that Miranda isn't his usual "type" (he usually prefers the BrainlessBeauty type for one-night stands, but Miranda is described as being much smarter). In an unusual example, Daniel later states he and Miranda have an "understanding" (suggesting an open relationship whereby they don't expect each other to be celibate while Daniel is on deployment), but they get engaged before ''The Sea Without a Shore'' and are married by the next book.

%%* Barbarous Barbary Buccaneers: 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 Creator/DavidDrake'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.

* BarbarousBarbaryBuccaneers: 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 Creator/DavidDrake'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.

* {{Asexuality}}: Adele is completely uninterested in sex and finds everyone's obsession with it irritating:
-->"Biology isn't one of my particular interests, Senator," she said in an upper class drawl. "I wouldn't be shocked if a maggot crawled out of your eye socket, though I'd find it vaguely disgusting."

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.)"

* FrickinLaserBeams: 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.

* KidWithTheLeash: Adele with Tovera. Adele keeps her around partially as a reminder that BadDreams are far from the worst possible consequence of her chosen lifestyle.

* BadDreams: Adele has killed '''a lot''' of people and remembers every one.

* {{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. 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, with his sister, a banker, handling things for him.

* TheJinx: The Sissies regard Lt. Mon as this and believe that Daniel's presence is the only thing that keeps it in check.