Heartwarming / Honor Harrington

The Honor of the Queen

• After Honor is injured stopping the attempted assassination of Protector Mayhew, most of those she interacts with - Grayson and Manticoran both - react with awkwardness or embarrassment at her scars. The one exception is the arch-reactionary Howard Clinkscales:
  The undamaged side of Honor's mouth smiled, and she realised that [Clinkscales], alone of everyone she'd met since the attack, seemed unembarrassed by the condition of her face. Apparently once he decided someone was a real officer, he expected them to bear their battle scars the same way he would have, and she discovered that she actually liked this old dinosaur.

Field of Dishonor

• A bit more violent than your typical Crowning Moment of Heartwarming, but when Honor's lover was killed, her friends in the Manticoran Navy — including an Admiral, of all people, Admiral Mark Sarnow, Honor's CO at Hancock, who instigates the whole thing — conceive and perform an op disguised as a training exercise for the sole purpose of tracking down the killer. This move was highly illegal and would have cost everyone involved their careers if found out. They did it anyway.
• When Paul Tankersley is killed, Honor receives a number of letters of condolence from her friends and connections — including Dame Estelle Matsuko, Resident Commissioner of the Basilisk System, whom she last worked with in On Basilisk Station. Even though they haven't seen each other for years, Honor made enough of an impression on Dame Estelle for the commissioner to reach out to her — and Honor is grateful to hear from her.

Flag in Exile

• Pretty much every single time with Graysons and Honor, but especially in Flag in Exile when Harrington steaders take down Father Marchant and later, the sermon Reverend Hanks gave in Harrington Cathedral.
• Andrew LaFollet's first conversation with Tomas Ramirez.

Honor Among Enemies

• Honor giving her approval to a naval rating choosing to exercise with marines, with all the subtext it includes.
• The PNS Vaubon, commanded by Citizen Commander Caslet, does some truly epic and heartwarming stuff.
  • Totally annihilate a brutal pirate ship and rescue the two Manticoran Mauve Shirts that appear at the beginning of the book.
  • Attack three more pirate ships in order to save a Manticoran merchant vessel from them. When it turns out that the merchant vessel is Honor's Q-ship, she captures the Vaubon, but also extends her personal thanks and congratulations to its crew. Awwwww. And at the very end of the book she gives them a cover story to explain why they did it.
• In the aftermath of Honor's near Mutual Kill with a peep battlecruiser:
  • Despite being certain they're all dead, Honor and Rafe don't give and rally and organise the crew to keep them busy and get everyone together, so at the very least no-one will die alone.
  • Treecats are seen as important as any other member of the crew, Bosun Sally McBride goes to some effort to rescue Samantha, Nimitz's mate, who is locked in a life support module in Honor's quarters because 'she's the only crewman still trapped.
  • Having a pinnace left they collect all the survivors from the Peep battlecruiser, so they can all work together to survive and sort out who's whose prisoner later.
  • At Hauptmann's prompting no-less, the LAC squadron guarding the liner they were protecting disobeys orders to go back and find the wreck and rescue Honor and her crew.

In Enemy Hands

• The first reunion between Honor and Andrew LaFollet, when she hugs him for the first time in the series, is beautiful:
  ...she stumbled forward as he freed one hand from the gun and held it out to her. Her working eye misted, making it hard to see, but his hand was warm and firm as it closed on her too-thin fingers. He squeezed hard, and Honor dragged in a deep, shuddery breath and put her arms around him, hugging him fiercely.
  • But the second is, quite simply, incandescent.
  "He did [save your life], My Lady," another voice said, and Honor gasped. She tried to sit up, but her right hand still held Montoya's, and she hissed in sudden pain as she tried to rise on the left hand she no longer had and the bandaged stump pressed into the firm softness on which she lay.
  Montoya started to stand, his face distressed, but someone else's arms reached out to support her. Nimitz spilled from her chest, lying beside her, and she pulled her right hand from Montoya's. Her arm went out, and the pain still rippling through her meant nothing at all as she hugged Andrew LaFollet with all the fierce strength in her wasted frame.

Echoes of Honor

• There's a surprisingly amount of in-depth discussion about the morality of various methods of providing an heir to Honor's steading. Chiefly the idea of the elder Harringtons having more kids to serve this role and whether this would be fair to the child if they felt they had only been bred for the job not because they were wanted.
  • Clinkscales reassures Alison Harrington that it was clear to all how much Honor and her parents had loved each other and how they had shaped her into the person she was.
• Following this when Allison goes to see Reverend Sullivan about the results of her medical research. He hand-serves her tea and not just tea, her favourite rare Beowulfian tea to boot, no easy task to get it just to set her at ease.
• The final line of the novel:
  Honor Harrington: "We're home, System Command. It took us awhile, but we're home."

Ashes of Victory

• Honor's return from being believed dead for two years is a string of heartwarming moments one after another. And, for extra heartwarming, it's Christmas.
  • Her reunion with Protector Benjamin, who gives the metaphorical finger to a thousand years of Grayson protocol and greets Honor with nothing short of a bear hug and Tears of Joy.
  • "Merry Christmas, Wesley." ^note High Admiral Wesley Matthews had been deeply affected by Honor's death, having considered her a good friend and peer. Upon learning of her survival and soon return to Grayson, Benjamin decided to keep it a secret, all so he could give his friend Wesley a big surprise.
  • Her reunion with her parents, and meeting her new siblings, after being 'unavailable' for the last two books, is made especially effective by Honor's words when she first sees them. Nearly all of David Weber's dialogue is very formal, with characters very carefully enunciating and bordering on purple prose at times, even when the characters are explicitly being casual with one another. When Honor finally sees her parents, all of that goes right out the window, and she can only say, "Momma...? Daddy...?"
• When Honor is speaking with Dr. Arif about creating treecat sign, she mentions quite offhandedly that Dame Estelle Matsuko is "a friend of [hers]", and that she wrote to the Resident Commissioner when she conceived the project to ask about how contact had been made with the Medusans. Particularly with the hindsight of how highly Dame Estelle regards Honor, there's something incredibly heartwarming about how a character who hasn't been heard of for five books — and who hasn't appeared onscreen for eight — is still someone Honor Harrington considers a personal friend.
• "Oops." It was Shannon's revenge for all she went through, and that she got promoted between this book and the next to Vice Admiral, and put in charge of Bolthole, the RHN's lead R&D site.

War of Honor

• The aftermath of the Theisman Coup, and Eloise Pritchart's revelation of the one thing Thomas Theisman demanded of her before he handed her the Presidency on a silver platter: that she prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that she was just as committed to the restoration of the old Republic and Michèle Péricard's original Constitution as he was. She passed the test with flying colours, and now, for the first time in two centuries, Haven's guiding hands are those of two people who love her more than life. Despite all the heartache and bloodshed still to come, for the first time, what was once an "interstellar Athens" has a fighting chance to become just that once again.

At All Costs

• Howard Clinkscales' funeral and the aftermath, when Honor creates the legal equivalent of blood bonds between her family and the Clinkscales family.
• The epilogue: David and the Phoenix being read by Honor to her young siblings and her own child. The story is not only beautiful, but a ready made allusion to the state of the empire]].

  • David and the Phoenix is a real book, as it happens.

• Nearly every interaction Honor has with Hamish and Emily Alexander after they finally get together, but one that stands out is the birth of Honor's son.
• Honor explaining her choice of her son's armsman. Her choice gets vindicated in Mission of Honor during the Oyster Bay terrorist attack, in what serves as a Dying Moment of Awesome for Andrew LaFollet.
• Honor's reunion with Michelle Henke. Their relationship has so much banter and fun that it's sometimes easy to forget just how much these two women love each other, but that scene brings it all out into the open.
• Eloise Pritchart clinging to Tom Theisman's hand as she agonises over the decision to launch Beatrice. Given all the heartbreak they had both been through up until that point — and wound up going through in the future, despite the decision to launch being the least awful of a number of terrible options — to see this friendship born in fire blossoming into something true and lovely and real is just gorgeous. For all that the Second Manticoran-Havenite War was something of a military holocaust, their relationship is proof positive that out of even the driest ashes, something beautiful can bloom.

Mission of Honor

• There is something impossibly sweet about this bit of narration regarding Michelle Henke, who, while waiting for the beginning of the Second Battle of Manticore, is laughing to herself about how, as much as she loves Honor, she refuses to "grow up" that much. It's a quiet recognition of the fact that, Overshadowed by Awesome as she might be, Michelle is also one hell of a commander in her own right.
  [Henke] shook her head, unaware of the way her staff was looking at her, or the way her sudden smile swept across her flag deck like a calming breeze.
• Eloise Pritchart and Elizabeth Winton thrashing out twelve books' worth of issues between the Republic and the Star Kingdom, then committing to a military alliance. Twenty years and a dozen novels had been leading up to that moment, and to see the payoff, after all the heartache both sides have been through, was astoundingly beautiful.

A Rising Thunder

• Thomas Theisman firmly putting a stop to Honor's self-pity party after she's forced to utterly annihilate Filareta's command. He understands her so well, and after so long having to fight someone they each truly respect, to see them working together not just as comrades-in-arms but as friends is unbelievably beautiful.
  • Combine that with the friendship forming between Elizabeth and Eloise, and it's so desperately obvious that this is a group of people who would, now that they know each other, far rather be fighting beside each other than against each other. Now they finally have the chance.
• Sorrow Singer informs Honor that the treecats have access to memories going back centuries, including Stephanie Harrington, Honor's esteemed ancestor and the first human to bond with a treecat. Honor herself idolizes Stephanie, and is humbled when Sorrow Singer tells her that, based on the experiences of those memories, she and Stephanie probably would have liked each other and gotten along well, had they ever been able to meet.

Uncompromising Honor

• The way Shannon Foraker and Sonja Hemphill more or less become best friends at their first meeting.
• When the Solarians come to attack Hypatia, Admiral Kotouč could have stayed back in the face of overwhelming opposition (the Solarians have an almost 20-to-1 superiority in ships). The Hypatians would not have blamed him. And yet, when it becomes obvious that the Solarians are going to destroy all of Hypatia's space infrastructure even though there's more than six million people there that cannot be evacuated in time, the Admiral leads nearly all of his ships into what amounts to be a suicide run just for the chance to allow the Hypatians to evacuate more people. Not only does he succeed in the task - even if it leads to the destruction of his attacking ships, his last ship's commander manages to force the Solarians to back off - and both Kotouč and said commander's fiancé, who was on one of the ships in the attack, manage to survive.
• A minor one, but Admiral Allen Higgins, who was forced to destroy an entire fleet of pod-laying dreadnoughts at Grendelsbane, then had to watch Oyster Bay rip apart the star system he was assigned to protect, is now on the Allied Joint Chiefs of Staff, and is working tirelessly to smooth over problems between the constituent services of the Grand Alliance. His treecat protector is even stated to secretly be a "mind-healer", a sort of telepathic therapist. After being tread on for so many books, the fact that he is beginning to have a change of fortune is worth an entry here.
• Anton Zilwicki reuniting with Thandi Palane and Victor Cachat at Mesa. The two friends hug each other desperately.
• In the aftermath of Beowulf's main habitats destruction, with more than 43 million dead people, Honor is left wracked between the fury against the Alignment and the League and the pain of losing so many friends as well as Hamish (who was in Beowulf Alpha) and Emily (who suffered a deadly attack after learning of Hamish's death), taking it against the Solarian League's capital system. Just before her ultimatum against them ends, Hamish arrives, miraculously alive, and Honor nearly collapses into his arms in the grief and joy of still having him.

Crown of Slaves

• Victor and Thandi. Just... Victor and Thandi.
  Victor: I'm crazy about you. I have no idea what we're going to do about it, but... there it is. Crazy or not. There it is.

Torch of Freedom

• Jack McBryde and Herlander Simeos' relationship as it builds over the course of the novel. The latter is a researcher that had his daughter killed as a result of Mesan machinations. The former is a former Mesan field agent tasked to monitor the latter and make sure he stays functional. Instead, they become close friends, and Jack eventually does everything he can, including giving his own life to ensure his friend can get an opportunity for vengeance in a way even Herlander couldn't have come up with.

Cauldron of Ghosts

• Just before Anton leaves Mesa to go get help, he and Victor are able, for the first time, to say just how very much they mean to each other. This is a Tear Jerker as well because, at that moment, the overwhelming odds are that they'll never see one another again.

To End in Fire

• Fleet Admiral Honor Harrington contemplating the top-level commanders of Grand Fleet just before the final run on Galton, and the note that "there was not a single officer at that table she would have replaced". The heartwarming really hits home, though, with the names of the three officers in charge of Task Force One, the Manticoran component of Grand Fleet — Michelle Henke, Honor's dearest friend and "the one woman above all others [she] wanted at her side for this operation", as overall commander, with Alice Truman — who has served with Honor since they first went to Grayson together in 1902 — as commander of Task Group One. And in charge of Task Group Two? None other than Allen Higgins, the man so traumatized by his wartime service that the treecats christened him "Shadow Heart" and gave him a mind-healer as a bodyguard. Not only did Higgins survive the "Everybody Dies" Ending of Uncompromising Honor, but he's recovered enough to take on one of the highest-level command slots in the entire Grand Alliance. No one could possibly deserve it more. Meanwhile, Task Group Three from Grayson is commanded by High Admiral Alfredo Yu, whose story qualifies as its own Moment under "Series-Wide" below.

The Shadow of Saganami

• It's one simple line, but the brief mention, as HMS Hercules is getting ready to leave for Monica, that Augustus Khumalo's flag captain Victoria Saunders is surprised to find herself proud of her Admiral. Given how Khumalo had been thought of by every major character up until that point, it's even more poignant.
• As a result of the Battle of Monica, the HMS Warlock is placed on the List of Honor meaning that, even after the current Warlock is scrapped, its name and accolades will live on in another ship. The reason this is heartwarming is because Warlock was Pavel Young's ship up until he was discharged and, until that point, its reputation had been stained by its former captain's actions. Even though its current CO, Captain Ito Anders, had died in the process of getting Warlock on that list, he saw the opportunity that Monica presented and took it.
  Captain Ito Anders: "...to be honest, she's always had something of a reputation to live down. She hasn't been fortunate in her commanding officers. I'm not going to add to that reputation. In fact, I'm going to clean it up properly at last."
• When a battered Hexapuma and Warlock return to Manticore after saving the day, Home Fleet is awaiting for them... in a formation that puts the two of them exactly where the flagship is in similar formations, and they are hailed with the traditional salute to the flagship as the formation passes in review before the Queen's yacht.
  Yours is the honor.

Storm from the Shadows

• Michelle Henke's reverent reflection on Raoul Alexander-Harrington's birth (in At All Costs), and what it felt like to share that moment with her best friend.
• Michelle Henke seeing Honor again after the events at Solon and its aftermath.
• Aivars Terekhov getting the Parliamentary Medal of Valor for the Battle of Monica. Just... that whole chapter. But especially Baroness Medusa's speech — and the way she gently touches his cheek.
  Terekhov was much taller than she was, and she rose on tiptoe as he bowed to her so that she could slip the ribbon around his neck and adjust its fall. She positioned the gleaming medal carefully, then looked up at him and—in a gesture Helen was certain hadn't been formally choreographed—touched him very gently on the cheek.

Shadow of Freedom

• Estelle Matsuko thinking to herself that while once upon a time Augustus Khumalo was not her favorite person, "those days were gone." Those two have come a long, long way, and it is frankly melt-worthy.

Short Story Collections

• The end of I Will Build My House of Steel has Queen Elizabeth being woken up by Sir Thomas Caparelli to inform her of Admiral White Haven's victory at Barnett. He opines that the Star Kingdom will be in a position to dictate terms to Haven in the next four to six months. She thanks him levelly, and allows him to return to work. Then, in the middle of the night, alone but for her treecat Ariel, the Queen of Manticore descends to her family crypt to visit her father's grave. She reflects on the sacrifices made and traces her fingers over his epitaph, letting her tears finally fall free.
• From "The Service of the Sword", Captain Michael Oversteegen's speech to soon-to-be-Ensign Abigail Hearns:
  Oversteegen: Some of my compatriots have seen fit t' express contempt for Grayson. They seem t' feel that such a primitive and backward planet can't possibly have anythin' t' offer a star nation so sophisticated and advanced as our own. I never happened t' agree with that position, and if I ever had, I certainly wouldn't now. Especially not after havin' the honor and considerable privilege of seein' firsthand just what sort of young women Grayson will be calling t' the service of the Sword. And havin' seen it, I intend t' be there when the first of them receives the recognition she so richly deserves.

Series-Wide

• The entirety of the relationship between Eloise Pritchart and Javier Giscard. The series has surprisingly few prominent romances, and this one in particular is a shining example of two people finding love in darkness and using it to accomplish an extraordinary end. Not even the tragedy of Giscard's death can take away what they accomplished together, and Lovat or no Lovat, their love story will never end.
• After twenty years of fighting ends with the Grand Alliance, Vice Admiral Shannon Foraker's friendship with Admiral Sonja Hemphill. Given everything Shannon's been through (State Sec, the Vaubon Disaster, everything leading up to "Oops"), it's nice to see good things like Bolthole and Sonja (with her R&D team) heading Shannon's way. Thank you, Admiral Foraker for everything you've done for the People's Navy and the Republic of Haven's Navy, to let us get to this point.
• Alfredo Yu first went to Grayson in order to conquer it for the People's Republic of Haven. He subsequently defected to Manticore, became a Grayson citizen, served as Honor's flag captain when she became an admiral in Grayson service, and worked his way up to become High Admiral, the Grayson Space Navy's senior uniformed officer. Grayson doesn't just talk the talk when it comes to believing in forgiveness and penitence; they most certainly walk the walk as well.