YMMV / Manticore Ascendant

• Alas, Poor Scrappy: Ensign Locatelli, who apologizes for being such a pain in the butt just before his Dying Moment of Awesome.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: From the short story version of A Call To Arms: Travis's captain trying to humiliate him by placing him in an Unwinnable Training Simulation, or was he hoping to teach him a lesson that would come in handy later? The full-length novel clarifies that it was the latter.
• The Scrappy: Robert Davison, a Pointy-Haired Boss who is too cowardly to try Travis's strategy which could have saved the HMS Phobos with little to no risk and averted the Sadistic Choice. The fact that he gets knighted for saving the people that he did save without taking any risk to himself, never gets called out for his actions and is mentioned as having peacefully retired a while later can add to the bitter taste in readers mouths.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Crown Prince Roger's death in A Call To Arms. It happens so suddenly that the entire event only warrants a single paragraph of the narration. In fact, most of that paragraph was simply explaining that most people who die in space combat never know it's about to happen, and that this case would be no different. King Edward can't even afford to take the time to grieve, as he must lead his people, knowing he is not the only one to lose a child that day.
  • Ensign Locatelli and Senior Chief Petty Officer Osterman's deaths as well. The only survivors of the near-destruction of their ship, they work despite their injuries to jury rig the ship's remaining laser cannon to destroy one of the Volsung battlecruisers. They both die when the system overloads and destroys the ship. Locatelli's last action is to apologize to Osterman for being such a pain.
  • King Edward's relationship with his daughter Sophie has been strained ever since Prince Michael's death. His duties as the Crown often conflict with his attempts to spend any quality time with his daughter. Sophie understands the burden her father is under, and dreads what this implies about her eventual fate. Her aunt Elizabeth helps talk her through her distress about this, and Edward makes a noble attempt to carve time out to have fun with his daughter, but none of them can escape the shadow of Michael's death, and the story hangs a huge Lamp Shade on the Wintons' propensity for untimely deaths, foreshadowing that Sophie will have to deal with her father's eventual death. King Michael and Princess Sophie die together in a random boating accident, leaving Elizabeth to take the throne as Queen Elizabeth II. The fact that Sophie could have just decided not to become monarch due to trauma over her father's death or feeling unworthy of the job almost takes this into They Wasted A Perfectly Good Character Territory.
• Trapped by Mountain Lions: While compelling in its own right and good for his Character Development, Chomps' B-plot in A Call To Insurrection, investigating the death of Duke Serisburg and his family, is entirely divorced from the overarching events of the series. Its only obvious impact on the larger world has been to unseat Baroness Crystal Pine from the Lords, but she herself was only a bit player in the grand scheme. Chomps did at least get back into Calvingdell's good graces, insofar as anyone can be.
• The Woobie: Quite a few Winton's, but Queen Cynthia stands out after losing her husband and two children, witnessing Michael and Sophie's deaths.

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