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Battletech novels and sourcebooks began publication in the 1980s, which I associate with pantsuits. Since then, women have had an evolving role in the universe. Let's take a look at some of them.
Lori Kalmar-Carlyle was a locust pilot who was conquered by her future husband, Greyson Carlyle, who she eventually fell in love with. She existed primarily as a love interest, and only after her husband's death did she command the Grey Death Legion to their ultimate demise in 'Time of Dying.'
Melissa Steiner-Davion was one of five House Leaders in the Warrior Trilogy, the second big trilogy in the Battletech Universe. Her job was to marry Hanse Davion. She was a loving and devoted wife to him, and I generally have warm feelings toward the character. Her marriage was arranged, but she inevitably fell in love with 'the Fox' and bore him many children. Including a wimpy Yvonne and diabolically evil Katherine, who was at the time of the Kerensky trilogy, a sweet, innocent adolescent in a pretty dress. Melissa existed primarily to support Hanse Davion's dreams of interstellar conquest.
Natasha Kerensky. Oh, Natasha, how I love thee. One cool thing about Natasha is that she is a bad ass hot chick who can outsmart, out sex, and out fight anything in the Inner Sphere AND clan space. She is one of the most dynamic characters in the Battletech Universe and could probably beat up Ripley from Alien and put up a good fight against Alice from Resident Evil. Unlike both of those characters, though, the Black Widow would be the one manipulating. Yup, Ripley and Alice would work for her, and both Wayland and Umbrella Corporation would have fallen quickly to Natasha if she had them in her crosshairs. She, like Kai Allard-Liao, is a superhero. She also conquered men, not the other way around, which makes me wonder if she was the authors' way of saying: see, in the future, men and women are equal, and to prove it, we're going to make a superhero that bends, breaks, and shatters every rule we can think of. This backfires in the Dark Ages...
Omi Kurita. She existed so Victor could have a love interest that couldn't be with him while he went off to save the Inner Sphere time and again. She was even killed off for the purposes of plot device, and had his kid for the same reason.
Romano Liao, Maximillian Liao's psycho-nutjob daughter – Thuggee death cultist? Sigh...
Anastasia Kerensky. And finally we come to the character who my friend at the time called a, nevermind.... This character may have singlehandedly doomed the Dark Ages to some sort of death by decency. Obviously sociopathic, her rise to power made a mockery of all of Clan Wolf's traditions, and her interpersonal skills, well, she wanted to be Natasha, but she just came off as a conniving, fickle, and almost amorphous personality that simply went as psycho as necessary to “make factions fight” for the purposes of making the MW: Dark Age clix game plausable. If there was an evolution of female characters in Battletech toward a more whole and realistic female point of view, she made sure that it was buried.
Katrina Steiner-Davion. Not as insane as Anastasia, she certainly held nothing back in her acquisition of power and ability to manipulate everything around her. How she, like Anastasia, survived so long is a testament to her shrewd genius. In the end, though, another hate-driven b**** saved her life. Why? I don't know. But then again, Vlad Ward was like a Dark Jedi, using the powers of hate and jealousy to guide him....
Myra Torberg. There to give Phelan a belt buckle to obsess over for three novels straight.
Exceptions (that is, these characters seem more human, and less plot device. Natasha could fit in here too, as she has really evolved over time, but she's still a superhero!)
Candice Liao, a decent leader stuck in a rock and a hard place, she successfully, with Hanse Davion's help, breaks off the St. Ives compact and rules it benevolently, and she plays a subtle and valuable role as Justin Allard's wife and vindicator, though fades to the sidelines once her husband's murder has cleared up.
Diedre Lear. Diedre's primary function was as a love interest for Kai Allard-Liao, but I would also argue that she is one of the better written women earlier on in the Battletech series. She has the most believable and human feel about her. You don't know here motivations or her fears, and it takes a LOT of impressing by Kai to land her in bed. Once she does finally fall for Kai, she fades into obscurity, though, as her job is to create children for Kai and show us just what a great guy he really is.
Francesca Jenkins, an investigator loyal to Victor to whom he owes everything, and though she plays a minor role overall in the Fed-Com Civil War, I REMEMBER her, which means she left an impression.
Okay, the women below, I have a hard time remembering well as I've only read the Dark Age novels once back when they came out, and have read the classic battletech novels far more recently.
Tara Campbell. Tara is the leader of the Northwind Highlanders in the Dark Ages. For the most part, she is a competent leader, mover and shaker in this grim future. There is one big mark on her record, though, if I recall, when One-Eyed Jack's Jupiter battlemech pinned her mech to the ground – though this may have been a Pack Hunter, and not her usual Hatchetman? Anyway, if a 100 ton Jupiter was lying down on top of a little Pack Hunter, the mech would be crushed. Probably a Hatchetman too, but in this case, it turned out to be some sort of battlemech sexual domination thing, with cockpits pressed up against cockpits while old One-Eye had his way with her battlemech. This same battle, if I recall, had her hatchetman doing cartwheels along the city streets.... If someone could clarify this up, that would be fantastic, because I can't find my dark age novels and Sarna writers can only stomach some of them.
Janella Lakewood. Here is Mason Dunne's sidekick, who becomes a Paladin of the Republic of the Sphere because of her virtues not only as a pilot, but a good politician and peacemaker. She is exceptional as she survives in the stories where Mason Dunne disappears. Usually, if the man dies/disappears, the woman runs out of purpose.
Katana Tormark. I don't remember much about her. Was she boring and uninteresting?
Anyway, you'll have to forgive my memory on many of these characters. Understand that this thread is for the purposes of discussing female characters in the Battletech universe. Feel free to argue and debate over the characters and the writing – and keep it objective.
I also ask that you don't condemn the authors of these novels and that's for a couple reasons. 1. you could argue is a sexist value on my part – is that they nearly all of the BT/MW authors are men, and it's simply hard for men to write women without significant investment of time, effort, and a lot of advice from women in their lives! 2. The authors are there to tell grand stories about the Battletech universe, about battlemech combat, and there is limited space in any given book to develop characters. In fact, most characters take multiple books to develop because there is SO MUCH going on in a couple hundred pages. 3. The books are written, especially early on, for teenage boys and male gamers.
Some things to keep in mind as well. In the 1980's we still had a cold war going on, G.I. Jane wasn't a movie – and that movie certainly isn't a poster for female recruitment! - and it was generally accepted that women didn't play combat roles. Female prime ministers were rare, and those was had to look at were the likes of Margaret Thatcher -the Iron Maiden (bless her soul). The 'greatest generation' were in power throughout the world, and their values were pre-hippy. The Civil Rights movement had only finished up their stuff twenty years before (1965ish) and women were fighting to break the 'glass ceiling.'
Battletech showed, in many ways, the idea that men and women were equal in that house leaders were women and even more progressively, the clans were VERY equal in their treatment of men and women – albeit at the cost of turning women in to men with boobs, that is, they stripped them of their femininity to do so. I think, if the authors were encouraged to bring more depth into the universe, more women would have come out as fuller, more interesting characters than they were in the 2000's, when the last big novel list was out – the Dark Ages. However, I think the game they were pushing (MW:DA) encouraged more cartoon and less adult situations. There were some good books, and some really, really awful ones. I would love to see a new novel series come out written for adults.
As I said, this thread was meant to be a discussion and debate starter, and I'm only throwing out my twenty cents on this issue. Let's keep is civil, lest we turn ourselves into some of the characters detailed above.
Edited by Peiper, 17 July 2015 - 08:56 PM.
) I used to hang around, but it's a great thread!
