He definitely would.
In terms of competent Inner Sphere leaders, from most competent to least:
Sun-Tzu Liao -- Reversed the losses the CapCon suffered through the 4th Succession War, fought back the Wobbies without outside help, and single-handedly turned the Capellan Confederation from Sick Man of the Inner Sphere into a military powerhouse that continues to threaten the rimward Sphere from the ***** on through the times we don't like to mention. He was also one of the few people smart enough to catch on that Devlin Stone was less sterling than he looked and refused to make concessions for Stone and David Lear's Blakist "social project," the Republic of the Sphere. Sun Tzu Liao's biggest mistake was playing political chicken with the Second Star League and deciding to sabotage it rather than risk his own manipulations being undone by a united Inner Sphere, thereby setting off the *****. Interestingly, the ***** did more damage to the
rest of the Inner Sphere than it did to the Capellan Confederation, allowing his own country to prosper and aggressively check its neighboring powers well into the... time period characteristic of WizKids mismanagement. But that's out of
everyone's hands.
Hanse Davion -- Rightfully respected as one of the greatest strategic minds of his time, whose influence and descendants, for better or worse, continue to affect the Sphere long after his own demise. But while Sun Tzu Liao's influence and historical significance led his country through a steady upward climb, Hanse's own legacy is marked by phenomenal highs and catastrophic lows, and his own ambitions, in the end, were thwarted by his children after a short but undeniable success. Sun Tzu's ambitions succeeded almost without reservation and this is the only reason I'd rate him higher. (In terms of pure awesome and showmanship, though, Hanse wins every time.) Hanse's biggest mistake was mismanaging the Lyran half of the FedCom and allowed Katrina Steiner's military reforms to backslide by politically mishandling Davion influence over the Commonwealth half, thereby setting the stage for a major reactionary backlash that his own daughter rode on the path to power. Those aside, The Fox is still the go-to military and strategic genius of the age, managing to succeed even in the face of sabotage by the powers holding all the secrets of technology in their hands. He's also a stone cold badass who married a girl less than half his age, Melissa Steiner. If it were anybody else, it'd be creepy. But since it's Hanse, I guess we'll let it slide. BT artists have also traditionally modelled him after William Shatner, and that's awesome. Personally, though, I'd model him after George Clooney.
[NOTE: Note, however, that the current leading project line dev of the BT tabletop game, Herb Beas, has some unkind words for the Davions, Hanse in particular. Put in perspective, he's an old geezer who robbed a cradle to steal a country, then proceeded to beat up the weakest kid on the block (the Capellans) to prove he was tough. So there's at least one important dissenting opinion re: The Fox.]
Frederick Steiner, better known as ComStar Precentor Martial
Anastasius Focht -- The man who fought the Clans and won. And saved the Inner Sphere from ComStar itself, though not without making very dangerous, very fanatical enemies in the process. His greatest mistake was the fateful one that ended his previous life as a Steiner cousin and began his new life, and identity, as the eyepatched badass who became the face of the new, reformed, suddenly-heroic ComStar. His second greatest mistake was underestimating those nutjobs who weren't down with his reformation. But his successes outweigh his failures by far, and he was instrumental in assembling and managing the forces of Operation Bulldog to the point where things were secure enough even an idiotic half-Davion distant nephew could manage the Operation and still kick Clan Smoke Jaguar in the tenderbits. Considering what he had to work with (the entire ComStar bureaucracy, a bickering Second Star League, and then an Inner Sphere set on nuclear fire by Classic flavor ComStar) he did damn good. No one can say Anastasius Focht wasn't one of the greatest military leaders of the 31st century, and if Myndo Waterly had retained command of ComStar the Sphere would be a much darker place.
Theodore Kurita -- Even before actually becoming Coordinator, Theodore fought to reform the socially backwards Combine and established a series of military reforms to help his battered country recover from not one but two wars of Davion aggression and the Clan Invasion. He cleverly undid the losses the Combine suffered in the Fourth Succession War with both political savvy and military cunning, all while Takashi was still on the Throne. Even as a military leader serving under his increasingly erratic father, he managed to do what few people could claim to do--he outwit none other than Hanse Davion himself. Without Theodore, the Combine might well have lost the War of 3039, even with ComStar's quiet assistance. Following his father's ******* and subsequent rise to Coordinator (and helped by his brilliant and oft-underestimated cousin Chandrasekar Kurita), he spearheaded the modernization and social reformation of the Combine that only ended when the ***** came, and some of the Combine's most valuable worlds were taken by Devlin Stone as part of his grand plan. The Combine was repeatedly dealt a bad hand in the 31st century and Teddy fought tooth and nail to keep his country alive, even in spite of his father's actions. A lesser man would have failed.
(Amusing note: Theodore was one of the few practical types who recognized that convincing the military's most honorable, reliable, and capable commanders to commit ******* after a mistake was a
bad idea. Considering the values of the society he was raised in, this practically makes him a genius.)
The original
Katrina Steiner -- A forward-thinking and benevolent ruler whose only real mistake was letting her teenaged daughter, Melissa, marry a middle-aged Hanse Davion. But this would be a catastrophic one in the end. If she had her way, the Lyran Commonwealth would be the powerhouse it always had the potential to be: Economically mighty and
militarily competent. It's a shame that, in the end, her own military reforms would be undone by her son-in-law and grandchildren, whose own heavy-handed attempts at modernizing the Lyran military gave strength to Katrina's critics, who went on to claim that the military reforms were an outside attempt to force Davion customs on their nation. And her granddaughter, Katherine, went on to drag her name through the mud. To be fair, Katherine takes more after her father's side of the family than her mother's, but almost everyone in the Davion forums tends to forget or ignore this.
Peter Steiner-Davion -- Where his more famous and infamous siblings essentially fought amongst themselves and made very few decisions that had a lasting positive effect on their realms, Peter almost stumbled into brilliance. He instituted the Archonette policy, granting emergency powers to regional leaders in the Lyran Alliance, granting them greater ability to respond to threats and invasion should the Archon be unable to. This might well be the only reason they didn't fall to the Blakists when the SSL collapsed and when Tharkad was placed under siege. As Archon and leader of a nation-state, Peter's made more good decisions than bad, which is something his more famous siblings can't claim. Note that he was instrumental in the dissolution of the Second Star League and one of the figures responsible for the ***** to begin with, though this was his only major mistake. And he's still only slightly worse than Katherine in retrospect. However, he wouldn't even have had the Archon job if it weren't for the nitwit who destroyed the FedCom and the other idiots who let Katherine get away with it (see below).
[EDIT: Chuggernaut maintains that Peter is terribly underrated as a leader and ought to be placed a few notches above, so he's been moved. the entry is edited accordingly, and I've copypasted the words from the man himself justifying this.]
Chuggernaut's notes:
I maintain that Peter is criminally underrated as a leader. For example, he's the only Steiner-Davion to put advisors around him for competence or popularity. Adamn didn't like him, but he and Caesar were the two big heroes of the FCCW's "other threats" so he put them into several positions of power at once (Caesar was in charge of a regiment, the Donegal Brigade, the Bolan Province and Tharkad's reconstruction all at the same time, for example). Meanwhile Vic, Kat and Yvonne all selected people based on being his friend, political orthodoxy, or being her boyfriend, respectively.
Really pulling out of the League was peter's one and only failing. That dude went hard on Tharkad to make up for it, though. He never quit fighting because he knew people needed to see the Archon and the Royal Guards out wrecking ****, so he did, even though at least twice he was literally the only one in the entire Regiment. There's a pretty fun scenario in JTP: Tharkad about the first time the Royal Guard are completely wiped out save for Peter, but I digress. Anyway, he knew that no matter what he couldn't disband the unit, so he just said "Guess what? I'm going out there to show WoB the back of my hand. Anyone who's fighting with me? You're the Royal Guards now."
This of course means Peter Steiner-Davion is a total badass.
Thomas Halas (impersonating Thomas Marik) -- Probably the most honorable leader out of the entire list, who expressly wanted to do good by his people and bring chivalry back to the Inner Sphere, but he wasn't young and brilliant and cunning enough to hold the squawking bag of hens we call the Free Worlds League in one piece without a few of the traditional Marik civil wars to keep things from going according to plan. One of the best things he's done, for the entire Inner Sphere, was to establish the
Knights of the Inner Sphere, the closest thing the BT setting has to honest-to-goodness classical knights in shining armor. (Though the Brotherhood of Randis more closely resemble the older, more religious military orders of knights rather than the more romanticized chivalric orders.) Chivalrous to a fault and honorable to the point that even the Clans couldn't deny it, the Knights were to be his greatest legacy. Sadly, the Word of Blake rightfully saw them as a threat to their plans. Survivors of the initial Wobbie purge would continue to fight the Word of Blake in a guerilla war throughout the *****, in the end sacrificing their lives in stalwart defiance. After the *****, he put his hopes on Devlin Stone, for good or ill.
Katherine Steiner-Davion -- Outplayed every one of her siblings for power and influence, her only weakness being herself. The only Steiner-Davion kid to take after Hanse's legendary cunning and ruthlessness but without any of his high-minded ideals or a sense of morality. Her megalomania fought her competence and her megalomania won. Also she's cartoonishly villainous because the BT writers needed to villify
someone for the Davionistas to fight in the Civil War and heavens forbid House Davion be even half as morally ambiguous these days as they used to be. Put in a Watsonian context, this means she has all the traditional Davion cunning and aggression but none of the moral character her father
or mother had to keep that aggression in check. This means she's really only one notch ahead of the next nincompoop:
Victor Steiner-Davion -- An extremely competent Mechwarrior and Battalion-level commander, utterly and painfully, hideously inept at commanding any unit, formation, or group of people larger than that. Cannot even manage or assemble the forces for a high-level strategic operation without essentially deferring to aides and Morgan Kell for all practical decisions on the operational level, being relegated to essentially a figurehead and lionized by more competent leaders because they know the people need a hero to look up to (hey there, Operation Bulldog). But at least he can outfight any Clanner on a personal level. Was dumb enough to try to do the Max Liao "Body Double Shuffle" on Thomas Halas/Marik, which didn't even work when Max tried it, and Max only did it because he was criminally insane. Took an entire year off when he lost a loved one, something other leaders with more mettle never needed to do. Also mismanaged the Lyran half of the FedCom worse than his father, driving them into Katherine's hands. Which is ironic considering he was raised on Tharkad while she was raised on New Avalon. (This is actually not very ironic and, in fact, very
telling when you consider their relative levels of cunning vs. moralizing. In terms of ruthlessness it's fair to say Katherine favored her dad, while Vic favored his mom.) Very moral person and a nice guy, I suppose, but as an actual
leader of people dammit he's only one step better than...
Yvonne Steiner-Davion -- Did you wonder why the Federated Suns went on a long decline during and after the *****? Welp, look no further. A kind and gentle person, inspiring in times of peace but ineffectual as a leader in times of war, Yvonne Steiner-Davion takes so much after her mother it hurts. And it did hurt. The entire Federated Suns. While Peter stoically kept the fires of resistance alive when the Blakists ravaged the Lyran Alliance, Princess Yvonne basically hid for years while local planetary governments and March duchies were left to fend for themselves. The only good thing she did was avoid giving
too much away to Devlin Stone when she was asked for a "donation." This meant the FedSuns would be in a better position than most of the other Inner Sphere powers to repair the damage the ***** did. Eventually. Unless one of their leaders down the line turns out to be a crazy rapist, but that's too dark an age to consider right now.
Takashi Kurita -- No you cannot have the Wolf's Dragoons, stop trying. And listen to your son for cryin' out loud. Ya nitwit.
Kai Allard-Liao -- Doesn't actually lead a country despite being in a prime position to seize the reins to do so because he's too busy angsting and fighting on Solaris, making him the most incompetent leader figure on the list.
Liaos who aren't Sun-Tzu or half-Federat -- Crazy runs in the family.
Not mentioning
Mary Sue Devlin Stone -- Who blacked out the HPG network and started the Dark Age because.
Or the real
Thomas Marik, The Master of the Word of Blake -- Who basically just shat on everyone's lawn with nuclear fire because.
But back on subject:
I am no longer allowed to refer to the current (as of 3049) Coordinator as a nitwit, even though I'm one hundred percent correct. Especially after that stroke made him so. Seriously.
[EDIT: It's telling that mods have had to resort to censoring insults regarding a person's intelligence or lack thereof through wordfilter. Honestly people, tsk tsk. We can't consider ourselves gentlemen if we're not willing to act like it.
Gentlemen.]
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Assiah, on 18 August 2012 - 01:39 PM, said:
