Author's Note: I'm getting better at the weekly aspect of this, though I admit to taking a slightly different approach with this one and so feedback on the structure is more than welcome, as well as actual discussion of the character. I feel I'm far from perfect but improving, hopefully you agree. :)
Character Study of the Week: Aleksandr Kerensky
Who: Aleksandr Sergeyevich Kerensky
What: Assorted officer ranks within the Star League Defence Forces
Commanding General, Star League Defence Forces
Regent and Protector of the Star League
Commanding General, Star League in Exile
When: 16 December 2700 – 11 June 2801
Weapon of Choice: Orion 1K, later modified
The Star League Defence Force, in whole or in part as the situation dictated
Once shrouded through the mists of time, filtered by legend and worship General Aleksandr Kerensky is the oldest of the messianic figures of Battletech. Information about the man has been short in coming and long in repeating the key highlights of his career and life until recently as the historical eras have been explored in greater detail.
Aleksandr Kerensky is a bit of a diversion for this series because he is less of a Character and more of a Plot Device.
When Battletech was starting it was set in the waning years of the Third Succession War in a setting that was described as having known nothing but constant war, indeed the length of the Third Succession War meant that there weren’t a lot of people left alive who remembered a time when that wasn’t the happening event.
What caused all these wars? Big empire collapsed and the largest potential peacekeepers (or bullies to keep things quiet if you will) up and left. Who got them to leave? Aleksandr Kerensky. By the power of personality, charisma and rightness he convinced them to leave lest greater destruction happen.
That’s the massively oversimplified view, and in-setting it’s probably all the average person had at the time, from a game perspective at that point who needed anything more?
This is half the messianic aspect, the other half is the belief, in-setting, and the implication, from a game perspective since it is a classic dangling story hook, that he and the SLDF will return in humanity’s darkest hour. We know now how that worked out, and quite frankly both inside and out of the universe Aleksandr living that long is moderately ridiculous but legends are not to be impeded by reality.
Naturally this background has been teased out, elaborated on and expanded as the setting became less black and white, however it never really changed Aleksandr’s role as a pivot point for events, thus he is more of a plot device than a character.
This continues on until his death where he catalyses events rather than creates them.
Much of this is because for the longest period of time Aleksandr was known by reputation and legend alone, he wasn’t a physical, active force in events. Even with the coming of the Clans his reputation remained level, if somewhat changed, he was a near mythological character to everyone, and even if his descendants were barbaric invaders anti-ethical to everything he stood for (as many have pointed out), Aleksandr himself remained largely “good” and revered because that reputation and legend persisted based on what knowledge of events was available.
But like all people no one is ever 100% good or bad, and the earliest, as far as writing history goes, sign of this is the Prinz Eugen Mutiny. Not so much because of the brutal handling of the mutiny, anything less would have been surprising given that it is a military desertion, but because it happened at all, thus showing that the Kerensky mystique is neither total nor irrepressible.
It also the first sign of something picked up on in the later Historicals, that Kerensky was never a political animal with his finger on the pulse of public opinion. He was a soldier who did his job, which boiled down to following orders and conscience. The latter of which was all he had once Richard Cameron died, leaving him not completely rudderless but with a reduced pool of resources with which to approach a problem.
In the Pentagon we see this again, he demobbed the SLDF and seemed to expect everyone to get down to the business of colonisation, their own thoughts and opinions be damned next to necessity and the ideals they were trying to preserve. If only things were ever that simple.
It should have been the focus, the Pentagon Worlds were habitable but each held their own dangers and required a great deal of effort to settle, theoretically occupying everyone. Instead tensions simmered, public opinion swayed even among the loyal soldiers, former and current, leading to grumblings, discontent, protests, riots, and finally the DeChevalier Massacre.
For all the good there seems to have been in Aleksandr Kerensky his reaction to these escalating events would probably have just raised the stakes further, his death, while inevitable anyway, was just the best means of tying off the bloody stump of the Star League in Exile and letting his son get away to forge the Clans rather than miring what was left of the League in a futile, fratricidal conflict that would have snuffed them out.
Throw in the Historicals and Aleksandr Kerensky sounds more and more like a normal person muddling through events making the best decisions he can with the information on hand.
Painfully though he remains ‘good’ in a broad ethical sense.
Did he order executions? Yes. Did he order massacres? Yes. Did he stomp over things with violence? Yes. He did so to uphold the law he swore to uphold, defend the weak as he saw them and preserve the ideals he strove for, however imperfectly.
The wrinkle is in that perspective.
To the Taurians and much of the Periphery he was a monster as soon as he signed on the dotted line and joined the SLDF, becoming Commanding General just made him a bigger monster. To the House Lords he was an impediment, to his own sons he was a distant legend. We the readers have nothing else to base our opinions on but these views, some of which only recently became available.
And that distance is key, for within the Battletech setting he is just as distant and unknowable as he was within. Perhaps two people knew him, Aleksandr Kerensky the human being, his wife Katuysha and best friend Aaron DeChevalier. The former we have little on and the latter is also only a few scraps of journal entries and Field Report prefaces, but provides a valuable window into this human, one of the very few. This is isolation of the character on every level, making it easier to dehumanise him.
When did he become a legend? To us outside of the setting it was immediate, General Aleksandr Kerensky was the cornerstone to the background mythology of the setting, his technologically advanced and ethically pure forces leaving was the beginning of the Dark Times of humanity the game was initially set in.
Inside the universe it’s a little harder to say. For the Clans it was immediate, in fact it was probably one of their cultural cornerstones as well. For the Inner Sphere it grew over time, sure, but may have begun as early as the Regency, since his reputation as a paragon was already established at that point, hence the choice for him to head the Star League until Richard came of age.
By the end of the war he had inadvertently built a cult of personality, how else would millions have willingly followed him into the unknown?
Millions, if not billions or trillions more, might have followed him in rebuilding the Terran Hegemony, even the Star League by force, but that’s where being the ‘good’ guy comes in again, and as usual for the Battletech universe it bites the character in the backside.
More importantly his legend was still limited. Even if he had wanted to he could not have leveraged his popularity, position or support against the House Lords without precipitating a five front war, so reputation and legend could only go so far.
This is also why during the Exodus and the Pentagon years Kerensky was shown taking such harsh actions, it was the earliest, easiest way to take some of the shine off the legend and start showing him as a human being making human decisions.
And his BattleMech. . . As a Gunslinger Aleksandr was able to choose anything he wanted despite the makeup of his company or battalion, unusual for the Star League which was homogeneous up to battalion, sometimes even regimental level.
A stock 1K Orion makes sense for the early days of his career. While far from the most advanced, powerful designs it is durable and falls well into the generalist category. Like the Shadow Hawk it had a cannon, LRMs, SRMs and laser weaponry in a balanced configuration, lacking only the mobility of jump jets which were supposed to be a rarity on a Level 1 Heavy BattleMech anyway.
In fact this configuration would be shared by many successful designs in various iterations, such as the Cyclops, Highlander and the Assault ‘Mech designed by Kerensky himself, the Atlas.
It is the versatility that makes it useful to a Gunslinger, in the days before the OmniMech with only the weapons bolted to your machine available on the day and never knowing what opponent you might face.
The modified Orion Kerensky piloted later on is an odd beast. All but the lasers are gone, devastating firepower is provided by the Gauss Rifle replacing the AC10 and of all things a Snub Nosed PPC has replaced the missiles. It’s an odd choice because it’s a retroactive new weapon, introduced during the Jihad timeline but given an original development date back during the late Star League period, enhancing the eras it can be played in.
Overall still a balanced machine and with the improved direct fire qualities is arguably a better duellist. It is less ammo dependent, more direct in its fire power, the lack of crit seekers is a little concerning but is replaced with pure punch. Nevertheless it was a powerful design with enough new tech to qualify as the personal ride of the highest ranking military officer in all of human space.
Of course, more than most other characters, for someone like Aleksandr Kerensky the legacy they leave behind is just as important as the character they are, it’s a part of the plot and setting centric nature of what they are.
Unfortunately that means the Clans have largely tainted the Kerensky legacy in the setting, as it means the (idealised) peacekeeping SLDF came back as ravenous conquerors.
Would Aleksandr have approved of Nicholas’ Clans? Hell no. General Kerensky was a man tied to the ideals of the Star League and SLDF. Freedom, safety, liberty, these were what he fought for. And he would fight, kill, use every trick in the book to achieve victory, but it would be a well-defined victory and any tactic that destroyed more than it gained was a waste.
IlKhan Kerensky was a man who saw an opportunity to build his version of a utopian society and grabbed it with both hands. Everything and everybody was a potential tool to be turned to a purpose, their own thoughts and wishes, even their needs beyond basic survival were moot. He codified warfare as a tool to settle even minor disputes. Life was lived to be lost on the battlefield, later generations to do the same as long as the dying was discrete and not wanton.
There are overlaps between father and son but on the whole the IlKhan is a very different person from the General.
His other son Andery is not any closer. Whether you argue he assisted in founding the Clans because he believed, because he wanted to curb his brother’s excesses or because he had no other choice out of politics, family loyalty or having nothing else to do it is clear in recent fiction and sourcebooks that he shared some ideals with his father and differed on others, much as his older brother but in a different direction.
While the Clans of Operation Revival would likely be an alien concept to all three men it’s clear that Aleksandr’s legacy, philosophical and political, not genetic, has been lost.
To those of us who play the game and read the books the question of legacy is a bit murkier, especially as sourcebooks looking back in time, either as retrospective analysis documents like the Historical Series, or found internal materials such as Field Reports, flesh out the time period, characters and all.
At the beginning Kerensky was more than just a footnote, and his legacy was one of lost glory. The Clans came and that brought a degree of taint with it, but sitting outside the setting we were in the position of being omniscient and could differentiate between Aleksandr and what his son had created a bit better. Now with more information coming to light the character is becoming richer and we see the frail human being trying to make the best decisions he can, just like any other in the setting.
Far from glorious but equally far from the thin character of old, and paradoxically it means that this ancient character is in the process of being developed as much as any in the contemporary Dark Age. Perhaps then his legacy is that of being proof that Battletech, at any time period, is a setting of constant growth and evolution.
