Minemech's actually correct in this case, had VSD upon his return to the Inner Sphere IMMEDIATELY returned to New Avalon, and landed there with the 10th Lyran guards, graciously thanks Katherine for watching the throne for him in his absence, and then politely said that he has now returned so as regent KSD would have basicly HAD to retreat, she would have had no legal standing to contest Victor and thus had no troops come to her aid. And KSD wasn't stupid eneugh to think she would have had a chance.
Victor never appointed Katherine as regent, but he can dismiss her as regent?
You guys keep using this word "legal" and I am telling you legality doesn't mean shit.
the whole "lol posession is 9 tenths of the law" argument, is just.... wrong, KSD's only claim to new avalon existed because VSD abandoned it.
"Possession is nine-tenths of the law" means that once someone has physical possession of something, it's very hard to get it back if they don't want to give it back without the threat or application of force. Even your "with the 10th Lyran Guards" stipulation is an implied threat of force.
NO ONE would support her. the vast majority of the military would back the rightful first prince
Why? Plenty of people supported her just a year later when the civil war actually kicked off.
Remember at this point Katherine has somehow manipulated public opinion to the point where her taking over from Yvonne was actually a popular move. The populace and even the military don't know what the audience knows about her and her public image is pretty good. There may be some debate about her actions in pulling the Lyran half of the FedCom out in the face of Operation Guerrero, but Guerrero happened because Victor did something morally reprehensible, and then he failed to save the Sarna March, and then he (in your words)
abandoned New Avalon and the FedCom as a whole to go fight the Clans, and in a campaign that can very reasonably be argued only directly benefited the Draconis Combine at that.
After all that he swans back in and goes, "OK I'm done taking care of our ancient enemies problems for them, I'm ready to go back to the relatively unimportant work of being First Prince now, something I was arguably doing a piss-poor job at before," and you think everybody is going to be cheering? Sorry, I'm not so sure. I mean, arguably nobody should have supported Katherine pulling the Lyran half of the FedCom out several years earlier if we want to talk about
legality, and it seems to have gone off without a hitch.
I agree that a lot of the setup for the FCCW was contrived, most of all the "Katherine is swept into power because Yvonne's poll numbers were bad" thing, a plot device which we can't really characterize as an act of bad decision-making on the part of any character in the universe, aside from maybe Yvonne, and Yvonne barely qualifies as a character anyway. But once Katherine holds power, there's no way things get resolved without shots fired.
Victor's huge mistake was taking his butt off the throne was giving Katherine an opportunity by taking his butt off the throne on New Avalon to go lead TF Bulldog. There was no need for him to do so and there is no reason to think the outcome would have been any different without him. (Hanse should have taught him that just because his middle name was Ian that didn't mean he needed to follow Ian's stupid example.) But after that mistake, while his choices may not be ideal to those of us in the audience with omniscient perspective and the benefit of hindsight, they are understandable.