What would you argue to be the most illogical decision made by an IS Leader?

[Metallgewitter]

What you forget about Katherine's media manipulation: she basically convinced the Fedsuns population that Victor (Hanse's heir) had died out there in the No Mans land (one of the rather man ipulative questions in talk shows was "If Victor is dead wouldn't his sister Katherine be the next logical successor?"). Of course with his triumphant return I don't understand (ilogical reaction of the Fedsuns population) why the FedSuns citizens didn't demand that Katherine step down immediately to make room  for her brother who is obvoiusly alive?

Or another ilogical decision: why did Waterly think her Operation Scorpion would actually work? Even if Mori had not betrayed her would the Houses have any fear to not simply take over all HPG stations now that the guardians were actually away? I know fanatics don't think straight but seriously. Even for the Clan OZ's it didn't make sense as the Clans had enough manpower to defeat Comstar's meager uprising forces.

[Hellraiser]

Trying to claim the First Lord of the Star League after dissolving it.

which would be...all of them.

Any one of the House Lords could have played kingmaker and maybe gotten a break during teh succession wars, by not trying to succeed to the throne.  the easiest way to get nearly everyone on your border to leave you alone?

Agreed, and what kind of room were they in that 300 years later the IS managed to come up with "lets vote & rotate" that they couldn't think of this earlier?
Clearly no one passed kindergarten & learned "lets all share" like the rest of us.

[Hellraiser]

It is a bit of a loop because by making Yvonne regent, she could not become First Prince should he die in the field. That on its own should have caused him to reconsider.

She couldn't anyway having no AFFS background which is a requirement.
The "Logical" thing to do would have been to stay & let Focht/Hohiro/Kai, et all, handle the mission to back up Morgan/Serpent.
I forget if Phelan would have gone or not, but I know he did stay after Victor was leaving so not sure if those 2 could just "swap".
Either way someone like Ardan or another major military player in the FS could have gone as FS representative.

But then we wouldn't have all the illogical Katie shenanigans.

[Hellraiser]

"Is Terra valuable?"

"No."

Focht and Victor don't know that all Focht's guns and all the engines for Victor's new navy both come from there.

Yeah, I'll never be able to figure that one out.   I mean, in the short term of a few months sure, but they had the Shipyards for quite some time still & at some point should have organized a taskforce to boot out the small amount of Wobblies that took Terra.

Heck, I've still never understood how 2 small ships managed to "tie-down" the entire C* fleets at Terra & nearby Ross/Lutyens stations.

[Hellraiser]

..... well... yeah. or do you think everytime a ruler gets incapicitated and a regent is appointed for them they can't dismiss their regent upon recovery? Like seriously....

If you give something to somebody to hold on to you for a while, you can ask for it back and expect them to give it back. But that doesn't work when the item was stolen in the first place. At least not without your polite request being backed up by force you're prepared to use.

If he went back home w/ the entire AFFS contingent minus what went to save Serpent, and showed up on New Avalon w/ a few RCTs it would have been resolved.
Then again, she didn't take the throne till after he was gone from the IS.
So really the issue is, if he didn't leave, she never would have had any chance to go to New Avalon.

Really though, her going to Katie was just bad writing, she had her future husband to talk to & plenty of AFFS Generals that were NOT in Katie's pocket still.
Now I'm wondering who all was on New Avalon back then.

[Cannonshop]

If he went back home w/ the entire AFFS contingent minus what went to save Serpent, and showed up on New Avalon w/ a few RCTs it would have been resolved.
Then again, she didn't take the throne till after he was gone from the IS.
So really the issue is, if he didn't leave, she never would have had any chance to go to New Avalon.

Really though, her going to Katie was just bad writing, she had her future husband to talk to & plenty of AFFS Generals that were NOT in Katie's pocket still.
Now I'm wondering who all was on New Avalon back then.

People do irrational things all the time, even very smart and capable people have their blind spots, we have nothing on what Katie and Yvonne's relationship was like before Katie's Coup, and the sourcebooks really only give us bare events, while the novels are all about Victor in that period, with damn near nothing showing the kids growing up or how they related to one another in the interwar years.

There's an old saying about how you can't have Treason without Trust.

[Caesar Steiner for Archon]

Anton Marik's revolt.
Unless he was REALLY left to hang by wannabe allies that never showed up when he declared his coup, his actions are quite bad.

Max played him like a fiddle. I know people are inclined to write him off because Stackpole wrote him as someone who only existed to demonstrate that Hanse Davion was superior in every way, at one point in the universe they were trying to write him as a clever manipulator. The allies who never showed up were the CCAF, and possibly ComStar. Both were supposedly in his ear.

I don't think the writers remembered there's any issue with someone being a regent and remaining in the line of succession, or they expected readers not to remember.

In any case, Yvonne later DID become de facto first prince, with the amusing legal figleaf that she was "regent" for a child she hadn't yet even conceived, which goes to show that once again, nobody really cares about these legalities when it's not expedient to.

Usually decisions like this make your characters seem like idiots (see: Victor and Focht) but in the case of the FS, saying "the people were too stupid to know" actually works

[Agathos]

No matter how upset you are about your dad, the Kentares Massacre makes no sense. Even setting aside its effect on the Combine's reputation and morale, it required pausing their advance for half a year in order to accomplish nothing of strategic value. And up until then the Combine was winning!

[Metallgewitter]

No matter how upset you are about your dad, the Kentares Massacre makes no sense. Even setting aside its effect on the Combine's reputation and morale, it required pausing their advance for half a year in order to accomplish nothing of strategic value. And up until then the Combine was winning!

Hey now when his Dad can issue "total Atomic annihilation" on Helm just because he couldn't find the SLDF depot there then his son can simply order an antire population exterminated for the death of his father. It runs in the family after all.

[Minemech]

Max played him like a fiddle. I know people are inclined to write him off because Stackpole wrote him as someone who only existed to demonstrate that Hanse Davion was superior in every way, at one point in the universe they were trying to write him as a clever manipulator. The allies who never showed up were the CCAF, and possibly ComStar. Both were supposedly in his ear.

A neglected angle would be that of the Federated Suns, who were destabilizing the League as best they could. I doubt their escapades are going to get much coverage in future print, but while they did cause mischief, given their current coverage I do not think they were as successful as they had hoped to be. Janos was running containment which played a role in why his brother saw him as weaker than he actually was. Anton's Revolt was ultimately the product of MIIO/DMI, the MASK, and ROM working against the League. The Replevin Doctrine was Janos' ultimate ace.

 However, I think that there is a consensus that Anton was clearly not a thinker and everyone else saw it but him.

[CJC070]

Personally most illogical decisions in the Battletech universe has real world context.  Remember World War One could be perceived as family drama on a global scale and half the wars today are about the poor choices made a century ago.

For me it was the Lyrans hiring the Wolves to attack the Free Worlds League.   

[The Wobbly Guy]

Don't discount the power of opinion polls. We can see their power very clearly ever since the start of the century, especially with a malleable and gullible populace.

[Cannonshop]

Don't discount the power of opinion polls. We can see their power very clearly ever since the start of the century, especially with a malleable and gullible populace.

especially since "Opinion Polling" is non-scientific and easily manipulated.  Slanting the question, limiting the answer on a multiple choice, 'recontexting' to give the answer the sponsoring entity wants, selection sampling manipulation, non-representative sampling, cherry picking results...

Opinion Polling is as much about pushing an agenda using the advertising method known as 'Bandwagon' as it is compiling actual, useful data. 

Okay, that's a stretch, compiling actual, useful data is a distant, tertiary purpose compared to creating a desired impression or pushing an agenda.

The idea that people a thousand years from now would still fall for that shit suggests human nature is not particularly malleable, and yes, none of us, is as stupid and gullible as all of us are.

[Middcore]

The issue with the opinion polling plot device isn't that public opinion can be manipulated, it's the idea that public opinion carries enough weight to force a change in the head of state in what is essentially a feudal monarchy.

[Cannonshop]

The issue with the opinion polling plot device isn't that public opinion can be manipulated, it's the idea that public opinion carries enough weight to force a change in the head of state in what is essentially a feudal monarchy.

Do you know what a Noble or Monarch that nobody obeys is?

a noisy beggar.  That's what they are.  It's the followers that make dictatorships work, if nobody obeys your orders it doesn't matter who you're related to, where you were born, or what the law says.

Only someone with followers, can be a ruler.

Public obedience, therefore, matters, they don't have to like you, but you're not in charge if they won't do what you tell them to.  If enough of the population tells you 'no', then you'll find your soldiers will also tell you 'no'-and they might kill ya in favor of someone who can tell them to do things, and they actually do them.

ask the people of the Jacobite period.  there was a King nobody obeyed, and a different king, invited to be the king, (Duke of Orange, from the continental europe) whom enough people obeyed to take the throne and there's some doubt as to how legitimate in LEGAL terms that was-but not in the terms of the most basic thing: People did what the Duke of Orange told them to do, and the stuart monarch couldnt' get enough people to do what HE told them to do.

Thus, why it's not "House of Stuart" on the English Throne today.

Obedience is the mark of legitimacy when you strip off all the cosmetic feel-good-about-yourself rhetoric.  If the people won't obey your monarch, supreme leader, emperor, dictator, generalissimo, whatever-they're not going to truly be legitimate.

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

 A few tasters:
 Why did Takashi want to bring Maximilian into his alliance with Janos? It could only be read as him thinking that he was more than the first among equals when he was neither. Maximilian had nothing to offer the two, even from a sympathetic realist perspective and his role in the recent civil war in the League was publicly known.

Cannon fodder.  As long as Max could tie up FedSuns troops and keep them shooting something other than Combine mechwarriors, he had value to Takashi.

[Lone-Wolf]

For me the most illogical decision was that Janos Marik allied with Kurita (and Liao).

Just look at it:
Davion, Marik and Steiner are (in a broad sense) the most democratic states in the IS.
Kurita and Liao are dictatureships.
So, why should a "democracy ally with a dictatureship?

And second:
Kurita massacred the population of Kentares, a Davion planet.
Kurita nuclear saturation bombed Helm, a Marik Planet.

Yes, in the 1st Succession war they nuclear bombed each other, but those two stand out.

It is a wonder that no-one called out Janos for allying with the murderer of Helm.

Of course we know that Marik and Steiner ahem dont like each other. But those three could tell Kurita and Liao to stop using evil methods (Northwind etc) or the three Houses would ally and curbstomp them. You know, re-introducing the Ares Convention and maybe even going towards the Geneva Conventions.
(And yes, I am looking at the 2nd Kearny with their refusal to accept surrender. Let them think about it when confronted by the Davion Assault Guards, Steiners 1st Royal Guards and a high profile House Marik unit - sorry I cant remember any good hitters of House Marik except the Knights of the Inner Sphere, but they are not of 3025).

[JAMES_PRYDE]

Does Alexander Kerensky count as a leader ?

[Minemech]

(And yes, I am looking at the 2nd Kearny with their refusal to accept surrender. Let them think about it when confronted by the Davion Assault Guards, Steiners 1st Royal Guards and a high profile House Marik unit - sorry I cant remember any good hitters of House Marik except the Knights of the Inner Sphere, but they are not of 3025).

Some well-known good hitters across the Inner Sphere were the 1st Fusiliers of Oriente, the Ducal Guard and the 1st Regulan Hussars. When you get specific to House Marik, things get complicated, so it is better to stick to Free Worlds League Militia units in general. The 2nd Oriente Hussars were likely the best light cavalry regiment in the Inner Sphere but they had competitors even among the FWLM (It is a hard title to hold; this status is not to be confused with the most elite which has different implications).
 The 1st Free Worlds Guards were supposed to be among the best, but were having a horrible luck streak in the 31st century. Some of the Marik Militia units, like the 9th, were punching well above their rating, implying bias in the system.

[Cannonshop]

Does Alexander Kerensky count as a leader ?

Yes, he would qualify, though he might also qualify as a bandit king, failed leader, or outright traitor depending on your point of view.

[Middcore]

Do you know what a Noble or Monarch that nobody obeys is?

This is all irrelevant, because there's no indication anybody was going to stop obeying Yvonne. The preposterously bare-bones, let's-just-gloss-over-this treatment of events we get in canon sources is basically that people didn't particularly like Yvonne or think she was doing a good job (although there's zero info on any specific policies or actions she took people would disagree with) and she was apparently so weak-willed that alone was enough to make her desert her post.

The intent is to show us what a masterful manipulator Katherine is, but it actually just ends up looking bizarre. In general, Stackpole and then Coleman failed pretty completely at showing us why Katherine is supposed to be such a charismatic and effective political operator. Granted, they made things difficult for themselves by letting the audience in on the fact she's a monster really early, but they barely make an effort aside from showing us a couple rather unremarkable speeches she makes, and the rest of the time she's Cruella De Vil.

As an IP which revolves around military conflict (it's kind of right there in the name), BT has never been very good at showing the audience that its supposed Machiavellis are actually capable of brilliant machinations, it tends to just tell us "THIS PERSON IS SO GOOD AT POLITICS" by having things that suit the ostensible political mastermind's interests happen while hand-waving the details. Whether this is because the writers are not good at writing believable political plots or whether they just think their audience would be bored if they tried is open to debate.

[CJC070]

You also have to consider the number of words they can commit to a novel.  Sure they could create a chapter devoting to how good an orator Katherine was but then they may have to remove something else.  You may disagree but ultimately it is the writer and editor that determine what is in these pages. 

[Metallgewitter]

The only times in the novels where we have seen her "manipulations" were when she tried to become the First Lady of the new Star League. Like promising Sun Tzu not to meddle in the St Ives conflict while also convincing Thomas Marik that she can make the St Ives war go on for syears to distract Sun Tzu. Or how she tried to provoke Victor into a temper tantrum to act as the peace maker, making herself the best candidate as the first first Lord / Lady right before the start of Operation Bulldog. Otherwise she only gives speeches or even meddles in military affairs during the civil war.

[Minemech]

 There is always the argument that she was genuinely incompetent, and the other Lords played her like a fiddle.

[Middcore]

The only times in the novels where we have seen her "manipulations" were when she tried to become the First Lady of the new Star League.

Right... the only time we see her actually try, she fails.

When she succeeds, we only see the outcome with no depiction of what she actually did.

I bring up the public speeches because those are main/only places where it seems like they're trying to show us how she could have popular support and inspire personal loyalty as opposed to wheeling and dealing with other people in positions of power, but they're underwhelming.

[Minemech]

 She is actually a bit of a stock character, the countess who sees herself as duchess or even queen material because she can outplay the lower rung of the nobility. When her weakness is revealed in the slightest sense, she has to fall back to force because she cannot truly outwit others.

[BrianDavion]

You also have to consider the number of words they can commit to a novel.  Sure they could create a chapter devoting to how good an orator Katherine was but then they may have to remove something else.  You may disagree but ultimately it is the writer and editor that determine what is in these pages.

Maybe but like the old writing adage says "show don't tell" and they really did a poor job showing us that because the few times they did show us doing what we where told what KSD did best she failed.
EVERY
SINGLE
TIME

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Okay any discussion that involves illogical decisions and Kathrine Davion has to include her plan to go sneak off to the Smoke Jaguar occupation zone and try to set up a secret alliance with them.  Accidentally running into Vlad is the only thing that saved her from spending the rest of her life growing turnips on Huntress.

[Middcore]

Okay any discussion that involves illogical decisions and Kathrine Davion has to include her plan to go sneak off to the Smoke Jaguar occupation zone and try to set up a secret alliance with them.  Accidentally running into Vlad is the only thing that saved her from spending the rest of her life growing turnips on Huntress.

A strong suggestion, although if Katherine hadn't come up with this brilliant scheme we would never have Alaric Ward as a character, and think what a loss to the universe that would be...

[MoneyLovinOgre4Hire]

Gosh, what a tragic thought.