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How the hell is she Captain?

And while I disagree with a lot of the Tactics used by The PIRA in Ulster, Catholics are no longer treated as second class citizens, as they were before the troubles.
See, this is where I have a real problem. My father and grandparents are from Belfast and are quite bitter about the suggestion that the PIRA or any other terrorist group is responsible for the abolition of the Protestant/Catholic hierarchy. No, that was born out of the combined efforts of both the Civil Rights movement and the British pressure to reform.

As for the IRA and Irish independence, the Home Rule Bill of 1914 showed that parliament was willing to concede to Irish demands for self-governance, all be it limited.

I'd argue more but I have articles to submit to my editor
 
And while I disagree with a lot of the Tactics used by The PIRA in Ulster, Catholics are no longer treated as second class citizens, as they were before the troubles.
See, this is where I have a real problem. My father and grandparents are from Belfast and are quite bitter about the suggestion that the PIRA or any other terrorist group is responsible for the abolition of the Protestant/Catholic hierarchy. No, that was born out of the combined efforts of both the Civil Rights movement and the British pressure to reform.

As for the IRA and Irish independence, the Home Rule Bill of 1914 showed that parliament was willing to concede to Irish demands for self-governance, all be it limited.

I'd argue more but I have articles to submit to my editor

To be fair you do have a good point, regarding the civil rights movement, I am a admirer of both Hume & Cooper. All though I do not believe the movement could reach equal rights alone.

As for Home Rule It was voted down in Parliament so many times that I am not convinced it would have actually been enacted in face of so much opposition, In any case it was delayed because of WWI, but Home Rule was still not enacted to 1922.
 
You also have to weigh in that Ro spent several years (?) fighting the Dominion behind enemy lines. Then she spent time in the Bajoran militia and only rejoined Starfleet when Bajor joined the Federation.

(Picard also vouched for her, and I assume Will Riker too. And since they are 2/3 of the Captains who saved the Federation from the Borg, that has to count for something. Wonder if Ezri helped out to? That would be ALL the Captains that saved the Federation supporting her.)
 
By the time of the events of Destiny, though, I believe that Ro is already a Captain and CO of DS9, having succeeded Elias Vaughn in that capacity, so Ezri's captaincy would've been in its infancy and the Borg/Caeliar crisis wouldn't have yet occurred. Therefore, if anyone besides Picard vouched for or recommended her for Captain it likely would've been Vaughn and/or Vedek Kira.
 
While I can't recall where exactly this was established (DS9 relaunch or Voyager relaunch), I remember it being stated that a general amnesty was extended to any Maquis survivors willing to join the Federation war effort against the Dominion (which I'm sure most were). The Maquis were pardoned, if only because the Federation wanted every willing fighter it could - and, as Sci points out, the Maquis, whatever the official description of their crimes, were best defined through their violent resistance to Cardassian control, and that no doubt seemed a far more sympathetic position once the war broke out. Maquis sympathizers might even have hailed the Maquis as visionaries who, through their proximity to the DMZ, understood before the government did that "those damn cardies couldn't be trusted". While that's probably not very sensible (future twists and turns don't magically justify the Maquis' defection and criminal activities at the time; after all, the Maquis' success was one of the factors behind Cardassia's perception of itself as a fading power, in need of a nice Dominion-shaped boost), they probably cast the whole affair in a new light so far as the Federation public was concerned. To say nothing of the ideological power shifts within Starfleet (which there must have been, if it's moving to a full-scale war footing for the first time in a century). The most purely idealistic/unforgiving members of the admiralty might well have insisted former terrorists and deserters not be accepted into the shiny Starfleet, but I imagine they would be outvoted, as it were. A desperate sector commander whose forces are crumbling under Dominion assault and who can't be guaranteed reinforcements because the fleets are needed elsewhere isn't going to turn down ex-Maquis assistance. And once they're part of the war effort, they're part of the post-war political process. Particularly if they're Bajoran, I'd imagine, since the Federation is eager to have Bajor as a member. Ro is long forgiven by at least enough of those in charge, I'd expect.

If anything (and this does come up in the Voyager relaunch), Voyager's Maquis crewmembers might be the suspect ones in the eyes of Starfleet Command, because they hadn't "proven themselves" in the war, haven't reintegrated into the Federation through shared blood and toil (Janeway would tell Command otherwise, but as the novels take pains to demonstrate, a weary Starfleet doesn't understand or accept that a jaunt through the Delta Quadrant was an ordeal in its own right).
 
By the time of the events of Destiny, though, I believe that Ro is already a Captain and CO of DS9, having succeeded Elias Vaughn in that capacity,

Specifically, Plagues of Night establishes that Ro Laren succeeded Elias Vaughn as commanding officer of Starbase Deep Space 9 in approximately April of 2379 while holding the rank of commander. It was only in August 2382 that Ro was promoted to captain. She had been invited to serve as the station's first officer by Captain Vaughn after he succeeded Captain Kira (I'm not sure when he took over).
 
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^ Hmm. That means that she'd barely been promoted, rank-wise, at the time of the bulk of Zero Sum Game, but I don't recall there being any indication of this in the novel itself, which I find interesting because, even though the book didn't focus much on events on the station itself, you'd think that something like that would be a detail that ought to/would have been at least mentioned in passing.

Regarding exactly when Vaughn took over command of DS9, Kira resigned her command and Starfleet commision in 2378, and one would assume that Vaughn would've taken command of the station shortly - if not immediately - thereafter.

Incidentally, I find it interesting that Ro is the one Vaughn asked to be his XO because, based on the DS9 Relaunch novels I've read, Ezri seems like she would've been the first and more/most obvious choice to serve as XO of the station because of the mentor/protoge relationship that the early DS9-R novels - particularly the Mission: Gamma books - start to establish, so the fact that she didn't get the job and Ro did leads me to wonder if she was off the station by that point. If she was, that would mean that the USS Aventine was commissioned sometime either prior to or during 2378, even though it wasn't fitted with quantum slipstream engines until 2380.
 
Nasat, I believe it's Voy: Homecoming that talks about the general amnesty. As well, I think in Avatar Jean-Luc Picard implies that the Maquis have been "forgiven" and that Ro herself decided not to go back to Starfleet because they wouldn't want her, so she joins the BM.
 
Forget the terrorist stuff, the big problem is that title inflation in the books means that by my calculations (using a highly advanced formula) none of the main characters will be ranked below Admiral come 2014.

"Admiral on the bridge"

"Which one?"
 
All this talk of Elias Vaughn makes me wish that somebody,anybody would kindly get their thumbs out and move his story (and that of DS9)along!:scream:
YEESH!
 
All this talk of Elias Vaughn makes me wish that somebody,anybody would kindly get their thumbs out and move his story (and that of DS9)along!:scream:
YEESH!

I'm reading Plagues of Night right now, and it's doing just that. A very large percentage of the book is set on DS9 or following former DS9 personnel, and there's definitely advancement on Vaughn's story, at least insofar as there can be any advancement after the events of Rough Beasts of Empire.
 
All this talk of Elias Vaughn makes me wish that somebody,anybody would kindly get their thumbs out and move his story (and that of DS9)along!:scream:
YEESH!

Plagues of Night, just out this month, is very much a DS9 story.

ETA:

This coming, of course, a mere 6 months after DS9's Mirror Universe vision came to its climax in Rise Like Lions, 10 months after Elias Vaughn was a major character in Cast No Shadow, 16 months after Shar and DS9's Andorian arc was moved along in the TNG Pact novel Paths of Disharmony, 17 months after the DS9/Spock Pact novel Rough Beasts of Empire was published, 18 months after the DS9 Pact novel Zero Sum Game was published, not quite three years since the DS9 novels The Soul Key and The Never-Ending Sacrifice were published, and four years since the Terok Nor trilogy and the novel Fearful Symmetry were published.

Not a single calender year has gone by since 2007 without a DS9 novel. The story's moving along just fine.
 
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Forget the terrorist stuff, the big problem is that title inflation in the books means that by my calculations (using a highly advanced formula) none of the main characters will be ranked below Admiral come 2014.

Nah, Harry Kim will still be an ensign. ;)
 
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