The Honor of the Queen

The Honor of the Queen is a science fiction novel by the American writer David Weber, published in 1993 and the second of his Honor Harrington series.

Three years after the events of the first book, Honor returns from an anti-piracy campaign to find herself escorting a diplomatic mission to Grayson, a world whose religion and law put women in a subordinate position and whose navy has never taken orders from one. The alliance matters because war with Haven is coming and because Grayson is worth having, so Honor has to do her job in a place that will not let her do it. Weber writes the negotiations, the fleet movements and the technical detail of a space navy in the same register, and the crisis turns on the difference between the rules of the mission and what the situation actually requires.

The series continued for many books, and this one established the alliance between Manticore and Grayson that holds through most of them. It is the second of the novels, and it begins the diplomatic thread that runs alongside the war.