Andery and Me
A BattleTech newsletter for the holiday season
Happy Holidays! In keeping with the spirit of the season, this is a newsletter about family – mostly Andery Kerensky’s imagined family, but also a little bit about mine. If you don’t mind, I’ll start with some details about me. It’ll make sense.
“Something missing”
When I was in high school, my first Chemistry teacher - let’s call him Mr. N - had an awkward conversation with my dad. Mr. N was a good teacher and I enjoyed his classes, reliably getting solid to excellent results in tests and exams – but rarely did my homework or completed assignments. Sometimes I even turned up in class without my books or stationary. Mr. N didn’t know how to explain it, venturing to Dad that while I was very bright and capable, there was “something missing,” though he couldn’t put his finger on what. He knew it wasn’t a memory problem because I didn’t have trouble remembering the course material, even though (as my father admitted), I wasn’t doing much revision.
If you’ve got some idea of what was going on with my brain, please don’t think badly of Mr. N. It was the 90s. ADHD wasn’t very well-understood by the experts, let alone high school teachers. If someone had suggested that his typically quiet, shy student had a hyperactivity disorder, Mr. N would have given them a look of polite disbelief. He wasn’t alone in ruling it out. I went to a number of mental health professionals as a child, teen, and adult, and until quite recently ADHD was out of the picture. I was prescribed anti-depressants a few times, but didn’t like who I was when I took them so those experiments didn’t last long. In 2021, I self-diagnosed and started a process of working with my brain rather than just despairing at having “something missing”. Over the last few years I’ve had bouts of extreme bitterness about how long it took to get to some kind of clarity, but the storms have passed. There have been times in my life that were difficult, but I like who I am now so it’s not really worth being upset by the past. There’s just one reason I still wish things had gone differently.
While it’s changing now, ADHD diagnoses for girls and women used to be difficult. The behaviors of boys and young men with ADHD were recognized and studied earlier. This has led to a backlog of women getting their diagnosis later in life, among them some friends of mine – and my big sister, who we’ll call “M” here. M is talented in all kinds of ways, but when it comes to masking (hiding neurodivergence by copying the behavior of other people), she’s absolutely world-class. Nobody had a sit-down with my parents to wonder if there was “something missing” about M, because she diligently did her homework, worked hard on her assignments, took up extra-curricular activities, and ran her nerves into the ground pretending to be a kind of human that she is not. Like me, M was taken to, and later sought out, quite a few mental health professionals. Sadly, unlike me, M was absolutely committed to trying to be normal so she stayed on anti-depressants despite side-effects.
This isn’t a pure tragedy. M is in the process of getting her ADHD diagnosis as I write this and I’m confident that the care she gets will really help her out. Although we rarely talk, M made a point of letting me know about it, and thought that I should consider getting assessed as well: ADHD runs in families. (Yeah, she didn’t know about the self-diagnosis – like I said, we don’t talk a lot.) M having ADHD didn’t exactly surprise me, but her masking was so good that it never occurred to me that we had such similar brains. If my ADHD had been recognized when we were children, I’m pretty sure that M would have masked her way past the first few attempts at connection, but having me as a lead probably would have seen her ADHD picked up earlier.
Andery and His Brain
That story is mostly to establish my credentials here. I’m not a mental health professional and wouldn’t dare diagnose a real person, let alone recommend treatment. But I’ve spent my whole life with the thoughts of an ADHD person, so when I read that way of thinking in the chapters of a novel it feels familiar. From my perspective, Andery Kerensky is definitely coded as Neurodivergent – and I think as a person with ADHD – in the Founding of the Clans trilogy. We are absolutely going to Spoilerville here, so if you haven’t read these books and get a thrill out of keeping them unspoiled… see you later, I hope! (Candidly, I don’t care about spoilers and sometimes even enjoy things more when they have been spoiled, because I know what I’m anticipating. Same sort of experience people get going to a movie for the second time.)
As you’re probably hanging around, here are some of the traits and behaviors that “ring true” for Andery as a Neurodivergent person:
Andery often fights back tears or other strong displays of emotion.
He blurts out his ideas in conversations, which annoys some people and intrigues others.
He’s “too intense” in romantic relationships.
He’s reluctant to disclose his feelings to others.
He’s torn between desperately wanting to fit in and deep concerns about the way that his world works.
He feels deeply inadequate and powerless to change his life.
He often resents people who try to help, rebelling against what feel like attempts to control him.
He’s often bumping into things. (The depiction of this in Founding of the Clans is a little dated but matches self-report from ADHDers. Andery bumps into things or trips because he’s caught up in his thoughts. More recent research indicates that there are structural differences in the ADHD brain that make for poor balance – which probably would have ruined Andery’s career as a mechwarrior.)
I could go on, but there’s one other key point about this identification. I’m not “claiming” Andery because I like him – far from it. He might even be my least-favorite character in BattleTech, because his internal misery and the way that it trapped him in self-destructive behavior is so familiar. In the chapters covering his youth, it’s easier to feel some sympathy for that, but as Andery gets older – and especially when he got older than I am now – I kept wanting to yell at him. “Stop doing this to yourself!”
Andery’s Context
Let’s put Andery in context. Founding of the Clans hugely expands on the details of his life, taking him from Moskva on Earth to the distant world of Eden with many stops on the way. In the process, it tells some of the story of the Exodus of the Star League Defense Forces loyal to Aleksandr Kerensky (Andery’s father), and the transformation of those people into the Clans, led by Andery’s brother Nicholas. There aren’t many big reveals about the Clans themselves, especially to BattleTech fans familiar with the story laid out in Operation: KLONDIKE. We get a few bits of trivia, like the Clanner “Aff” having its origins in a childhood game played by Andery and Nicholas and “Seyla” coming from the religious term Selah.
The biographical side is more interesting. Andery was somewhat sheltered from the horrors of the Amaris empire, but he grew up knowing little else. We don’t see his childhood at all and at one point Andery indulges in his imagined happy upbringing with ice-cream and games in the park, before admitting to himself that things weren’t nearly that pleasant. The self-deception is far-going enough for him to misremember other details entirely, such as thinking that he remembered his mother’s prayers from before Stefan Amaris launched his coup. (Andery was less than two months old when that happened.) This shouldn’t be taken as a sign of bad character. It simply speaks to the depths of Andery’s childhood pain that he had to block it out.
I’m not sure whether that trauma explains Andery’s terrible family relationships. He’s totally estranged from his mother for reasons that go unexplored. There are no conversations and barely even thoughts of her in the twelve years between the start of the trilogy in 2784 and Katyusha’s death in 2796. Andery’s relationship with his father is also distant, though the dynamic is well-established. Andery never feels that he can live up to his famous father, mostly keeping his distance while idolizing the man (and then resenting other people for idolizing him). This is also quite understandable, though there are painful moments. I really felt for Andery appealing to his old and obviously confused father to return to a more active leadership role and walking out frustrated. It was one of his last chances to feel for and connect with the man, his father, but he was stuck thinking about the General.
Andery’s friendships are better. He has a few solid buddies who treat him well in the books, but his best friend was Sarah McEvedy Windham Khatib. Don’t get me wrong, McEvedy shows up, but she’s not that close to Andery. They’re friends, but there’s an uncomfortable implication that Andery only befriends her as a romantic prospect. I’m also not entirely sure what he sees in her other than a pretty face, because just like in Betrayal of Ideals, the Wolverine Khan comes across as a fairly awful person when we get to see things from her point of view. (Joyce Merrell of the Snow Ravens – who is meant to be Sarah’s friend – calls on the Wolverines to help fight a particularly desperate battle. McEvedy intentionally delays her warriors so that the Snow Ravens will be weakened.)
But we were talking about Windham Khatib. He’s portrayed throughout as a wonderfully supportive friend. Windham isn’t shy about his religious beliefs but he accepts that Andery is a lifelong Atheist without any substantial complaint. In the most part, his background as a pastor affects their friendship in the form of Windham’s empathy and wisdom – and it’s part of Andery’s tragedy that he doesn’t confide more of his feelings to the Cloud Cobra Khan.
Instead, Andery tries to find solace in his romantic relationship with Dana Kufahl, the founder of Clan Coyote. The start of their relationship is, to say the least, embarrassing. They meet when Andery is teaching at the military academy and Dana is one of his students. It is a strict breach of professional ethics for him to pursue her, but he does anyway, and not for reasons that are particularly admirable. In the scene that fades to black with the consummation of their relationship, Andery reflects to himself that he really doesn’t know all that much about Dana. Despite that, he’s sure that he’s found The One. I mean… this is ADHD all-or-nothing thinking but it’s also really shallow. Luckily, as they find out more about one another they seem to develop into a good match. The novels don’t really show us this process, we just get Andery reflecting on how complete he is with Dana while he’s falling apart over other things. My impression is that Dana largely teaches Andery about meditation and this helps him to ground himself when he becomes dysregulated, as he doesn’t find much closure on his bigger issues until they’ve been together for quite a long time.
OK, OK. I’ve hinted at it, but it’s past time to say what these books are really about.
Andery and Nicholas
The person that Andery thinks about most often is his brother, and at the very conclusion of the books we find out that Nicholas returns the full intensity of that feeling. But their relationship is fraught. When we first meet him as a teenager, Andery bitterly resents Nicholas for reasons that aren’t entirely clear and bleed out as the story unfolds. Andery spends almost his entire life crushed by the expectations of the Kerensky name, and his main coping mechanism for that is to be angry at his big brother, who seems to not only carry the Kerensky burden lightly but even welcome it.
That doesn’t mean that Nicholas is an easy older brother to have. His childhood trauma is, if anything, even more terrible than Andery’s. Flashbacks to Nicholas’ point of view in occupied Moskva show him recruited into the resistance as a child of eight and some of the absolutely harrowing experiences that come from that. For me, the emotional height of the books is one of the flashbacks in the first book, Fall from Glory, and it’s one of the things I really shouldn’t spoil. Suffice it to say that I can’t understand how anyone would read the desperate struggles of a very young Nicholas Kerensky and not come away from it with a certain connection to him. What I can easily understand is how the adult who emerges from that childhood is emotionally locked down to the point of coming across as almost inhuman. Nicholas learned at an early age that he couldn’t afford to be vulnerable, and it took him decades just to soften that lesson.
To make matters worse, Nicholas claims to be manipulating his younger brother and Andery readily believes him. There are two major problems with this. Firstly, as you’ve probably gathered, Andery’s opinion on the matter doesn’t count for much. Usually Nicholas claiming to have manipulated events allows Andery to absolve himself of his own personal responsibility. The first instance of this is particularly ludicrous. Nicholas says that he convinced Andery to get involved with the lead-up to the Prinz Eugen mutiny by… telling him not to have anything to do with it. (It’s true that Nicholas’ life partner, Jennifer, also encouraged Andery to get involved with this in a more direct way, but we later learn that they’re not always on the same page.) Indeed, Andery imagines Nicholas’ hand behind several other events that he certainly didn’t have anything to do with. He’s just not reliable.
But then Nicholas said he manipulated these events. That’s proof that’s he’s a manipulative liar, right? There’s no way that a manipulative liar would lie about something like that, not unless he was trying to manipulate people… see the problem? His say-so isn’t particularly good evidence in itself, and the plots don’t make a lot of sense. One of the events that Nicholas claims to have instigated was an attempt on his own life that he only survived thanks to the advanced body armor of the Star League, a fairly reckless thing to plan. Even if you’re prepared to believe that the Founder of the Clans was completely fearless, after the assassination attempt Nicholas and his agents have no real leads on those more immediately responsible, which makes one wonder how he could have orchestrated things in the first place. In general, it would be far, far easier for Nicholas to simply claim to be totally in control at all times than to actually have played people with the faint measures he’s supposedly using.
Nicholas and his Brain
Why would Nicholas need to project an appearance of control over events? Well, it fits in with a lot of other things he does. As an adult, Nicholas has a habit of keeping himself excessively still, even though he loves to exercise. He rarely shows emotion other than a cold approval or displeasure, though we occasionally see how deep his feelings run, either from his own perspective or Jennifer’s. He has his detailed plans for a society that will safely channel human aggression away from the excesses out total warfare – plans that he loves to talk about for hours with the very few people that he trusts. And of course, he spends decades doing his level best to come across as the dutiful heir of the great Aleksandr Kerensky, just a chip off the old block, running his nerves into the ground pretending to be a kind of human he is not.
Don’t worry. I’m not telling you that Nicholas Kerensky and my big sister M are basically the same. (Although if the world needs someone to design a whole new form of society in the next decade, I’m sure M would do a good job of it.) But I am telling you that I’ve seen this sibling dynamic with ADHD, and what’s in the Founding of the Clans trilogy is all too familiar, especially because Andery and I are both seeing it through the eyes of the little brother. There are moments in the books where Nicholas is – at least to me – clearly trying to help Andery despite their rift, and Andery flashes into a “don’t try to control me” anger that I know intimately. The most striking example of this is how Andery comes to be working at the military academy. Nicholas arranged it, and Andery stays bitter about that for decades even though the job suits him well and leads to him meeting the love of his life. That blindness and ingratitude is something that I know pretty well, too.
Of course, it’s not as clear what’s going on in Nicholas’ head because we get far less of his thoughts in the novels. But in the scenes which take Nicholas’ point of view in his late teens, he thinks very similarly to Andery and is shown fighting back tears the same way that his younger brother does. We also get a recurring analogy of the two as the opposite sides of the same coin – and while that can be read many ways, it’s reasonable to read it as a metaphor for their different masking strategies.
Something Ending
Psychoanalyzing Nicholas Kerensky is pretty common in BattleTech fandom. He gets branded with the Messiah complex, called a psychopath, a narcissist, and so on. What I’ve suggested above isn’t particularly new in the sense that he was always considered to have an atypical mind. However, I do think it’s somewhat more interesting to suggest that Nicholas wasn’t “crazy-bad” but simply different. In traditional cultures, neurodivergence often served as a kind of “insurance policy” for times of crisis – when things aren’t working in typical ways, atypical thinkers get called on. In the massively populated and connected world of the 21st century, that might be outdated, but the Exodus created a micro-humanity of just six million where that old pattern could reassert itself.
As for my atypical brain, it certainly isn’t up to the challenge of reimagining the lives of six millions, but I hope you’ve been finding something intriguing in the way I look at things here at Secrets of BattleTech. While I usually just leave off with a Subscribe button, this has been a more personal newsletter so maybe it’s right to make a more personal appeal? ADHD means that it’s not always easy for me to stay with a project, and I would appreciate your help. If you like these newsletters, please think about doing the usual like/comment/subscribe/share things – not really to feed algorithms or engagement, but just to send me a message that you like what I’m doing and want to see more of the same. I can’t stop myself from checking just the view numbers so I’m guaranteed to take something more personal to heart.
Finally, I want to wish you all the best for the New Year. May your piloting checks be gentle and your gunnery checks brutal.