The Kerensky Miracle (part four)

Dishing the dirt on one of BattleTech/MechWarrior's most famous deadbeat dads

Last week’s poking into BattleTech and MechWarrior history found that the path to warrior domination of the Clans – if there even is such a thing – was hardly straightforward. But this week, we need to back up a bit. Remember Focht’s stray comment that Aleksandr Kerensky’s family was unknown to Inner Sphere sources back in part 1? Now is the time to look at the account of that family attributed to the in-universe personality Victor Steiner-Davion, the two-part Liberation of Terra (2012/2013).

The General’s Woman

Let’s start with the General’s supposed wife, Katyusha Kerensky. We have very little information on her personally and much of it contradictory. Steiner-Davion gives one version in which Katyusha was a pilot discharged from the SLDF on medical grounds who met the General in 2749 while both were at a medical facility. He also gives us a version in which Katyusha was an SLDF staff officer who met the General some time in the 2740s. (It’s hard to understand how he could think both things, so presumably Steiner-Davion was merely putting his name on the work of subordinates.) While no year of birth is provided for Katyusha, she was probably born sometime between 2716 and 2726, really young enough to be Aleksandr’s daughter – his year of birth is firmly established as 2700. The age gap was apparently no barrier to their forming a friendship or for that friendship to become a romance sometime in the 2750s. Fearing that his mistress might be used against him in court, the General kept the matter secret. We don’t really know where Katyusha lived in this time, but she probably wasn’t traveling with Aleksandr (this would have made their relationship all too conspicuous). It’s strongly implied that she resided on Earth at this time.

Perhaps that account raises some eyebrows on moral grounds, but it’s believable enough. However, plausibility is about to hit the rocks. We’re told that the two married ten years later, in 2759 or 2763 (Steiner-Davion gives the former date in LoT vol 2, the latter in LoT vol 1) and that this was also kept secret. How?! Surely they would have filed for a marriage certificate and put Katyusha’s name next to Aleksandr’s on all manner of legal documents – and if they didn’t, in what way were they married? Charitably we might say that they declared their intentions to sort out the paperwork as soon as better times arrived and court scandals weren’t a concern. Katyusha wouldn’t have been the first woman to think that her much older lover would make an honest woman out of her one day. Whatever its legal status, we’re told that the “marriage” produced two boys. Nicholas was born in May 2764, while his younger brother Andery was born in November 2766. Apparently they were kept secret as well, presumably with no father identified on the birth certificate and bearing Katyusha’s maiden name.

So what? The Kerensky family was trashier than we thought? Aleksandr Kerensky was another commitment-phobic creep with a taste for younger women – and perhaps a string of other children from other “wives”? Well, perhaps, but the timeline of General Kerensky’s movements makes this account far stranger. Let’s go through it in detail.

Aleksandr Kerensky Sightings

Aleksandr is meant to have been in command in the Outworlds Alliance (roughly five months journey from Earth) in May 2760. This mostly fits the timeline of his relationship with Katyusha – he promised to marry her, then shipped out. We also have the General using a command circuit (a relay of spaceships used to travel at high speed, much like a series of fresh horses for an old-timey courier) to make it back to Earth in June of that year for business at court.

Our next sighting of the General has him “in the Periphery” (months from Terra again) in early 2764 for a meeting with Stefan Amaris. It’s implied that Aleksandr stays at his post while Amaris returns to Earth. This almost certainly means that Nicholas was born while his father was hundreds of lightyears away. Trashy, again, but plausible.

We then see the General organizing a police action in the Taurian Concordat (a Periphery state, still distant from Earth) throughout 2764 and the following year, before the situation explodes into open revolt in April 2765. There’s a specific reference to an attempt on Aleksandr’s life on a Taurian world the next month, then we’re told that he is in personal command of the fight against the rebels through to the end of 2766. The conflict is described as a bloody war of attrition that destroyed or rendered ineffective over one hundred divisions of the Star League Defense Force. Did the General give himself leave for early 2766 and return to Earth to be with Katyusha during this trying time? There’s no mention of him returning to humanity’s birthplace, not even for the purpose of reporting back to court. But if Aleksandr wasn’t on Earth that year, we really have to wonder about Andery’s conception.

The Andery Problem

The timeline problem for Andery gets little attention. Steiner-Davion claims that Katyusha was pregnant with Andery when Aleksandr left for the Periphery, without making it clear which trip he’s talking about. It seems likely that he’s confused, or his source is, as we saw above that Katyusha being pregnant with Nicholas when Aleksandr left Earth was plausible given the timelines.

What are the alternatives to the standard narrative? The boy might have been conceived using assisted reproductive technology. (Indeed, given the General’s and perhaps Katyusha’s age, this seems more likely than not for both boys.) But one really has to wonder what was going through the minds of Aleksandr and Katyusha if they chose to add to their family in early 2766, with the General stuck boots-deep in a war that showed no signs of ending. Was Katyusha just resigned to her sometime lover not being around – or had she decided to make time for someone who would be there for her?

It’s an embarrassing notion, but the idea that Andery and Nicholas were only half-brothers is more plausible than the standard narrative. Aleksandr might well have been gone for years and had been feared dead at least once. Katyusha might have had some financial assistance from the General but she certainly wouldn’t have had his emotional support. We’re told that there was an “extended family” situation, though if the complete secrecy story is to be believed these people couldn’t have been Aleksandr’s kin.

Even More Secret?

Those pondering what Aleksandr might have had to say about newborn Andery don’t need to worry because the General wouldn’t return to Earth until 2777. This time his absence was entirely excusable. 2766 ended with Stefan Amaris’ coup and the New Year ushered in the long Star League Civil War. Amaris had spent years preparing for this stroke, not only putting military plans into place but also securing a vast network of political supporters. Several other political opponents were neutralized by taking their families hostage. A vast and brutal secret police force was put to work rounding up opponents.

In the standard account, Katyusha and her sons somehow evaded discovery by Amaris loyalists and secret police, and even joined the resistance movement on Earth. Indeed, while we’re given fairly extensive accounts of the Amaris coup itself and other military operations within the civil war, there’s no mention of an attempt to hunt down General Kerensky’s family or personal friends on Earth. Not one of the Amaris loyalists had happened to find out about the General’s woman. When his assets were seized – and surely they were seized – none of the clerks assigned to the case put their finger on a series of payments for Katyusha’s support and said, “That’s funny.” Dare we imagine Aleksandr Kerensky, known to the Clans as “the Great Father”, as a deadbeat dad?

The standard narrative isn’t impossible here, but it’s clearly patched together from contradictory sources and rather unlikely as a whole. It seems much more likely that Aleksandr and Katyusha had no significant relationship until after the end of the Star League Civil War, and that they married during the preparations for the Exodus. Nicholas and Andery weren’t the General’s sons, but they took their stepfather’s famous name. While it would be somewhat strange for a lifelong bachelor to marry for the first time in his late seventies, the General might have had non-romantic intentions – seeing Katyusha’s sons as promising young men who might provide the Star League in Exile with political leaders after he was gone. Indeed, Katyusha might not even be necessary for this kind of scenario - there’s no particular reason why General Kerensky needed to be married in order to do as Roman Emperors did and adopt grown men as his intended political heirs. Over the years, Clan history was either amended to create a blood connection or just drifted away through oral transmission. (The same drift might explain why details about Katyusha aren’t always the same.)

Nominative Determinism

Let’s break out of the narrative for a moment because there’s a more radical, if less likely, possibility. BattleTech often makes use of a strong form of nominative determinism – the idea that a person’s name tells you something about their fate. We have Thomas (“a twin”) Marik replaced by a body-double, Ulric (“wolf ruler”) Kerensky leading the Wolf Clan, and so on. I’m not sure if the writers had a habit of assigning “working titles” to their characters and growing attached to the names, or if they wanted to wink at the reader. Either way, there’s something rather intriguing about the names of these Kerenskys.

Alexander Kerensky, as your uncle who won’t shut up about 20^th century politics will remind you, was the name of the last leader of the Russian Provisional Government that staggered about between the Tzar and Lenin. The historical Kerensky had two sons, but they weren’t called Nicholas and Andery and they became engineers rather than following their father’s footsteps. The name Nicholas means “victory of the people”, while Andery (probably) means “man”. Do we dare to take that completely seriously? So rather than Aleksandr’s son taking power after the civil war, it was the “victory of the people” that came to power after the dust settled?

It’s not completely far-fetched. There’s certainly no need for a man “Nicholas Kerensky” to make sense of how the Clans ended up being who they are. Frankly, he mostly gets brought into the story to not explain how things came to be – “Nicholas wanted it that way” bars the gate to inquiry. Of course, some people might insist that the existence of Clansfolk bearing the Kerensky name and claiming a genetic link to Nicholas proves that he was a human being rather than just a fiction. But this isn’t so impressive – the ancient Spartans claimed to be descended from Herakles (and through him, Zeus), while the medieval Merovingians said that they were the issue of a sea monster (seriously). For that matter, there don’t seem to be any Clansmen with the Kerensky name and signs of male pattern baldness, despite both the General and Nicholas traditionally being depicted as somewhat folically challenged.

Indeed, if we take the more radical ideas from part 3 – that the Clans are not a militarized society, but rather one in which the military and police are disproportionately small – “Nicholas Kerensky” as a myth seems to serve a purpose. The new society emerging from civil war on the Pentagon worlds must have seen some need for armed forces, but they wanted those armed forces small (though with the ability to scale up if the situation changed) and easily controlled. The solution, on this interpretation, was the artificially-generated “Trueborn” warriors, human beings created not for their own sake but simply to serve society’s needs. While some might think that these kids should just be told over and over that their role is to serve, history hasn’t treated that plan too kindly. Perhaps the people of the Pentagon worlds decided that their slave-soldiers would be more loyal if they were taught to think themselves the leaders of their society – complete with a legendary founder and a historically-determined destiny?