Grayson (Honorverse)

The planet Grayson is a fictional human star-nation in the "Honorverse", the setting for a series of books written by David Weber and published by Baen Books. =History= Grayson was settled in the year 988 P.D. (Post Diaspora; equivalent to 3091 on present-day calendar) by the Reverend Austin Grayson and his followers, all members of the Church of Humanity (Unchained). The settlers' intention was to start a new life totally free of technology and live the way the Bible said people should live. This dream was foiled before their ship even landed because Grayson has an unusually high concentration of heavy metals in its soil which made anything indigenous poisonous. As a result technology was necessary just to survive. After the Rev. Grayson's death his doctrine about life totally without technology was abandoned. Adopted in its place was the view that technology in and of itself was not un-Godly, but the way it had consumed Man's life on Earth was. Not all Graysons could accept this reinterpretation, and over the course of several hundred years a political rift developed between the Moderates (those willing to employ technology to a limited extent), and the Faithful (those who wanted nothing to do with technology). War eventually broke out between the two groups. The Moderates won the most battles, but the Faithful had a doomsday weapon, which was intended to blow the planet up. This might have actually happened had Barbara Bancroft, wife of one of the Faithful's leaders, not fled to the Moderates and disclosed the existance of the doomsday weapon. For her bravery, Barbara Bancroft is known as the Mother of Grayson. Having learned about the doomsday weapon the Moderates realized that the time had come to strike a truce with the Faithful. Under the treaty that was signed, the Moderates would provision the Faithful as lavishly as they could, and send the Faithful to the planet Masada in the nearby Endicott (Honorverse) system. In the six hundred years since the Faithful's exile, there have been several interplanetary wars between Grayson and Masada. The Masadans have promised to exterminate the Graysons in the name of God.

=Social Heirarchy= The Church of Humanity practiced polygamy even before they came to Grayson. For this reason women outnumbered men on Grayson 4:1. The planet's harsh climate was hard on all colonists, but perhaps even crueler, male babies were more vulnerable to the planet's harmful effects than female babies. In fact, the environment was so dangerous that the settlers required genetic engineering to survive. However, the genetic alterations unintentionally resulted in a sex-linked genetic defect that killed many males before birth. (This defect was forgotten by the Graysons for centuries, until Allison Chou Harrington rediscovered it.) Live female births outnumbered male births 3:1. So the practice of polygamy continued. Under Grayson's constitution women have no political or legal rights. They cannot vote, sit on juries, own land, or hold a title. Women are loved and respected, but are believed to be inferior to men.

=Political Structure= The planet is ruled by a council headed up by a Protector. Since the Rev. Grayson's death, this Protector has been a member of the Mayhew family. For the past five generations, the Council has worked to reduce amount of autonomous power welded by the Mayhew clan. In this they were very successful. Prior to the Grayson-Manticore alliance the Protectorate had become a largely ceremonial position.