Esther McQueen

Admiral Esther McQueen is a fictional character in the Honorverse, a series of military science fiction novels written by David Weber.

A native of the People's Republic of Haven and an officer of the Havenite Navy, Citizen Vice-Admiral Esther McQueen makes her first appearance in the series' fifth novel, "Flag in Exile", where she commands one of the attacks meant to divert forces from Yeltsin's Star, under Citizen Vice Admiral Thurston's "Operation Stalking Horse"/"Operation Dagger" combination of offensives, which had Yeltsin's Star as their primary target. Even at this time, she was considered one of the "rising stars" of the People's Navy, soon after rising to the plum command of Trevor's Star, which was the primary target of the operations of the Manticoran Alliance, despite the failure of Operation Dagger and the death of Citizen Admiral Thurston.

In this position, McQueen outperformed all expectations, earning grudging praise from Admiral White Haven, the primary Manticoran field commander. Realising that her abilities were too critical for the war effort, the Committee of Public Safety recalled her to Haven when it was clear that Trevor's Star would fall to the Alliance, in order not to be forced to shoot her "pour encourager les autres", for failure to defeat the enemy. Shortly afterwards, during the Leveler Uprising, she moved to defend the Committee of Public Safety, using both orbital kinetic missile strikes from her flagship PNS "Rosseau", and low-altitude bombing against the Levelers (earning her the nickname "Admiral Cluster Bomb").

The Committee decided to recognize her accomplishments by appointing her to the position of Secretary of War, despite grave misgivings over her ability to motivate her subordinates to act contrary to civilian orders. Citizen Secretary McQueen was the only Havenite strategist to create a successful offensive plan against the Alliance during the First Havenite War (Operation Icarus), which consisted of a daring series of punishing raids upon highly visible targets, thereby forcing the Alliance to redeploy its strength for defensive purposes. Due largely to her successful record as Secretary of War, Oscar Saint-Just, concerned about her political ambitions, decided to lay the necessary groundwork to "prove" her disloyalty to a People's Court.

Wrongly believing that she was about to be eliminated (Saint-Just was merely starting to set up his "evidence"), McQueen acted first. Leading Navy and Marine Corps forces on the planet, she launched her own coup against the Committee, in the process accidentally killing Citizen Chairman Rob S. Pierre (she wanted a hostage/political prisoner). A major reason that the McQueen Coup did not succeed immediately was that Citizen Admiral Amanda Graveson, CO of Haven's Capital Fleet, "chickened out" of McQueen's plans, presumably due to pre-emptive action on the part of State Security's capital ships in orbit. Despite this, the majority of ground forces on Haven gradually declared for McQueen, and Saint-Just began losing ground in the streets of Nouveau Paris. When it became obvious that McQueen's coup would be successful, Saint-Just remotely activated a nuclear bomb concealed beneath the Octagon (the military HQ of the People's Navy and McQueen's HQ), killing McQueen and everyone else inside, as well as millions of innocent civilians in adjacent towers. Citizen Admiral Graveson would secretly pass on McQueen's plans to Thomas Theisman, who would use them to finally overthrow the Committee of Public Safety.

McQueen is considered by many to be analogous to Napoleon Bonaparte. However, her similarity to him ended when she was killed by Saint-Just, as in reality Napoleon succeeded in his coup.