regshoe

I think O'Brian thought of Stephen as the real protagonist of the series (and who certainly I think has the aspirational, Mary-sue-ish elements), but I think he's actually better at writing Jack. He suffers from the Englishman's vice of assuming that a True Irishman is a Catholic and that leads him to some odd contortions in writing Stephen, who I think has the soul of a Dissenter (and could more plausibly have been that as a disappointed United Irishman) but O'Brian wanted the romantic European side as well... I am still raging that he killed off James Dillon because he didn't really know what to do with him, though. He has a tendency to create good ideas for female characters and then not really follow through as well. I will forgive him a lot for his little details - Jack is a better musician and mathematician than Stephen despite his inferior abstract intellect, Dillon's terrible teeth, the fact that no-one ever, I think, actually says Mowett-the-Poet.

I kind of appreciate that - and I think quite often inadvertently, I agree that O'Brian hasn't really done any more thinking about the injustice of the press gang etc. than Jack has - some of the grossest prejudices of the period are reproduced in a character who is in other ways admirable and not wholly without introspection, and we sometimes see him coming to reconsider as the result of experience, and sometimes not. It feels more textured than the standard Man of His Times defence, but he's also never improbably enlightened for a British naval officer at the turn of the 19th century.