Lester Tourville

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Admiral Lester Tourville is a fictional character in the Honorverse.

Early on in the series, Tourville, a senior officer of the People's Navy, appears to be incautious and aggressive—what the books describe as a cowboy mentality. He smokes cigars to accentuate the effect. However, he is actually a tactical genius, one of only two in the Navy that can equal Honor Harrington or Hamish Alexander, the other being Thomas Theisman. He hides his true usefulness for fear that the Committee of Public Safety will suspect him of being politically ambitious like Esther McQueen. Tourville is the first Havenite to defeat Harrington in space combat. He then commanded a task group in Admiral Javier Giscard's Twelfth Fleet, during a series of coordinated attacks on Allied space. By the end of the war, both Tourville and Giscard were dispatched with a fleet, with orders to defend a key Havenite system in a hopeless battle against the seemingly unstoppable Manticoran fleet; even though both admirals had been earmarked for future purging by Oscar Saint-Just

After the fall of the Committee, Admiral Tourville sided with the new government and spent most of the following five years leading forces of the Republican Navy in a campaign to topple the remnants of the old regime. When war with Manticore resumed, Tourville led a fleet that attacked the Manticoran naval station at Sidemore, but was defeated by Harrington. Nevertheless, he continued to lead the Republic's fleets, even defeating an Alliance fleet in Zanzibar. Tourville then commanded a massive Havenite fleet in an all-out attempt to win the war, which would lead to the Battle of Manticore. Despite his numerical superiority, he was once again defeated by the technologically superior Manticoran fleet commanded by Harrington. As of the end of At All Costs, Admiral Lester Tourville is a prisoner of war.