San Martin (Honorverse)
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San Martin is a fictional planet that appears in David Weber's Honor Harrington series of novels.
Located in the Trevor's Star System, San Martin is quite possibly the heaviest-gravity planet settled by humans in the Honorverse, at about 2.7 times the gravity of Earth. For this reason, virtually all the people of San Martin, known as "San Martinos", descend from colonists who had been genetically engineered to survive the high-grav environment.
Genetic engineering was not enough to simply move in; the planet is so massive that its sea-level atmospheric pressure is capable of forming deadly concentrations of carbon dioxide and nitrogen. For this reason, settlement had been restricted to mountainous peaks and plateaus, of which San Martin had many. Probably as a result of being forced to live in small communities and of the planet's unforgiving environment, the San Martinos have developed an overall stubborn and indomitable personality.
The original San Martino colonists may have come from Latin America or Spain, as the planet's official language is Spanish, every San Martino character shown so far has a Spanish name and speaks Standard English with a Spanish accent.
The Trevor's Star System also has one of the Manticore Wormhole Junction's terminus, which added to the planet's economic development until it was invaded by the People's Republic of Haven. The people of San Martin stubbornly resisted the invasion; the San Martin Navy, commanded by Commodore Jesus Ramirez, fought with such tenacity to cover refugee transports fleeing through the Junction that the People's Navy lost three ships for each San Martin ship they managed to destroy. Shortly after the planet's surrender, the Havenites executed President Hector Ramirez, uncle of Commodore Ramirez.
Havenite occupation was not easy: a planetwide resistance movement led by the Ramirez family struck hard at the Havenite garrison. In retaliation, the Havenites wiped out the entire Ramirez family, and kept the planet under martial law until the Manticoran Alliance freed it during the First Haven-Manticore War.
Having survived Havenite imprisonment at the Cerberus III prison camps, Commodore Jesus Ramirez was elected as the first post-occupation President of San Martin. Within a few years and with the approval of the San Martin Congress, President Ramirez requested annexation within the Star Kingdom of Manticore, as a full member of the Star Kingdom with proportionate representation in both the Houses of Lords and Commons. There is one caveat in that their representative lords will not have cadet seats; which means either all of their peers will be Barons or their Earls and Countesses will be deprived of the privilege for a set period of time. They will be compensated for this with a larger number of MPs in the House of Commons. San Martin thus became the fifth planetary member of the Star Kingdom, after Manticore, Sphinx, Gryphon and Medusa.
