Quote:
Originally Posted by Sackett
My guess is going to be that the governments screwed up when issuing the Letters of Marque and issued them in perpetuity, with a clause for inheritance, and no clause covering revocation. I'm assuming the war was expected to last several generations and that the privateers were expected to act independently without resupply or communication with the issuing government. (Not that unrealistic considering historical privateers).
The government probably failed to take into account the idea that they would win and that the privateers would be unwilling to relinquish their letters of Marque.
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Well from what we know in universe 100 years ago Marika’s colony world Sea of the Morningstar revolted against its ruler, the Stellar Alliance. As part of its war strategy it issued Letters of Marque allowing piracy against their colonial rulers. Apparently this went swimmingly, since the war was won in a yet-to-be-revealed surprising way.
My theory the pirates were decisive in ending the war, so for political reasons the new government couldn’t simply cancel the Letters of Marque. But it was extremely awkward for the government to continue to sanction piracy going forward, so they added a qualification that each Letter could only be passed on to a direct descendant. Piracy having high workplace mortality figures, this resulted in exponentially decreasing numbers of “legal pirates” each year. Today there are very few Letters-of-Marque holders alive, but there are still wanna-be crooks and freeloaders. Anybody holding such a Letter would be a license to print money for any would-be pirates. So the guys in the cafe are their to press-gang Marika not injure her.