Authentic Characters

Poul Anderson's leading characters are genuinely and authentically different from each other. If there are scales for hedonism and flamboyance, then Nicholas van Rijn is at the very top of both scales and Manse Everard is at the other ends with Dominic Flandry somewhere between but nearer to van Rijn.

It makes more sense to compare Everard with Flandry because van Rijn is an independent operator whereas Flandry works for a government and Everard works for - can we call the Danellians an inter-temporal government? Through their agency, the Time Patrol, they impose laws on time travelers and they are also the covert power behind all temporal governments for as long as those governments hold power. Always on the side of history, they must protect Hitler until 1945.

Traveling through space, not time, Flandry preserves the Terran Empire for as long as possible, not until any already known date. The worst thing that we see him do is his participation in the forcible annexation of Brae. Doing what he does, Everard has worked out how to cope with guilt. He has no qualms about killing rapists but tries to minimize harm to bystanders. His job is harder than Flandry's. Consider some of the regimes that he must protect.