Falkayn And Flandry

Poul Anderson's Technic History is built on two great sf series with a lot of additional information, the third major component being the history of human-Ythrian interactions.

Nicholas van Rijn is Catholic and David Falkayn's mentor:

"'...what I thought of like a son...'"
-Poul Anderson, "Lodestar" IN Anderson, David Falkayn: Star Trader (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 631-680 AT p. 680.

Max Abrams is Jewish and Dominic Flandry's mentor:

"By and large, after winking at a few things, he felt he'd have been proud to have Dominic Flandry for a son."
-Ensign Flandry, CHAPTER ELEVEN, p. 104.

Although those passages sound similar, the careers of a Polesotechnic League trade pioneer and of a Terran Imperial Intelligence agent are very different. And both fictional biographies are embedded in a much longer future history series. Van Rijn has his own sub-series whereas Abrams appears only in the opening Flandry novel and in a reminiscence by his daughter in a much later novel. Both Falkayn and Flandry have children who appear later in their respective series. In fact, van Rijn has a son who becomes Grand Duke of Hermes, Falkayn's home planet, and a granddaughter who marries Falkayn. The Falkayns cooperate closely with Ythrians.who later fight the Terran Empire but then cooperate with it against Merseia which was saved from the effects of supernova radiation by a mission led by Falkayn. And four installments are set after the Terran Empire, long after the lifetimes of the characters mentioned here, although nevertheless there are long term consequences of some of Flandry's actions. That, unfortunately, is the end of the Technic History.