Change And David Falkayn

Mirkheim is the culmination of the Polesotechnic League Tetralogy and a major turning point for David Falkayn specifically. Between novels, he has:

married;

given up promiscuity for monogamy;

started a family;

stopped leading a trader team for Nicholas van Rijn.

In this novel, because of the death of his older brother, Michael, he returns to Hermes to take up his position as head of the family and president of the domain even though he knows that his mother, younger brother and sister can cope. He also hopes that his experience of conflict on other planets will assist occupied Hermes. 

Instead, after the war, he becomes acting CEO of the Solar Spice & Liquors Company, while van Rijn is busy elsewhere, and will then:

"'...look for a place to begin afresh.'"

-Poul Anderson, Mirkheim (New York, 1977), XXI, p. 209.

In subsequent volumes, we will learn where that is. I think that David Falkayn goes through more changes than anyone else, even than Dominic Flandry.

(I would have had to walk up another flight of stairs to retrieve the copy of Rise Of The Terran Empire which I usually refer to when quoting from Mirkheim.)