Dominic Flandry

Dominic Flandry is the central character in the second half of Poul Anderson's Technic History science fiction. He first appeared in 1951.

The space opera series is set in the 31st century, during the waning days of the Terran Empire. Flandry is a dashing field agent of the Imperial Intelligence Corps who travels the stars to fight off imminent threats to the empire from both external enemies and internal treachery. His long-time archenemy is Aycharaych, a cultured but ruthless telepathic spymaster who weaves plots for the expansionistic rival empire of the alien Merseians.

The illegitimate son of a minor nobleman, Flandry rises to considerable power within the decadent Empire by his own wits, and enjoys all the pleasures his position in society gives him. Still he is painfully conscious of the impending fall of the Terran Empire and the subsequent "Long Night" of a galactic dark age. His career is dedicated to holding it off for as long as possible. In time, he passes the mantle to his daughter Diana, who is also illegitimate.

Flandry is willing to disregard conventional morality and use his foes' tactics against them. He can cheerfully deceive, seduce, and blackmail; in A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, he orders the mind-probing of his traitorous illegitimate son, reducing him to a vegetative state, and bombards Aycharaych's uninhabited homeworld into radioactive ruin in part for vengeance, as Aycharaych's latest plot had resulted in the death of the woman he loved and planned to marry.

He also appears – with Anderson's permission – in the novel The Dark Dimensions (1971), part of the John Grimes series written by A. Bertram Chandler. There, Flandry crosses over into Chandler's Rim Worlds and meets Chandler's Commodore Grimes (the two fail to like each other).

"The Day of Their Return" is related to the Flandry saga though he does not appear in it – being a sequel to 'The Rebel Worlds' depicting how the planet Aeneas and its inhabitants fared after Flandry ended his mission there and went elsewhere.

And "Outpost of Empire" features the same kind of crisis which Flandry is normally sent to deal with – a planet torn by the clash of humans and non-humans and of competing human cultures, with Merseia stirring up the pot – but in this case it is resolved by a professor, with an academic approach different from Flandry's (though he too can take bold and decisive action).

While still a cadet, Flandry seduced the girlfriend of a fellow trainee named Fenross. The girl was not very attractive and Flandry was not particularly smitten with her; in later times he could hardly remember her name ("Majorie or something like that"). After Flandry dropped her, the girl became "very wild" and was killed in an accident on Venus. Fenross, who had cared for her very much, never looked at another woman afterwards and never forgave Flandry. Being promoted faster, Fenross became an admiral and Flandry's direct superior, and kept doing all he could to get Flandry killed. Flandry admitted that Fenross had a legitimate grudge, but did manage to survive all the very dangerous missions on which Fenross kept sending him.

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