Reign of Gregor Vorbarra

which is a pretty mundane sentence. but it's a lot less mundane when it's coming from the emperor of three planets who once drunkenly "fell" out a window and ran away to accidentally work in construction, and is one of two people who can consistently outscheme Miles Vorkosigan. He has the kind of pent up rage that can only be amassed by a lifetime of sitting through meetings with the dullest people alive. He is a quiet, mild mannered man who itches to watch the world burn.

I read some of your other insights and it made me think back again on the books. I have read them a couple of times now, and it made me realise I tend to gloss over the relationship sub-plots, and the books I liked least were the ones where the relationships (as many have pointed out, very heteronormative) were closer to the main plots. Then I reflected on why: because they're so cringe. XD And I'm not in the least interested in that aspect of the story, so I just wanted to get past it.

So what I enjoyed about Diplomatic Immunity and Cryoburn were the shenanigans (and in both I fell in love with Roic's character). I definitely preferred the books that were jam-packed with said shenanigans, like The Vor Game, Brothers in Arms and the short story Borders of Infinity.

Your tags didn't come through but I think there was something about Memory (or maybe that was a previous post). I also very much loved Memory. Right up there.

I wish we'd got more of Simon and Gregor, the books with them just had a little something extra.

who had the early upbringing of several boys, but ultimately no control over the sorts of men they grew to be, which was determined instead by the men in their lives and the expectations of the world, because that's the reality of what it means to be a woman in a patriarchal society etc etc.....

and the person found that conversation obnoxiously twee and smug and unrealistic on Bujold's part. a cult-of-women's-knowledge style second wave feminist historical revisionism of how gender roles and power interact. and i remembered this, because it was interesting and well-argued.

so it was really funny when i actually read that book and was like. hey. hang on. the person who wrote that meta post was wrong. they Did Not Get this scenario in a very crucial way; they were imposing their own expectations too hard.

because the key thing about Cordelia in this scenario is not that she is a Strong Female Character, who's going to subvert this society single-handed via the undervalued Feminine Power.

it's that she's foreign. she is from another planet with wildly different social values, ones significantly closer to the interstellar norm than those of barrayar.

and barrayar is a formerly closed society going through the ructions and convulsions of adapting itself to external influences from galactic society, of deciding what it will and will not allow itself, in terms of change, and whose expense those changes that do occur will come at, and so forth.

aral's brief as regent, the thing the last emperor broke and bridled him to achieve, is staving off the reactionary fascist era of Barrayaran history.

they were so close to eating themselves alive that way.

giving cordelia, his partner, an outspoken Betan with a strong personality and strong opinions, control over the education of the boy emperor, and therefore structuring how he is going to respond to the inevitable changes in their no longer static society, is a completely accidental surrender of vast amounts of future territory by the conservative wing to the progressive one.

barrayar’s initial settlers were primarily speakers of english, greek, russian, and french

the greek speakers seem to be a minority linguistically (it’s referred to as “a minority dialect” in the vor game) and probably culturally (see ivan’s reference to the “greekie hicks” in a civil campaign)

the main characters of the series seem to be native english-speakers: aral and cordelia had no language barrier in shards of honor (and i assume the language which barrayar and beta have in common in english rather than russian), and in komarr miles refers to a “polyglot” mix of “English, mathematics, and engineering”. as far as i can tell, there also don’t seem to be language barriers between any other main characters.

however, high vor/counts and their heirs seem to be expected to have a grasp of all four of barrayar’s languages, although possibly not a good one. miles displays an understanding of greek in the vor game (although his accent is allegedly poor), one of the apparent virtues of rené vorbretten (as recounted in a civil campaign) is that he speaks four languages, and the debate over whether gregor’s wedding vows should be repeated in all four languages (also in a civil campaign) implies that he’s competent in all of them.

Both Kareen and Martya use ‘Tante Cordelia’ throughout A Civil Campaign (with Kareen also calling Cordelia’s mother ‘Gran'tante Naismith’), so there is definitely some French influence going on there

Ivan uses both ‘Mother’ and ‘Mamere’ in Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, but only ever calls Cordelia ‘Aunt’

Cordelia reads a book from the Time of Isolation in Barrayar, and explains that “The English in which it was written was printed in a mutant variation of the Cyrillic alphabet, all forty-six characters of it, once used for all tongues on Barrayar.” (for reference, modern Russian only has 33 letters, so at some point an extra 13 were added - unclear when this happened though, as Cordelia is able to read it)

The additional points about the variation between ‘Tante’ and ‘Aunt’ lead me to believe that the French term has probably been adopted in Barrayaran English (presumably via intermarriage between Anglophones & Francophones) and the two are alternated in a similar way to modern English terms for grandparents (e.g. ‘granny’ vs ‘nan’ vs ‘grandma’, where there’s a slight element of cultural preference but is ultimately settled on a family-by-family basis).

Ivan remains a bit of a mystery to me - certainly up to where I am in the series, no one else ever uses ‘Mamere’, which suggests it’s not in the same kind of free variation as ‘Tante’ and ‘Aunt’ seem to be, but equally, we don’t see everything, so it could be. It could possibly also suggest that Alys is of French descent, grew up in a family where ‘Mamere’ was the standard term for one’s mother, and, raising Ivan alone, kept using that regardless of whether French was actually spoken in their home.

The quote about Cyrillic is really cool (and something I had totally forgotten from Barrayar!). Actually, it’s got me brewing a bit of a theory: it points to Russian having cultural dominance during the Time of Isolation (so that its alphabet is adopted for writing English, French, and Greek too), but the narration says that it “used to” be used for all four languages. So presumably after the Time of Isolation, when Barrayar made contact with, e.g., Beta Colony (which I assume is majority Anglophone, given what I said before about Aral & Cordelia’s lack of language barrier), English gained more cultural currency, as it allowed communication with galactics, and seemingly also switched back to the Roman alphabet? (Side note: there doesn’t seem to be any kind of language barrier that I can recall between Barrayarans and Komarrans, nor Barrayarans and Cetagandans?)

As for the alphabet … I know this likely isn’t what happened, but I like to imagine that the Barrayarans just. took the Russian one and added a bunch of English/French & Greek letters to it (along with ones like eth and thorn, for the hell of it) and eventually lowered it to the 46 characters Cordelia sees.

And, apologies - I didn’t explain the information Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance well enough (didn’t want to quote directly for fear of spoilers and went too far the other way, whoops). Here it is in more detail:

One character refers to the Barrayaran Russian, French, and Greek collectively as languages, but the third person narrator voice calls them dialects. The same character also implicitly calls “Barrayaran Russian” a language, and immediately afterwards says that the “[Barrayaran] Greek dialect … is pretty corrupt—well, altered”, in a way which implies they are comparing it to ‘normal’/galactic Greek rather than English. Nothing about French, but following the Greek example it would probably be a version of the French the first settlers spoke. There are also apparently “district dialect variations” for each of the four languages, but there’s no information about what those differences are.

I agree with pretty much all the points made so far. All the main Barrayaran characters seem to be native speakers of English, though they do seem to have at least a passing familiarity with the other three languages used on Barrayar. However, it’s hard to say whether this familiarity is more like ‘knows a few French/Russian/Greek words’ or actual fluency in one or more of these other languages. Miles does seem to know all four Barrayaran languages, but given that he’s very much an overachiever, it’s hard to generalize based on him. However, in the beginning of The Vor Game, there’s a classmate of his who is apparently fluent in all four Barrayaran languages, and who gets assigned to learning galactic languages, in preparation for a job in intelligence. So it’s likely that fluency in all four Barrayaran languages is not exactly common.

That said, it does seem like the French language has a certain amount of currency in ordinary Barrayaran society (or at least in the upper crust). For example, as mentioned above, some (though not all) people use French terms for relatives, such as ‘mere’ and ‘tante’. Also, it seems that ordinary honorifics (i.e. non Vor-related ones) tend to be French ones, e.g. ‘madame’ and ‘mademoiselle’ (this is especially prominent in the later books, particularly Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, so this seems to be something that the author herself changed her mind about in later years).

Only the upper crust (the Vor and high-ranking non-Vor like the Koudelkas) use such terms, though. The few ordinary folk we meet – such as the inhabitants of Silvy Vale in ‘The Mountains of Mourning’ – seem to use ‘Ma’ and ‘Da’ for their parents, and these terms also seem to be used as honorifics for them by non-related persons, e.g. Ma Kosti.

Despite the influence of Russian on Barrayaran culture and names, it seems that the language itself isn’t very common. There seems to be no hint of the main characters speaking it at any point. (Miles’s knowledge of it seems mainly academic.) The only instance of a Barrayaran character speaking Russian that I can recall is in Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance, when Tej (who is not Barrayaran herself, but is a language prodigy) switches to talking in Russian with a random Barrayaran side-character, when she deduces it’s his native language, and he becomes more cooperative thereafter.

The ‘dialects’ thing is probably just a case of non-linguistically trained people using the word to mean ‘less important language’. I wouldn’t read too much into it.

Some other general observations re: languages in the Vorkosiverse:

Most planets in the nexus seem to speak English – at the very least, it seems to be a major lingua franca. In the entire series, IIRC, there are only two cases of people being unable to speak/understand English – in Brothers in Arms, during a diplomatic event hosting the people of Lairouba at the Barrayaran embassy on Earth, where there are communication difficulties because the translation devices are delivered late; and in Diplomatic Immunity, where Miles addresses a bunch of people from all across the nexus, many of whom listen to him via translation devices (including a hilariously poor one).

I suspect you could tie yourself into some impossible knots trying to untangle and make logical sense of it.

-Miles Naismith Vorkosigan has no notability in and of himself, he is only notable attached to his parents

-The only reason anyone would know about him existing is because of a birth announcement or other public notification issued by his parents, and thus he would be part of their bio

-Sometimes IRL these kind of birth announcements have middle names and a lot of info. Sometimes they don't. Miles, considering the circumstances of his birth, probably did not have one of these at the time he was born. It's unclear if he ever had one.

-Thus it's fully possible that no one on Barrayar who isn't aquainted with his family or knows his family well would have ever heard of him

-If they have heard of him, they know his name is Miles Vorkosigan, mother's maiden name Naismith

-Cordelia's father's name was Miles Naismith

-Miles Naismith's tragic death probably came with some publicity, including the fact that I assume it left no body

-Even if someone did know that Cordelia named her son Miles Naismith Vorkosigan, it's ridiculous to think that a mercenary admiral is a 17 year old nobody from a random planet

-This is before we get into language barrier issues, which the series mostly ignores. If we do take it seriously, I want to you to take a globe, pick a country at random, find the English wikipedia article on its current head of state, and then check the wikipedia article on its head of state in the official language(s) of that country. There will be differences. If there's a large wikipedian community that works in that language, there's going to be information only in that language that is not in English.

-Now let's assume that Miles's treason trial at age 17 made the news. This doesn't help the idea that this failson is a mercenary admiral, either.

-googling "Miles Naismith Vorkosigan" will get you, at best, "Cordelia Naismith married Aral Vorkosigan and they have a son named Miles"

-googling "Miles Naismith" will get you the admiral and old news articles about Cordelia's dad's death

-quick tell me Aral's middle name, tell me Cordelia's, tell me Gregor's, tell me Cordelia's mother's. Middle names are ignorable. Miles Naismith is Miles Naismith. Miles Vorkosigan is Miles Vorkosigan.

-but space google thinks that Admiral Miles Naismith, who is Betan, is Cordelia Naismith Vorksoigan's dad

-this is of course laughable, and it becomes a spacebook sign that you have to be careful when googling

-and then some folks are like "well, Admiral Naismith does seem to be doing good things for Barrayar some times" and then it's like "lol guess he's giving his daughter a birthday present" and no one actually believes it

i went into ACC with very high expectations knowing that it was one of, if not the fan favourite in the series. i can't say it's one of my favourites though... i enjoyed it a normal amount. it's more of a middle of the road entry for me

i liked that the two major plotlines in this book were political infighting and. bugs! tho i wasn't super into the bug stuff lol i wish it had been more of a side quest and not taken as much page time

but anyway. it was very entertaining nevertheless. just not one of the best vorkosigan books and it baffles me how often i've seen this up there with memory in rankings but well! different readers have different tastes!

But then I struggle with media that leans into the slap-stick, stupid, clueless, dumb characters. I think it was dipping too close to that for my taste. I can see why people enjoy it for the fun, if that's your brand of fun.

"When you take away what you think is the core of your identity, what's left? Well. You. And now you have to look in the mirror and figure out what that means."

Damn. How many parallels between Illyan and Miles from this book are going to hit me in the face and force me to rethink everything I thought I knew?

Miles losing his covert ops identity and Illyan losing his chip.

Miles going catatonic and Illyan trapped in medbay with no idea what day or year it is.

Miles staring at the dagger and Illyan touching his forehead and saying "I think I'd rather have you cut my throat."

Ivan forcing Miles into the ice bath and Miles choosing surgery for Illyan.

Both of them losing the post and position that gave them a place in society and counteracted the stigma of being disabled/prole.

Both of them sitting at loose ends because they never wanted to retire, and what do you even do if you're not working? What's the point of existence if you're not doing your job?