Lorelei, Tumbling

Ways to tell Lord Mark is a true Vorkosigan:

Wants to save everyone even when it's obviously impossible

Wife (partner?) guy

Deeply fucked up

Good at personnel and recruitment

Faithful worshipper of Cordelia

Some of my favorite quotes:

"I'm not sure you're ready for this, but here goes. You had exactly three role models to learn how to be a human being from. The Jacksonian body-slavers, the Komarran terrorists—and Miles. You were steeped in Miles. And I'm sorry, but Miles thinks he's a knight-errant. A rational government wouldn't allow him possession of a pocket-knife, let alone a space fleet. And so, Mark, when you were finally forced to choose between two palpable evils and a lunatic—you upped and ran after the lunatic."

[...]

Having named them all, he finally found Mark by process of elimination. Gorge and Grunt and Howl and the Other had sent Lord Mark deep inside, to sleep through it all. Poor, fragile Lord Mark, barely twelve weeks old.

[...] "Don't you dare pity me. I won. Save your sympathy for Baron Ryoval, if you must. I took him. Suckered him. I beat him at his own game, on his own ground. I will not allow you to turn my victory into defeat for the sake of your damned . . . feelings." [...] I don't want to have to fight Ry Ryoval in my head, or in their heads, for the rest of my life. He's dead, I'm not, it's enough."

- Mirror Dance

Mark said valiantly, "If Kareen wants me to marry her, I will. If she doesn't, I won't. If she wants me to go away, I'll go—" This last was accompanied by a covertly terrified glance her way.

"If she wants me to walk downtown backwards on my hands, I'll try. Whatever she wants," Mark finished up.

[...]

"Mark is as much a veteran of our wars as any Barrayaran I know, Kou. He was conscripted earlier, is all. In his own strange and lonely way, he fought as hard, and risked as much. And lost as much."

- A Civil Campaign

And of course, "Miles, what have you done with your baby brother?"

I did some tumblr skimming to get a sense of the ~fandom discourse~ after finishing A Marvellous Light, just because, and saw someone recommended it for drarry shippers, and like, a) really, in 2025? do we need this? b) as far as I can tell the only resemblance is that Edwin is blonde and kind of mean and Robin is dark-haired and kind of dumb, but then my understanding of draco-related shipping was always that people just made up a new character to take the place of the cardboard bully in the texts, so whatever.

BUT, it kept niggling at me, because I am in fact a huge mark for horrible prickly geniuses guarding their softest vulnerable hearts, so surely I could come up with a better comparison. And then I read the following two scenes, and I realized the obvious parallel is McShep from Stargate Atlantis.

"Blast, I hate riddles.”

“No, you don’t,” murmured Sir Robert.

Edwin reached out without breaking his hungry perusal of the letter and flicked the back of Sir Robert’s hand, winning himself a smile that he didn’t notice.

...

The next few sentences began sensibly enough but soon spiralled off into a level of judgemental detail about cradling minutiae that was extreme even for Edwin. Robin began to open his mouth, then closed it again.

Manning was clutching his books to his chest as if they’d save him. Finally he managed to interrupt—“Stop! I—look, I didn’t write it. It was my sister. Abigail. But you can’t tell anyone. Our parents don’t approve of her fiddling around with spells.”

“Well,” said Edwin sniffily, “you can tell her it’s sloppily argued and lacking breadth.” [...] This was the most amusing thing to happen in weeks: a jealous Edwin Courcey trying to wield secondhand academic cattiness against someone who’d fucked his partner.

Rodney McKay would absolutely get into a jealous academic pissing contest calling someone's thesis sloppily argued and lacking breadth.

Meanwhile Robin's out here being Just Some Guy/himbo who doesn't even go here and then turns out to have a very Special and Important ability that no one really understands. At first Edwin is like, ugh, I gotta work with this guy? and then is quickly obsessed with studying him like a bug for both his magical mysteries and his beautiful, muscular forearms. And Robin is like, this guy's an asshole, but also a genius, and amazing. And anytime he sees anyone else be mean to Edwin his reaction is, how dare you insult this man? He is MY asshole and you are hurting his feelings, I will punch you.

Also repeatedly, one of them almost dies and the other one almost loses their mind over it.