There's a storm coming

Because every time I read a little comment about "Aral/Gregor has replaced the Old Men with his New Modern Men" and how this is somehow attributed to them aging out or Aral/Gregor's political brilliance or whatever, I'm thinking... Really? And all these other men (who are also more authoritarian and competitive than the Nice Men that Aral and Greg like) that were so prominent so far were just totally cool with being replaced? Press F to doubt, I'm not sure people or power relations work that way IRL.

But, you know... Escobar. The logic behind Escobar was to basically take all the high brass of the pro-war party, put them in one place and then nuke the fuck out of them while making it look like an accident.

Of course the most pro-war, fascist-esque of the old guard weren't putting up political resistance or any other kind of pressure to being replaced or to Aral's reforms - they were dead. Even if some weren't, there'd be a power vacuum within that faction that would take years to sort out, or for the more low-ranking people who remained to gain the levels of power and influence that the old guard had.

Imagine what would happen to politics if almost the entire top echelon of the US Republican party just... Died in a tragic accident. But worse, because people can't vote for new candidates - they're formally appointed by the Emperor or Prime Minister or they inherit their titles, and informally the appointments are dealt with various under the table deals within the CoC. Which anyone new who suddenly shot up in rank wouldn't have the clout to make. All I'm saying, it's really easy to replace all the horrible people with at least half-decent ones if you've killed them first instead of tried to oust them fairly.

Not to mention the a) strong message sent by so many high ranking people dying as well as so many people dying in general and b) the lack of general influence on society and on their surroundings these people would have exerted (Gregor isn't the only kid who lost an asshole father, I bet).

What you have left after Escobar is basically progressives vs. old-school conservatives that value stability and aren't too expansionist - those are the two sides in Barrayar, if you think about it. And those are still the two main sides throughout the rest of the series.

So put in that framework, I think Vorkosigan as a whole does a pretty decent job of extrapolating what would happen from its current political setup?

And also I love how on a superficial reading it comes off as almost... reactionary? Centrist? In its approach of "change from the inside" etc. But actually? The only reasons the "new generation" can afford to believe in maintaining peace and that change from the inside is possible is because... The series quite literally opens with a concerted effort to nuke all the fascists dead? Like that's pretty much the premise if you think about it: what if we took this backwards authoritarian fascist society and nuked all the fascists in one go, what would happen to this society in the next 30ish years?

via @psqqa

Okay, so I see this kind of comment in the tags a lot and I thought I'd addressed it in the third-to-last paragraph but apparently not clearly enough.

Vordarian is not of the War Party. He is of another party that is conservative but not in an expansionist, warmongering sense: he's the kind of conservative who wants things to stay exactly as they are, not the kind who wants to take over the world fascist-style. He is, in fact, opposed to the War Party and to Serg: this is why Princess Kareen originally approaches him and presumably seduces him.

In fact, IIRC it's hinted at several places in Barrayar that either Kareen, Vordarian or both are wondering if Aral, due to his association with the Komarr invasion and with Guy Vorrutyer, might not just be Serg 2.0. Later Vordarian lets his personal ambition get the better of him and refuses to let go of his dreams of rulership and back out of the conspiracy even when Serg is dead and Aral is proving himself to be relatively decent, BUT! Vordarian is the kind of old-school conservative that Pyotr is, he's not a warmongering fascist by political credo the way the War Party members are.

Vordarian's opposition to Aral has nothing to do with Komarr or worrying about Aral being a warmonger or as bad as Serg. He's worked with Aral on the General Staff. He knows Aral was opposed to the Escobar invasion. He almost certainly knows the truth about the Solstice Massacre.

No, Vordarian's concern is that Aral is too progressive. He thinks Aral will "betray" the Vor by cutting down their traditional powers. (He's actually not wrong but I digress.)

Kareen doesn't mention any concerns about Aral, just disbelief that Bothari is the one who killed Ges Vorrutyer. Of course, she's hardly likely to express any doubts she might have to Cordelia, but she seems contented enough about the situation.

As far as Aral's political genius goes: like Cordelia, I do believe he was a Great Man. Yes, she is biased (and, I admit, so am) but she knows all the facts and still sees him as such.

Just because the field was cleared of one set of dangers/obstacles does not mean the others were any easier to tackle. He still has a very steep hill to climb - he is not being hyperbolic when he tells Cordelia it's an impossible job Ezar wanted to dump on him.

I won't get too deep into the weeds of his accomplishments, but just keeping Barrayar from imploding into civil war again is pretty major. Dorca's unification is not really all that old and despite his and later Ezar's best efforts, infighting is still the base condition for the Vor. (Military caste ya know.) Think about all the plots to assassinate Aral and/or Gregor that happen after Vordarian's Pretendership (General Haroche alone foils 5 separate plots against Gregor, including the Yarrow incident!) Not to mention the nascent anti-Vor/democratic movement (i.e. People's Defense League.)

But it's very interesting to me that the only concrete detail we got about what is actually in TTBL is that it features Cordelia killing Vorrutyer.

It says such fascinating things about Beta Colony that they didn't reassign that to another character, fictional or otherwise. From the Betan viewpoint* this woman killed a major enemy commander while in captivity, sowing maximum chaos right before the major assault where they revealed their new capabilities, possibly sealing the deal for Escobar thereby... and then came home, had a public meltdown, was accused of being a spy, tortured someone (!) to escape**, WENT TO THE ENEMY'S PLANET AND MARRIED IT'S NEW RULER.

Do they value accuracy in media so much that it was unthinkable to write Cordelia out? How do they end her storyline in the drama? Do they have to explain her disappearance? How do they spin that? I'm picturing all the starry-eyed Beta teens looking her up on idk Betapedia after seeing TTBL and going "she did WHAT?" Did they have to worry about her protesting her portrayal/ publicly setting the record straight? Hell, what did Elizabeth Naismith think of it? (My eternal question honestly).

Heck, maybe the whole point of the piece is that War Is Bad But Sometimes Necessary and they write Cordelia as having Succumbed To The Romance Of Violence which is why she runs away to Barrayar in the end, bc she could No Longer Live Among Us, in contrast to the true heroes who get to come home and live peacefully. We don't know.

But we get such few glimpses of life on Beta and this one tantalizes me.

*keeping in mind they have no idea what Ezar did

The only one I'm certain of is Emperor Ezar, who is all the way at the bottom axis of "duty is the death of love," and maybe to the left axis of "reason before honour."

Ezar is the man who organizes and orchestrates the assassination of his own son and heir, because said son and heir is a depraved, power-mad, power-hungry monster. Whatever love Ezar might feel towards Serg dies under the weight of his duty as Emperor, his duty as ruler of an Imperium that will inevitably be corrupted and embroiled in wars both external and internal if the Crown Prince is allowed to take the camp stool. Serg and his cronies/enablers must not be allowed to assume power, because of what that power, unrestrained, will do.

imagine you are born just in time for your world to be unified by dorca vorbarra and rediscovered by people from wider galaxy. things are finally looking good, for the first time in 600 years of isolation there is no more feudal infighting, and the promise of galactic medicine and technologies being available lightens everyone's perspectives. sure, your grandpa is called count pierre "le sanguinaire", but who doesn't have terrible relatives?

then you are 15, and suddenly your planet is attacked by the aggressive eugenecist space empire hell-bent on subjugating your people and turning them into disposable material for unethical genetic experiments. you flee into the mountains, away from your family, and create guerrilla forces from locals sworn to your dad, and it's really terrible for a very long time. you have no high-tech weapons and no food, you sleep in a cave in the dead of winter, and the cetagandans try everything (from carpet bombing to chemical weapons) to murder you.

but hey, at least you now have your bff ezar vorbarra, and (from the bff's words on his deathbed) it sounds like you two had so much fun between unimaginable horrors and despair, and it's not surprising, since no one really believes in death after life at 20. then the emperor makes you a general at the tender age of 22. fortunately for him, you & bff make a frighteningly competent dream-team, and the joke's on cetagandans.

then, several years later, you ask the emperor for weapons, because you still sleep on the bare cave floor, there are little resources, and every ghem on the planet is trying to murder you. he offers you the hand of his granddaughter instead, like it's some sort of twisted fairytale, but you grow to love your olivia more than anything, and the tide of war is finally turning, and you allow yourself to entertain the idea of peaceful life, and then...

the space eugenecist empire nukes your hometown, killing your mom, dad, surviving brothers, and two hundred thousand of your people. plus your bff (ezar) gets a radiation doze large enough for it to cause severe cancer thirty years later. great.

but you win! your district is in shambles, your capital is an irradiated crater, your castle is in ruins, but you win! the old dorca dies, and yuri ascends the throne, but politicking is secondary to the fact that you are alive.

yes, you are probably not entirely sane, and you've long forgotten what the peaceful times look like, but you are alive, just under 35, and your entire life is ahead of you. olivia is alive too, and ezar, and you now have three wonderful children, and the extended vorpatril-vorbarra family that hosts regular get-togethers. sure, your mom-in-law is a betan with all sorts of crazy ideas in her head, but she is not pierre vorrutyer. small mercies.

but then the new emperor goes mad, and decides to murder your entire family overnight. your brothers-in-law are gone, one of your sisters-in-law too, and all your nephews and nieces except little padma. but all of this pales in comparison to the facts that olivia is murdered, and that your heir and daughter lay dead beside her.

all you have left of her, of your house, of the family you've lost in vashnoi not a ten years ago, is aral, whom you keep by your side throughout the bloody civil war to put your bff on the throne.

but you win again. you are 43, and ezar vorbarra is now the emperor. you are responsible for the imperium's entire ground forces. you are also responsible for a severely traumatized boy of 13, and the only children you've interacted with without olivia's genle guidance were little messengers of guerilla companies.

And then there is Vorkosigan's role in it. He is loyal and he is honorable and Ezar uses up every bit of that. He pushes him to the breaking point. If he were going to live longer, perhaps he would've considered going about it a different way, but Ezar is going to die and he will have no more use for him. He will not hoard his resources, he will use them, even if it means that they break.

not that it’s the right thing to do, just the only thing to do. And it remains so terribly convincing throughout the series, we’re literally never presented with a solution that would have been nearly as effective.

Because yes, there are much simpler and easier solutions to get rid of Serg alone... if the problem was just Serg alone.

But Serg had built himself into a cult of personality supported by very powerful people with their own goals and machinations built on his poison. The way Ezar lays it out - for us, for Aral, even for Cordelia in that terrible secondhand way - is that to do the easier solutions would only step the cultural illness deeper.

To outright assassinate Serg would to make him into a martyr, and enshrine his ideas and ideals in gold for the next generation. To have him succumb to some sort of illness, well: It’s not impossible, but the political reality is that even if Ezar had access to a weapon like this, later canon rests on the facts that Cetaganda has and will use weapons like this frequently - to kill Serg this way would not defang the movement, as they have enough knowledge and ability to accurately or not twist it into another war with Cetaganda. (That Barrayar cannot win and cannot afford.)  

To leave Serg alive and with his own abilities intact would only allow Serg to cause further ruin upon Ezar’s people, Ezar’s empire.

Ezar, as complex and complicated as he is, is not a man without the weight of his duty. He’s not... He’s very much not a pillar of ethics, in any sense. And he’s absolutely also a man shaped by his Vor warrior caste in Barrayar’s cuture.

To leave Serg alive is intolerable and would ruin Ezar’s life work. To kill him and leave his faction behind could be done, if Ezar wasn’t dying - dying to leave behind a son who would be and cannot be entrusted with the power over three livable planets and their populations that Ezar’s death would give him. Dying to leave behind a daughter-in-law who has quite possibly only survived his son’s abuse thus far with Ezar’s own protection, a grandson whom Serg would not hesitate to abuse himself and shape into an equal monster.

There is no heir to Ezar’s camp stool, beyond Serg, beyond little Gregor. To leave Serg in power invites ruin for his people. To leave no one in power invites literal civil war, which would also ruin his people.

Gregor is three.

Barrayar cannot survive a civil war. Barrayar cannot survive a war with Cetaganda. Barrayar cannot survive Emperor Serg.

The terrifying thing about the Escobar invasion is how absolutely desperate it is. It’s absolutely cold and it’s absolutely cruel and it’s absolutely calculated and -

And it’s the only way Ezar sees to see his people, his planet, his empire through - not to thrive better than they have been, but simply survive the next five to ten years.

Securing Aral for Regent in all of that? An honorable man who will not grasp more power than what’s thrusted onto him, who will grant Ezar’s grandson back his proper empire at the moment of his legal majority, who has attracted a strong, no-nonsense woman with galactic connections who will not hesitate to help usher and guide Gregor into his place as both a person and a prince?

That was a pipe dream.

Ezar’s last and greatest gambit worked out better than he could imagine, honestly. Survival was the goal.

And the Ezar who survived the Cetagandan Invasion, who rose in power after Yuri’s Massacare, who is a powerful Emperor but also written as almost inhuman - as barely a person, so much as he is his position...

He knew that first, you must survive. And took the only option for that.

Ges Vorrutyer was supposed to be the fall-guy for the invasion "failing", destined to fall on his sword for the Emperor except Bothari got there first with a knife. And post Escobar, there is a convenient riot at the building War Minister Grishnov works in that swiftly clears up once Grishnov is dead.

Ezar does admit letting Serg go out thinking he's a glorious war hero is the last good deed he can do his son he so very badly raised, but doing a fake war was not solely for filicide.

(Is sending those too bloodthirsty to be pragmatic out into doomed battles a technique he's used before? Was this old hat to him?)

Ezar survived the Cetagandan Occupation, and he survived the civil war with Mad Yuri, and then he chose to invade Komarr to prevent another potential Cetagandan invasion. But that was it. He was done with war otherwise. He survived two on his home planet and instigated a third in another solar system to prevent any more.

Serg wanted expansionist war, and made two attempts on Ezar's life to make himself Emperor early. Some other Vor and government ministers wanted it. Maybe if he had time Ezar would have done a couple subtle assassinations and more politicking to curb the War Party, but he didn't have time.

Happy belated Hogswatch, I hope you will enjoy this bc it has consumed me these holidays.

It is finished!

Lady Sybil Ramkin sat off to one side, wearing a few acres of black velvet. The Ramkin family jewels glittered in her fingers, neck and in the black curls of today's wig. The total effect was striking, like a globe of the heavens.

How do they rise up.

Glorious 25th of May animatic which is slightly less elaborate then I would have preferred but I really like how it has turned out regardless.

Edit: Apparently it is restricted in some territories so I am adding the actual file under the cut as a back up