Quick geneology question

[wired]

My apologies if I've missed this in canon or fanon, but what was Aral's first wife's name? I can't think of where to look, and it seems rude to write a fic about her and never identify her by name.

Comments

[holyschist]

I'm not sure she was ever given one in canon. She was Ges Vorrutyer's sister (and now I'm trying to remember if there was ever any non-Ges confirmation for her sins, hmmm....), but I can't seem to find any information that names her.

[dira]

Canon has now established that she was the younger sister of a Count Vorrutyer and so probably Ges's sister; extra-canonically, Lois has said she thought that was true. We know about her affairs from Aral's own lips, but we have never learned her first name. We've also never learned Aral's brother or sister's names--I don't think we even got Aral's mother's first name until A Civil Campaign.

Lois has said that she hates making up names, and I think names are part of her general philosophy of not committing to points of canon that don't directly affect the story in progress, so I'm not really surprised that the first Lady Vorkosigan doesn't have a name.

[holyschist]

What I'm wondering, and I can't remember--did Aral have actual proof of her affairs?

[dira]

Well, I suppose we can't definitively prove what Aral knew from what he says to Cordelia, but assuming he's not a bald liar or a sociopath--he fought duels with both of these men, which involved talking to both of them, and he does not report that either of them denied having had affairs with his wife, or voice any uncertainty on that score. He regrets killing them, and he realizes that killing people to recover his honor on that score was futile, but he doesn't express any further uncertainty over the justice of what he did.

[dira]

...And now that I've flipped through the relevant passages of the canon, I really really have no idea anymore of anything except that I am a crazy-eyed Aral apologist. *g*

[wired]

It's ok. This stupid fic as conceived has one little exploration of Lady Vorkosigan's mental state. That part was fine. And then I veered totally off the rails and Negri knew that she was pregnant by another man and ... encouraged her to end things so as to leave Aral vulnerable for Ezar's machinations later... yeah.

[dira]

I just wrote a nearly-five-thousand-word fic about Aral and Piotr because of one conversational detour in the Aral/Jole fic I'm currently working on which already got edited out. I feel your pain. *g*

[holyschist]

I adore Aral bunches! I just think there might be some interesting potential there to play with unreliable narrators (one might need to come up with plausibly Vor reasons for the accused men to lie, or something).