The new wedding customs among even the most marginalized in Barrayaran culture indicate that previous religion has mostly been lost. At least for Russians and Greeks (especially Greeks), it's reasonable to assume the previous religion would be some variant of Eastern Orthodox. Even if the religions no longer exist in anything resembling their past forms (both being very vulnerable to a loss in apostolic succession, "now what?"), their early presence might have helped maintain ethnic identity.
Cyrillic managed to become the alphabet of choice, somehow. Is recent Barrayaran English ascendancy a new development of Vorbarra unification, galactic recontact, and the Cetagandan occupation? It might be reasonable to assume the Vorkosigan district was previously Russian-speaking...
For all we know the Barryaran French were all Quebecois and skilled in resisting language hegemony ;)
Considering there's clear separatist factions in the Counts despite Barrayar being more than a bit of a centralized dictatorship, the unity may just be an illusion. The nervous jokes about ethnic revolt (from all three other language groups!) seem a bit too nervous.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-05-15 11:29 pm (UTC)The new wedding customs among even the most marginalized in Barrayaran culture indicate that previous religion has mostly been lost. At least for Russians and Greeks (especially Greeks), it's reasonable to assume the previous religion would be some variant of Eastern Orthodox. Even if the religions no longer exist in anything resembling their past forms (both being very vulnerable to a loss in apostolic succession, "now what?"), their early presence might have helped maintain ethnic identity.
Cyrillic managed to become the alphabet of choice, somehow. Is recent Barrayaran English ascendancy a new development of Vorbarra unification, galactic recontact, and the Cetagandan occupation? It might be reasonable to assume the Vorkosigan district was previously Russian-speaking...
For all we know the Barryaran French were all Quebecois and skilled in resisting language hegemony ;)
Considering there's clear separatist factions in the Counts despite Barrayar being more than a bit of a centralized dictatorship, the unity may just be an illusion. The nervous jokes about ethnic revolt (from all three other language groups!) seem a bit too nervous.