Shards of Honor - readthrough!

[flourish]

To kick off our Vorkosiverse reread: Shards of Honor! I've just got some quick thoughts, and look forward to hearing all of yours too:

• Cordelia discusses herself as being somewhat socially awkward or incapable when she talks about the bad relationship she was in pre-Aral, but she doesn't actually end up being that way in the series later. Is this just self-doubt? Or could it be that Cordelia is "out of step" with Beta colony and for some reason has assumptions about the way people interact that's more suited to life on Barrayar (or, even, not on Barrayar either, but at least on Barrayar she knows her assumptions are likely to be wrong)?
• I've recently seen some people complaining about the question of "blood guilt" that gets brought up with the fetuses in replicators, suggesting that Bujold has some kind of anti-abortion axe to grind. Rereading it this time, I wonder if it isn't perfectly reasonable: on Beta colony there are not typically any unwanted pregnancies, nor would I imagine are they very common on Escobar. The idea that Betan culture - how does Cordelia put it? "has a respect for life"? - has a very different tenor than it does in the United States today, then, or on Barrayar for that matter. I don't have any opinion on the topic that I care to share, but it was interesting to me to meditate on how it affects our understanding of Cordelia...
• It's also interesting that Cordelia explicitly positions herself as a theist. I like that Bujold does not just allow the assumption that everyone is a theist, or everyone is an atheist, or whatever.
• It just occurred to me: Konstantine Bothari - he's Greek! And so is Elena, then. Somehow it did not occur to me that 'Konstantine' established him as part of the Greek minority on Barrayar.
• Rereading Shards of Honor reminded me of Xav Vorbarra's Betan wife. To refresh: Xav is the younger son of Dorca the Just, half-brother to Mad Emperor Yuri. He ended up living through the end of the Time of Isolation (or at least Dorca's reign overlapped the Time of Isolation's end, so I assume Xav lived through it) and ended up bringing home a Betan wife from his ambassadorship to Beta colony. I don't know if we know her name, but his daughter Olivia married Piotr and therefore was Aral's mother; another daughter was Padma Vorpatril's mother. Can we say wonderful fanfiction topic? I would love to dig my teeth into writing about the experience of a Betan going to just-post-Time of Isolation Barrayar! Holy jeez, talk about culture shock.

What are you all thinking about?

Remember: the next book in our readthrough is Barrayar, and we'll be discussing it on June 1!

Comments

[melannen]

Re point one: I think that for some people, social interaction is a lot easier when everyone has a specific role to fill. Cordelia seems to do really well under military discipline, where she knows everyone's assignments and relative ranks (even loose discipline, like Beta's) but not so well in the murkier, shiftier places of a personal life. She was lucky enough that in marrying High Vor she basically married her personal life into military service - even the women's command that Alys runs is no less regimented. If there's a system to work, she can work the system, and blossom. She just needs the system.

(Aral, on the other hand, doesn't do all that well under a system - it wasn't until after he had Cordelia to teach him that he really learned the trick of owning a role instead of letting it own you, so he had to keep rebelling in order to let *himself* out. They're really each others' best-case scenario.)

Also, Cordelia's ex-fiance was a horrible, horrible little troll.

[flourish]

Great point.

Hmm... don't know whether I agree about Aral. I need to chew on that for a bit. I hadn't thought of it like that.

And yes - he's the kind of character who I want to write into a story just so I can drop a piano on his head...

[beatrice_otter]

Remember what she says? "The inept ... need rules for their own protection." Would fit this theory perfectly. Plus, you know, I'm not naturally good with people myself; It's something I'm learning. And that takes time, but it can be learned.

[branchandroot]

*thoughtful* That does seem indicated in the way she thinks about political systems. She analyzes and classifies them based on their rules and what they accomplish, which suggests that she looks at the world (possibly increasingly, over time) in terms of its structure and systems. She can apply that to Beta Colony, too, but most of that kind of thing that I recall off hand seems to take place only after she's had Barrayar to practice on, as it were.

[flourish]

Right, and it's much harder to turn a critical eye on your own society than it is to turn a critical eye on someone else's - so no surprise she'd be better at critiquing Beta after encountering Barrayar!