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

[teluekh.livejournal.com]

They're not Betans, except for Cordelia. They're Escobarans. I don't think we know of any other Betan women that got captured. Possibly freighter crews, but Beta Colony didn't properly enter the war until late and the Barrayarans were blockading the wormholes.

The question of the raped women is interesting, though. Cordelia mentions in Barrayar that Elena Visconti's contraceptive implant was taken out by Vorrutyer, but this may be an assumption on her part. Contraceptive implants are -not actually mentioned- in Shards of Honor to the best of my recollection, and Visconti doesn't mention it in her accusation in TWA either. Cordelia's apparently wasn't removed.

Possibly the implants were Made Up Later in the grand scheme of things? Cordelia mentions in this book that one of the babies might have been hers.

A limited number of women were made pregnant and handed to Serg according to Elena Visconti in The Warrior's Apprentice. I don't think all of the pregnancies are because of this. There can't have been any women handed to Serg between Elena and Cordelia because Aral would have gone after Ges and Serg with plasma weaponry.

According to Elena Visconti Vorrutyer didn't rape the women himself, though I'm not sure how she would know in a general sense. If all the women were impregnated for Serg then I think Elena Bothari would have way more sisters and brothers >.>

Escobar is Spanish-speaking and likely has a culture derived from Spain or Latin American. A possible explanation for the pregnancies might be... Catholicism? A philosophical objection to contraceptive implants?

[elf]

A possible explanation for the pregnancies might be... Catholicism? A philosophical objection to contraceptive implants?

Perhaps in a few. Seventeen missing implants is a fairly small number, and might be accounted for by a number of different unlikely causes: a tiny fraction of religious objectors, a handful of deliberate removals by Vorrutyer, and a few cases of bad timing--women who'd had their implant removed deliberately a day or two before war hit their area.

Or perhaps no implants is fairly widespread on Escobar, and the seventeen are just those who'd rather ship babies to the fathers. The rest might've kept them, or placed them in Escobaran orphanages rather than risk whatever Barrayar does to war-orphans.

(There's a nice fanfic premise: Unknown Barrayaran bastard heirs, alive on Escobar.)