Vorkosigan Readthrough: Barrayar

[extrapenguin]

This is slightly ahead of schedule, since apparently my weekend shall be consumed by the Barrayar-approved activity of "boffering", that is, "playing medieval warfare with pieces of drainage pipe coated with foam plastic". In any case, here are my notes on Barrayar:

• Hmm, no regents for 120 years?


• There's a very nice description of the Residence near the beginning!


• Aral, you really should've briefed Cordelia before sending her to meet with Kareen. Or given her a Barrayar Translator.


• Kareen only wears half-mourning (grey) in private. Scandalous, or expected?


• What's going on in Darkoi with Count Vorlakial? Do we ever get an answer?


• Kou is 6'4. Barrayarans: tall. Very tall. That's like 193cm in real units. Though since he's a grocer's son, I guess he got adequate nutrition while growing up?


• "Appeal to Irrelevant Authorities at Headquarters" oh, Cordelia


• Bujold: very good with foreshadowing – Vordarian's family tree, Bothari the midwife, A+


• Alys has two sisters.


• Cordelia's Rules of Barrayaran Sexual Behavior :DDD


• Hm, Piotr enjoys explaining Barrayar to Cordelia. An interesting, if tragically brief, moment in canon.


• Gergor's birthday seems to be in the autumn. Ezar's was earlier in the year.


• Cordelia's conversation with Vordarian: very confusing for both of them. Yet another example of Cordelia operating from a completely different reference system.


• Barrayaran therapy: not all that good, it seems.


• The Caravanserai is part of Vorbarr Sultana, but guarded by Count Vorbohn's guard? What's going on here?


• There are a surprising amount of incidents summarizable as "Kou noooo".


• "Post-partum fatigue" oh dear. :D


• Aral and Piotr's arguments are very gut-punching. Piotr, please get your head out of your ass.


• Drou: A+ pulling of Kou's strings during the start of their rescue mission.


• Dorca's great-uncle kept over 300 horses in the old old imperial stables.


• The amount of gut-punch lines seems to have increased notably: ghost of his most notable failure at his banquet of victory


• Vordarian's head! On the table!


• Captain Illyan: certified grade-A puppy.


• Cordelia has a lot of troubles adjusting to the Barrayaran attitude, it seems.

Next book (The Warrior's Apprentice) will be later, I fear, since I'll be going abroad for a while. I can't promise anything, but somewhere in the vicinity of the 6th of July.

Comments

[beatrice_otter]

On the subject of regencies, I looked up England for comparison. Between 1190-present, England has had only seven regencies for a minor ruler (two of those for the same minor king, Edward VI). Two of those were a year or less; six were for four years or less. It works out to one regency every 118 years; and NONE of them were as long as Aral's Regency.

[extrapenguin]

Hum, okay, that does sound reasonable, then. I guess that (significantly) underage rulers haven't been very common, especially earlier on.

Though I do wonder – Ezar was in his 40s when he got made Emperor, and didn't have any prior children. That's odd, I think. He was a Vorbarra underling to General Count Piotr Vorkosigan, hero of the resistance, and childless and unwed. (Or was he? That would involve a wife and potential children being put aside, since no mention was made of Yuri killing his family.) Did he simply not wed for dynastic reasons like not wanting to piss off Yuri? Homosexuality? Secret fear of fathering muties?

(Looking at Tel's timeline, Ezar reproduced at 46 and Serg at 26. What's the median age of first reproducing for Barrayaran men, anyway? Based on text-based guessing, I'd say 25-30 for Vor. A bit older than for women?)

[krait]

At a guess, given Barrayar's militaristic culture and patriarchal system, I'd venture to say that yes, the marriage/reproduction age for men would be higher than for women.

The idea that a man has to 'establish himself' before having children (because his wife probably doesn't work, and is expected to be a full-time mother even if she did work before having children) is pretty common in lots of patriarchal systems, and Barrayar is probably no exception.

The rampant militarism would feed into that - note Barrayar's interesting way of marking military service ("a ten-year man" or "a twenty-year man" etc. - there seem to be commonly recognised benchmarks, after which one has the option to leave or continue). That would mesh well with the general idea of a man having to reach a more settled point in his life before marrying: like the Spartans, Barrayaran men are probably expected to fulfill their duty to the Emperor before pursuing a personal life. Women, not being able to serve in the military (and being prized more for reproduction than any other purpose) would marry younger, in order to maximise their childbearing potential.

I think 25-30 (or 35) is a reasonable estimate for (Vor and middle class) men. There's probably generational fluctuation within that range, as people might marry earlier in politically unsettled times (have to make sure there's an heir! And if we're taking sides, better make sure to marry off all your kids into useful alliances!) and a bit later during peaceful ones.

Given Barrayar's law/custom of primogeniture, I'd also expect that birth order has a significant influence - the firstborn heir needs to marry sooner, in order to continue the line, but his younger siblings don't need to rush as much... unless Big Bro dies heirless and they're suddenly on the spot as the new heir.

[beatrice_otter]

Except that the wife not working is a product of the Victorian era and the rise of whole classes of people where the husband worked outside the home. In previous social systems the wife did different work than the husband did, true, but if the husband had to work so did the wife. But when both are working in/around the home (instead of one going off to work in a separate place) the distinctions are far lesser.

And age at marriage can vary wildly from place to place, but usually the average age of the two spouses is fairly close even though the husband is usually older at least a little bit. In early modern Europe, for example (1600s-1700s), average age at marriage was 25-27 for men and 22-25 for women. You sometimes got people marrying younger than that; but it was usually rich nobles making a dynastic marriage. Rich nobles who a) had property and land and didn't need to work for it, and b) needed a secure heir to pass it on to as soon as possible.

Here's the thing we often forget about pretty much any other social system in the history of the world: it's all about family, on an inter-generational level. You have a responsibility to your family, and that responsibility is to take your place in society, marry to the family's advantage, and pass on the family skills, jobs, genes, and property to the next generation. This is true in most societies in the history of the world.

In a culture like that, it is deeply, deeply weird to have someone not marry until they are in their 40s, unless they are a pauper ... and by that I mean "can't reliably afford to feed/clothe/house themselves." You have to buck a lot of social pressure to do it. It does happen ... but seldom by accident.

[krait]

Except that the wife not working is a product of the Victorian era and the rise of whole classes of people where the husband worked outside the home.

I phrased things badly there, I think! I failed to specify, but I was thinking specifically of the Vor class, since we were discussing Piotr and the Emperor. "Rich men who had property and needed an heir" would pretty much perfectly describe the Counts and their heirs (and Emperors) - but not their still well-off but not dynastically important sisters and younger brothers... Hence why I thought that firstborn sons would probably marry younger than their non-inheriting siblings. You're definitely right that it wouldn't apply to the non-Vor, and especially not the rural/farming community where marriage and children are essential!

I was thinking in part of certain ancient cultures, including Sparta (a militaristic culture, relatively few in number), where men were around 25 when they married, and couldn't live with their wives until 30, or ancient Greece, where 30 was a reasonable marriage age for (noble/wealthy) men, with wives generally much younger.


Barrayar, being both a militaristic culture and a future one (and thus capable of looking back on Earth history and adopting whatever bits suited them) might well have borrowed elements from them; Sparta, for one, was big on mandatory military service as being a young man's first obligation, with married life not becoming the focus until later.

I don't think it would have been the pattern for the lower classes, or even for the all-important Vor heirs, but I can certainly see -- in a society/group where significant amounts of money/land and political divides were common, and in which health care and life expectancy were fairly hight -- it being the pattern for a lot of the Vor. (Barrayarans have a lot to say about Byerly Vorrutyer, for instance, but his not being married doesn't seem to be one of them. Ivan, who's around the same age as By, doesn't seem to find his unmarried state at 30ish unusual or worthy of comment, and his mother is the only one we see make an issue of it.)

Hmm... what a good excuse for a re-read of the series! :D

[extrapenguin]

Ivan and By are two-three generations younger than Ezar, so it makes sense for social attitudes to have changed.

Ezar was in his 40s, which is rather late by any standard. Either he was just about to marry (after some delay or something), or he was planning not to and using military service as a smokescreen. I do not think he was anywhere near the throne genealogically; he was merely a Vorbarra and married a woman with better connections.

[spiralsheep]

Maybe he wouldn't have been allowed to marry her until [x thing] happened and suddenly made him eligible?

[beatrice_otter]

Or he'd been married and widowed, and they had no children, or married with no children and he divorced her to marry the Vorbarra princess.

[spiralsheep]

Ezar was in his 40s when he got made Emperor, and didn't have any prior children. That's odd, I think.

I agree it's odd, but perhaps he was afraid they'd be targets for assassination? Gregor has similar fears and also delays "doing his duty" to father an heir.

[extrapenguin]

True, though Ezar IIRC wasn't all that close to the campstool before Piotr plonked him there, so less risk of assassination. Except from Cetagandans.

(Do we have textev for how related Ezar is to Dorca etc?)

[spiralsheep]

Having an heir would presumably have increased Ezar's perceived suitability for the succession. Lurking in the background until the other candidates have mostly destroyed each other has resulted in more than one unlikely historical ruler. Also, making a marital alliance with whoever else survives and assumes power, instead of having to defend a pre-existing extended family of in-laws, could be advantageous. Perhaps there were multiple strategic reasons for him to wait.

There's a family tree on the wiki but I can't verify it:

http://vorkosigan.wikia.com/wiki/Vorbarra

http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/vorkosigan/images/6/6d/Vorbarra.gif/revision/latest?cb=20081227101225

[extrapenguin]

I always figured out that Ezar was way, way distant from the succession, and was basically made Emperor due to him being Piotr's Pet Vorbarra. Like, 3rd cousin to Yuri? I also never really saw Ezar as having any imperial ambitions pre-Yuri's Massacre, since that would be too risky.

Frankly, he's exactly the kind of offshoot Vorbarra I'd have expected to have 6 daughters that he'd then marry off to Counts' Heirs so as to have a power block formed from his grandsons.

The family tree's otherwise okay, though Ezar's placement is just a question mark. One of their explanations is plain wrong, though: Miles and Gregor are cousins due to the fact that they share Dorca the Just as an ancestor (great-great grandfather via Prince Xav and great-grandfather via Yuri's full sister, respectively), so Ezar does not need to be particularly related to Dorca.

(I also don't think Miles was stating anything in chapter 18 of Shards of Honor. I do recall seeing that somewhere, though, so likely it's just misattributed.)

(I would very much like for LMB to give us a set of names for some of those people – Aral's wife and siblings, Dorca's wives and kids, a number of maiden names for women, Gregor's spawn...)