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

[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.