nineveh_uk

I thought about writing up a longer version of this, but decided that (for now, at least) I’d let you use your imagination...

*

‘You know,’ said Illyan, ‘people seriously overestimate how difficult it is for the Chief of ImpSec to get laid.’

Six pairs of eyes turned to him in horrified fascination.

Not really fic, more some thoughts about a sub-plot of A Civil Campaign and Barrayar in general that I first had in fic form and have kept that way. They’ve been sitting on the bookshelf as a draft for ages, and it’s much easier to just type them up like this than to try to pull out the argument and make it coherent in essay form.

So, considerations of Dono Vorrutyer, legitimacy and inheritance.

( ‘A body birth?’ said Martya dubiously. ‘Isn’t that a bit of a risk?’ )

I had forgetten that I'd posted a WIP snapshot of this. It diverges in the fifth sentence: in this version, Lord Vorhallen is not accidentally married to his sister*. Anyway, Miles and Ekaterin get divorced.

It isn't that I don't like Miles and Ekaterin. I do. It's just that I feel their conventional Barrayarality gets the better of them. I don't think they get divorced in canon at all. I think that Ekaterin does her degree, learns to terraform, and spends the rest of her life as Miles's helpmate in Vorkosigan's district. At least (thanks to a post-war DLS letter) Peter Wimsey eventually ends up living off Harriet's blockbuster income, thanks to the unfortunate effect of the Blitz on making one's money through property.

( Under the circumstances )

I have the most incredible, gorgeous, piece of total and utter batshittery at work, which unfortunately I cannot report on. It is agony. So in lieu of the most WTF-ery work post I could ever write, have my version of younger generation Vorkosigan fix-it fic (on the assumption that a childhood in which everyone grows up wondering whether you're going to cement your father's political power by marrying the Emperor's son needs fixing).

I

Count Aral Vorkosigan, home from Sergyar for a family Winterfair and feeling that perhaps there could not be so many of them left, watched the children playing in the snow-covered garden. Serg, a name said with a wince, but it had been necessary, and the boy was making it his own, Aral, his namesake, blessedly unlike him in every way, no ghosts of history there, Lizzie, short and stocky, and running to join them, calling so that they turned not so much to wait as to receive her, Helen.

‘She reminds me of someone,' he remarked absently, and turning to Illyan beside him, 'I don’t suppose you remember who it might be?’ Illyan smiled with a rueful shake of his head, but any words were cut off by the woman at the other window, Drou, suddenly as blank-faced as in the long-ago days she had guarded Kareen.

‘She reminds you of Ezar.’

II

The Betan Astronomical Survey keeps quota places for off-worlders, without which they could never hope to belong. But the idealism for which Beta Colony is so famous is not a blind idealism. The quota for offworlders, so often considered a typical Betan soft-hearted gesture, is nonetheless widely acknowledged to be a brilliant propaganda device (what child, dreaming of galactic travel, does not dream of a chance at the Survey?), and rather less often a pragmatic device for, among other things, ensuring the pick of galactic talent, a subtle form of cultural espionage, and a means of bonding a ship’s company together with something rather more than mere planetary loyalty. The competition is fierce. For certain planetary citizens, however, (Betan law assumes that everyone is a citizen) there is a catch.

Helen had expected the oath, to renounce all former allegiances, to swear loyalty to Beta, to her colonies, to free humanity and those she may find among the stars. She rattles through it. She has made oaths before, but she is a woman. No-one really expects her to keep any vow but that of marriage. This is no different. She knows it doesn’t matter what she says, here, now. It matters what she becomes, what the Survey makes her. Besides, Barrayar does not recognise the renunciation of planetary statehood. Only there is one last line to be read, one that wasn’t there at the morning practice. The Betan therapists are very, very good. She would have poured out her heart for Barrayar, if only Barrayar had wanted it. Beta wants her, and now Helen will give her anything.

There were no hands to place her own between, and no instructions to kneel, but she knelt.

‘I swear by my word as Vorkosigan.’

It’s not that I haven’t got the ideas, but meanwhile there is a student attending a lecture on Dementors in Wittenberg who has been trying to get out of the door before he is sick for far too long.

So, without in anyway saying "Write it, write it, write it" to other people, this is what I have decided my life is too short to write and wish someone else would do instead:

(1) I want to know about the Vor maidens who are paraded past Gregor, but fail to do the job. Imagine it: excited and expectant parents, girls being shown as a favour to their fathers, would-be fiancés wondering what is going to happen, and of course the women themselves. We see it from the POV of Alys and Gregor, but not from the meat in the meat-market.

(2) I am incapable of reading the words “Lord Vorhovis” without thinking of his counterpart, “Lord Vorburton”. Fields of wheat (Wheat! Wheat! Fields of wheat!) on the Southern Continent.

I’ve been starting to looking around at Vorkosigan fanfic on AO3*, which I have been enjoying greatly, but occasionally it strikes me that there may be some over-optimism about the pace of change on Barrayar. And then I was reminded of a line from The Leopard, and another from the end of Diplomatic Immunity**.

( If things are to stay the same, everything must change )

*Two one-shot recs, completely different: Equality, and a crossover, Where Some Klingons Have Gone Before

**Which if you haven’t seen, is very long and utterly wonderful. I must actually read the book before I go on holiday in September.