lotesse | Ivan, His Booke, a babble

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Ivan, His Booke, a babble

So I have read Captain Vorpatril's Alliance! and behind the cut are some sundry assorted things about it, including spoilers but possibly not including coherence - I've got a cold and also had to read this book in a room by myself so as not to make squeaky gaspy noises in anyone else's hearing.

-Biggest point - I was SO RELIEVED when I realized that most of this book was going to take place on Barrayar. Because, charmed as I am by the rest of Bujold's Nexus, it's Barrayar I adore, and when the book brought me back there it was like coming home. Also, in this particular chronological moment, Barrayar=Vorkosibabies, so that's always win. Although there were not nearly enough Vorkosibabies. But there was Simon! and Alys! and Ekaterin, a little bit. And it's always most fun to go to Barrayar through an outsider pov, which Tej provided beautifully.

-it choked me up a little bit that she didn't write Aral, even though he's technically still alive. She's shut his book, I'm afraid.

-I REALLY LIKE RISH.

-It was interesting how much having Tej as a pov character amplified the verse's embrace of genetic greed/Darwinian sexual selection. And, well, from that point of view Alys has got to be feeling like she won the lottery - her boy found a girl who's haut-descended, doesn't get much better than that for genetic perfection. I did bounce, a little, off of how highly sexualized the first part of the book is, maybe because the sexuality was presented in such an overwhelmingly visual way? And because I guess I'm not actually that in to perfect!people!lust. It was later, when Ivan was blissing out on commitment and domesticity, that I was really engaged by the pairing.

-I'm charmed by Tej. Not in love with her yet, but I think I could be - this book withheld several important tests, I thought, and that's holding me back from her. I want to see Tej with Cordelia, and with Kareen Koudelka, and I want to see how she'll deal with the actual savagery of Barrayar, which was never really on display in this book. Because it seems like there's always that moment, with galactic characters, where they have to fully recognize both Barrayar's grace and Barrayar's violence. Does Tej know how all the rest of Ivan's family died, for example? - for that matter, I can't remember if the complication to his children's position posed by her Cetagandan blood is ever made clear to her. But I would think that Barrayar could be absolutely vicious about the whole thing; they usually are.

-“This is not a date, you idiot,” Tej snapped at him. To her annoyance, his smile inexplicably broadened. DOLPHIN NOISES. IVAN RESPONDS TO "IDIOT" AS A TERM OF ENDEARMENT. THIS IS NOT NORMAL BB.

-Simon kind of broke my heart. :(

-I seem to have come out of this book shipping a sedoretu. I've been entertaining daydreams of a Miles/Ivan/Ekaterin group marriage for a while, and then this happened:

“Countess Cordelia Vorkosigan is very close friends with Ivan’s mother, you know. Cordelia has frequently mentioned to me how much she treasured having a woman friend, when she first came to Barrayar as a bride and a stranger, to show her how to go on here—all those things the men didn’t know. At least there’s no war on, this time. Perhaps when Miles and I get back from Sergyar, we can visit again…?”

A heartbreakingly kind offer, Tej thought. She smiled, but shook her head. “We don’t expect to be here that long.”

“Ah,” said Lady Ekaterin, with a curious glance at Ivan Xav. “That’s a pity. Well, let’s just take a stroll through the dining room wing, and then we can go out the back and around to my garden…”

Miles & Tej as morning, Ekaterin & Ivan as evening, lots of babies, perfect bliss. This has become my Vorkosiverse otp.

-I LOVE THE IVAN XAV THING. I DO NOT KNOW WHY. IT IS CUTE LIKE SUNSHINE AND KITTENS. BUT NOT KITTENS ON TREES.

-That said, I want to side-eye a little at the way Bujold keeps decentralizing her narrative by pulling characters away from each other. I don't WANT Ivan and Tej to go away for two years! I don't WANT Byerly to go off adventuring. And I do want Mark and Kareen to come back, because I miss having them as more than mentions. Don't break up the families of choice, Lois, don't do it!

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Sadly, Miles and Ivan can't be in a sedoretu, because they are definitely parallel cousins, and thus same moiety.

I really really liked how the way Tej and her family's ignorance of Barrayaran culture compared to their own Jackosonian norms really did make the plot work because everyone kept misinterpreting each other's motives and plans. Though I do kind of wish we could have seen Mark in this story, since he can switch between Jacksonian and Barrayaran -- admittedly, he'd have problem have seen through the Baron and Baronne's plans and blow them up spectacularly, which would have cut the plot very short.

Doesn't moiety track through mothers? They're not at all related there.

Doesn't matter -- Aral and Padma were parallel cousins through their mothers, and thus of the same moiety. Thus they each married women from the opposite moiety -- Cordelia and Alys are the same moiety, and thus so are their sons.

Depending on whether Gregor is generation up or down, he might be the opposite moiety from Miles and Ivan or the same.

Gregor's a generation up, he's the same generation as Aral.

1) Dorca
2) Xav and the daughter who married Ezar
3) Olivia and Serg
4) Aral (and Padma) and Gregor
5) Miles (and Ivan) and Gregor's kids

Well, then that solves the problem of who is the other man in the Emperor's sedoretu, which must be a tough position to fill -- I suspect the opposite moiety male being an Imperial cross-cousin or parallel cousin one generation up or down (like Miles and Ivan) would be the usual solution. The same-moiety woman would probably be a sister or other maternal relative, just to keep the family loyalty as strong as possible.

Yeah, it could be Miles or Ivan. Personally, I'd like it to be Ivan, because that gets the guy who is basically next in line for the throne in the marriage, which can be explained both as neutralizing him and as giving him access and honor, depending on who's asking. ;) Also Miles needs to be free to create his own sedoretu to deal with Vorkosigan family. On the assumption that, this being Barrayar, it's all about rank; it's the Emperor's sedoretu, after all. A child of that marriage could go be a count, but a count in that marriage would always be outranked. Although I am totally wanting the Pierre/Dorca/Pierre's Sister/Pierre's Wife sedoretu, and imagining the completely Barrayaran struggles for dominance there are making me giggle a lot.

Then there's the question of Serg/Kareen's marriage. Aral could have been in that marriage (*handwave* about Aral's wife; actually, we could queer it and get Ges in there, somehow *lots of handwaving*). Which, can you imagine? Ezar ordering Aral to kill his husband, Aral then *already* being married to Kareen, and Aral really can't get out of being regent at this point. And then Kareen and Cordelia's first meeting gets *another* level of complexity. Or it's Serg/Kareen/Padma/Alys, which makes more canonical sense, and then Aral gets to be regent (Padma can't do as above because, uh, he's a Captain, he's too low ranked *handwave*) so Aral takes care of the government, and Padma/Kareen/Alys are Gregor's parents. And have to find another husband for Kareen. And here's Vordarian to bring the complications! :D :D :D

There's also all the possibilities with how the sedoretu canon treats the word "cousin". That flahsed out to me when I read it, because, ooooh, that would be fascinating to reinterpret here.

I agree with your points (except that, although fascinating in its name-ness, I found the Ivan Xav thing *distracting*, because, first, I wrote that, and second, no one's commenting on it, and third, it did switch back a lot with Vorpatril, which distracted me). Totally agree with you about the weird genetic stuff going on, and I wish Tej had seen any of the Barrayaran ugliness. It's kind of like this is Shards of Honor and we need Barrayar to see the dark side... except Cordelia was perfectly placed from the start to see the dark side, considering that she meets Aral after he's been ousted in a mutiny, and then has to argue to keep Dubauer alive.

I would't put it past Tej to sort of on reflex assume her kids will be competing for the Imperium (the letter from home made me o.O especially her reaction), and so I'm hoping Mark or someone who understands Jacksonian stuff and Barrayar stuff can pull her to the side and say "yeah, no, not happeneing, and if it did, that would be a *disaster*, not a feature."

I think the big test will be when their vacation's over and they go back to Barrayar. I'd love to see that stuff. Alas that there wasn't a post-Epilogue.

The sedoretu I really want, and I forget whose idea this was: Gregor/Laisa/Duv/Delia. :D

I would't put it past Tej to sort of on reflex assume her kids will be competing for the Imperium

I got the impression that Tej has a low awareness of what her heritage as 1/4 haut could mean on Barrayar -- her life is too busy until after her family leaves for her to really get a handle on things, and it wasn't like Ivan was introducing her to anyone other than his fairly progressive and open-minded family.

And afterwards, with Ivan politely exiled to Ylla, she still doesn't get confronted with some of the real ugliness of Barrayaran culture. I think she's going to have rather a shock when she comes home with Ivan at the end of his service.

Also, Mark was conspicuous by his absence in a story all about Jacksonians -- the one extant character who understands both cultures, and LMB left him out. Otoh, it would considerably shortened the book if he had appeared, since he would have seen through to the motivations and plans of Tej's family in a heartbeat.

I would have loved it if Mark had shown up and sliced through things. I was very happy at the start by how *fast* it seemed the plot as going. We got Tej as Arqua in, uh, the fourth chapter? Fifth? Which when it happened, I was all "ooh, yay, we are moving quickly! No dragging heels here!" And then we got to Barrayar and I'd thought it was going to be a mostly-on-Komarr-book that just went to Barrayar at the *end*. So yay moving fast, meaning we get a lot packed into a little space.

So if Mark had shown up (imagine if it had been *Mark* as the Vorkosigan at home, not Miles, and Mark passing along a direct order from Gregor *snickers a lot*), and cut through the red tape. We could have a Tej POV scene where she's all relieved that there is someone here with her cultural context to explain things, and Mark cutting through everything, and they could also commiserate about Jacksonian stuff, and Mark could be that friends-who-explains-wierdness that Alys was to Cordelia. That would have been awesome. Putting Mark in the expert-about-Barrayar territory, much to his wtfery, and also giving Tej an ally and translator who can talk Jacksonian to the Jacksonian and Barrayaran to the Barayarans.

And then we could have shoved Ivan and Tej into their two year vacation 3/4 of the way into the book, then come home and more stuff could have happened. And somewhere in this, Tej could have, uh, maybe gone to a Residence party and met one of the Vor conservatives, who take one look at her and go "you're Vorpatril's haut wife?" and then proceed in that vein. And then we deal with it. Which would have been awesome. Oh, and she could have met Laisa during this, and we would have seen Laisa!

Yes, yes, this.

I very much wanted more backlash against her grandmother. This is a woman who was on the ground during the Occupation, and married to the satrap. Benighted planet? Well I imagine that you didn't help. Those genetic samples? I don't imagine the High Vor were lining up to hand them over. And maybe your son-in-law died in Vorkosigan Vashnoi, but he wasn't the only one, by any means.

I was longing for an Alys put-down, by that point.

Alys is too polite to interupt her own dinner party like that, and I think everyone rude enough (i.e. Ivan ;)) was just too stunned. Especially at how casually the nuclear destruction of a city is played in that story.

I was really waiting for someone to, like, try to arrest the haut woman for stuff from the war or at least point out that, from the Barrayaran perspective, this isn't some amusing anecdote from the past. Repercussions from the war are still being felt; part of the reason the Vorkosigans are poor-for-counts is because they owned everything in Vashnoi, and now that land-wealth simply isn't. And that's before you mention the loss of life. Yeah, the district got beaten up in the two civil wars, but that was because the Vorkosigans were a major reason for them, and those wars were relatively short (Yuri's war was, uh, two years?, and the pretendership was a couple of months). The Cetagandan war was two decades and near the end of it, their capital got blown up. There's a huge nuclear hole.

And, yep, the haut continue to be haut. Those tunnels, sure, let's test them on Barrayar. 'Tis a silly planet, no one will miss it.

"The problem," Gregor said. "Is that there is an extant arrest warrant for Lady Vorpatril's grandmother."

Ivan had to admit, it was hardly a surprise.

"In the hand of my grandmother, acting in the name of her brother Yuri."

Gregor pushed a flimsy across the desk. "She made suggestive cartoons in the margin. And the actual text says that, should any free man of Barrayar behead the Lady Moira and present me with it, I must give them a bag of gold and send them on their way. I'm sorry, any free man or woman. Her handwriting was excreable even when she wasn't adding bits in between the lines."

"Oh," Ivan said faintly.

Oooh. What happens next?

I suspect that Gregor says that he will refrain on having the warrant, ahem, executed, but he doesn't think they can avoid trying her for war crimes, as there is clear and present evidence that she did, and would they prefer a Barrayan court, or the Interplanetary Court of Criminal Justice?

Ha, awesome. :D

Want! Want fiercely!

Admittedly, Lady Moira might not be identifiable because of document and evidence loss, but when she just chatters about it in public...

Also, I'm kind of surprised that the family's refugee status wasn't held up at all because of Lady Moira's status an obvious Cetagandan of rank.

Heh! She's just proved exactly who she is by putting on a biotainer girdle coded to her precise genetic fingerprint which has been lying in a sealed Cetagandan bunker since the Occupation in front of an Imperial officer who I believe is neither naturally nor artificially allergic to fast-penta, as well as several other witnesses. Get out of that, counsel for the defence!

Yeah, I was a little puzzled at no one in Tej's chapters having a fit at Tej's grandmother. A Cetagandan on Barrayar, even a commoner, must be a rare thing indeed -- and someone should have reacted, given that Mark managed to get in trouble by walking through the gentrified caravanserai with a security perimeter.

I was longing for someone on the Barrayaran side of things to at least have a tart word or two, and I didn't really care who at that point -- the non-reaction was bizarre.

I haven't read this, yet, though I do want to very much. It's about time Ivan got his own book! \0/

I don't think having a Cetagandan spouse would bar Ivan's inheiritance now that they have a Komarran Empress, and so many Komarran-Barrayaran intermarriages. Incubator births, transgendered lords inheiriting, etc. The ice has been broken, so to speak, at least on the Barrayaran side. Who knows what the Cetagandans would do about it? Kittens on trees, after all.

I just haven't been able to read the previous book, because of what I think happens to Aral. JUST NO. Once I get past that, if I do, then I'll happily devour this one.

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Ivan, His Booke, a babble

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Identifying Lady Moira

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