tied him to a tree like saint sebastian

[lotesse]

two questions about the Vorkosigan Saga:

1. how does swearing someone work in terms of the armsmans' score/Vorloupulous' law? When Miles swears Arde and Baz in - when Mark swears Elena - do those count as additions to the number of Vorkosigan Armsmen? Because neither boy acts as though a slot needs to be open before a swearing can happen, on penalty of high treason. Is there a textual explanation, or is it a crack in the narrative?

2. Why, when Bujold so obviously understands why aspects of Miles' courtship of Ekaterin are really borderline in terms of acceptable behavior, does she choose to have the story go down that way? There are all of these words about how Ekaterin needs some time, some confidence, some space - Bujold clearly does get it, at some level. Does she just not care? Why was it necessary for her to write the story about Miles pushing Ekaterin's consent and disrespecting her boundaries and still getting her to marry him in the end?

It would have been really cool if it had gone the other way, actually been a healthy and functional romance all the time, instead of just some of the time.

Comments

[staranise]

1. I wonder if it's twenty people per Vor, rather than per family?

2. I only just realized this, but ACC is a huge homage to Dorothy L. Sayers' Gaudy Night, in which a similar courtship takes place over months and years. I think LMB wanted to preserve the basic story of "man pursues a woman who believes she is broken and no longer eligible for love; realizes he can't 'fix' or 'save' her, is humbled, and apologizes handsomely; she is inspired to pursue him, and they all live happily ever after." However, she tried to fit it into a too-compressed timeline.

[lotesse]

1. So are the official Vorwhatsis Armsmens' score sworn to the current count, then? Because I don't know that canon matches that; armsmen seem to be inherited along with the countship. I think they must be doubly-sworn, "Armsman Simple" indicating personal loyalty and "Vorwhatsis Armsman" indicating a place in the official score and an additional oath.

2. I've never read Sayers - is she worth it, or am I just going to be driven round the bend?

[ithiliana]

Early Sayers is less interesting than later Sayers -- I love later Sayers, and even most of her earlier stuff (with a couple of exceptions). the later Sayers has Harriet Vane (and Gaudy Night is one of two books I took--along with Virginia Woolf's ROOM--when I did a study abroad term at oxford), and I love Harriet Vane (who writes murder mysteries). (Tolkien disliked Sayers' work immensely!)

[princessofgeeks]

Sayers is worth it. Full stop. Start with Murder Must Advertise.

[staranise]

1. Oooh, I like that explanation. It makes "Armsman Simple" make sense--"Armsman [Complex]" would be the inherited ones.

2. They're detective novels set and written in the 1920s, starring an English aristocrat who affects to be an overbred flibbertigibbet, but is in fact a WWI veteran with PTSD who solves crimes. (You can very much see Miles' foundations in him.) I tolerate him and his silliness for HARRIET VANE (sorry *ahem*) a writer and Oxford graduate who is brittle, defensive as all fuck, and severely in need of someone who can wrap her in a blanket and give her hot cocoa not that she would take it. Peter and Harriet's relationship is the mold Miles and Ekaterin are cast in.

However, once or twice a novel there are glaringly anti-Semitic bits that seem stuck there just for fun, and it is a fly in my ointment.

Should you wish to read only one, Gaudy Night is the middle book and contains the fewest racist remarks (I can't remember any, but I might've missed one) while the complete progression I'd recommend is Strong Poison - Gaudy Night - Busman's Honeymoon. I didn't read any others.

[oursin]

Have His Carcase comes immediately after Strong Poison and has their relationship developing as they fight crime.

[legionseagle]

Crime carried out by total incompetents - I think the only reason it manages to remain undetected for several hundred pages is first n pbzcyrgryl enaqbz snpgbe gung gur zheqreref pbhyq unir unq ab onfvf sbe fhfcrpgvat and secondly that I suspect Peter and Harriet couldn't lower their intellects to the level of sheer stupidity displayed by everyone in sight and kept trying to think of sensible explanations for the apparent sequence of events.

[oursin]

The reason it remains undetected is to give the Peter/Harriet relationship time to develop is probably the explanation? (i.e. extraneous authorial edict)

The racist remark in Gaudy Night

[legionseagle]

"Wot this country needs is an 'itler." Said, however, by a sympathetic character who is trying to get an unsympathetic (and misogynistic) character to do an emergency job of reversing an act of sabotage which has been aimed to do maximum damage to a women's college, so it's probably a pose.

[aella_irene]

With Ekaterin, what I end up muttering is that there isn't a Have His Carcase, and there needs to be one, because Have His Carcase features Harriet discovering that she can be a detective on her own, and it is nice to have Peter around. Also, it means that there is three or four years between Strong Poison and Gaudy Night, and Harriet and Peter need that time, and so do Miles and Ekaterin.

[princessofgeeks]

IAWT

[ithiliana]

I agree with Staranise on both points: I think it's 20 people per Vor (because I'm remembering in the Cordelia duology that both Aral and his father had their armsmen.

And yes to the homage to GN, and to the rush which is tied up with the action/spy/political narratives of Barrayar which are in both of Ekaterin's novels.

I have loved Bujold's work for a long time but more and more I am uncomfortable with how her major female characters (except for Ista in the Chalion series, but only Ista) are treated. It's....well, it's one of those problematic things. I LOVE the characters, but I wish they had the time/space/narrative attention that the male characters do.

[lotesse]

Piotr's armsmen, yes. hmm. but they become Aral's on him death, I think. At least, Esterhazy does. and Bothari.

I think it's very telling that Bujold's beta was Patricia C. Wrede; I see the same good seeds in both, but bad seeds in both as well, and in some of the same weak spots. And they both give me that "limited second-wave foremother" sad feeling - admittedly, Bujold less, but I think she's also won more goodwill than Wrede ever had, and hasn't yet been tested with the same pressure.

[ithiliana]

Do they become his personal armsmen or the office's? And now that I think more about it, i'm not sure enough of how it worked to know whether it was a glitch on her part or not......

"limited second-wave foremother"--excellent phrase and observation, and I say that as someone who came into feminism in the early 1980s via the Second Wave (and over the years has found that only Joanna Russ' work is worth revisiting).

[oursin]

Not McIntyre or Charnas???

[ithiliana]

This comment set off some wonderful creative explosive thoughts -- but I was dashing around and getting ready for a conference so could not answer until today!

*LITEBULB*

I was thinking not only of fiction when I wrote my reply about "second wave feminsts" but also the theory and non-fiction!

And I did not make that clear--and since we were talking about fiction, obviously I should have (it's a tough time at the moment).

But back to your question: Vonda McIntyre's work is incredible and I realized that I don't consider limited to the problematic Second Wave elements (as I do Bujold and Wrede): she was certainly part of that major 70s change in sff, but as a somewhat younger writer than Russ (checking Wikipedia, I see there's about ten years of age difference), but also I don't 'count' her as similar to Bujold and Wrede because of some of her sf (specifically the Starfarers series) has so much more intersectionality in it (that's the problem with the "wave" theory -- it is necessary perhaps but implies a homogeneity which is inaccurate).

So, definitely McIntyre would be someone whose work I can and do still read.

Charnas....is complicated. I've had a hard time reading her major Motherlines work since the first time I picked up the first novel in the series--not because it's bad but because it's just so brilliantly and comprehensively dystopian and bleak. I think her work is incredibile important, but I don't re-read it because I get too depressed (and I've never taught it).

Speaking of other major feminist sf authors who were publishing in the 70s, I have to admit I gave up on LeGuin after _Tehanu_ -- I so disliked that book, and none of her more recent work has tempted me in.

But I wouldn't put Wrede or Bujold in the same category of feminist writer that I would place Russ and Charnas (and to a certain extent LegGuin and McIntyre).

And of course all categories are constructed, and subjective--Russ for me is the single most important writer of fiction and non-fiction.

Another one who is nearly as important and amazing is Melissa Scott (whose work is WAY overlooked, especially her sf -- I think there seems to be a bit more vocal fandom/attention paid to her fantasy novels which I find OK, but not nearly as gripping as her sf).

And a key component is that their works are not just about (heterosexual) gender but are more intersectional (Scott does more with ethnicity and class than Russ does).

Not sure this is making sense for anybody but me, but thank you for the question!

[lotesse]

Theory-wise, I also want to sort Adrienne Rich into the box with Russ and McIntyre and LeGuin. of the time but not "second wave" in that way y/n?

[ithiliana]

Me too. On phone waiting for airport shuttle boy hope to talk more. In think it has to do with intersectionality.

[ithiliana]

*definitely yes*

Spoilers in linked review

[ithiliana]

And here's a review that was a major influence on me shifts/discomforts in readingn Bujold (although writing a paper on the Chalion series for the Bujold conference last summer led to some major re/thinking in terms of the female characters--i.e. Bujold can have queer male characters but not female characters (I don't count consider Donna or Dono as queer).

http://ltimmelduchamp.com/criticism/campaign.html

(One of the male academics writing on Bujold gets grumpy about this review by Duchamp--and other feminists reviews of LMB's work--if you like, I can try to give you the info).

Re: Spoilers in linked review

[lotesse]

(would love to read)

I think the point about the conservatism of comedy in the linked essay is well taken.

In the intensely personal feudal society of Barrayar, why would Miles commissioning Ekaterin to plant him a Barrayaran Garden - the design of which he enjoyed all the way back in Komarr - as a way of giving her help but also giving her professional respect? If Cordelia wasn't so insistent that he was trapping her, I don't think I'd see it as a trap, I really don't. After Cordelia raises the point so emphatically I don't feel comfortable making apologetics - but then the story disregards it anyway, leaving me in a knot.

I suppose the problem is that, once you start sympathizing with the women being used as tools to reform the hero, you feel less good about the hero's reform.

[princessofgeeks]

1. The sworn armsmen that are the personal retinue are different that the sworn subjects of the district count. Apples and oranges. The sworn retainers are a separate thing.

2. I will have to think more about this.

[lotesse]

Miles cracks that joke at Baz about shopping for livery though? which seems like more than just "you are now a citizen of my district."

[princessofgeeks]

You are right about that, and I think in context it was meant as more of a joke? Because I remember a discussion somewhere in the canon that the counts were limited to 20 armsmen bodyguards as a hedge against them trying to create private militias that could threaten the power of the emporer.

But I would defer to people who are much more expert on the canon than I.

[antisoppist]

Here via network. I agree ACC is homage to Sayers and one in which the woman gets to do the asking and save the hero instead of the other way round, and I get Ekaterin thinking "well I know how it's going to end, and I will give in eventually, so why not just do it now, when my giving in loudly and in public would actually be useful to him" but after that I'd like them to agree on a five year engagement at least before she has to become Countess Vorkosigan, in which she can go off and gain garden design qualifications, set up a small business, or whatever she needs to do By Herself in order to Be Herself. She needs to find out who she is without Tien before she gets swallowed up by Miles, who tends to swallow people.

I'd also like the version in which Tien doesn't handily die and they all have to work that one out.

[legionseagle]

Both of those. Especially the five year hiatus and the degree.

[staranise]

YESSSS.

[melannen]

I think I just assumed that the Vorkosigans (and probably a lot of other Counts?) keep a few armsmens' slots open for emergencies (like the ones Miles is always having.) If that's the case, though, I wonder why we never have Miles getting yelled at for wasting the open spaces on people who are, well, in space all the time. <_< Arde, at least, is implied to be a full Armsman, iirc, and it doesn't really make sense to me that every Vorkosigan could have his own set; that could get out of control really easily.

[oracne]

Sayers influenced a lot of people, so I think she's worth reading just for that. (I imprinted on her work early, but I think it's valuable, objectively.)

[lannamichaels]

Regarding the armsmen, Bujold retcons herself a couple times on them. It is explicit later on (WG?) that armsmen have to be from that district... but Bothari's not, and that never comes up when it should otherwise in WA and Mirror Dance. There's no indication that anyone other than a count can have armsmen; they're the leftovers from the Count's private armies, their armed support is reduced just to 20. There's a fan theory that some put forward that the Count gets 20 and the heir gets 20 also, but that's not really anywhere. So Miles is basically swearing armsmen on behalf of his father.

It's only legal if there are places in the score to do it, and it's possible that there are. We don't ever get a full list of armsmen. It also could be that Miles is banking on the fact that he's unlikely to get caught, that it doesn't completely count. He's not thinking about VorL's law at all.

But it's just not explained.