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

[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)