![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
tied him to a tree like saint sebastian
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.
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.
Re: Spoilers in linked review
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.