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Hmm
"Of the five men with a better right by blood and law to the Imperium of Barrayar than mine, your name heads the list." (Ezar Vorbarra to Aral Vorkosigan, at the end of Shards.)
Aral, Padma, and who else? Arguably you could put Gregor in the list somewhere, Gregor is directly descended from Dorca by his mother (Yuri's sister) while Ezar was Dorca's nephew. Gregor drops below Aral and Padma in precedence under this logic if you allow that having descended from Dorca's son Xav rather than Dorca's daughter puts Aral and Padma ahead. Although I'm fairly certain that rather implies that a younger son beats an elder daughter purely by being male, and I'm not sure how that fits with salic descent criteria. Unless perhaps Aral and Padma being a generation closer to Dorca than Gregor fills the gap?
But so: Aral, Padma, Gregor. And who, pray tell, are the other two men alive at the end of Shards of Honor with a better claim to the crown than Ezar, but no better than Aral's? Not Xav; I'm fairly certain he's dead here and even if he were alive, he'd head the list over Aral certainly.![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
niqaeli and I have posited that Kareen's a Vorbarra cousin--but also that all her male relatives (other than her son) are dead, or she would have had someone to guard her against Vordarian.
Hmm. Later on there is mention of Vortaine, Ivan's elderly heir and so perhaps in theory Padma's heir at this point in the timeline? I wonder how he fits into the geneaology. He must be rather distantly related, a fourth cousin x times removed of Ivan's (and Miles's?) at the nearest, I'd think: not child of one of Xav's daughters, or he'd be as close to Aral as Padma; not descended from a spare sib one generation back, there were only three Imperial sibs there, and they're all accounted for unless you want to argue Yuri's sister was married to a Vortaine before she wed Ezar, re the consolidation of power--which would put our mysterious Vortaine too high in the chain of inheritance. No, I think his closest possible connection would be if he were descended from one of Dorca's sibs. Which arguably might put him on this list in the right place, if the Dorca sib he's child or grandchild of is the elder of the Dorca sib Ezar's the child of.
Aral, Padma, Gregor, Vortaine. Considering how far removed Vortaine is, I suspect I shall never figure out the fifth. Unless it's not a whole separate line to work out and Vortaine has a younger brother. Heh.
Aral, Padma, and who else? Arguably you could put Gregor in the list somewhere, Gregor is directly descended from Dorca by his mother (Yuri's sister) while Ezar was Dorca's nephew. Gregor drops below Aral and Padma in precedence under this logic if you allow that having descended from Dorca's son Xav rather than Dorca's daughter puts Aral and Padma ahead. Although I'm fairly certain that rather implies that a younger son beats an elder daughter purely by being male, and I'm not sure how that fits with salic descent criteria. Unless perhaps Aral and Padma being a generation closer to Dorca than Gregor fills the gap?
But so: Aral, Padma, Gregor. And who, pray tell, are the other two men alive at the end of Shards of Honor with a better claim to the crown than Ezar, but no better than Aral's? Not Xav; I'm fairly certain he's dead here and even if he were alive, he'd head the list over Aral certainly.
niqaeli and I have posited that Kareen's a Vorbarra cousin--but also that all her male relatives (other than her son) are dead, or she would have had someone to guard her against Vordarian. Hmm. Later on there is mention of Vortaine, Ivan's elderly heir and so perhaps in theory Padma's heir at this point in the timeline? I wonder how he fits into the geneaology. He must be rather distantly related, a fourth cousin x times removed of Ivan's (and Miles's?) at the nearest, I'd think: not child of one of Xav's daughters, or he'd be as close to Aral as Padma; not descended from a spare sib one generation back, there were only three Imperial sibs there, and they're all accounted for unless you want to argue Yuri's sister was married to a Vortaine before she wed Ezar, re the consolidation of power--which would put our mysterious Vortaine too high in the chain of inheritance. No, I think his closest possible connection would be if he were descended from one of Dorca's sibs. Which arguably might put him on this list in the right place, if the Dorca sib he's child or grandchild of is the elder of the Dorca sib Ezar's the child of.
Aral, Padma, Gregor, Vortaine. Considering how far removed Vortaine is, I suspect I shall never figure out the fifth. Unless it's not a whole separate line to work out and Vortaine has a younger brother. Heh.
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As a side note, it's not Vordarian a male relative would have been guarding Kareen against: it's Serg. She cultivated Vordarian herself because, well, she didn't have a lot of faith that Ezar would be able to keep his promise to protect her from the grave. (Can't blame the woman for being practical on the issue. For her son's sake as much as her own; Serg on the throne and no one to protect them both would've likely ended badly. For both of them.)
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Right. That. It was totally two in the morning when I posted.
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Vordarian, Vordrozda are obviously candidates for the 'five men'.
My personal theory is that Xav disinherited Aral after the thing with his wife and set up his property entailments so Aral/Miles cannot be Padma/Ivan's heir, even by will. Lots of assumptions there, but I think it logically fits best.
On Vortaine - theoretically, he could be descended from a daughter of a daughter of Dorca, as opposed to a son of a daughter... Descent could also be from upstream, yes. We don't know how many kids Dorca had. Or siblings, for that matter.
It's been mentioned (not in the books, on List) that Xav was likely dubiously legitimate. This changes the inheritance dynamics a bit. He's not descended from Yuri's mom/Serg's grandma (who was Pierre Vorrutyer's close female relative, probably sister).
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No, both, actually. He did indeed wed Yuri's sister to cement his claim, but Dorca's his uncle.
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(http://librarium.narod.ru/bujold/vorkosiverse.txt)
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As for family tree, the texts mention only three Dorca children -- Yuri, Ezar's wife-to-be, and Xav -- and in this particular case, others would more than likely have come up in the texts in the context of Yuri's obsession with his father's descendants.
I am not up to chasing down a reference for Ezar being Dorca's nephew; maybe when my headache has gone down. But, no, we don't know how many sibs Dorca may have had that survived to create cadet branches.
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If Ezar being Dorca's nephew was cited anywhere, it'd be in one of the published hypothetical genealogies (Dreamweaver's Dilemma, Vorkosigan Companion), and it's not. I think you might be confusing Ezar with Dorca, who was not the son of the preceding Emperor and inherited through his mother. Ezar was Dorca's distant cousin, as above stated by Lois.
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Given Ezar as a distant cousin of Dorca, it makes the question of the five men more fascinating: if he's as distant as all that, how is it that there are only five men who have a better claim by blood? Especially as we must allow for Salic descent. Did the civil war really decimate the Vorbarra descendants so badly? Given that Imperial families like to be on at least the medium side... two or three sons, if possible. An heir, a spare, and a spare for the spare. And that's not counting any daughters that might be had in between getting the sons out.