deep Vorkosigan thought of the day

[jmtorres]

ImpSec had to essentially regard Bothari as an extension of their own protection of Miles, or surely they would have come after Miles at Tau Verde much sooner. Because he slipped ImpSec but good on Beta Colony in Warrior's Apprentice.

Comments

[lannamichaels]

Not only that, not duplicating armsman protection, but there's also the ImpSec agents hidden among the mercenary fleets, who are probably relaying back "don't worry, sir, we've got eyes on Lord Vorkosigan. But, uh, you may not like what he's doing..."

Unless, of course, Elena's an ImpSec agent or Baz is a deep-cover agent. ;)

[jmtorres]

There's just the one, I'm pretty sure? They mention, I think, more than one from multiple national services, but just the one Barrayaran one. But the security net Miles typically lives under...this may be one of those places where the later canon like Civil Campaign is just slightly inconsistent with the early canon, I think. I can't actually totally reconcile Miles's security net with Warrior's Apprentice in my head.

[lannamichaels]

There's a bunch in Warriors Apprentice that I can't reconcile without a lot of "everything going on is extremely illegal", like the stuff about Miles randomly swearing armsmen even though he probably shouldn't be allowed to due to quotas and that they aren't district men (this also comes up later with Mark and Elena, completely illegal, and Elena would know that, because he isn't actually in a legal position at that time which will allow him to accept oaths and there's no indication that there's an open slot for a new arms(wo)man). I also really have difficulties with the timeline, which is almost a year from start to finish, which I find complicated and complicating.

Oh, and I don't remember if the age is mentioned in WA or another book, but I think it comes down to Ezar being a few (four?) years older than Piotr, which makes me go "strange apprenticeship system you have there". But I just stumbled over that recently, so I'm still trying to track down if that's just me misremembering.

[jmtorres]

On the one hand, I'm tempted to go with just "everything is extremely illegal" but as a possible fanwank: does count's heir get a separate twenty count from count proper? That neither Miles nor Mark would have gotten anywhere near filling up having each only recently become count's heir in the relevant parts of the storyline?

Part of the timeline is oh god, interstellar travel takes forever; roundtrip Barrayar-Beta is about three months and I'm trying to figure out how much faster Imperial courier is, because is the long bit the physical distance between wormholes or the greasing through bureaucracy? ARGUABLE.

Let me know if you find a ref on that age thing, I'm curious.

[lannamichaels]

On the one hand, I'm tempted to go with just "everything is extremely illegal" but as a possible fanwank: does count's heir get a separate twenty count from count proper?

hmm, I don't *think* so, mainly because a count's heir gets to swear them, iirc, because he's the count's voice, so he's doing it on the count's behalf. He can't do it on his own name. That was a whole big thing, because Dono didn't have the right to swear armsmen unless he was a count or a confirmed count's heir, and it's still twenty.


Part of the timeline is oh god, interstellar travel takes forever; roundtrip Barrayar-Beta is about three months

it is? oops. I am so bad at figuring this out. I'd thought it was a month each way. And I think it's 3 days in a fast courier between Komarr and Barryar, but seven days otherwise? I don't know. I think it might be a factor also of deliberately taking longer due to stress and strain on the passengers of going through a lot of wormholes very quickly. If you're willing to get severely jumpship, you can get there in X amount of time, but if you don't want to get as sick, it's going to add a couple days travel time.


As for the age thing, Ezar is 77 when he dies, according to the end of Shards. Trying to dig up where Piotr's age is stated. I think it's early 90s, though, which would make him younger than Ezar. Although later Ekaterin says he was nearly a hundred, which would bring Piotr up to being a handful of years older than Ezar. Heh, and now I've started a canon reread of WA to find this. Well, I needed to do something to distract me from my canon reread of Cryoburn to figure out how to make that Komarran plot make any sense...


Edit: Huh, according to this, Ezar's a year or two older than Piotr. It sources Piotr's age to Mirror Dance. "The man was seventy-two standard years old, middle-aged for a galactic, old for harsh Barrayar... His father, Count Piotr, had lived twenty years more than that, a whole other lifetime. " Although the twenty years there could probalby be handwaved as a loose measurement, being anywhere from 20-29.

[jmtorres]

Would you like another fun wrinkle? Is a standard year the very same as a Barrayaran year? I have tried to figure out time-keeping (months? weeks? I've come up with figures for weeks ranging from 4 to 9 Barrayaran days, based on various bits of Civil Campaign alone) in a 26.7hr/day environment and Miles specifically mentions at some point that ship standards in the Dendarii are not equivalent to planetary locals and... yeah.

[lannamichaels]

I have decided that I completely give up of the length of a Barrayaran week/year/month for the time being. So much confusion. One day I will go back to that Mirror Dance->Winterfair Gifts timeline, just to try to keep things straight (Pierre Vorrutyer's death, anyone? also, how long was it between Haroche's arrest and Miles becoming Lord Auditor? At least five days, but possibly under a week?), but otherwise, I give up.

Although a fun backstory bit that comes of doing random timeline stuff: Pym was probably on Vorhartung Security during Miles's treason trial.