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Archived Discussion Literature / VorkosiganSaga

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This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.


Scifantasy: Pulled this:

  • Though this troper has never been sure if that was meant to be a gambit or Xanatos Roulette, since part of it ended up involving Cordelia very deeply and there was simply no way Ezar could have predicted her.

...for natter. Though for the record, it was a gambit.

How do I know? If Cordelia hadn't been the captain of the distraction ship, it still would have put the convoy through, giving the Escobarans the plasma mirror shields they needed. (Cordelia being "Vorkosigan's Betan" and not just the captain who followed the plan that bamboozled the blockaders didn't matter until she was a captive.)

Sure, Aral would have had to work harder to get Vorrutyer aboard the flagship with Prince Serg (which is why he describes Bothari's killing Vorrutyer as "simplifying matters"), but he would have managed. So, we get the same "put all the eggs in one basket, then drop the basket" maneuver. Now Aral's in command, and he gets to order the retreat, this time based more on the bare facts ("we can't hurt them, and they're killing us") than the intelligence he claimed to have gotten from Cordelia. The end result would have been the same.

  • Vorrutyer was intended to survive the actual battle, and return to Barrayar "to apologize to the Emperor for the mess, in the full old Japanese sense of the phrase." By killing him early, Cordelia simplified things by clearing the chain of command for Vorkosigan to take control earlier, and thereby reducing the casualties all around.

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