History Literature / VorkosiganSaga

*** The first rape being [[spoiler: mentioned in the previous bullet point, as are the reasons Bothari is forgiven]]. Despite the extenuating circumstances there is a surprising level of trust and sympathy given to the rapist by protagonists later.

* AbsentAliens: No ''sapient'' aliens anyway. Several of the planets, most notably Sergyar, have very active ''ecosystems''. There are plenty of odd creatures, but they all are variants of humans created via genetic engineering. The most prominent of these are the quaddies, built to work in zero-gravity environments, who have an extra set of arms in the place of legs. Herms were gengineered as the next step in human evolution, but they ended up being a Betan minority group instead.

* SelfPunishmentOverFailure: In ''Winterfair Gifts'', Armsman Pym puts himself on extended night duty after he failed to detect the poisoned necklace among Ekaterin's wedding gifts.

* ShirtlessScene: Roic gets a memorable one in ''A Civil Campaign'', when he stumbles, half-awake, into the midst of a [[ItMakesSenseInContext interplanetary-arrest-slash-food-fight]] while wearing boots, underwear, a pistol holster, and nothing else. It actually brings the mayhem to a halt, as all the ladies involved stop flinging bug butter at the cops so they can [[FemaleGaze ogle.]]

** The series as a whole seems to have a tendency of having extensibly heroic characters being perpetrators of rape or near rape. While there are always exonerating circumstances some may still be uncomfortable at how forgiven the story can be to the would-be rapists.
*** The first rape being [[spoiler: mentioned in the previous bullet point, as are the reasons Bothari is forgiven]]. Despite the exterminating circumstances there is a surprising level of trust and sympathy given to the rapist by protagonists later.

* CharacterTics: Miles tends to jerk his chin up defensively under stress; more so when younger and more self-conscious about his height. Miles also inherited the habit of putting his fingers together when being stern and incisive from his father, Aral. Mark shares all of Miles' tics, having been conditioned from a young age to impersonate him. In ''A Civil Campaign'', a little time is spent illustrating that [[GenderBender Lord Dono]] is training himself to use more masculine character tics, and echoes one of Aral's[[note]]specifically, [[EdgyBackwardsChairSitting sitting backwards on a chair, with arms folded over the chairback]][[/note]].

* {{Transgender}}: Lady Donna/Lord Dono's sex change to contest a seat on the Council of Counts is a major sub-plot in ''A Civil Campaign''. Dono notes that Betan surgery is so advanced several Betans have changed sex ''a few times'' in their lives; however, he also states has no such plans and is determined to remain a male for the rest of his life.

** When Aral thinks he might be dying in ''Mirror Dance'', he [[FamousLastWords urgently]] tells Mark, "All true wealth is biological." This notion shows up everywhere in the series--whether it be family love, a politically-motivated quest for posterity, the constant ambivalence over the value of altered or unfamiliar lifeforms, the prison camp, [[spoiler:Miles']] death and resuscitation, the Cetagandan desire to refine human genetics, the Betan focus on quality-of-life, the Jacksonian clones, the villains' near-universal obsession with torture and dismemberment, and on and on and on... Human bodies, and whether or not they matter, and why or why not, are the explicit focus of nearly everything that happens in the series.

* FamousLastWords: Vidal Vordarian
-->'''Vordarian:''' What? You're a Betan! [[KilledMidSentence You can't do--]] [''[[OffWithHisHead Bothari chop!]]'']

* InsaneAdmiral: Ges Vorrutyer is a literal example. There are more than a few crazy generals in the Barrayaran combined services too, such as Stanis Metzov. Admiral Naismith also qualifies, but he's CrazyAwesome rather than Crazy Evil.

** Lampshaded by Ekaterin, when she compares her loner, JerkAss late husband Tien to Miles' rowdy collection of CrazyAwesome badasses, geniuses, {{Cool Old Guy}}s, [[CoolOldLady Cool Old Ladies]], [[OfficerAndAGentleman Officers and Gentlemen]]...

* SecretSnackStash: In ''The Vor Game'' one of the trainees at Camp Permafrost has a secret statsh of pastries--not only are they likely much better tasting than the standard chow at the camp, they're almost certainly a care package sent from someone back home. The poor soldier, anxious to keep his secret stash of homemade (and homesickness averting/exacerbating) pastries safe from his ravenous bunkmates, hides them in a drainage culvert. During a rainstorm he apparently becomes worried about their "liquidity", goes to retrieve them, accidentally winds up in the wrong culvert in the darkness and storm, gets himself wedged in, and drowns.

* DancingBear: The series directly invokes the trope more than one. Considering Barrayar is Space Russia, it's apropriate. In ''Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen'', Cordelia discusses Aral's artistic talent with her grandson.[[invoked]]

* DancingBear: The series directly invokes the trope more than one. Considering Barrayar is Space Russia, it's apropriate. In ''Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen'', Cordelia discusses Aral's artistic talent with her grandson.

'''Cordelia:''' He showed them to a few people. Me, Oliver, Simon sometimes. I'm sure quite a few people would have wanted them, but not... not for the drawings themselves. They'd have wanted them because the Lord Regent or the Admiral or the Count had made them, or worse, to sell for money. ''(pause)'' He said it would be like that bicycle-riding bear someone was parading around the district, once. It wasn’t that the bear was good at bicycling, it was just the novelty of a bear riding at all.

* YouCalledMeXItMustBeSerious: Ivan notes when Desplains is happy with him, he calls him "Ivan." When in a neutral mood, he calls him "Vorpatril". When he's really angry, it's a [[TranquilFury dead-level]] ''"Captain"''.

** Possibly just ObliviouslyEvil. Also a case of LethallyStupid. [[spoiler: Regardless of the consequences for Barrayar itself had their plan worked, as Miles points out, the vast majority of Barrayaran space-based military forces were on Komarr's side of the wormhole at the time. If they closed it, the Komarrans would be stuck facing the wrath of ''very'' angry Barrayaran military commanders with a fleet of warships at their disposal. Though to be fair, their original plan was to close the wormhole during the Emperor's wedding, when the vast majority of the fleet would be on the the Barrayaran side of the wormhole]].

** Vorkosigan House in Vorbarr Sultana may be considered representative of the species: 4 residential floors for extended family and retainers, 2 underground service levels, extensive library, ballroom, dining room with space for nearly 100 guests if they don't mind a little crowding. It does have some modern amenities such as a lift tube (thanks to a pregnant Cordelia insisting on one), but they're discrete and don't interfere with the architectural style at all. The tangle field is almost invisible, to the dismay of poor Zap the cat.
** Vorkosigan House in the district Capital of Hassadar also fits, even though much of the building is occupied by administrative offices.

** downplayed for Miles - compared with the above, his discovery that his parents' marriage, while happy and loving, hadn't been exactly standard, doesn't qualify as more than AmazinglyEmbarrassingParents.
** completely inverted for Mark, who discovers in ''Mirror Dance'' that his father, while not perfect, was far from being the DepravedBisexual DarthVaderClone that Mark had been brought up to believe.

** Averted with Jole, whom Cordelia informs that ''everyone'' notices that he can drink anyone under the table. He does get a buzz from a GargleBlaster on his 50th birthday.

* TheCasanova: Ivan, at least during his peak years as a junior officer. He later shades into LookingForLoveInAllTheWrongPlaces when he realizes there may not be any single women of his class ''left'' if he doesn't snag one soon. Though, given his reasons for being BrilliantButLazy it might have helped his situation just as well to have a morganatically lower-class wife.

* DowryDilemma: Mark has the difference between pride-price and dowry explained when he offers to pay Koudelka for continuing to date his daughter.

* LoveInformant: ''A Civil Campaign'' has an example of the accidental variant: Ekaterin learns that Miles is in love with her when Simon Illyan, who has memory problems, introduces the subject in conversation because he's forgotten she doesn't already know.

** Happens again in ''cryoburn'' when miles has an idiosyncratic response to whatever drug his would-be captors tried to sedate him with. It ends with him hallucinating that the people he was talking to were [[InsectoidAliens giant butter bugs]] and being presumed to be an addict.

** Cetagandans value artisty, even in their bioweapons.

*** The second example would be [[spoiler:the first time Drou and Koudelka have sex]]. While it's ultimately made clear that both parties wanted sex the fact that one party didn't [[QuestionableConsent wait for consent]] and was so forceful that he feared he had raped her means that he was [[MoralLuck lucky]] his partner ended up desiring sex or he would have been a rapist. Though the women in question makes it quite clear that [[ActionGirl there's no way he could have forced himself on her even if he weren't crippled, and she is actually ''insulted'' the man was thinking she wasn't giving him a wonderful gift.

* InTheBlood: Gregor is afraid of this because of how insane, inbred, and generally RoyallyScrewedUp much of his family was. Finding out how evil his father was almost [[DrivenToSuicide drove him to suicide]], though that was far from being the only issue.

* FeministFantasy: Very understated but there. A good chunk of the books take a non-critical look at a patriarchy that is increasingly shaped by women behind the men, as it slowly acclitimizes itself to the rest of the galaxy. The introduction of the uterine replicator accelerates the process, while more women join the armed services in a military-oriented society. That said, traditional values are still incorporated into the new paradigm where possible, leading to femininity not being exclusive to the ActionGirl.

* GuileHero: Miles most prominently, but really [[BigBadassFamily the whole Vorkosigan family]] qualifies, each with their own signature brand of guile:

* DirtyBusiness

* DidntThinkThisThrough: All the patriarchal Vor back in Aral and Cordelia's day who used galactic technology to choose the gender of their children, overwhelmingly favouring sons with the odd daughter thrown in. You can do the maths; they certainly didn't. As Miles muses,

* ShroudedInMyth: [=ImpSec=] is shrouded in myth not only in Barrayar but elsewhere. In Jackson's Whole they are apparently a bogeyman, chiefly due to a single [=ImpSec=] agent taking down ''all'' of House Ryoval.

*** The second example would be [[spoiler:the first time Drou and Koudelka have sex]]. While it's ultimately made clear that both parties wanted sex the fact that one party didn't [[QuestionableConsent wait for consent]] and was so forceful that he feared he had raped her means that he was [[MoralLuck lucky]] his partner ended up desiring sex or he would have been a rapist. Though the women in question makes it quite clear that [[ActionGirl there's no way [[spoiler:Kou could have forced himself on her even if he weren't crippled]], and she is actually ''insulted'' the man was thinking she wasn't giving him a wonderful gift.

*** The second example would be [[spoiler:the first time Drou and Koudelka have sex]]. While it's ultimately made clear that both parties wanted sex the fact that one party didn't [[QuestionableConsent wait for consent]] and was so forceful that he feared he had raped her means that he was [[MoralLuck lucky]] his partner ended up desiring sex or he would have been a rapist. Though the women in question makes it quite clear that [[ActionGirl there's no way [[spoiler: Kou could have forced himself on her even if he weren't crippled]], and she is actually ''insulted'' the man was thinking she wasn't giving him a wonderful gift.
*** The third instance involves [[spoiler: Mark]] who starts to force himself on someone who was mentally a child [[YoungerThanTheyLook in an adult's body]], and who doesn't understand what is being done to her. The would-be rapist is only stoped due to [[spoiler: his own inability to perform due to past psychological issues owing to his own experience of being raped]], this time the perpetrator does get a clear WhatTheHellHero response from the immeditae witnesses who treats it as hitting the MoralEventHorizon, but Cordelia is quite forgiving about the incident, and ultimately the would-be rapist ends up being treated as a protagonist deserving of a happy ending.