History Literature / VorkosiganSaga

* WretchedHive: Jackson's Whole is a planet-sized version.

** Lady Donna always harbored a deep resentment toward Richars for him attempting to rape her when she was a ''pre-teen'', but when he managed to get her brother to die of a heart attack without heirs, her rage went nuclear -- without actually showing it. Ekaterin states her sex change was backed by a ''lot'' of rage; Miles replies she never suffered fools lightly.

* WomanScorned: Exiled Lady ghem Estif offered to sell her brooch, filled with invaluable genetic data about wartime Barrayarans, to Cetaganda. Cetaganda offered ten million Betan dollars for it. However, when the exchange was to be made, she destroyed it in front of the haut Lady who came to purchase it.
-->'''Tej:''' Grandmama was really incensed at being culled from the ''haut'', back when.
-->'''Ivan:''' That was a hundred years ago! She's held this grudge for over a century?
-->'''Tej:''' It's... it's a girl thing. Ghem Estif-Arqua style.

** The term "charming understatement" in ''Captain Vorpatril's Alliance''.

* DeathOfAThousandCuts: A literal example in the execution of Mad Emperor Yuri.

* NotSoDifferent:

* HeadsIWinTailsYouLose: A romantic [[WinWinEnding WinWin]] version of the trope, as Tej made a bet with Ivan as to whether an old Cetagandan bunker had any treasure left; the winner got to request anything of the loser. Tej reveals that had she won, she'd request she stay with Ivan on Barrayar, when Ivan had already decided he wanted her to stay. (Tej did win the bet.)

** When Silvy Vale was relocated, the graveyard where she was buried was flooded under a new lake.
--->'''Harra:''' We didn't move my mother's grave, of course. I left her down there. Let even her burial be buried, no burnings for her.

* UnPerson: [[spoiler:Mara Mattulich's]] punishment for infanticide was to be declared dead before the law, losing all property to the mother of the child [[spoiler:(her own daughter)]], be barred from entering into any legally binding agreement (contract, will, etc.), and to never have an offering burned in memorial after death. Miles had to decide whether to execute or imprison for life an old woman or let her go. While from a legal standpoint his punishment was meaningless, the symbology was clear, and all of the older residents shuddered while [[spoiler:Mara]] herself growled "Some leniency". [[spoiler:When Miles returns to the same village ten years later, Mara has died in the interim but Harra, her daughter, deliberately ''didn't'' move her grave when the town dgraveyard was purposefully flooded due to a new dam, burying her utterly.]]

* TakeAThirdOption: In "The Mountains of Mourning" [[spoiler:Miles has to punish Mara -- who murdered her granddaughter for having a harelip, and who killed two out of four of her own children (the one with too many fingers and toes and the one with a bulgy head; the other two were born dead) for mutations when she was younger, albeit forced to do so by her own mother -- in a way that will also discourage other infanticides happening in the future. The obvious course, and the only suitable punishment anyone can think of, is to execute her...but no one really wants to kill an old woman who's as much a victim as a sinner, however hateful she is; and her death won't send the necessary message. Miles instead declares her ''legally'' dead, removing her right to own anything or to leave her village, and leaving her entirely dependant on the charity of Harra, the daughter that she wronged. He also forbids anyone to mourn her or burn a funeral offering after she dies, meaning "she will die as the childless do, without remembrance." To the older generations of the hill folk of Barrayar (for whom DueToTheDead is serious business) this is worse, and more effective, than a simple execution.]]

* UnPerson: [[spoiler:Mara's]] punishment for infanticide was to be declared dead before the law, losing all property to the mother of the child [[spoiler:(her own daughter)]], be barred from entering into any legally binding agreement (contract, will, etc.), and to never have an offering burned in memorial after death. Miles had to decide whether to execute or imprison for life an old woman or let her go. While from a legal standpoint his punishment was meaningless, the symbology was clear, and all of the older residents shuddered while [[spoiler:Mara]] herself growled "Some leniency".

->''"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself [...] Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards."''

* ItWasAGift: Mile's bag of Cetagandan scalps. Grotesquely fascinating, but not the sort of thing to display on the coffee table.

* ItIsDehumanizing: Both the genderless Cetagandan ba and at least some of the Betan hermaphrodites actually prefer the term ''it'', although for drastically different reasons. Bel Thorne prefers it because Beta Colony is so amazingly egalitarian that they can use that pronoun without being dehumanizing, while most people Bel encounters are put off-guard. The Cetagandan haut females call the ba slaves and use them as genetic experiment testbeds, which seems like a straighter use of the trope -- until we find that the haut use everyone, themselves included, as such, and that the ba are as much siblings as slaves.

** [[spoiler: The villain of ''Diplomatic Immunity'' very nearly gets away with multiple murder, stealing the uterine replicators of Rho Ceta, and instigating a war between Barrayar and the Cetagandan Empire. But they couldn't plan for a) Russo Gupta managing to survive the contagion they infected him and his friends with and b) said Gupta managing to track them down, raring for revenge, thus alerting Barrayar and, crucially, ''Miles'' to what's really going on, and well as unwittingly giving him a hint of how he can survive bioweapon when the villain infects him with it as well.]]

->''"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself. Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards."''

* HomosexualReproduction: Mainly a case of TechnologyMarchesOn. This was not considered possible in older novels, hence the need for ovarian cultures in ''Ethan of Athos''. But in more recent novels it has been made very clear that reproductive science (advanced by the Betans naturally) ''can'' produce a viable zygote from two same-sex parents, which is then typically brought to term in a uterine replicator. [[spoiler: Cordelia even offers Oliver Jole, Aral's male partner, the opportunity to use frozen sperm from Aral along with denucleated eggs from her combined with his own sperm to produce offspring that would genetically have both him and Aral as fathers, though technically Aral, supplying the X chromosome, would be the ''mother'']].
** Note that the Athosians are an isolationist backwater colony that seems to have been founded within a few decades of the Uterine Replicator's invention, with widespread censorship of any off-world media (including, it appears, scientific journals for all but a tiny minority of security-cleared citizens). It's not too implausible for their reproductive science to be lagging behind. They also believe in LamarckWasRight, and choose ovarian cultures as sources for specific traits (scientific proclivity, martial ability, and so on.)

* [[HasTwoMommies Has Two Daddies]]: Genetically, Jole and Aral's sons will have two fathers, albeit one who died at least four years before their conception. Aral is technically the "mother", since his sample supplies the "X" chromosomes.

* [[HasTwoMommies Has Two Daddies]]: Genetically, Jole and Aral's sons will have two fathers, albeit one who died at least four years before their conception.

** In the same book, Ivan on looking at the {{WesternAnimation/Gargoyles}} on Cockroach Central, is reminded of their appearance in "a short-lived children's animated show."

->''"The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart."''
-->-- '''Miles Vorkosigan'''

->''"Boy, can she write!"''
-->-- '''Creator/AnneMcCaffrey''', [[https://www.goodreads.com/questions/1412558-curious-about-blurbs-are-they-done-at-the whose blurb appears on nearly every book]]

-->'''Vorthys:''' We think of General Vorparadijs as a sort of ''Auditor Emeritus''. Respected, but we don't make him come to meetings anymore.