* CanonSue: Cordelia and Aral seem to edge into this territory being almost unanimously admired by the rest of the characters and portrayed as unfailing sources of wisdom. Cordelia at least is still allowed to get things wrong - although nothing too great - as the series progresses, but Aral gets this is a lot. It may be an artifact of mostly seeing him through the viewpoints of his younger relatives, especially Miles, to whom he appears basically perfect.
* CompleteMonster:
** Ges Vorrutyer gets about twenty pages of screen time, and is still a memorable skin-crawler. His creepy obsession with tormenting and torturing his ex-boyfriend Aral takes him from "academically interested in watching a psychologically destroyed Bothari raping Cordelia Naismith on his say-so" to "willing and eager to do the deed himself" in a way that leaves even the normally very calm and balanced Cordelia absolutely terrified. Oh, and guess who broke Bothari in the first place? According to Aral, Ges did it twice: once before Bothari arrived at the Leper Colony, and again after only a few scant months when Bothari was reassigned.
** Prince Serg was considered Ges' ally and equal in awfulness by those in the know, and was bad enough that his father Emperor Ezar was willing to sacrifice thousands of his own troops and the honour of his best people in an OffingTheOffspring BatmanGambit rather than let Serg take the throne. His widow tries to kiss Cordelia's hand in gratitude for her having killed Ges, and later remarks of a suitor that she's had him checked out and he treats his courtesans normally, a point she clearly considers in his favour.
** Baron Ryoval. Possibly the worst in the series, and given the CompleteMonster company he keeps in the Vorkosigan saga, [[TortureTechnician that]] [[BodyHorror is really]] [[UpToEleven saying something.]]
** Commander Cavilo is Miles as a CompleteMonster. Miles' friends [[GenreSavvy take great delight]] in telling Miles this.
** Mark's foster-"father" Galen is [[AbusiveParents another real prize-winner]].
** Ghem-Colonel Millisor and Captain Rau think nothing of brutally torturing innocent bystanders for information, nor of massacring entire families just to make sure there are no inconvenient witnesses; they are even perfectly willing to consider wiping out all life on the planet Athos in order to keep their secrets. And that's just what we learn within about a chapter of meeting them.
* CrazyAwesome:
** Miles at his most manic and inspired arguably slips into this. Perhaps the defining example is the moment where he resolved a hostage situation ''[[ShootTheHostage by threatening to shoot the hostage himself]]''. With a ''plasma cannon''.
-->''Miles had judged the hostage-problem logically insoluble; therefore, clearly the only thing to do was make it Cavilo's problem instead of his own.'' (from ''The Vor Game'')
** There's his verbal sparring with Cavilo earlier as well:
-->'''Elena''': Damn. If I didn't know you, I'd think you were Mad Yuri's understudy. The look on your face . . . am I reading too much into all that innuendo, or did you in fact just connive to assassinate Gregor in one breath, offer to cuckold him in the next, accuse your father of homosexuality, suggest a patricidal plot against him, and league yourself with Cavilo -- what are you going to do for an encore?
--->[[spoiler: Note that Aral(Miles's Father) is probably bi-sexual preferring guys or possibly homosexual with a SingleTargetSexuality exception for Cordelia (Miles's Mother). They are happily married. Miles has not heard about any of this except possibly as rumours from his father's political enemies which he would probably ignore. ]].


* EnsembleDarkhorse: Both "That Idiot" Ivan Vorpatril and Mark Vorkosigan have become intriguing characters due to HiddenDepths, and it doesn't hurt that both love to deflate Miles' ego, and know ''exactly'' what buttons to push - Mark even more so since he ''is'' Miles. Other popular bit players are Emperor Ezar and Emperor Fletchir Giaja, each of whom only appear in one book (''Barrayar'' and ''Cetaganda'' respectively.) Both leave striking impressions of rulers who are cunning and a hint of what Gregor might become when he grows older. Miles is in awe of Fletchir's wisdom, deeming him a WorthyOpponent.
* JerkassWoobie : Ekatrin's first husband. The decay of his marriage is caused by his phyisical difficulties causeing him a low self-esteem and depression that makes him withdraw into himself and neglect his wife. On another planet besides Barrayar he might have been a tolerable husband, but the odd FantasticRacism slowly got to him.
*** Not only did he neglect her, he verbally and psychologically abused her ''constantly''. And although he did have low self-esteem, he was also ridiculously proud and terrified of what he saw to be public embarrassment - enough to make things far more difficult, demoralizing and time-consuming then they needed to be when it came to treating his illness and ''his son's''.

** The unnamed villain of ''Diplomatic Immunity'' caused the (extremely horrible) deaths of four people who had the bad luck to get in [[spoiler:its]] way, to say nothing of trying to make a scapegoat out of Barrayar and create war between it and the Cetagandan Empire - ''plus'' that little business with the [[spoiler:bomb in the concert hall]], the last of which was purely out of spite at having been caused so much trouble by the Quaddies. But their backstory is incredibly poignant; [[spoiler:as a genderless, genetically engineered servant, the ba had to spend its life witnessing all that was denied it - power, wealth, the right to breed - in the form of its younger, perfected sibling, the Emperor of Cetaganda. Then the late Empress, who actually did treat the ba somewhat like a 'real' child, died with her final plans unfulfilled. And, although it tried to start a new empire with itself as both Emperor and Empress, in order to bizarelly fulfil its late Empress' (and mother's) wishes, Miles also rather poignantly has the right of it: "In other words...the ba wanted children. In the only way it could...concieve."]]
-->[Miles] had slain men's bodies, and bore the mark, and knew it. He did not think he'd ever before slain a soul, yet left the body breathing, bereft and accusing.
* MemeticSexGod: Ivan; on Cetaganda at least. Especially impressive in light of the fact that Ivan's Cetagandan competition has been being genetically engineered toward perfection for centuries. It's probably not just his good looks. And this reputation withstands him being dosed with a drug to ensure TheLoinsSleepTonight.
** More accurately, the drug causes the reputation. The attempt to satisfy Cetagandan ghem-ladies while, er, disabled, along with some convenient lies about the Barrayaran Art of Love, make Ivan's name on Cetaganda.
* NightmareFuel / NauseaFuel: In ''Diplomatic Immunity'', [[spoiler: Ker Dubauer's]] lovely selection of Cetagandan bioweapons will leave you ''begging'' for a MercyKill before you [[spoiler: literally boil into a steaming puddle of melted entrails. Oh, and they leave the brain intact so you're conscious up till the last minute.]]
* {{Squick}}:
** Butter bugs before Ekaterin's cosmetic improvements.
-->'''Miles:''' It looks like a cross between a cockroach, a termite, and a... and a... and a ''pustule''.
** Cetagandan ''Kitten Trees.'' For the love of all that's holy, '''do not pick one before they're RIPE.'''
** The [[BodyHorror once-human things]] in Baron Ryoval's research/torture labs.
* WhatMeasureIsANonBadass: Ekaterin comes off as this compared to the rest of Miles's soldier/badass girlfriends, mostly because she's had a quieter, more domestic life. She has a brief AdrenalineMakeover at the end of ''Komarr'' that impresses the hell out of Miles, though, so maybe she just has that potential and never used it.
** Ekaterin acquits herself pretty well toward the end of ''Diplomatic Immunity'' while [[spoiler: Miles is incapacitated]]. It's also made clear in the series that there's more than one kind of badassery, and once out from under Tien and in Miles' orbit Ekaterin starts displaying hers, from proposing to Miles in front of the entire Council of Counts to fox Richars Vorrutyer in ''Civil Campaign'' to [[spoiler: working behind the scenes on both a personal and diplomatic level to make contacting the Cetagandans about the rogue ba easier]] in ''Diplomatic Immunity''. She's also super-classy towards Miles' various paramours and would-be paramours, even having his old flame Taura stand as second during her wedding. And finally, as of ''Captain Vorpatril's Alliance'', her artistic talents - already well established by her previous appearances - are shown to be both impressive (Tej's jaw drops when presented with an example of her work) and very much in demand (Lady Alys Vorpatril mentions ''with pride'' that her rooftop garden was designed by Lady Vorkosigan.)
* {{Woobie}}: Poor, poor Russo Gupta. His BackStory is just pathetic.
* WoobieDestroyerOfWorlds: Mark drifts into this territory several times.
----