Winter's Orbit is a 2021 sci-fi book by Everina Maxwell. An earlier version, The Course of Honour, was published on Archive of Our Own in 2017 as an original work; it has since been taken down.
The Iskat Empire, a galactic empire that manages its vassal planets through treaties and political marriages, faces an incoming problem when the already shaky relationship to its smallest vassal planet, Thea, is weakened by the accidental death of the Iskat Prince Taam, married off to the Thean Count Jainan.
In amidst of a delicate political situation where all of their treaties are under heavy scrutiny by The Resolution, an intergalactic federation that protects their connection, safety, and trade to other galaxies, they need to quickly make a new marriage to solidify their connection.
Enter Prince Kiem, Taam's cousin and a controversial party boy, known for multiple public fumbles, the only member of the large royal family that is free to be married off at such a hurry. Kiem and Jainan are married within minutes of meeting each other, having to now work together to solve the mystery surrounding Taam's death.
Tropes:
- Arranged Marriage: Iskat alliances are sealed through political marriages between the parties involved. Jainan and Kiem are wrapped in a really rushed one to show The Resolution that the treaty between the planets still stand after Jainan's Iskat partner dies.
- Boomerang Bigot: Among certain Theans, Jainan is seem as this, as some believe he has turned his back on Thea, its costumes and its people, in order to pander to the Iskat Empire.
- Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": The wildlife on Iskat seems to be mostly dangerous alien reptiles, but the long-ago colonists gave them names like "doves", "kingfishers", and "sheep". The terraforming on Thea seems to have resulted in a more Earthlike planet with more conventional animals. This gets quite funny when our heroes are attacked by a "bear" that apparently has scales and extra legs, and they get sidetracked into an argument about whether it's actually a bear during the attack.
- Culture Clash: Thea and Iskat have quite a few diferences in culture, which proves to cause some problems for Kiem and Jainan to understand each other's culture. Kiem, for example, has some trouble understanding gender as expressed by Theans since they do not subscribe to the gender system that Iskat has (the acessory-based gender expression). Jainan has spent so long disconnected from Thea that he himself sometimes makes cultural faux-pas of his own culture.
- Foreshadowing: The accident that killed Taam was called a "textbook" case of a malfunction in a machine. Jainan eventually realizes it is too textbook, as he is capable of comparing the logs of failure to an actual textbook, indicating sabotage as the values are too neatly spaced to be a coincidence.
- Non-Heteronormative Society: Same-sex relationships aren't remarked upon and are even used for political marriages. Gender in Iskat is also apparently fluid, as the material of accessories are the way people express their gender (wood for male, flint for female, glass for nonbinary). One of the planets in the Empire don't even has the concept of gender, and it's only in respect to Iskat's traditions that they wear glass trinkets.
- One-Way Visor: The Auditor uses a certain technology that produces a light shimmer in front of his face, making him appear to be a faceless being, though he sees everything normally. His assistants both also have a similar technology, though only on their left eyes.
- Queer Romance: Part of the story is the budding romance between Jainan and Kiem.
- She Is the King: The Emperor is a gender neutral title and the current holder of it is a woman.
- Switching P.O.V.: The story changes between Jainan and Kiem's point of view.
- There Is Only One Bed: Romantic variation. Because it's important to portray the marriage between Jainan and Kiem as as stable and strong as possible, they're forced to live together immediately and share the same bed. Kiem had even attempted to find a way to give Jainan his own space and bedroom, or even to divide his bedroom into two, but he was shot down by Hren.
