Vorkosigan Saga / Tropes J to Z

Vorkosigan Saga | Tropes A to I | Tropes J to Z

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Tropes J

• Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique:
  • Cordelia is at first appalled by the notion, but later admits that it has its uses. Such as when you are in a tearing hurry.
  • Bothari, to Miles' lasting regret.
• Jumped at the Call: The Undying Loyalty of the military caste of Barrayar has its benefits. To prevent the Escobaran fleet from following the retreating Barrayaran fleet, a ship self-destructed to temporarily shut down the wormhole. According to Aral, the pilot jumped at the chance for a Heroic Sacrifice. When Gregor was missing, a lookalike was told he would be standing in for Gregor due to an assassination plot. Again, said man jumped at the chance.
  Only on Barrayar would pulling a loaded needler start a stampede toward one.
• Just Following Orders: Subverted. During the years he served as Gregor's Regent and later Prime Minister, Aral himself personally gave a lecture to last year students in Barrayar's military academy about what to do when given an illegal order.
• Just Friends:
  • Galeni gets friend zoned in a major way by Laisa in Memory, and it nearly gets him cashiered for treason, though it's not because of any action he takes; the antagonist frames him for a crime and uses the breakup as Galeni's motivation.
  • Miles himself gets told by Elena that she's fond of Miles, but there's no way she'd ever get into a serious relationship with him. "He just takes you over" is a common complaint of Miles' potential partners.

Tropes K

• Karmic Death: Tien suffocates to death horribly when his mask runs out of oxygen. He was shown earlier in the book yelling at his wife for telling him to check on his oxygen reserves.
• Keep It Foreign: Russian translation, big time. In the original, Russophone influence pops out at every corner, starting with Piotr Vorkosigan, Yuri, Ludmilla Koudelka and ending with... well, the list would be too long to even contemplate. It got almost completely wiped out in translation. Ekaterin, for example, became Katriona. Damn, they even managed to disguise Ivan... as Ivan. Using the fact that it's also a popular Scottish name, they've changed the pronunciation from Russian "Иван" (pronounced "Ee-`van") to British "Айвен" (pronounced "`Ai-ven"). The "fool-hero" reference was lost in process. That probably was because there wasn't much market for "nativist" SF in early '90s Russia, and everything foreign sold better.
• Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: Olivia Koudelka demonstrates that Drou — former personal bodyguard to the Emperor — was passing more than just tips on baking cakes to her daughters as they grew up. Dressed in an evening gown, she responds to a attempted assault on a member of her party by first taking out one mook in hand-to-hand combat, then using a captured stunner to incapacitate two more. All in a matter of minutes in a crowded, poorly-lit parking garage.
• Kick the Dog: More like Drown The Puppy. Lord Richars' reaction to Lady Donna fighting off his attempt at raping her. When she was twelve years old.
• Kill Me Now, or Forever Stay Your Hand:
  • In Shards of Honor, Aral Vorkosigan deals with a mutineer by giving him a gun and sitting down with his back to him. "I told him I couldn't work with a man who made my shoulder blades itch, and this was the last chance I was going to give him for instant promotion." Subverted in that Aral admits he didn't know if it would work, and the reason he did it was that he was so damned tired he didn't care if he killed him or not.
  • In Mirror Dance, he constantly leaves himself completely open to being killed by Mark. Again, the message is "if I can't trust you, kill me anyway." Done in a far more subtle manner, of course.
• Killed Mid-Sentence:
  • Vidal Vordarian, as seen in Famous Last Words.
  • Miles himself. It didn't stick.
  • The tale of an officer in the Cetagandan War, whose last words were purported to be, "Don't worry lieutenant, their guns can't possibly hit us at this ran--"
• Killing for a Tissue Sample: Averted in "Labyrinth", where Miles is sent on a mission to retrieve a sample stored in the muscle of a genetically engineered super-soldier. He's given a lethal injection for the super-soldier, but it's unrelated to fetching the sample. Rather, the scientist believes that Miles won't help rescue the said super-soldier and death is more merciful than what she faces.
• King on His Deathbed: The magnificent, manipulative Emperor Ezar, who manipulates events from his deathbed and beyond.
  Aral: We're talking about a man who can make even his own death serve his political purposes, remember? And if there's some way to govern Barrayar from beyond the grave, you can bet he's figured it out.
• Knight Errant: Cordelia diagnoses Miles as thinking of himself like this. After a while, Mark is forced to agree.

Tropes L

• Lady of War: Based on her exploits up to and including the Shopping Trip, Cordelia qualifies, but would be appalled at being so named.
• Ladykiller in Love: Ivan and Byerly in Captain Vorpatril's Alliance.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Bujold just loves this trope. Miles in particular takes great joy in devising and delivering these sorts of comeuppances.
  "Dowries?...Dowries?!"
• The Law of Conservation of Detail: Bujold is a absolute master of this. If she mentions it it's important.
• Layman's Terms: The "little bug that eats things" from Memory.
• The Leader: Of the characters whose leadership styles we get a good look at:
  • Aral: Type II (Levelheaded) with strong elements of type IV (Charismatic).
  • Cordelia: Type II.
  • Miles: Type I (Mastermind) and Type IV in roughly equal measure. Early in his career, he had Type III (Headstrong) tendencies, but grew out of it as he gained (often painful) experience. An odd part of Miles' charisma (in his Naismith persona) is the notion that he will always think of a way for an otherwise outmatched force to not just win, but win resoundingly, so his Type I feeds the Type IV.
  • Simon Illyan: Type I and Type II.
  • Gregor: Type II and Type IV. Given who was his Regent and who guided his early education, this is hardly surprising.
• Leave Behind a Pistol: Vor who commit treason are usually offered this as an alternative to the official punishment: public starvation. Miles asks Illyan if he ought to do this for Illyan's betrayer Lucas Haroche; Illyan says he would rather the man live through every eternal minute of his trial and punishment.
• Lighter and Softer: Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, after Cryoburn (although it's set chronologically earlier).
• Limited Advancement Opportunities: When Miles becomes an Imperial Auditor, he mentions that all advancement within the Auditors is by seniority (Though his extreme youth relative to all the others means that he has a good chance of making First Auditor one day). However, at this point rank advancement doesn't really mean anything — an Auditor on assignment outranks everyone except the Emperor, and seniority between Auditors only matters on the rare occasions when multiple Auditors are working the same case — and even then it just defines who gets stuck with the lion's share of the paperwork.
• Lipstick-and-Load Montage: When Miles for the first time dons his house uniform and all his medals in Memory.
• Lock-and-Load Montage: Chapter 5 of Mirror Dance opens with a 4-paragraph description of Mark getting into Naismith's combat armor.
• Locked in the Bathroom: In the novel Komarr, Nikki locks himself in the bathroom and refuses to go to school the morning after he learns that he's a mutant; Miles ends up talking him out. This gets a callback in A Civil Campaign when Nikki locks himself in his Uncle's study.
  Ekaterin: I only know one man who was ever able to talk Nikki out of a locked room. And he isn't here.
• Loners Are Freaks:
  • Ekaterin compares Tien's friendless state with Miles's many and interesting friends.
  • A pivotal point in Mirror Dance occurs when Mark, who has been trying — and failing — to be Miles all on his own, and is definitely well on his way to being a freak, finally figures out that not even Miles tries to be Miles on his own; he gets his friends to help. Or, if they don't want to help, he dragoons them into doing it anyway.
• Longevity Treatment:
  • There's a common rumour that Beta Colony has one which it's not sharing with any other planets. It's not true, but Miles takes advantage of the rumour to explain how Admiral Naismith looks so young for his rank and presumed experience.
  • Mark is financing the Durona Group's research into developing one, as part of his campaign against the Jackson Whole clone trade. As of Cryoburn they are beginning to start human trials on a treatment that will revert someone from "old aged" to "middle aged."
• Loophole Abuse:
  • In "The Borders of Infinity", the Cetagandan Empire exploits loopholes in the "Interstellar Judiciary Commission" rules regarding treatment of prisoners:
    • So many square meters per inmate? An opaque, luminous force shield encloses that much open ground and field latrines.
    • No periods of darkness for over twelve hours? No darkness at all, ever.
    • Water? Everyone gets a cup along with their clothes and a bedroll (the taps by the latrines work most of the time).
    • Access to medical personnel? Plenty of medics mixed in with the general population, but the rules mention nothing about medicines or equipment.
    • Food? A pile of IJC-compliant ration bars (one per inmate) appears at a random location on the camp perimeter twice per day. Each bar will provide half of the daily requirement of calories, protein and nutrients. And there's nothing in the guidelines about distribution, either — let the prisoners distribute it themselves.
    • No forced labor? Nothing to do at all.
    • No solitary confinement for more than 24 hours? <insert bitter laughter here>
    • No beatings or rapes by guards? No guards....
  • The legendary 2,000 chefs of Lord Vorloupulous were an attempt to pull this off against Emperor Dorca Vorbarra's decree that each Vor house could only have 20 sworn armsmen. It did not work.
  • Another historical Barrayaran example: "If a horse's ass can be a Count, why not the entire horse?" Described in story as a Take That! to the Count's human heir, who had a political split with the Count. The appointment was confirmed by a rump majority, made up of friends of the Count. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on your point of view) "Lord Midnight" died before the Count, and by that time he had patched up his disagreement with his son. The funniest thing about Lord Midnight is that he's an important precedent; his case established that a Count may designate an heir who is not actually a blood descendant.
  • In The Warrior's Apprentice, this is Miles's favorite gambit, loosely interpreting historical and legal precedents for his and his friends' benefit.
• Losing a Shoe in the Struggle: In Barrayar, when the boy-Emperor Gregor is brought by loyalist forces to Vorkosigan Surleau in the wake of Vordarian's coup attempt he is missing one of his shoes. A couple of chapters later he explains that he lost his shoe in the struggle between his mother and the soldiers who were trying to take him—Princess Kareen grabbed for her son, and wound up with only a shoe. In the climax of the book, it turns out to be quite important that Cordelia is able to produce the mate to the lost shoe (because of course Kareen kept her son's other shoe).
• Lost Colony: The planet of Barrayar, which was rediscovered only eighty years prior to the start of the main series timeline.
• Love Across Battlelines: Aral and Cordelia when they first meet in Shards of Honor.
• Love at First Sight:
  • Aral considered marrying Cordelia from the moment he first met her, and cemented his decision after about two or three hours of knowing her. (Bear in mind that, during this time, he watched her throwing up in the mud and helped her to dig a grave.) He calls this love at first sight. Cordelia, as a Betan born-and-raised citizen, and also a woman in uniform, calls it his sub-conscious recognising a solution to all the hangups of his bisexuality that Barrayarran culture has only exacerbated.
  • Drou takes an instant interest in Kou, despite his being seriously handicapped (which on Barrayar at the time made him almost an Un-person.) Kou acts like an idiot in response until Cordelia straightens the Beta Couple out.
• Love Cannot Overcome: Ellie Quinn loves Miles but is horrified by the thought of becoming Lady Vorkosigan. This becomes a recurring theme for his love interests, and Miles eventually jests (with more than a little truth behind the jest) that he has given up on trying to get a woman to follow him to Barrayar, and has now decided to find a woman who already loves Barrayar and focus on getting her to love him.
• Love Informant: A Civil Campaign has an example of the accidental variant: Ekaterin learns that Miles is in love with her when Simon Illyan lets it slip, not knowing that Miles had neglected to inform Ekaterin of this romantic campaign (Miles was about to warn him to keep quiet about it, but was interrupted by other people). Illyan is rather distressed after the fact in his own understated way, both due to accidentally revealing Miles' machinations and due to his memory problems making him unsure if Miles failed to warn him or he had in fact forgotten.
• Love Makes You Crazy. Miles, in a big way. The things he did to try to win Elena's hand, and then Ekaterin. From a certain point of view, Miles creates the whole vast edifice of the Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet just so that Elena can fulfill her longing to be a soldier — or, in a different sense of love, to prove his worth to his grandfather.
• Loving a Shadow: Ellie Quinn was in love with Admiral Miles Naismith, not Lieutenant Miles Vorkosigan. This dichotomy would eventually scuttle their relationship.

Tropes M

• Mad Artist:
  • Cetagandans show shades of this (the infamous Kitten Tree from Cetaganda comes to mind). Even the haut bioweapons are elegant creations.
  • Emperor Yuri's architect, who built ImpSec HQ (among other structures). The building is so ugly it's become a Running Gag on Barrayar.
• Make It Look Like an Accident:
  • Ethan was going to be force-fed alcohol and tossed over a railing before Elli showed up. This appears to be Millisor's MO, as his later plan is to strip Ethan and Elli and put them in a flex tube, then evacuate the air.
  Ethan: God the Father, the Population Council will think I was depraved enough to make love to a woman in a flex tube!
  Elli: Gods forbid that Admiral Naismith would think I was stupid enough to make love to anything in a flex tube!
  • Star brags to Tej in Captain Vorpatril's Alliance that she managed to do this to the bounty hunters sent to capture her and her family.
• Malicious Slander. Several cases, including Aral Vorkosigan's first marriage, and Miles when he was accused of killing Ekaterin's husband Tien. Aral gave Miles a salient piece of advice regarding reputation and honor:
  Aral: Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.
• Mama Bear:
  • Cordelia, especially in Barrayar. In Gentlemen Jole and the Red Queen, Cordelia is extremely overprotective of her new daughter to the point of leaving her nanny in tears, thanks to her never having a healthy baby. She eventually gets better.
  • Ekaterin is generally the poster child for emotional reserve, but harass her son Nikki and you may leave with a broken nose.
• Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: This trope hits the Trope Breaker during the course of the saga for Barrayar, thereby producing complications of its own.
• Marital Rape License: While this doesn't seem to be legal on present Barrayar as a whole (given one side character is mentioned as hitting her husband over the head and locking him out of their bedroom), it's implied Crown Prince Serg was a big fan of it. Princess Kareen (initially) thinks Vordarian is a decent guy because he "uses his courtesans normally." There's a reason Kareen is an in-universe Woobie.
• Marriage Before Romance: Ivan and Tej, though they had chemistry even before their emergency Citizenship Marriage.
• Meaningful Name: Miles means soldier (Per comments from the author, the name was picked at random and just worked out); Ivan is the stereotypical fool-hero in Russian folklore, their Jack equivalent.
  • "Barrayar" means the planet is named for/ruled by the Vorbarra family, much as Sergyar was named in honor of Prince Serg. The Vor prefix indicates one is a noble ("warrior caste," Miles would say) and apparently means "thief" in Russian — a happy coincidence for Bujold, since she had already described the first Vor as being the early emperors' tax collectors and enforcers, and given civilian attitudes toward such...
• Meaningful Rename:
  • Miles' name was supposed to be Piotr Miles Vorkosigan, named after his paternal and maternal grandfathers. When Count Piotr Pierre Vorkosigan disowns him (after trying to kill the infant), Cordelia renames him Miles Naismith Vorkosigan, solely after her father.
    • For many years, Mark was known only by the name of the man he was cloned to replace, Miles Naismith Vorkosigan. When they met, Miles gave him the name "Mark Pierre Vorkosigan," following the traditional Barrayaran pattern for a Count's second son.
  • The dropping of "Provisional" from the Dendarii Free Mercenaries.
  • Miles giving Taura her name on their first meeting.
• Medal of Dishonor: The Imperial Military Academy gives out armbands to commemorate how many times a cadet has been ruled to have been killed or wounded in an exercise. Thus their absence is a badge of honor... and a sign that the instructors will be trying harder next time.
• Medieval Stasis: Barrayar was stuck in this for centuries in the Time of Isolation, and some rural areas are still recovering. In some places the recovery is being delayed on purpose — in Barrayar, a former soldier of Piotr's who retired from the military to be a mailman mentioned that the Count was deliberately delaying the full transition of the postal service from horseback deliveries to more advanced methods in his district until the delivery riders already in service could retire with a full pension.
• Meet the In-Laws: The first half of Captain Vorpatril's Alliance is largely about Tej meeting Ivan's family, starting with disreputable cousin Byerly and ending with Ivan's stepbrother, Emperor Gregor. The second half is largely about Ivan meeting Tej's family, after they turn out not to be dead after all.
• MegaCorp: GalacTech is prominent in Falling Free and is still in business as of the latest book. Maker of, among other things, ships, living furs, and fungoid tunnel borers. It's not portrayed as inherently evil, though the initial classification of quaddies as "experimental tissue cultures" — and never getting around to reclassifying them as children — leads to trouble when the Cay Project goes from being an asset to a liability.
  • It is noteworthy that GalacTech was introduced primarily as a construction company, building large space stations, etc, with bioengineering as a sideline that many in the corporation's upper echelons would have preferred to drop. By Miles' time, the only branch of the company that ever gets menitioned is GalacTech Bioengineering.
• Men Don't Cry: Mirror Dance. Ivan after hearing about Miles' death. Mark notices his tears, but says nothing about them.
• The Men First: In "The Borders of Infinity" Miles assures the Marilacan P.O.W.'s he's rescuing that he will be going up in the last shuttle.
  Tung: Have I expressed myself yet, Sir, on what a dumbshit piece of grandstanding that is?
  Miles: Eloquently, with your eyebrows, a little while ago.
• Mental Fusion: Wormhole-jump pilots have implants that let them neurally link with their ships. It affects them similar to LSD, in which they can transform into colors and taste sounds.
• Merchant Prince: The system of Jackson's Whole is run by a set of corrupt merchant princes, including Baron Ryoval, Baron Bharaputra, and Baron Fell. (The title is honorary.) The only reason they're not considered criminals is that they have all the power, and no other system can enforce its rules on Jackson's Whole.
  • The Komarran oligarchs, such as the Toscanes, are a much more respectable version.
• Messianic Archetype:
  • This is a talent that the entire Vorkosigan clan seems to have. In The Warrior's Apprentice, Miles starts out with an about-to-be-junked spaceship, an alcoholic washed-up pilot, and a cowardly deserter of an engineer; uses them to capture a bunch of total screw-up mercenaries and turns them all into a crack special-ops team by sheer force of will and making them believe that they can do it. As the former alcoholic washed up-pilot says:
    "Your forward momentum is going to lead all your followers over a cliff someday." He paused, beginning to grin. "On the way down, you'll convince 'em all they can fly." He stuck his fists in his armpits, and waggled his elbows. "Lead on, my lord. I'm flapping as hard as I can."
  • Brother Miles uplifts 10,000 naked prisoners of war, bringing them bodily into the high places of the air.
  • Explicitly referenced in The Warrior's Apprentice:
    Elena: They asked me to come. You haven't been letting anyone else in, remember? They've been pestering me for days. They act like a bunch of ancient Christians asking the Virgin Mary to intercede with God.
    Miles: No, only with Jesus. God is back on Barrayar.
  • Leo Graf in Falling Free, after he realizes the quaddies could be saved by clever engineering:
    The solution had been lying around him in pieces all this time, invisible until he'd changed. He grinned dementedly, possessed. He yielded himself up to it without reservation. All. All. There was no limit to what one man might do, if he gave all, and held back nothing.
    ...
    "Or," Leo raised his voice, "you can take your lives into your own hands. Come with me and put all your risks up front. The big gamble for the big payoff. Let me tell you"—he gulped for courage, mustered megalomania—for surely only a maniac could drive this through to success—"let me tell you about the Promised Land. . . ."
• Military Maverick: Miles, in a big way. The Vor Game starts with him being assigned to Kyril Island because the Academy staff feel he needs to learn how to be a subordinate instead of maneuvering himself into charge. He ends up getting his commander discharged from the Imperial Service. By the end of the book, he is reporting directly to Simon Illyan simply because he makes such a habit of driving his superiors nuts that Illyan cannot, in good conscience, inflict him on anybody else. At one point in The Vor Game, Miles has three different commanding officers (in different contexts) locked up in neighboring cells in the brig. Contrary to the trope, Miles does eventually get himself discharged in ill standing and does not get his commission back, even after he saves the day once again. Granted, Miles being the sort to "fall into a cess pool and come up with a handful of gold," it works out fine.
• Military Moonshiner: While they're never shown, at one point after leaving ImpSec Miles notes that in his ten-year military career, he hadn't once seen a spaceship that didn't have an unauthorized still hidden on it somewhere.
• Military Science Fiction: The series has an interesting place in that subgenre. While there is military action, and the books are published by Baen Books, they differ in that Bujold and her characters are social-liberal, whereas the genre is typically hard line conservative, and atypically, rather than being in the direction of a Super-Soldier, Miles is a Non-Action Guy (or at least not physically strong).
• Mind Rape: During Mirror Dance, Mark is captured by Ry Ryoval, who uses multiple forms of physical torture (beatings, drugs, and force feeding to start) as a diagnostic for the form of mental torture to apply to Mark.
• Minor Crime Reveals Major Plot: Sometimes it seems as if Miles' career is built of these.
  • Miles' first official ImpSec assignment in The Vor Game was to assist the officer assigned to find out what was going on in the Hegen Hub and possibly get the Dendarii/Oseran Mercenaries out of the area. Then he encounters a certain Greg Bleakman in a Jacksonian detention facility...
  • Komarr starts with the investigation of a collision between an in-system ore freighter and an orbital mirror, then detours to a modest embezzlement scheme...
  • The mess that sends Miles to Quaddiespace in Diplomatic Immunity (Missing Person case that escalates to a small armed clash with severe diplomatic repercussions) is nothing compared with what unfolds once Miles discovers what one of the Komarran trade fleet ships is carrying. As it turns out, the "Minor Crime" was actually intended to bring the Major Plot to light, but not exactly as the perpetrator intended...
  • Miles has solved the mystery that sent him to Kibou-daini by the 1/3 point in Cryoburn. He spends the rest of the book uncovering a major local conspiracy that was only tangentially connected to his original case (and was completely outside of his jurisdiction as a Barrayaran Imperial Auditor).
• Misery Builds Character: discussed in Shards of Honor

Cordelia: (looking at Bothari) Suffering bastard.
Aral: I thought you saw meaning in that sort of thing.
Cordelia: In the abstract. Most days it's just stumbling around in the dark with the rest of creation, smashing into things and wondering why it hurts.

• Mistaken for Gay: Gregor's inability to find someone to produce an heir led to rumors that he was more interested in men. Lady Alys snorted that even if it were true, it wouldn't help with finding an heir for him. ^note While it would be technologically possible to produce children with another man, just the Emperor producing heirs via uterine replicator with his wife was stretching the limits of Barrayaran cultural boundaries at the time. Gregor's actual concern was that all the potential genetic defects in the High Vor bloodlines might produce insane children. Hence he rejected all the Vor women pitched to him and married a Komarran one instead. Obviously, it wouldn't be politic for him to actually tell people this, although those closest to him were fully aware of his reasoning. Regardless, Gregor announced that his children would be via uterine replicator anyway.
• Mood Whiplash: "Shopping" is quickly followed by "I paid too much for it".
• Moral Luck: Referenced in universe in The Warrior's Apprentice. Miles successfully predicts his enemy will attempt a flank attack and insists that all weapons be placed on the flank of the base to drive off the attack. When a (dubious) ally excitedly states he is a genius for predicting the maneuver Miles soberly reflects on what they would say if he had been wrong about the angle of the attack. Though this isn't a perfect example of this trope, as Miles was relying on more than dumb luck when he selected where to place the weapons.
• Mugging the Monster: Well, predatory lending to a person with an Imperial Auditor in the room and an ImpSec forensic accountant waiting on the other line, but it's close enough.
• Multigenerational Household:
  • Vorkosigan House: Piotr + Aral & Cordelia, Aral & Cordelia + Miles. Good thing the place has all that room.
  • The Koudelkas: At least until Delia and Olivia got married, and Kareen moved in with Mark.
  • The Vorthys residence until Ekaterin settled things with Miles.
• Mundane Utility: In addition to its intended purposes, Koudelka's swordstick sees use as a surgical knife, sounding rod, and lockpick during the Shopping Trip.
• Murder by Suicide: In Dreamweaver's Dilemma, dream cartridges are a relatively common form of entertainment on Earth, and an artist devoted to their creation is paid an exorbitant sum to create a particularly nightmarish one. While she's glad of the commission, she eventually realizes it might be an attempt at this trope (driving someone to suicidal insanity by shoving them into an endless loop of nightmares). She would have remained troubled but unwilling and unable to delve further for answers had the middleman not gotten greedy and tried to get her killed in an attempt to steal her paycheck.
• Murder the Hypotenuse: Miles is accused (but only in the court of public opinion) of clearing the way to Ekaterin in A Civil Campaign.
• Mushroom Samba: Miles's allergic reaction to fast-penta. Well, more of a Mushroom Charleston with a side trip to Stratford-on-Avon.
  • 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 giant butterbugs and being presumed to be an addict.
• Must Make Her Laugh: Ivan's #1 rule: if she laughs, you live.
• The Mutiny: Miles collides with one in The Vor Game
• My Eyes Are Up Here: Tej is described as nicely full-figured and frequently has men looking at her, and then shifting their gaze up to her face.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Aral Vorkosigan during most of Shards of Honor and Barrayar, where his role as a conspirator to destroy Prince Serg through the broad assassination tool of an unnecessary war destroys his personal honor and leaves him a broken man in the former book; his decision to execute Carl Vorhalas is a prominent example in the latter book.
  • In The Warrior's Apprentice, Miles instantly regrets asking Bothari to get a jump pilot to talk. Bothari immediately becomes a Nightmare Fuel Station Attendant, and the pilot later dies, to Miles' deep dismay. He later states that some lessons have prices that are too high.

Tropes N

• Nail 'Em: Guppy and the automated hot riveter in Diplomatic Immunity.
  Miles: You might say he's riveted my attention.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast:
  • The Butcher Of Komarr ^note aka Aral Vorkosigan, and no he did not earn his title
  • The legendary Count Pierre Vorrutyer, known as Le Sanguinaire (The Bloody, in French).
• Near-Rape Experience:
  • In Shards of Honor, Cordelia is almost raped by Bothari on Admiral Vorrutyer's orders; when Bothari refuses, Vorrutyer himself nearly follows through, but is stopped when Bothari kills him.
  • Mark is a perpetrator on blonde clone Maree in Mirror Dance, which blows all the good will the Dendarii might have had left for him.
• Needle in a Stack of Needles:
  • The whole point of the Barrayar-Escobar War. With thousands of Barrayarrans dead in a botched invasion, nobody would realize that one of those casualties — Prince Serg — was deliberate.
  • More conventionally, during the War of Vordarian's Pretendership, Count Piotr Vorkosigan uses horses to move various important personages around in the Dendarii hills — on a thermal scanner, they'll look just like any other hill family, where more modern transportation would stick out like a sore thumb.
• Nepotism: A large portion of the population of Barrayar is certain that Miles Vorkosigan only got his positions because of his father the Regent/Prime Minister or his foster brother the Emperor. They are mostly wrong. It was nepotism that got Miles into the Imperial Military Academy, despite him not meeting the physical requirements, and nepotism that kept him in the Imperial Service after the Kyril Island incident.
• Never Got to Say Goodbye: Cordelia buries it deep, but she never got over her father dying in a starship accident; the last thing she saw of him was his ship exploding in a bright nuclear light. Jole notes in Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen she still carries that image with her.
• Never My Fault: Played with regarding Ivan. Ivan is always trying to reassure himself that the problems that arise around him aren't his fault or responsibility.
  • Etienne Vorsoisson never takes responsibility for his own mistakes and failings, and always blames somebody else. He also assumes everyone else is as self-interested as he is. This eventually gets him killed due to his own proud/hasty neglect of proper safety measures, which his wife reminded him about earlier. And then someone else uses Tien's death to accuse Miles of murder. Even when Tien's dead, his mistakes get blamed on someone else.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: In Shards of Honor, Cordelia's Betan Survey crew decides to rescue her from the clutches of the psychotic Butcher of Komarr... and in exactly the wrong move, they take in two Sergyar-stranded members of the mutiny against Aral (both secret police and nasty pieces of work) and orchestrate their return to the General Vorkraft where they stage a breakout of their fellow mutineers. They're terribly proud of themselves for being so clever, too. It doesn't help that it gets Koudelka seriously injured via nerve disruptor, someone Cordelia genuinely liked.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Herod: Mad Emperor Yuri tried to kill all of his direct blood heirs, including Piotr Vorkosigan's wife and children. Not including Piotr on the hit list was a serious tactical blunder, as he turned and helped Ezar win the throne.
• Nice to the Waiter: Cordelia. Although it is not so much "nice to the waiter" as it is "nice to the bodyguards".
• No Biological Sex: Cetagandan ba which, when added to Betan herms, leads to real Pronoun Trouble.
• "No. Just… No" Reaction: Tej's reaction, word for word, when the possibility of using Illyan to get out of her marriage to Ivan through infidelity is brought up. Ivan has a similar reaction to the idea of using By in the same way, despite Rish's encouragement.
• No Periods, Period: Via the widespread use of contraceptive implants.
• No Poverty: Beta, homeworld of Cordelia Vorkosigan, has such a high standard of living for all its inhabitants that the term "poor" means not having a computer in the home, and that is all but unheard of since access to information is guaranteed by the Betan government. To someone from Barrayar, where illiteracy and starvation are widespread amongst the rural population, it is a bit hard to fathom just how well the Betans live.
• No-Sell: In Barrayar, Vordarian tries to sabotage Aral and Cordelia's marriage by telling her that "[Aral's] bisexual, you know." Her response: "He was bisexual. Now he's monogamous," followed by a discussion of her theories about his actually being attracted to soldiers. Don't try to shock a Betan by saying someone has an alternate sexuality, when they perfected reversible transgender surgery and created genetically engineered hermaphrodites. Only after seeing Vordarian aghast at her matter-of-fact reaction does Cordelia even realize Vordarian had meant her to be shocked.^note And adding to the Irony, Aral giving in to his bisexual urges and not being monogamous only strengthens their marriage.
• Nothing but Skulls: The crazy old woman's house is decorated with the skulls of all the irradiated children who died there in "Flowers of Vashnoi".
• No Woman's Land:
  • Barrayar, although it is (slowly) improving its treatment of women. Cordelia points out that there were biological imperatives for this back when Barrayar was a primitive society desperate to ensure sufficient reproduction to survive ("Beta Colony can control gametes, Barrayar had to control the whole woman") but those established traditions are taking a long time to fade even though they are no longer necessary. Even under the traditional system, however, women possessed a certain amount of formal power as heads of their households, and the opportunity of obtaining a great deal more informal power; see Lady Alys.
  • Athos is a more literal example, being a males-only Cult Colony.
• Non-Action Guy:
  • Miles is really a subversion of the trope. Yes, he is short and has had more breaks than he has bones, but he spends ten years leading covert ops missions, often in the line of fire, and only loses once. Just do not ask him to perform hand-to-hand combat. However, as Enrique Borgos learns, Miles does have some martial moves that allows him to immobilize targets and seriously threaten them.
  • Ethan, who starts his story as a timid doctor unused to the galactic way of life and is a timid doctor unused to the galactic way of life.
• Noble Fugitive: Gregor and (technically) Cordelia, when on the run from a coup-in-progress.
• Non-Idle Rich: Most of the rich people shown are busy either with politics or warfare and some are busy with commerce, industry, or invention. Even Ivan has more to do then he wants.
• Noodle Incident:
  • The Infamous Incendiary Cat Plot, That Time We Stole a Tank and — Ivan's personal favorite — The Abandoned Escape Tunnels.
  • More seriously, the "mutagen disasters", never actually described, which are the root of the Barrayaran horror of mutation.
  • One draft of Miles' apology letter to Ekaterin was written in rhymed poetry, which she understandably pines to read just for novelty's sake.
    Her mind hiccuped to a stop. For a moment, all she could wonder was who emptied his wastebasket, and if they could be bribed. Pym, probably, and likely not.
    • Ekaterin underestimates a 10-year ImpSec veteran; Miles was too well-trained by Simon to trust anybody with sensitive materials unnecessarily. He incinerated the rejected drafts personally.
  • The Sergyar worm plague.
• "Not So Different" Remark:
  • Bel Thorne notes the similarities between the well-intentioned creation of hermaphrodites on Beta and Baron Ryoval's sick experiments.
  • Miles' friends all note how similar Miles and Cavilo are at the end of The Vor Game, to Miles' embarrassment and frustration. It also highlights the difference between Miles and Cavilo: none of Cavilo's associates (one can't really say she has "friends") would ever dare to tease her that way.
  • Cordelia notes that Barrayar and Beta Colony's diametrically opposed attitudes towards sex and gender are essentially two different approaches to the exact same problems of human reproduction in a harsh environment, with the differences chalked up to the fact that Beta had sophisticated reproductive medical technology that Barrayar didn't.
• Not What It Looks Like: In Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, Cordelia and Oliver's frequent trips to Lake Serena inspire all sorts of speculation throughout Sergyar, except for what it actually is: the beginning of a new relationship.
  Cordelia: Apparently, nobody under thirty thinks anyone over fifty has sex, so the explanations, while inventive, are bound to lead people astray.
• Not With the Safety On, You Won't: In Captain Vorpatril's Alliance Ivan jumps a mook who's holding him at stunner-point after he notices that the mook is holding Ivan's own stunner ... which has a personally-coded grip that keeps it from working for anyone other than Ivan. The mook is then very surprised — briefly — when Ivan grabs the stunner that didn't work for him and promptly shoots him with it.
• Nuke 'em. The Cetagandans nuked a significant part of the Vorkosigan's district (including the old capital) during the occupation. The bomb used on the capital was salted with plutonium to make it especially toxic.

Tropes O

• The Oath-Breaker:
  • Ekaterin's husband was killed in an accident immediately after she told him she was leaving him. Because she never went through with the divorce her reputation remains intact in everyone else's eyes, but she knows she is an oathbreaker and suffers the shame of it.
  • Miles understands completely:
  Miles: In my experience, the trouble with oaths of the form "death before dishonor" is that eventually, given enough time and abrasion, they separate the world into just two sorts of people: the dead, and the forsworn. It is a survivor's problem, this one.
  • He later lampshades that at least he got the order right since he died in Mirror Dance and broke his oath as an ImpSec agent in Memory, in part caused by his death.
• Obfuscating Disability: After the destruction of his eidetic memory chip and medical retirement from ImpSec in Memory, Simon Illyan makes a point of playing up the damage done to his mind when it seems useful or convenient. His short-to-medium-term memory is spotty enough that the PDA/voice recorder/GPS unit he wears on his belt is anything but a prop, but by every other cognitive measure he remains solidly in the 'dangerously brilliant' category.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Played with, in the case of Ivan: There is a conversation in Mirror Dance where this possibility is discussed, but Aral Vorkosigan dismisses it, commenting that Ivan has acted stupidly from too young an age for it to be an act. However, when you read the portions of the book from Ivan's perspective, it is clear that he is fairly intelligent, and more in the way of Brilliant, but Lazy; he has learned that the "reward" for doing a job well is another, harder job. This had already been established in Cetaganda and Brothers in Arms, where it is clear that Ivan is a perfectly competent young soldier, but that he feels safer if everybody regards him as a harmless fool. Considering he is the effective heir to the Emperor of Barrayar^note (Aral and Miles, and maybe Mark have better claims to the throne, but none of them want the job, and neither Miles nor Mark would ever have been accepted anyways), he may also believe that he keeps the people ahead of him safer (all of whom are family who he is close to), by assuring nobody wants him in charge.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Barrayar's ministries will helpfully give you the runaround... in triplicate. Especially if your business involves a High Vor family (e.g. Vorkosigan) in any sort of negative way.
  "I found I had only to pronounce his last name correctly to produce the most damn-all stone wall obtuseness from every Barrayaran clerk, secretary, embassy officer and bureaucrat I encountered."
• Of Corpse He's Alive: Drugged version in The Vor Game, when Elena and Miles guide around a fast-penta'ed Admiral Oser.
• An Offer You Can't Refuse: When Gregor "requests and requires" you, you don't have an option. You must attend.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: At some point, the Back Story featuring the first Cetagandan invasion of Barrayar after the Time of Isolation ended will have to see print.
• Off with His Head!: In Barrayar, Vorhalas' first son is executed for dueling — but it takes three tries to properly decapitate him. Cordelia notes later when Bothari kills Vordarian with Koudelka's swordstick that Barrayar should have hired Bothari to execute him instead, since he does a better job with a single stroke.

  The flashing stroke cut off his words, his head, and his life. It was extremely neat, despite the last spurts of blood from the stump of his neck. Vorkosigan should have loaned Bothari's services the day they'd executed Carl Vorhalas.

• Oh, Crap!: In Mirror Dance, when an amnesiac Miles realizes where his clinic is.
  Miles: Oh, shit! I'm on Jackson's Whole!
• Older Than They Look: Betans and Cetagandans both live considerably longer than the residents of most other planets. In both cases it is down to genetic tinkering, but where the Betans just eliminated genetic defects, the Cetagandans have been forcibly evolving themselves for centuries.
  • At one point, Miles mentions that Cordelia, then in her mid-sixties, was just reaching middle age for a Betan, and this leads to rumors about a nonexistent "Betan rejuvenation process" that can extend the lifespan of anybody who can afford it. Miles points out in one of the books that it is just their way of life and their health care system that lets them live longer lives.
  • Several of the haut women Miles meets in Cetaganda are in their nineties and look no older than thirty or so. Lady Moira ghem Estif (a haut by birth) is about 130 at the time of Captain Vorpatril's Alliance and looks no worse than "faintly frail".
• Once Done, Never Forgotten: A prime example is Cordelia Vorkosigan's shopping trip during a civil war... which included bringing the head of the pretender home in a plastic shopping bag. Decades later, it's still brought up as why no one invites her shopping, although when it's done good-naturedly, she is glad that Barrayar has advanced to the point where it can be joked about.
  Jole: What's in the box? Not a severed head again, I trust?
  Cordelia: Now, now, Oliver. Bring home one dismembered body part — once, mind you, once — and people get twitchy about checking your luggage ever after.
• One Drink Will Kill the Baby: While pregnant with Miles, Cordelia passes on a glass of champagne, noting that she's forgoing "all metabolic poisons".
• One-Man Army: Inverted. Mark claimed of Miles, "He's not a man, he's a mob."
  • At another point, he realizes, "His mistake...was that he had been trying to be Miles Vorkosigan all by himself. Even Miles didn't do Miles that way."
• Only Electric Sheep Are Cheap: Cordelia, having grown up under a dome on Beta Colony, has difficulty remembering that wood furniture is not a sign of fabulous wealth on Barrayar, nor is it burning an emergency (as it would be in a controlled environment like a dome.) Miles mentions they run the fireplaces to impress Betan visitors, because to them actually burning wood as a heat source is tantamount to rappers pouring bottles of expensive champagne on strippers in their music videos.
• Only One Name: Quaddies do not have last names. If someone wants to use a first name that someone else already has, they have to attach a number to it. One "Leo Ninety-nine" is given as an example. The highest number ever seen attached to any other name is "Sixteen". The quaddies really remember Leo Graf fondly.
• Ordered Apology: One technique Miles uses while reclaiming the Dendarii.
• Ordered to Cheat: Not quite to cheat, but Drou is ordered to knock her opponent out while sparring in Barrayar, after he gooses her in a previous round, in order to discourage such behaviour from her future sparring partners. It also showed that she had been pulling her punches in her earlier matches.
• Our Hero Is Dead: In Mirror Dance, Miles gets himself killed. He is cryogenically frozen almost immediately, holding out hope for reviving him later... if anyone knew where his cryo-pod ended up. Meanwhile, the rest of the cast have to adjust to the fact that he is dead and may not be coming back.
• Our Showers Are Different: Sonic showers, toothbrushes, and other cleaning items make frequent appearance. At one point, Miles amuses himself by imagining what would happen if the programming for the gimmicky-even-for-Betans "sonic toothbrush" went awry.
• Our Wormholes Are Different: Invisible to the naked eye and require "Necklin fields" to enable jumpships to traverse them. Ships without jump drives cannot just fly into a wormhole.
• Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions:
  • Played with in Ethan of Athos, since it's not so much that Athos is silly for still being highly religious but instead silly for the rather misogynist and gynophobic theology that informed the colony's founders.
  • Also averted from an unlikely source — Cordelia, of highly progressive, scientific, sociologically and psychologically-minded Beta Colony, is rather calmly, quietly Christian. (Betan Presbyterian, according to Word of God, if you’ll pardon the expression.) Her Christianity is only mentioned in passing by Miles a couple times, having been a minor influence in how she raised him. Everyone else seems blandly indifferent to the question of God, though occasionally willing to entreat or curse Him silently during moments of duress.
  • Emperor Ezar says he's atheist, and it's given him great comfort in his final days. Cordelia says she envies him. Ezar tops her by commenting there's no one more ruthless than someone of faith when she says Aral shouldn't give up the "gift" of the challenge of being Imperial Regent.
• Outlaw Town: Jackson's Whole was initially a hijacker's base and along the way became "governed" by a loose connection of crime families specializing in specific crimes (sex slavery, arms dealing, etc.). It is ultra-capitalist and has no real laws to speak of — a handshake is as good as a contract, and you are as good as dead if you are not under the protection of one of its crime families.
• Over-the-Top Secret:
  • The incident in Komarr is so delicate, Miles states "this whole thing is going to end up so classified, they're going to have to invent a whole new level of classification just to put it in. And then classify the classification."
  • As a general rule, everything Miles did as Admiral Naismith is classified until twenty-five years after the events in question. Some of the juicier items (such as the actual story of what Gregor was up to at the start of the Hegen Hub war) are not expected to be declassified until much, much later.
  • Only a handful of people ever knew that the Escobar invasion was deliberately planned to be a fiasco by Emperor Ezar in order to safely kill off his son, Prince Serg and tie up some inconvenient loose ends like the Political Office. With the death of Aral, Cordelia may be the only one still alive who knows — it is unclear if Emperor Gregor ever learned that truth.
• Overly Long Name: Tej and her siblings. Her father found a book of baby names and couldn't make up his mind. For example, Tej's full name is Akuti Tejaswini Jyoti ghem Estif Arqua (Vorpatril), and that was after his wife had reined him in a bit. Tej is impressed when Ivan manages to say her full name after only having heard it once.
• Ow, My Body Part!:
  • Miles not only gets headaches, he gives them. Elena Bothari-Jesek opens a debriefing in Mirror Dance by passing around a bottle of painkillers.
  • In Diplomatic Immunity, when Miles learns the Barrayarans set fire to a police station on a space station, while attacking firemen and policemen trying to restore order as the military tried to break the Barrayarans out of jail, his reaction is "Ow, my aching head." Bel tells Miles that they're idiots. Miles's response, "Yes, but they're my idiots."

Tropes P

• The Pardon: Aral handed these out generously after the Pretendership.
• Parental Hypocrisy: In A Civil Campaign, Kou and Drou get extremely upset upon learning that Kareen has having (sane, well-adjusted, well-educated, and generally awesome) premarital sex with Mark. Cordelia turns the tables by quietly bringing the couch where they first had sex — also premarital, but a miserable, fumbling, painful expedition that wound up almost ending their budding relationship — out of storage. And then forces them to sit on it while she, Kareen, and Mark confront them. By the time she's done, the Koudelkas mere and pere are well and truly deflated. It's also implied that Kou, at the very least, might have had issues with Mark being unworthy of Kareen — a natural reaction for any father — and also Mark being a clone.
• Parental Sexuality Squick: In Memory, when Ivan learns that his mother has Simon Illyan as her boyfriend.
• Passed-Over Promotion: Lucas Haroche's motivation in Memory. Seeing this coming, he tries to avert it by giving Klingon Promotion a go.
• Patchwork Story: Borders of Infinity (the novel) is actually the shorter works "The Mountains of Mourning", "Labyrinth", and "The Borders of Infinity" with a frame story tacked on.
• Patriotic Fervor: All Vor have this. Some express their patriotism by seeking to improve Barrayar as well as/instead of providing military service.
• Penal Colony: "The Borders of Infinity" takes place in a Cetagandan prison camp.
• The Penance: In "The Mountains of Mourning", the perpetrator of an infanticide is sentenced to have her property rights removed and to be considered legally dead.
• Perilous Marriage Proposal: In Captain Vorpatril's Alliance Ivan proposes an on-the-spot Citizenship Marriage to Tej as the cops are breaking down the apartment door and Tej is about to commit suicide to avoid being arrested.
• Perpetual Motion Machine: Discussed in Komarr. One of the physicists Miles calls in to consult determines that the device he is asking her about looks like a perpetual motion machine. Since she is a competent physicist who does not believe in such things, she concludes that it must be drawing energy from the deep structure of the wormholes it gets pointed at because there is nowhere else it could be coming from.
• Personal Seals: During the Time of Isolation, the high Vor lords developed the habit of carrying daggers with seals concealed in the hilt; they would use these seal daggers to make an imprint of the seal in their own blood. (Later practice was to use pigments, with various colors signifying different meanings, from love letters to birth announcements to death notices.) Miles has a genuine Time of Isolation seal dagger inherited from Grandfather Piotr; at least when making Anguished Declarations of Love, he goes the full traditional route of sealing the letter with his own blood.
• Photographic Memory: Due to a computer chip in his head, Simon Illyan has one of these. In Memory, the chip is sabotaged and surgically removed.
• Phrase Catcher:
  • "Ivan, you idiot..." and variations thereof. Amusingly reversed in Diplomatic Immunity:
  Admiral Vorpatril: Vorkosigan, you idiot—!
  • At the climax of A Civil Campaign, Miles begins to say, "Ivan, you idiot!" when he appears late to the Council of Counts with Lord Dono and Miles' political antagonists, but Ivan interrupts him, knowing he has just saved the day, and enjoys a moment of knowing something Miles does not, for once.
  • "Unpack, Miles" may be a candidate: Ekaterin uses it several times in Diplomatic Immunity, and Miles himself uses it in Cryoburn. Miles thinks extremely fast, and tends to skip straight to telling people what to do without telling them why he needs them to do it.
• Pimping the Offspring: Sergeant Bothari's mother (who was herself a prostitute) used to sell him to her customers, until he "got big enough to beat up her damned customers" at the age of twelve.
• Pineal Weirdness: The source of telepathy in Ethan of Athos. More or less.
• Pity Sex: A teenage Miles finds himself as "an object of charity" in Beta Colony, and does not care for it.
• The Place: Barrayar, Cetaganda, and Komarr.
• Planetary Nation: Most of the nations, planets and Space Stations are this. The few exceptions are the Cetagandan Empire and Barrayaran Empires, which are nations made up of multiple planets, and Earth, which is still split up into a gillion countries like today. Jackson's Hole is made up of numerous Great and Minor Houses, which are functionally countries in their own right.
• Planet of Hats:
  • Cetagandans value artistry, even in their bioweapons.
  • Quaddies place a high value on the concept of work (Miles even compares it to the way Barrayarans feel about honor).
  • Betans are either enlightened or decadent depending on your point of view.
  • Athos is a planet of only men. Offworlders sometimes derisively call it 'The Planet of Fags.' Athosians need not necessarily be gay, but most emigres of the culture are, for fairly obvious reasons. Their offspring have the same ratio of gay/straight as the rest of the galaxy, however.
• Playing with Syringes: Taura is the result of this as a genetically-engineered Super-Soldier.
• The Plot Reaper: Ekaterin's unlikeable, abusive, and all-around Jerkass of a husband dies just as she has decided to leave him, freeing her to be courted by Miles Vorkosigan. Unfortunately, he dies in such a way that fewer than a score of people in the Barrayaran Empire have a high enough security clearance to be able to satisfy themselves that Miles didn't kill him out of jealousy, which causes problems for Miles all throughout the next book. As for Ekaterin, the reaper didn't strike until after she'd told Tien she was leaving, meaning she gets all the guilt of breaking her word without the catharsis of it actually accomplishing something.
• Pointy-Haired Boss: Bruce Van Atta in Falling Free. A former engineer, transferred to management where he would hopefully cause less damage. When Leo Graf sets off his plan to reconfigure the quaddies' space station so that they can steal it, he tells Van Atta that he will be surprised by how much of the station, which Van Atta thinks is being decommissioned, can be "recycled." Van Atta insists that all of Leo's plans go through his office—so he can take Leo's name off them and replace them with his own so he can take the credit. Leo doesn't mind because he realizes Bruce isn't actually going to look at those plans, and after they've gone the plans will provide damning evidence that Leo had practically warned Bruce of his plans to steal the station in advance.
• Poison and Cure Gambit: One of the ways Baron Fell earns a living. He's not so crude as to actually poison anyone himself: He just offers terrifying poisons for sale, waits for people to get thoroughly scared of them, and then offers the antidote for sale once the market has peaked.
• Poor Communication Kills: For security and legal reasons, in Falling Free the Quaddies are listed on the company books as post-fetal experimental tissue cultures. An out-of-system manager ordered the tissue cultures to be disposed of—which Bruce Van Atta deliberately interpreted as permision to kill the Quaddies.
• Population Control: Different planets have different approaches:
  • Barrayar is underpopulated, and has unfettered reproduction (though it is somewhat "backward" and considers all sex out of wedlock to be illicit).
  • Beta Colony is a marginally habitable world, and has strict population control. All babies must be licensed, though getting a baby license seems to be about as difficult as getting a driver's license (at least for the first two). Since contraceptives are legally required for all females (and hermaphrodites) but not males for some reason, all sex between consenting individuals is considered to be normal recreational behaviour, though they do have statutory rape laws.
  • Athos is underpopulated, but since its entire population is male, it requires major technological assistance for anyone to reproduce. The actual cost of raising children to the age where they are self-sufficient is a major part of the planetary government budget, unlike most other planets where it is part of the informal economy.
  • The Cetagandan Empire is a group of planets exercising extreme bio-engineering, where every child "born" (at least among the Haut class) is not only approved but has its genetic makeup designed by the central government. What is more, it would be possible for the child's parents never to have even met, let alone had sex, and they have no choice about or control over what the government does with their genetic material.
• Portal Network: The books are set among a series of planets connected by wormholes. Some routes require traveling through multiple wormholes in a row.
• Post-Rape Taunt: In Shards Of Honor Ges Vorrutyer attempts this, but makes a serious misjudgement of who to use as a proxy.
• Power Degeneration: Taura again, whose increased metabolism results in extremely rapid aging near the end of her short life.
• Power of Trust: The BFG in Cordelia's arsenal.
  Commodore Koudelka: You? I know you! You trust beyond reason!
  Cordelia: Yes. It's how I get results beyond hope. As you may recall.
• Praetorian Guard: The Barrayaran Armsmen. Counts are limited to twenty by law, so the Armsmen are all some kind of badass. The Vorkosigan family tends to attract the best of the best.
• Precision F-Strike: Ekaterin is an extraordinarily polite woman, almost to the point of Extreme Doormat. The harshest thing she utters for the first one and a half books after her first appearance is "Drat." It comes as a shock when she finally lets fly with a comparatively mild "Open the damned door and let me out" later on. (Miles does have that effect on people.)
  • Emperor Gregor is normally so controlled that just his use of sarcasm is enough to mortify Illyan.
• Pregnancy Scare: in Barrayar, Drou is very afraid that she's pregnant after sleeping with Lt. Koudelka. She doesn't tell him about it, but acts so nervous that he becomes convinced that he had been mistaken about her consent and had raped her.
• Pretty Boy: Bel Thorne is described as quite good-looking, in an androgynous sort of way. Understandable, since it^note  the herms' own pronoun of choice is a hermaphrodite.
• Prevent the War: In Diplomatic Immunity, the hero is an Imperial Auditor (big-time troubleshooter) sent to calm down a harbor brawl that had escalated into an interstellar incident, only to find that there are more sinister aspects that threaten war with a rival empire.
• Primal Scene: First Miles and later Ivan have this reaction in Memory when they realize that Lady Alys Vorpatril (Ivan's mother) is sleeping with Simon Illyan.
  "You don't need to bellow."
  "I am not bellowing," said Ivan. "I'm being firm."
  "Could you please be firm at a lower volume?"
  "No. Simon Illyan is sleeping with my mother, and it's your fault!"
• Prison Episode: The novella "The Borders of Infinity", set in a very nasty but technically legal prisoner of war camp.
• Private Military Contractors: The Dendarii Free Mercenary Fleet is one of many mercenary companies working around the wormhole nexus. The fact that they are on retainer with Barrayaran Imperial Security, and that their commander reports directly to the head thereof, is a secret known to only a very few.
  Miles: This is a paid political rescue.
  Sgt. Beatrice: Mercenaries?
  Miles: We're not something wriggling with too many legs that you found in your sleeping bag. The proper tone of voice is Mercenaries!—with a glad cry.

  — "The Borders of Infinity"
• Professional Sex Ed: Betan Licensed Practical Sexuality Therapist training emphasizes the "educational" aspect of things, so they are occasionally contracted as "first time" introductions for nervous soon-to-be-ex-virgins.
• Promotion, Not Punishment: Miles Vorkosigan has a... problem with following orders, and those above constantly complain about his "excessive initiative" or curse him by wishing he one day commands someone "just like him". In Vor Games, he is put under the one man who could possibly deal with him and sent on a simple intelligence-gathering mission. By the end of this, he manages to have 3 separate 'superior officers' locked in the brig so he can go about leading a mercenary troop to defend a wormhole from an enemy invasion which no one ever asked him to do. But since he did manage to save everyone, he ends up with a promotion and his dream job of playing admiral for the military fleet.
  • Discussed in Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, as ImpSec HQ is sinking into a mudhole and people leave the building or stay at their posts:
  Simon, his teeth pressed into his lower lip, released the stress to say, "At a guess, those would be the fellows who grew up in earthquake country, Guy." And after another minute, under his breath, as the evacuation continued more sporadically, "The ones still inside, you'll want to commend. The ones outside, those are the ones I'd promote..."
• Proud Warrior Race Guys: The Vor of Barrayar and the Ghem-Lords of Cetaganda. When the Cetagandans invaded Barrayar, it was a bloody mess for all involved.
• Protagonist-Centered Morality:
  • Usually well averted, but the ending of Mark & Kareen's plot in A Civil Campaign drifts into this. The officers sent to arrest a man who actually ripped a lot of people off, even if he did it out of naivete, are sent packing by general agreement of the protagonists; even Ekaterin approves. No one expresses any concern for the cheated investors at all. Could border on Grey-and-Gray Morality, given that there were multiple other people who would have wasted their money and hard work if he were arrested, his Escobar creditors would lose any opportunity to get their money back, and the officers were invading a very important Count's house to make the arrest (they didn't have a warrant from the Vorkosigan district, assuming Miles was right).
  • Reading The Warrior's Apprentice before reading Shards Of Honor, it is shocking how little Miles is bothered by the eventual revelation of Elena's parentage, especially given how little he actually does know at that point about what happened and why. Having read the other book, we have sympathy for Bothari's insanity and his struggle to make something good out of the terrible things that happened. But all the characters should know at that point is 'prolonged rape and torture'. Possibly justified by the fact that Miles has known Bothari all his life and is quite aware of both the man's mental issues and his efforts to overcome them. Elena, on the other hand, is traumatized for a very long time by this knowledge.
  • The series as a whole seems to have a tendency of having ostensibly heroic characters being perpetrators of rape or near rape. While there are always exonerating circumstances some may still be uncomfortable at how forgiving the story can be to the would-be rapists.
    • The first rape being 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. However, Bothari gets Redemption Equals Death by allowing his victim to kill him; his last words are "Rest easy now." The rest of the series deals with how the progeny born of rape deals with her own existence and her need for a mother, and how the mother deals with her.
    • The second example would be 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 wait for consent and was so forceful that he feared he had raped her means that he was lucky his partner ended up desiring sex or he would have been a rapist. Though the woman in question makes it quite clear that 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.
    • The third instance involves Mark who starts to force himself on someone who was mentally a child in an adult's body, and who doesn't understand what is being done to her. The would-be rapist is only stopped due to 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 What the Hell, Hero? response from the immediate witnesses who treat it as hitting the Moral Event Horizon, 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.
• Psycho for Hire: Bothari was taken into Aral's employ specifically to restrain his psychotic tendencies. Ges Vorruyter, on the other hand, employed Bothari to utilize them.
• Psycho Sidekick: Bothari plays this role to Miles in The Warrior's Apprentice.
• Psychotic Smirk: When Bothari tortures a jump pilot, he wears a creepy one. It's a (bad) revelation for Miles, who underestimated how dastardly Bothari could be when given the leeway. Had Miles asked his father anything about Bothari's past, he'd have never asked him to torture anyone for information, especially since it directly leads to the jump pilot's death later. invoked
• Purple Prose: In-universe during A Civil Campaign. Specifically, Miles' attempts at writing an apology to Ekaterin are implied to have gone there over the myriad drafts. Including the one in rhyme.
• Putting on the Reich:
  • Some of the many Barrayaran uniforms enter this territory, to include jackboots, jodhpurs, high collars, peaked caps and capes. Miles offers a justification in Cetaganda, when he muses that it is derived from horse cavalry uniforms. Then he lampshades it, admitting it is a little silly to keep the boots when the last time the military used horses was his grandfather's time — and that, according to the old man, horses saved his forces during his campaigns mostly by being edible. Aral at one point remarks that the officers must use them for riding hobbyhorses, high horses, and nightmares.
  • The Betan Expeditionary Force uniforms also included jackboots, even though the only horses to be found on Beta Colony are in the zoos.

Tropes R

• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The Dendarii Mercenaries originally consists of: a disabled teenage boy who failed the army fitness test; a teenage girl who wouldn't even be allowed to apply to join the army; a mentally unstable ex-soldier; an alcoholic pilot; and a deserter who can never return to his home planet. And they manage to conquer, then recruit, an entire fleet of experienced mercenaries.
• Railing Kill: Unintentionally in Ethan of Athos: Quinn tries to stun a mook on a catwalk. Mook goes over the railing he was moving towards when she fired and breaks his neck. Elli is mildly (the mook was guilty of several murders, and was in the middle of staging an "accidental" death for Ethan) upset.
  Quinn: Gee, I feel really bad about that. I've never killed a man by accident before. Unprofessional.
• Rape by Proxy: Ges uses Bothari to abuse his female prisoners of war when he does not do it himself.
• Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Every one of Miles' love interests. Even Taura, described in "Winterfair Gifts" as having mahogany hair and ivory skin. At least, so described by the besotted Armsman Roic.
  • Alys Vorpatril and Kareen Vorbarra are described this way as well.
• Read the Freaking Manual: After the Dinner Party in A Civil Campaign, Miles is at a loss for how to care for the lone occupant of Ekaterin's garden, despite detailed instructions appended to her resignation letter. Miles's thinking is not entirely rational when it comes to Ekaterin and gardens at this point.
• A Real Man Is a Killer: Deconstructed in Brothers in Arms, when Galen tries to get Mark to kill Miles and Galeni:
  Galen: You must learn to kill if you expect to survive.
  Miles: No, you don't. Most people go through their whole lives without killing anybody. False argument.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: The good guys get one when Gregor finally tells off Cavilo, pointing out that she has been treating the Emperor of three worlds as a naive newbie.
  Emperor Gregor: Commander Cavilo, both of my parents died violently in political intrigue before I was six years old. A fact you might have researched. Did you think you were dealing with an amateur?
• Reassigned to Antarctica: Lazkowski Base on Kyril Island, aka "Camp Permafrost," is the usual setting for this.
  • Aral was assigned as the base commander when he was out of favor with Ezar, but he didn't remember much about it. "I was drunk most of the time."
    • After that, Aral was assigned to command General Vorkraft, which was nicknamed "Vorkosigan's Leper Colony".
  • General Stanis Metzov and Alexi Vormoncrief are later assigned to Lazkowski Base, and it could not have happened to more deserving guys.
  • Miles is also an example, metaphorically. His own assignment to Lazkowski Base is a matter of paying his dues: in his first assignment out of the Academy he's supposed to show that he can work with ordinary soldiers and officers. When things blow up, his career in the regular Service is aborted — he's reassigned to ImpSec where, as far as (almost) everybody knows, he spends the next ten years as a glorified mailman. (In reality, he reports directly to Illyan, and no one else. The only other person with that direct access is the Emperor himself.)
  • At the end of Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, Ivan and Tej, to backwater planet Ylla rather than Lazkowski Base. Ivan rapidly uses his administrative skills to turn his "exile" into a two-year honeymoon in paradise. After a year, Ivan does start to feel the pangs of homesickness.
• Recap by Audit: Borders of Infinity is actually a thinly disguised short story collection (of "The Mountains of Mourning", "Labyrinth", and "The Borders of Infinity") with an audit as framing device for the stories.
• Recorded Spliced Conversation: In The Warrior's Apprentice this is actually attempted with a video call (albeit unsuccessfully). The Pelians attempt to disguise the "seams" with artfully-placed little bursts of video static ("white fuzz on the screen"). Miles catches on when he notices an object on the desk of the Felician officer supposedly on the other end of the videoconference keeps flipping back and forth from being on the guy's right to being on his left.
• Recruited from the Gutter: Sgt Bothari was an Ax-Crazy slum orphan who entered the Barrayaran Imperial Service to find someone to control his violent impulses. Later, he was used as a minion by a sadist to torture prisoners, until he refused to torture Cordelia Naismath, the heroine, and killed his master. When Cordelia married a Barrayaran aristocrat, Bothari became an honoured bodyguard.
• Red Light District:
  • The caravanserai area of Vorbarr Sultana in Barrayar. By the time of the later books in the series it has been cleaned up and gentrified, but you can still get into trouble in some of its back alleys.
  • Kareenburg in Sergyar had one, but Cordelia cleaned it up by unionizing the sex workers.
• Refuge in Audacity:
  • Miles builds his career on this. At one point, he is sent into a prison to rescue one man, and ends up rescuing over ten thousand.
  • Leo Graf from Falling Free, who hijacks an entire space station by reconfiguring it into a starship.
• Regent for Life:
  • Specifically and thoroughly averted in the case of Aral Vorkosigan.
  • Vidal Vordarian was planning to do this. Ezar figured this out fairly quickly, which is why his grandson's regency went to Aral Vorkosigan instead. Vordarian immediately tries a more direct route to the Imperium.
• Rejected Marriage Proposal: Ekaterin turns down marriage proposals from Venier in Komarr and from Alex Vormoncrief in A Civil Campaign. In fact, she turns down proposals from Vormoncrief twice, the second time hitting him in the nose when he grabs hold of her. She also storms out of a large dinner party after a horribly awkward proposal from Miles - but without actually saying "no", a fact that both Ekaterin's aunt and Miles find to be highly significant. Ekaterin later proposes to Miles in an even more public setting and Miles accepts.
• Releasing from the Promise: A Vor lord can't do this for an Armsman. He can, however, send him off to live his own life elsewhere.
• Reluctant Ruler: Gregor in The Vor Game. He basically runs away from home after finding out his father was a sadomasochistic Caligula. Miles reassures him that a) Miles has as much bad blood as Gregor (which Gregor chuckles isn't reassuring), and b) If he were The Caligula, it'd have manifested by now, and the only people who will go crazy are his advisors.
  • Invoked by Emperor Ezar at the end of Shards of Honor. He is fully aware that Aral Vorkosigan is A) horrified at the possibility of becoming Emperor and B) is a widely respected war hero with a better blood right to be Emperor than either Ezar's line or indeed anyone else. Therefore, anything other than an orderly succession and Ezar's only grandson Gregor manifestly fit to rule upon reaching maturity is something Lord Vorkosigan will move worlds to avoid.
• The Remnant: In Brothers In Arms, the villain is one of these for the Komarran resistance.
• Remember the Dead: At least the more literal-minded of Barrayaran traditionalists seem to believe that the ceremonies of veneration for ancestors actually in some way maintain the existence of those being venerated. When Ma Mattulich is given a sentence which includes the stipulation that "no one...shall make a burning for her when she goes into the ground at last" Miles thinks to himself that at least the more literal-minded traditionalists will see this as "literally lethal".
• Research, Inc.: The Durona Group functioned as the internally autonomous in-house medical research group of House Fell, before eventually breaking away and becoming totally independent (albeit funded by Mark Vorkosigan) on Escobar.
• The Resenter: Mark, at first, as a consequence of being a clone groomed for an assassination plot by an abusive madman. He gets better.
• La Résistance: The Barrayaran resistance to the Cetagandan Occupation in Miles' grandfather's day is a huge part of the backstory of the whole saga. Miles goes on to organize one for the Cetagandan-occupied planet of Marilac in "The Borders of Infinity", freeing an entire prisoner of war camp while organizing the prisoners to serve as a nucleus for efforts to restore Marilac's independence.
• Rest-and-Resupply Stop: The nature of interstellar travel in the saga means these — whether space stations or whole planets — are common in the setting. A notable example is Kline Station, a politically independent space habitat in a distant orbit around a "dark star" with no planets, but near which half-a-dozen wormhole exits can be found within practicable sublight cruising distance of one another; the "Docks and Locks" area of the space station complex features prominently in Ethan of Athos (mostly set on Kline Station) and it's very clear that, while it obviously has no natural resources of its own, Kline Station is nonetheless a significant commercial center on account of its position on the wormhole nexus. While Komarr is a planet, it's a pretty worthless one (cold and without a breathable atmosphere, with the population living in domed cities) without much in the way of natural resources, but once again of strategic importance on account of being at the convergence of numerous important wormhole routes. Komarr has been "a galactic trade crossroads for centuries", with an economy founded on "providing services to the trade ships of other worlds" that pass through its wormholes. As on Kline Station, Komarran domes prominently feature "Docks and Locks" districts, where cargoes can be loaded and unloaded. The broader Komarr System also features a number of off-planet space stations at the entrances to the wormholes.
• Retired Badass: Aral and Cordelia, in the later books.
• Revenge by Proxy
  • Ser Galen's abusive treatment of Mark is at least partially colored by his hatred of Aral Vorkosigan, the target of his plot.
  • In "The Mountains of Mourning", someone slits the throat of Miles' horse in an attempted "retroactive infanticide by proxy."
• Rewatch Bonus: On a second read of Memory, one may realize Illyan gives Miles chance after chance to confess his lies, because he doesn't want to fire Miles. And, later on in the book, there are multiple instances where Haroche winces or looks horrified, which on first impression seems like he's appalled at what's happening/might have happened to Illyan, but turns out to be because he's guilty about what he did or afraid that he's going to get caught.
• Roaring Rampage of Rescue: Cordelia embarks on one in Barrayar, to rescue the Uterine Replicator Miles is in after it's captured by Vordarian's forces. She meant it to be a stealth mission, but it ended with the Imperial Palace in flames and Vordarian dead. By her doing and command.
• Romancing the Widow:
  • Vidal Vordarian tried to do this with Princess Kareen as part of his Regent for Life plan.
  • Drives the plot in A Civil Campaign, and got a head start in Komarr.
• Romantic Fake–Real Turn: Ivan and Tej in Captain Vorpatril's Alliance.
• Royally Screwed Up: The Vorbarra family. Thank Father Frost for gene cleaning.
• Royal "We": Gregor very occasionally when he wants to make it abundantly clear he is speaking officially.
• Rule #1: "You play games like that with the big boys, you'd better make damn sure you win, Miles says. Rule One. And there is no Rule Two." Count Falco Vorpatril, Ivan's distant uncle, says the same thing to Richars Vorrutyer just earlier in the book.
  Falco: There is an unwritten rule among us, Richars; if you attempt any ploy on the far side of ethical, you'd damned well better be good enough at your game not to get caught. You're not good enough.
• Rules Lawyer: In Barrayar, Aral Vorkosigan tells Bothari to obeys his wife's commands as if they were his own and never rescinds the order. Aral probably meant that order as coming from Lord Vorkosigan. Bothari interprets it as coming from Lord Regent Vorkosigan, equivalent to an order from the Emperor himself. Cordelia invokes the trope, breathily remarking she never knew Bothari was a "barracks lawyer".
• Running Gag:
  • In Shards of Honor, no one Cordelia meets actually voted for Betan President "Steady Freddy."
  • In Ethan of Athos all of the things that Q.E.D stands for according to Elli Quinn. "Quinn Elicits Deception"... etc.
  • The term "charming understatement" in Captain Vorpatril's Alliance. It becomes a serious-minded Brick Joke when the Arquas get a subpoena "with fangs" from Gregor.
    Ivan: No. Not charming.

Tropes S

• Sadistic Choice: In Barrayar, Aral has to decide between the letter of the law and compassion: execute a young man for a drunken play-duel that became a real one, or pardon him for his crime. Aral chooses the law, due to Barrayar's political instability and fears that favors to friends would lead to rampant nepotism. This forever estranges him from his friend Count Vorhalas, and leads directly to Miles' exposure to soltoxin. It also allows Gregor to, sixteen years later, take control of a relatively stable multi-planet empire, where even the political opposition is a loyal one — led by Vorhalas, determined to make sure his son did not die for nothing.
• Salt the Earth: The nuclear bomb that the Cetagandans used on Vorkosigan Vashnoi was intended to do this. It deliberately salted with plutonium that was intended to be spread around, poisoning the land for generations.
• Sanity Has Advantages: Mark is not exactly more sane than Baron Ryoval, but his insanity is far more orderly and patient. That proves to be enough.
• Sarcastic Confession: While being questioned by the Komarran police about his report of a break-in, Ivan claims to have mentioned the incident to his commanding officer. This is how the conversation actually went:
  Admiral Desplains: Heavy drinking last night, Vorpatril?
  Ivan: No, sir, not a drop. I was kidnapped by two beautiful women and held prisoner in their flat all night. They didn't let me get a wink of sleep.
  Desplains: Save your sex fantasies for your friends, Ivan.
• Scars Are Forever: Miles has an amazing collection from years of bone replacement surgeries, the needle grenade, the Komarr Waste Heat Station incident... Ekaterin finds them most intriguing.
• Schizo Tech: Barrayar was originally a Lost Colony, got cut off from everything, fell back into feudalism and is desperately trying to step up and rejoin galactic society. So while they may have a shiny new fleet of starships, equip their soldiers with kick-ass Powered Armor and are able to rebuild a man's nervous system, The Emperor still presides over the government in an old-school castle and in the outlying regions mail is delivered by hand. On horseback. The mailman on horseback is portrayed as keeping an old, valued, retainer on the government payroll, rather than replacing him with the more efficient modern alternatives. We get snapshots of backcountry life, twenty and thirty years later, that show that it has undergone the same sort of transformations that took place in similar areas of Earth in the last century.
• Screaming Birth: Averted with Lady Alys Vorpatril, who was screaming and cursing her husband (although not for the usual reason); when she is told they cannot afford her to be loud, she bites a makeshift piece of rope and bears it.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!:
  • Miles has had nepotism work in his favor many times. Helps to be foster-brother to the Emperor. To avoid giving the wrong impression, Miles is very careful to only (intentionally) play this card when he has no other options. Indeed, one of the reasons given for his relentless drive is to prove to himself and others that he does not need to rely on nepotism to advance. Which is why Illyan discussed kicking Miles out of ImpSec with Gregor before actually doing it.
    "I didn't know he was that important," said Jin [Sato], ... Miles-san had never acted at all high-nosed or stuffy. On the other hand he'd never acted like the rules applied to him, either.
  • Exercising his connections in a particularly blatant manner is also what get him ejected from the Barrayaran military command line and transferred laterally into Imperial Security. He participates in a mutiny against his commanding officer who ordered technical specialists into a hazardous and unnecessary situation, then hopscotched the chain of command in order to use fresh trainees as an impromptu firing squad when they refused. His Vor name means he is automatically charged with high treason due to this act. He's warned that he can squeeze himself out of it after a good show of punishment and being kept out of the public eye for a few years, but that the other mutineers will probably be dishonorably discharged without trial... unless, as Miles proposes, the charges of mutiny are quashed in their entirety. However, as his father notes, this would thoroughly wreck Miles' reputation. No commander would willingly have him due to this blatant exercise of his father the Regent's political influence to protect him, and anyone forced to take him as a subordinate would end up working "with their neck cranked over their shoulder." Miles asks for the charges to be quashed to protect them, even if the price ends up being his resignation from the service entirely. Fortunately for him, they don't end up needing his resignation: he is instead transferred to ImpSec, which is framed as an internal demotion into a do-nothing sinecure post meant to disgrace him.
  • Subverted by Count Vorpatril in Captain Vorpatril's Alliance. Unfortunately for Ivan, his connections are outranked by his mother's.
  • In an early book, Miles notes (only half-facetiously) that when you belong to an aristocracy, nepotism isn't a sin, it's a lifestyle.
  • In Memory, Miles tries to use his connections with Emperor Gregor to prevent him from being dismissed from ImpSec. Unfortunately for him, Simon had already discussed his dismissal with Gregor. Miles doesn't even bother with his father, knowing Aral will shut him down faster than Simon and Gregor combined.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Jackson's Whole's hat of choice. Mark abuses this with glee.
• Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Leo Graf, Dr. Minchenko, and Mama Nilla refuse to let the quaddies be sterilized and sent to the surface to live out probably-short lives.
• Secret-Identity Identity: Miles struggles with the dichotomy between his identities as Lord Miles Vorkosigan and Admiral Miles Naismith.
• Secret Secret-Keeper: Both Ky Tung and Bel Thorne reveal that they've known about Admiral Naismith's real identity for some time, Ky when announcing his retirement to Miles, and Bel when it's officially read in on the secret in Mirror Dance.
• Secret Snack Stash: In The Vor Game, one of the trainees at Camp Permafrost has a secret stash 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.
• Secret Test of Character:
  • Miles fails one spectacularly in Memory. He has not forgiven himself for it. He passes another one in the same book. Because the one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart.
  • Miles' stint as the ninth Auditor, which is a temporary role for special cases, was Gregor's test to see if he could become a real Imperial Auditor. Little did Miles know that Gregor and four other Auditors were closely observing his performance. Had he failed at his aforementioned second test of character, they might have known.
  • Miles administers one on Consul Vorlynkin in Cryoburn. He lets the Consul witness him both soliciting and accepting a bribe. The Consul reporting Miles' perfidy up the chain of command is what tells Miles that he can be trusted with the greater picture of what Miles' real mission is.
  • In Captain Vorpatril's Alliance Byerly points out to Ivan that Tej's half-Cetagandan ancestry disqualifies any potential children — and probably Ivan — from ever becoming Emperor. Ivan is thrilled, and then realizes that Byerly was watching to see if Ivan wanted the throne. It also serves to nudge Ivan to realise his feelings about his Citizenship Marriage are rather deeper and much more complicated than he has admitted to himself thus far.
• Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Emperor Yuri was convinced that his relatives were planning to kill him and take the throne. So he sent out assassins to kill them first. Those of his relatives who survived that night (Along with General Count Piotr Vorkosigan, who did NOT take having his wife, daughter, and eldest son murdered at the dinner table well) decided that this was the final straw and launched a civil war to overthrow and kill the mad Emperor.
• Self-Punishment Over Failure: In Winterfair Gifts, Armsman Pym puts himself on extended night duty after he failed to detect the poisoned necklace among Ekaterin's wedding gifts. It also allows him to reward the man who did find the poisoned necklace by giving him the night off - he's taking that man's shift.
• Selling One's Own Hair: In Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, Moira Ghem-Estif (formerly Haut) lets a collector cut her previously-uncut hair (Haut hair being highly valued for rarity and cultural significance) for a chunk of money that her family needs to travel to Barrayar to re-unite the family after surviving a coup.
• Settling the Frontier:
  • The Saga starts on the newly discovered world of Sergyar, and its colonization is part of the backstory of the rest of the series — especially after Aral is appointed viceroy of the new colony.
  • Barrayar itself is still being settled as new regions of the planet get terraformed and made habitable for humans and the earth-descended species they depend on. "The Mountains of Mourning" gives us a view of what life is like on the Barrayaran frontier.
• Sex as Rite-of-Passage: Betans are apparently big on this. As soon as you get your contraceptive implant and your hymen surgically cut, you are expected to try it out, hiring a professional for the occasion if necessary.
• Shady Lady of the Night: In Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, By reveals that ImpSec often recruits prostitutes to work as spies. Their logic is that it is easier to convince a prostitute to act as a spy than to convince a spy to sleep with an enemy target when necessary.
• Shaving Is Science: Rather than a razor (straight razor, safety razor, or electric razor) Miles uses "depilatory cream". In Komarr it's mentioned that if you leave this stuff on for too long it will start eating through your skin. (Although it's possible that Miles is exaggerating the effect — he's talking to a nine-year-old to whom "depilation is still a bit of a mystery" and is explicitly trying to fast-talk his way into the bathroom where the kid has barricaded himself because he doesn't want to go to school.)
• She Cleans Up Nicely:
  • Cordelia is very impressed by Aral in his dress uniform with all the trimmings near the end of Shards of Honor.
  • Lady Alys gives excellent advice to Drou on her wedding preparations, especially the dress, in Barrayar. Drou is finally put in a white silk wedding dress and is absolutely stunning.
  • In the short story "Winterfair Gifts", Taura visits Barrayar for Miles and Ekaterin's wedding, and after Lady Alys gets her hands on her the results are... memorable.
    A stunning vision in hunter green stepped through behind her. Oh, it was still Taura, certainly, but ... the skin that had been sallow and dull against the pink was now revealed as a glowing ivory. The green jacket fit very trimly about the waist. Above, her pale shoulders and long neck seemed to bloom from a white linen collar; below, the jacket skirt skimmed out briefly around the upper hips. A narrow skirt continued the long green fall to her firm calves. Wide linen cuffs decorated with subtle white braid made her hands look, if not small, well-proportioned. The pink nail polish was gone, replaced by a dark mahogany shade. The heavy braid hanging down her back had been transformed into a mysteriously knotted arrangement, clinging close to her head and set off with a green ... hat? feather? anyway, a neat little accent tilted to the other side. The odd shape of her face seemed suddenly artistic and sophisticated rather than distorted.
• Shipper on Deck: Cordelia to Drou and Kou in Barrayar.
  Cordelia: You two are two of my favorite people. If only you'd get your heads on straight...
• Shirtless Scene: Roic gets a memorable one in A Civil Campaign, when he stumbles, half-awake, into the midst of an 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 ogle.
  Miles: Armsman Roic... you appear to be out of uniform.
• Shock Stick: Used throughout the series (referred to as either "shock-sticks" or "shock sticks"), they are baton-like non-lethal electric weapons, which can be sufficiently painful as to cause the victim to lose consciousness. In The Vor Game (the first mention within the saga), one is used on Miles by Jacksonian goons, and later on Gregor (although as Miles points out, they only used the low power setting on Gregor). They also feature prominently in Mark's backstory in Brothers in Arms and Mirror Dance, including Ser Galen using a shock stick to sexually assault Mark as part of his "training".
• Shoot the Dangerous Minion: The Lawful Evil Emperor Ezar turns out to have deliberately launched an invasion of Escobar which was doomed to fail, so that he could kill his son Prince Serg and discredit the violent nationalists at his court. The sacrifice of numerous innocents during that invasion made it possible for the throne to pass to Ezar's grandson, Gregor, who is a noble and benevolent king. And Ezar himself not only confesses to it all on his deathbed, but makes it clear he's looking forward to dying. After all he'd gone through by that point, he was ready for a nice long rest.
• Shoot the Hostage: Miles threatens to shoot Gregor, Cavilo's hostage, in The Vor Game. He is bluffing, since his plasma cannon is unpowered. As Miles puts it, the hostage problem is essentially unsolvable but threatening to shoot Gregor makes it Cavilo's problem, not his.
• Shout-Out:
  • Simon Illyan got his name from Illya Kuryakin.
  • Miles has a very subtle one to Sherlock Holmes when talking about Admiral Naismith:
  Miles: "Aye, there's the genius and the wonder of the man!"
  • In "Labyrinth", a man in a fast-penta daze goes off on a tangent quoting from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
  • A passage from The Pilgrim's Progress, never explicitly identified (a character thinks it is "scripture" of some kind) plays a role in "The Borders of Infinity".
  • "The Borders of Infinity" also has several references to The Divine Comedy, including a character named Beatrice.
  • In Memory, the cone of silence is used to allow General Haroche and Miles to have a conversation on a classified subject.
  • In the same book, Ivan on looking at the Gargoyles on ImpSec HQ, is reminded of their appearance in "a short-lived children's animated show."
  • Captain Vorpatril's Alliance contains a shout out to the opening of King Tut's tomb:
  "What can you see?"
  "Marvellous things!"
  • Cetagandan Haut Ladies all look like extras from a Leiji Matsumoto anime.
  • In Mirror Dance, while contemplating Mark's weight gain, Cordelia briefly envisions him in the future as needing a float pallet with attendants.
  • Cryoburn gives us Miles (in a hallucinatory state) using the phrase, "Oh gods and little fishes".
• Show Within a Show:
  • As a child, Miles was a big fan of a holovid action/drama serial, Lord Vorthalia the Bold, Legendary Hero from the Time of Isolation. As an adult, he can remember most of the 9 verses of the theme song. It is likely that he picked up some of his Knight Errant tendencies from this.
  • Some Marilacans attempted to hire Admiral Naismith as an advisor for The Greatest Escape — a holovid docudrama about the Dagoola IV breakout.
  • Nikolai Vorsoisson is fond of holovids featuring Captain Vortalon, a jump pilot who has galactic adventures with Prince Xav, smuggling arms to the Resistance during the Cetagandan invasion.
  • Beta Colony produced a film based on the Escobaran War and Cordelia's role in it called The Thin Blue Line. Their portrayal of Prince Serg upsets Elena, because most Barrayarans view Prince Serg as a hero, not as the Caligula he actually was.
  • While Rish is hiding out in her and Tej's flat in Solstice, she develops a fondness for Komarran soap operas.
• Shrouded in Myth: ImpSec is shrouded in myth not only on Barrayar but elsewhere. On Jackson's Whole they are apparently a bogeyman, chiefly due to a single ImpSec agent (actually Mark) taking down all of House Ryoval. They also think Illyan possessed a cyborg brain (he has an eidetic memory chip up until Memory, but that's the extent of his augmentation).
• Shown Their Work: In a case of Write What You Know, all engineering and building mechanics are extremely detailed and in-depth — because the author's father was an engineer. From Leo Graf and his philosophizing about safety in Falling Free to Captain Vorpatril's Alliance and the event concerning ImpSec HQ to the B-plot of the "dodgy" plascrete in Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, a lot of thought and detail go into those situations.invoked
  • Similarly, a lot of intelligence techniques are pretty accurate. A truth serum exists? Some criminal organizations just assign work to small fry who don't know anything. There are also procedures for taking bribes — and reporting them, of course. At one point, some character wonders how many prostitutes are supplementing their take-home pay with ImpSec informant money.
  • Ivan attributes his romantic successes to the sheer volume of attempts he makes. This is actually a recommended technique for pickup artists; to train yourself to not be afraid of rejection.
• Sibling Rivalry:
  • Miles and Mark settle into a very intense sibling rivalry once they get over trying to kill each other. Fortunately for the rest of the universe, their favorite way of scoring points tends to be pulling each other's chips out of the fire — or out-snarking each other.
    Mark: Last word, I win.
  • A milder one happens between the Koudelka girls.
• Sick and Wrong:
  • Ivan's reaction to a Cetagandan kitten tree. The fact that a kitten dies when he plucks it off the bush before it was... ripe... does not help matters.
  • This is Miles' and Elli's initial reaction to the fur blanket they find in a shop in London. To be specific, this blanket is alive, purrs, snuggles closer when stroked, and feeds on ambient EM fields.
  • Applied to political infighting when one prospective heir of the late Count Vorryuter tries to disqualify the other via emasculation and loses the bulk of his political allies. Given that the former is an extreme conservative and the latter a voluntarily transgender man, there are several levels of intense discomfort to choose from.
• Sick Captive Scam: In Komarr, Ekaterin uses her aunt's not-entirely-feigned infirmity to get them out of the lavatory that's being used as an impromptu cell, and then to break away from their captors long enough to lock herself into the control room.
• Significant Name Shift:
  • In Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, Ivan thinks, at the end, that Miles's children will be old enough to call him Uncle Ivan by the time of his return, and shudders to think of how his identity can be changed without his doing anything. Then he reflects on the possibility of "Da" — which is easier because he would do it.
  • Just as Miles was addressed unexpectedly as "Lord Vorkosigan" and infers that his grandfather has died (and his father became Count, and Miles his heir), Miles at one point reflects that he's not eager for the day that he is greeted as "Count Vorkosigan, sir?" This will signify that his father is dead, and he's the new Count. Happens at the end of "Cryoburn."
• Silk Hiding Steel: Alys Vorpatril. Later on, Ekaterin Vorsoisson also manages to find her steel and develop into this.
• Single-Stroke Battle: Aral Vorkosigan's brilliant conquering of Komarr in his Back Story — too bad his political officer gave him a reputation as The Butcher with a single betrayal.
• Sink or Swim Mentor: Discussed as Gregor offers Miles the permanent post of Imperial Auditor with four of the other Auditors in attendance:
  "Every assignment," Gregor went on, "may be totally unrelated to any other. Unpredictable. You'll be tossed in to sink or swim."
  "Not entirely unsupported," objected Vorthys. "The rest of us will be willing to call advice from shore, now and then."
  For some reason Miles had a mental flash of the whole lot of them sitting in beach chairs holding drinks with fruit on little sticks, awarding him judiciously discussed points for style as he went under, frantically gulping and splashing, the water filling his nose.
• Situational Sexuality: Athos for obvious reasons, as not only are women not allowed on the planet, but all media containing them is tightly censored. After two centuries of this, most men on the planet have long since stopped caring and just have relationships with each other. Those who are presumably strongly heterosexual simply opt for celibacy.
• Skip to the End: Ivan and Tej's wedding, due to a Wedding Deadline involving people wanting to arrest both of them.
• The Slacker: Quietly deconstructed in Ivan, who appears so casual and indifferent towards work because he is very efficient and does things right the first time, leaving him extra time to slack off. This culminates in him turning a job as consul's aide on a backwater planet into a three-days-a-week part-time position at full pay on a tropical island on said planet, effectively turning the assignment into an extended honeymoon with his new wife, simply because he could handle all the position's work more efficiently, directly improving his superior's quality of life at the same time.
• Slasher Smile: Well, a "canine grin", but Bothari gets one off without even being seen when Koudelka accuses Bothari of being off his medication when he refuses to follow Koudelka's orders, proclaiming that he was Cordelia's "dog" and that he had resigned his commission.
  How such could travel over a purely audio link Cordelia was not sure, but a canine grin hung in the air before them.
• Slice of Life: Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen covers the last few months of Cordelia's time as Vicereine of Sergyar and the associated drama of the fledgling colony world. It is decidedly relaxed for the series, with the only turmoil being emotional in nature and the only explosion due to some unfortunately incendiary wildlife, not a dastardly plot on her life... probably. There were Cetagandans present, after all.
• Snowball Lie: Miles's creation of the Dendarii Mercenaries in The Warrior's Apprentice.
• So Bad, It's Good: In-universe. The ugliness of the ImpSec building is a Running Gag in Barrayar. Some of the gargoyles even managed to become characters in children's cartoons.
• So Beautiful, It's a Curse: After Elli Quinn gets her face burned off in a space battle, Miles pays for it to be replaced with the best face that 30th century reconstructive surgery can supply. She is initially delighted with her new face "but the second time a soldier made a pass at me instead of following an order, I knew I definitely had a problem." She goes on to explain that her problems do not arise because she is beautiful, but because she does not have the experience of knowing how to properly deal with her admirers that naturally-beautiful women would have gained while growing up.
• The Sociopath: Practically everyone from the high class of Jackson's Whole has sociopathic tendencies. When the Cordonahs casually discuss how to profit at many Barrayarans' harm, it's quite chilling. And the Barrayarans in question had been nothing but kind and welcoming to them, even though the Cordonahs had a Cetagandan haut as part of their family.
  • They even consider tying up Tej's matrimonial loose ends by murdering Ivan. Fortunately Tej is "rather reluctant" on that score.
  • For the matter of that, it is implied that grandma Arqua was at least a minor accessory to war crimes during The Occupation, probably including involuntary human genetic research.
• Sociopathic Hero: Sgt. Bothari, Miles' bodyguard during his early years. A multiple rapist and murderer, who knows he is insane but struggles so hard to be a good dad for his daughter that he is very nearly The Woobie.
  • To a lesser extent, Miles' father Aral, who murdered his political officer with his bare hands after the latter ordered a massacre of civilian prisoners; and earlier had murdered his first wife's two lovers, one in a fair duel, the other in more-or-less cold blood.
• Solid Gold Poop: Butterbugs eat (or, at least, could be redesigned to eat) inedible Barrayaran plant material, and vomit up a bland, but nutritious, "butter" that can accept many flavourings to make it more palatable. Their droppings also make a spectacularly good compost, which is extremely valuable on a world that's still being terraformed and on which, in the not-too-distant past, wars have been fought over horse manure (or rather, the distribution rights of same). And an almost literal version in The Flowers of Vashnoi when it's discovered that the newly engineered "radbugs" are concentrating and excreting, among other things, platinum from the irradiated soil they are processing. Enrique muses that they could be used for extracting usable metal from old gold mine tailings.
• Son of a Whore: Bothari, as revealed in Barrayar. Cordelia is unsurprised by this, but expresses outrage when Bothari reveals that his mother used to sell him to her clients. It also explains why "bastard" is a Berserk Button for Bothari when other epithets roll off his back.
• So Proud of You
• Space Cossacks: The Dendarii Mercenaries are a little like Cossacks, being irregulars in the service of Tsarist Russia Recycled In Space and they contain individuals escaping from social pressure on Barrayar, including Elena and her husband, and in a different way Miles himself. However, they mostly contain people from any and every world in the Nexus. Also, they play the "screening the Empire from external threats" role.
• Space Sector: The series repeatedly mentions numbered sectors ("Sector II", "Sector V"). It's not clear if these are generally-used spatial divisions, or specific to the Barrayaran Imperial Service (though the Barrayaran Empire explicitly does not rule these various sectors). The planet Komarr is also divided into sub-planetary sectors as its major administrative subdivisions.
• Spanner in the Works: Miles, in almost every book he is in.
  • The villain of Diplomatic Immunity very nearly gets away with multiple murders, 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) Gupta then managing to track them down, raring for revenge, thus alerting Barrayar and crucially Miles to what's really going on, as well as unwittingly giving him a hint of how he can survive the bioweapon when the villain infects him with it as well.
  • In Cryoburn, the attempted kidnapping of Miles by the N.H.L.L. leads to him helping an orphan boy. As a result,
    Roic wondered how m'lord's sudden trail of chaos through their affairs, erupting out of seeming-nowhere, must have felt to the confused cryocorp men, who'd thought they'd had [their dead body problem] all locked down. That was a vision to make a fellow smile, ...
• Spare to the Throne: At the age of eleven, Aral Vorkosigan watched as his mother and older brother and sister were slain by a death squad sent by the mad emperor Yuri. While these events happened before the time of the books, they are of critical importance in the relationships between Aral's father, Count Piotr Vorkosigan, and Aral's son, Miles. Miles' mother, Cordelia, was poisoned while pregnant, and the boy was considered lost by both Count Piotr and their doctors, who called for an abortion with the intent of trying again for a healthy heir. Years later, while Miles was briefly dead (he got better) his clone-brother, Mark — who had been created in a plot to replace him and destroy the Imperium — had to face the concept that if Miles was truly lost (dead and rotted) he might have to take up his progenitor's place as heir to the Countship of the Vorkosigan District in the Council of Counts.
  • Much is also made of the Vorkosigan family's status as the Spares to the Emperor's throne. After Mad Yuri's pruning of the family tree, and since Ezar only had one son (Serg), Aral was the closest thing to a spare if anything happened to Serg or (later) Serg's son Gregor. After Serg died and Ezar soon followed, Aral became Gregor's regent and remained the Spare, followed by Miles later on. Only it's an open secret that nobody would accept a "mutie" and "cripple" like Miles on the throne, so the real successor if something was to happen to Gregor would be Ivan, who wants none of it. The Vorkosigan family's proximity to the throne is an extremely important plot point in several books, and the pressure is only lifted off Miles late in the series when Gregor finally gets married and works on some heirs. Ivan is thrilled when it's pointed out Tej's Cetagandan heritage will remove him and any children from the succession.
• Spiritual Successor: "The Flowers of Vashnoi" can be seen as a follow-up to "The Mountains of Mourning", as they deal with the older generation of Vorkosigan hill people unable to deal with modernity.
• Split Personality:
  • Miles's persona as Admiral Naismith is not quite a complete disassociation, but often treated as one. Cordelia in particular expresses grave concerns over how Miles could cope in the event that he had to abandon the role. Despite a brief bout of depression, Miles does manage to maintain his stability after losing the alternate identity.
  • Mark's Black Gang. Mark is envious of Miles' split personality because Miles Naismith was someone you could take to parties and show off.
• Split-Personality Switch Trigger: Mark's Black Gang are a classic example of the traumas involved automatically triggering the associated personaliity in order to protect the "real" persona (Mark himself) from that trauma: The force-feedings bring forth "Gorge", the rapes bring forth "Grunt", and the straight torture sessions bring forth "Howl".
• The Spymaster: Simon Illyan, and his predecessor Captain Negri, dubbed "Ezar's Familiar". And General Guy Allegre, who succeeds Simon, although in Captain Vorpatril's Alliance it's clear that Simon can't stop playing Spymaster just because he's retired.
• Standard Royal Court: Though slightly more streamlined than most, the Barrayaran aristocracy consists of an Emperor and the high Vor (who are the sum total of the aristocracy), more armsmen (e.g. bodyguards) than you can shake a stick at, then the low Vor (anyone with "Vor" on the front of their name who's not directly in line for a countship; this also includes any non-Vor with a twenty year military service record and an honorable discharge). Unavoidably, there are courtiers in the emperor's orbit, but he does not deliberately court them.
• The Stateless:
  • In Captain Vorpatril's Alliance Lady Moira ghem Estif renounced her Cetagandan citizenship when she and her husband expatriated to Komarr in the wake of the disastrous invasion of Barrayar. Her husband took Komarran citizenship, and she had residency as his spouse. Since then, she has lived with House Cordonah on Jackson's Whole, and as a resident alien on Earth, but specifically calls out her status as someone who's been stateless for over a century.
  • Arguably, the many Houseless residents of Jackson's Whole (collectively referred to as Grubbers) would also count, as the Houses Major and Minor are effectively the governments of that planet, so anyone who hasn't got House allegiance/protection is effectively stateless.
• State Sec: The Ministry of Political Education, complete with Political Officers. ImpSec, though its name is fairly ominous (and it is willing to trade on that factor on occasion) is more of a Properly Paranoid intelligence agency.
• Strange Salute: A borderline example with the oft-mentioned (and unofficial) ImpSec analysts' salute, which is a salute so lazy that it is just a wave in the general vicinity of the face.
• Straying Baby: Barrayar ends with a frantic search for Miles.
• Subordinate Excuse: Miles originally goes about courting Ekaterin after their return to Barrayar by hiring her to build a garden. She quits the job in a rage once she discovers this, since this entire manipulation went against the single request she had of Miles, that he never lie to her. She complains that the garden could have been her gift to him.
• Subspace Ansible: Averted, which is often crucial to the plot. This technology does not exist in the setting and all messages have to be conveyed through the Wormhole Nexus by ships or focusing a beam of light through a wormhole (called a "tightbeam"). As a result, there is nothing even close to real-time interstellar communication. Which means that Miles (and everyone else) have to work in an environment wherein they cannot simply call up their superiors for instructions. Of course, this also gives Miles an excuse to pull off gambits that would probably never get approved up front.
• Sudden Principled Stand: Used several times.
  • In Falling Free, Bannerji does not refuse to fire at and destroy the ship that the quaddies escape on per se, but he demands a proper work order, signed by the Hazardous Waste Management Officer and with an Environmental Impact Assessment attached. This gives the ship time to escape.
  • In Shards of Honor, when Sergeant Bothari refuses to rape Cordelia as per Admiral Vorrutyer's orders.
• Suddenly Significant Rule: In A Civil Campaign, Ekaterin's fiendishly brilliant idea for dealing with Count Vormuir's own Loophole Abuse regarding his bevy of replicator-birthed daughters is to dust off the old laws regarding the duty of a high-born father to provide dowries for his acknowledged female bastards — in Vormuir's case, one hundred and eighteen dowries.
• Super Breeding Program: A Barrayaran Count sets up a breeding program using cast-off female eggs and his own sperm in Uterine Replicators to create dozens of his own daughters, not as a bid to create some kind of pure or super race, but to... make more taxpayers for his district? To be precise, it's a scheme to attract young, productive male immigrants looking for wives — a real problem these days on Barrayar thanks to misuse of sex selection techniques. The Countess (who had already given him a few legitimate children), whose consent he did this without, was not very happy about it. The punishment? His wife refuses to see him (much less have sex with him), and later, the Count is expected to provide dowries for each and every daughter.
  • The Star Crèche is basically one giant eugenics project.
• Super-Senses:
  • Cetagandans, even ghem and ba, have genetically improved senses.
  • Rish and the rest of the Jewels — among other things, Rish can hear heartbeats and smell when someone is aroused. (Their DNA comes from a half-haut/half-ghem Cetagandan woman.) Also Tej and her other siblings, to a lesser extent (their genetics come from their mother and their non-Cetagandan father). Sometimes a downside, since they're also trained to have a refined sense of aesthetics and are very sensitive to bad cooking or clashing colors. They also suffer very bad disorientation during wormhole jumps and thus find jumpship travel extremely unpleasant.
• Super-Soldier:
  • Taura was created to be one ... by people with an imperfect list of specifications.
  • It is implied that the Cetagandans consider Miles to be one.
• Supreme Chef: Ma Kosti, kitchen goddess. Took maple mead, combined it with bug butter. Result? A creamy, maple-flavoured dessert fit for the Emperor himself (Gregor is on the list of people who have tried hiring her away from Miles). And that was one of her minor culinary accomplishments. Ivan warns Miles to double her salary, and both Alys and Cordelia torment Miles with the idea they might tempt her away — and those two are some of the very few people in the galaxy who could strongarm Miles.^note Fortunately for Miles, Alys has relented and just uses Ma Kosti for special events, and knows she will never give up a chance to cook for Emperor Gregor.
  Ma Kosti had prepared the smallest lake trout, which was enough to feed the whole household, with a sauce that would have made baked cardboard delectable, and rendered the fresh fish a feast for minor gods.
• Switching P.O.V.: Through Brothers in Arms, the stories are told in tight/limited third person perspective focused on Cordelia or Miles, but most of the later books are told from multiple perspectives:
  • Mirror Dance: Mark and Miles.
  • Komarr: Ekaterin and Miles, alternating chapters.
  • A Civil Campaign: Miles, Ekaterin, Ivan, Kareen, and Mark.
  • Cryoburn: Miles, Jin, and Roic.
  • Captain Vorpatril's Alliance: Ivan and Tej.
  • Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen: Cordelia and Oliver.
• Sword Cane: Koudelka's swordstick. It avoids the unscrewing problem via a powerful spring-loaded sheath — strong enough to make the ejected sheath a useful projectile weapon in itself. It also has a very good blade, as Bothari demonstrates during the "Shopping Trip".
• Sympathetic P.O.V.: While early Miles-centered books are narrated from his point-of-view, later ones give the thoughts of Mark, Ivan, Ekaterin, Kareen and Armsman Roic. While Miles struggles with his low self-esteem, all of his friends emphasize how intimidated they are by his genius, drive, and presence:
  Ivan: In between inspiring you to strangle him with your bare hands, he could make you proud enough to cry...So small, so wrecked, so obnoxious. So incandescent. Give the people a light, and they'll follow it anywhere. Did Miles know how dangerous he was?
  ...
  Kareen: Mark, I'd take you and every member of the Black Gang at your worst for a week before I let myself get locked in a room with Miles. He... takes you over. Do you have any idea what it takes to stop him?

Tropes T

• Take a Third Option: In "The Mountains of Mourning" Miles has to punish Mara Mattulich — 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, to enter into any legal business 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 Due to the Dead is serious business) this is worse, and more effective, than a simple execution.
• Take My Hand!: Subverted in "The Borders of Infinity" when Miles misses his grip on a falling ally, then deconstructed in Komarr, as Miles belatedly realizes what the consequences of a successful Take My Hand! moment would actually have been. (They were in a space shuttle, the other person weighed significantly more than Miles, and Miles was not anchored in any way.)
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: Ivan Vorpatril. Tall, Dark, and Snarky as well, at least when alone with Miles.
• Tangled Family Tree:
  • The Vor have a lot of this. Tracking who is related to who is usually complicated and requires charts, as well as being plot-important.
  • Cetagandan haut have genetic constellations rather than family lines, aided by the fact that every child is conceived by decree of the Star Creche, and the parents may never even meet each other, much less actually have sex. Trying to draw their genetic connections on paper would result in a mesh (or a mess) rather than a tree.
• Tastes Like Purple: In Shards, Cordelia describes the antidote gas as having, "...a greenish taste, cooler, but nearly as nauseating as the original poison."
• Technically a Smile:
  • In Memory, an angry Duv Galeni is described showing his teeth in a way that's "not at all a smile."
  • Ivan develops one after years of dealing with Miles.
  • Inverted by Taura, whose genuine smiles, thanks to her fangs, look downright terrifying to people who do not know her. Of course the "other" smile she uses when she tries to look intimidating is exceedingly effective.
  • Cavilo gives Miles an extremely sour "Watch this, asshole" smile before killing a captain she'd been blackmailing when Miles interferes too much, in The Vor Game.
• Technology Marches On: In-Universe — when Jole finds out to his shock that the Prince Serg, a dreadnought that was the fleet's flagship, is being decommissioned and scrapped. He fights his Nostalgia Filter to recognize its weaponry after 20 years is pathetically inadequate now, but he still reminisces about the Curb-Stomp Battle in the Hegen Hub battle when the gravitic lances were state-of-the-art.
• Teen Superspy: Miles starts as one.
• Teeth-Clenched Teamwork: Slightly subverted between Aral and Piotr in the first book. Cordelia notes that despite their vitriolic argument over Miles, when Vordarian's forces make their attempt at usurping the throne, there's no wasted breath between them as they seamlessly plot out a strategy to defeat him... despite Piotr's having been on the verge of disowning Aral less than one minute ago.
• Telepathic Spacemen: Terrance Cee, thanks to Cetagandian genetic engineering. In the future of the setting, the entire population of Athos will eventually become this — as may some people on Barrayar, thanks to the genetic samples made available by Miles and Elli Quinn.
• Tell Me About My Father:
  • In The Vor Game, Emperor Gregor asks Miles what he knows about Prince Serg. Miles suggests that he go talk to Countess Vorkosigan. Some of his actions in later books indicate that he did so.
  • Unfortunately for Elena, finding out about her mother in The Warrior's Apprentice was not what she expected.
  • Mark does this with Cordelia in Mirror Dance, with her having a frank discussion with him. She comments that Miles dismisses the (true) rumors about, say, Aral's sexuality because he thinks it's slander. She tells Mark the truth because he needs to know the truth about him with no illusions about him as anything but a real man.
  • Miles finally comes to terms with Aral's bisexuality when he asks Jole to tell him his perspective of his father. Miles takes it in stride, noting the length of Aral and Jole's relationship is analogous to a marriage (a three-headed one with Cordelia included.)
• Tempting Fate:
  • On arriving back on Barrayar with his new Citizenship Marriage wife:
    Ivan: There are three people I'd most like to avoid in Vorbarr Sultana — m'mother, Miles, and Gregor, in that order.^note A non-optional invitation from his mother to dinner that night arrives about a minute later. The invitation to tea with Miles and Gregor arrives the next morning — and he meets them, in that order.
  • Also
    Richars: Alys Vorpatril does not hold a vote in the Council of Counts.
    [later, after Alys's expert political maneuvering has netted Miles and his friends several votes in the Council]
    Miles: Richars Vorrutyer sat right there and informed me that Lady Alys held no vote in Council. The fact that she has spent more years in the Vorbarr Sultana political scene than all of us here put together seemed to escape him.
  • In Barrayar, when Vordarian is at Cordelia and Bothari's mercy, she asks him if he'll stop the war. Ranting that he'll never give up and fight to the last man was definitely not a smart idea.
• Thanatos Gambit: Ezar: His maneuvering Aral into position as Regent from his deathbed; his use of his infirmities to trap foes:
  Vortala: He's flushed more rats out of the wainscotting in the last five months than the past twenty years. You could practically mark the shakedowns in the Ministries by his medical bulletins. One week: condition very grave. Next week: another deputy minister caught out on charges of peculation, or whatever.
• That Thing Is Not My Child!:
  • Piotr's reaction to a deformed Miles as an infant. He actually attempts to murder Miles at one point. Miles begins winning Piotr over with his love of horses, and by the time Miles is 17, Piotr is actively rooting for him to make it in the military.
  • Elena Visconti's initial reaction to her Child by Rape, Elena Bothari. Miles convinces her to at least meet with her, and years afterward, Visconti has come to terms with her daughter, and is meeting with her annually.
• They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!: Miles to Ivan in Memory: "That's Lord Auditor Coz to you." Ivan continues to address Miles as "Lord Auditor Coz" every now and then just to needle him. Mark seems to have picked up the habit (doubtless for the exact same reason); he scores a point or two off of "Lord Auditor Brother." This results in Tej thinking of Miles as The Coz when she meets him — and thanks to Ivan, Emperor Gregor as "The Gregor" as well.
• Thicker Than Water: Piotr and Aral Vorkosigan clash badly over what to do with a deformed, crippled heir, but the two are also completely committed to the good of Barrayar and the Imperium. Despite Piotr's nearly disowning Aral just moments before, when young Emperor Gregor is brought to them after a pretender to the throne makes his move, both Vorkosigans immediately begin coordinating to keep the Emperor safe and bring down the pretender.
• Third Line, Some Waiting: The Breather Episode books, like A Civil Campaign or Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen often feature a minor plot thread that gets resolved in the end, such as the butter bugs in the former and Mikos ghem Soren and his adjusting to life on Sergyar in the latter. Despite the series having many characters, Bujold manages to avoid any Kudzu Plots.
• A Threesome Is Hot: Cordelia loves having three-way sex with her paramour — so long as the third is also male.
• Through His Stomach: Rish tells Tej her suitors should come with food, not connections.
• Throwing Out the Script: Ivan can see Miles planning to do this at Aral's funeral at the end of Cryoburn; it's a sign of Character Development that he doesn't.
• Tiny Guy, Huge Girl: Miles with all of his sexual/romantic partners, but especially Taura.
• Too Clever by Half: Miles. His brilliance gets him into just as much trouble as it gets him out of.
• Too Dumb to Live: Tien Vorsoisson failing to keep his breath mask charged, when practically the first thing everyone on Komarr is told is "never go outside the domes without a fully charged breath mask".
• Too Kinky to Torture: Mark.
  Technician: I hate to be the one to tell you this, Baron, but your torture victim appears to be having a wonderful time.
• To the Pain: Tried Twice. Failed. Twice.
• Tractor Beam: A mature technology with the usual large-scale military/civilian applications (grabbing spacecraft for tactical advantage or careful manipulation such as docking maneuvers), as well as smaller scale uses: Hand tractors for cargo handling and medical hand tractors for fine detail work under sterile conditions. It was also weaponized as the Gravitic Imploder Lance, using a modified version of the technology to inflict catastrophic damage on other ships.
• Tranquil Fury:
  • Emperor Gregor when he gets mad, as Miles and Ivan found out.
    Gregor had grown so neutral as to seem almost gray. So, that's what rage looks like on him. Miles wondered if Haroche realized what Gregor's extreme lack of expression meant.
    ...
    Ivan: [...] You don't want to see what he's like pissed.
    Byerly: What does he look like, pissed?
    Ivan: Identical to what he looks like the rest of the time. That's the scary part.
  • Ekaterin. Her mother taught her when she was young to deal with anger by being an Extreme Doormat. As she grew more independent, this transmuted into what Miles called "turning to stone." She becomes icy, unemotional, and unmovingly pragmatic.
  • Aral. When he's really angry, his voice gets lower, but extremely intense. Characters like Vorreedi and Desplains remind Miles and Ivan respectively when they speak with a soft "dead level" tone, reminding them both of Aral when he's about to spring a verbal trap.
  • Lady Donna's transformation into Lord Dono was chiefly due to her rage at Richars, though she (then he) never raises his voice ever. Ekaterin recognized the level of anger behind the plan.
• Transhuman Aliens: The Cetagandans & the quaddies. Ironically, the Cetas, who look like standard humans, are actually more alien in their thinking than the quaddies. After all the genetic engineering they have done on themselves, Miles wonders whether the Cetan Haut class can even be considered part of the same species as the rest of humanity. Or the reverse: how long before the Cetagandans stop considering non-Cetagandans human?
• Traumatic Haircut:
  • A variant is used to chilling effect in Shards of Honor, where the sadistic psychopath of a bad guy clips one of Cordelia's locks as part of his sick preparations to rape her for real (although any demoralizing effect it has on Cordelia herself is more of a side benefit; his primary purpose in doing so is in order to torment Aral by toying with the lock of hair where he can see it).
  • The Haut ladies of Cetaganda never cut their hair. In Cetaganda, one is held prisoner by clamping her hair. She and another Haut lady react with horror to Miles' suggestion to just cut her loose. Then he distracts them and cuts her loose anyway. In Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, one sells her hair for an unstated but significant amount of money; her (half-haut, half-ghem) daughter's hair had been cut by her captors.
  • In memorial services, Barrayarans cut a lock from their hair and burn it ritually. Cordelia was so devastated by Aral's death, she cut off all of her waist-length hair and burned it. She kept it short thereafter.
• Tribal Face Paint: The Cetagandans wear elaborate facepaint with different variations for caste and rank.
• Tropical Epilogue:
  • After seeing Gregor's betrothal ceremony to its conclusion, and before preparations for the Wedding start gearing up, Alys Vorpatril — to Ivan's extreme discomfort, if not dismay — plans to spend a couple of weeks with Simon at some prole resort on the south coast so dull that it had never come to ImpSec's attention. Ivan mutters about "those disgusting drinks with the fruit on a stick in them", among other things.
  • Captain Vorpatril's Alliance ends with a "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue via emails read on a tropical beach. Ivan himself happens to be enjoying one of those fruit-on-stick drinks at the time, with his wife.
• True Companions:
  • Lampshaded by Ekaterin, when she compares her loner, Jerkass late husband Tien to Miles' rowdy collection of badasses, geniuses, Cool Old Guys, Cool Old Ladies, Officers and Gentlemen...
  • Also noted by Mark, who while looking through one of Miles' photo albums realizes that Miles' support crew is the major reason he could never catch up.
    Mark: He's not a man, he's a mob.
  • Quaddie culture puts special meaning into being part of a "work gang". The concept of the Crew is this trope, to them.
  • Tej notes that while Ivan Xav doesn't have any brothers, he does have brother officers.
• Truly Single Parent: The Durona group, a series of clones of one Lily Durona.
• Truth Serums: The drug fast-penta, which is ubiquitous and almost foolproof, provided you know the right questions to ask. However, it cannot be used on anyone with the wrong type of allergic reaction, as it would kill them, and the allergic reaction can be deliberately induced by a competent intelligence agency. Miles notes to himself, later in the series, that the ability to artificially induce a fatal allergic reaction to fast-penta has resulted in a world where this remarkable truth serum is now fantastically useful only when you are dealing with rank amateurs, since any professional subject will have been proofed against chemical interrogation long before you arrive on the scene. In Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, it's revealed that Komarran criminal organizations have taken to foiling fast-penta interrogations by assigning the actual dirty work to underlings who don't know anything important (a classic intelligence technique).
  • Miles demonstrates an anomalous reaction to it in Brothers in Arms, where he becomes hyperactive instead of calm. Instead of compelling him to tell the truth in response to a question, every single thing he thinks just spills out of his mouth (truthfully, but not necessarily in response to what he was asked, which is the problematic bit from the interrogator's point of view), and it is impossible to shut him up. He realizes that he can evade questioning by "free associating" the questions to irrelevant topics, such as memorised poetry or plays, and ends up reciting the entirety of Richard III as a one-man show at top speed before vomiting and passing out. Most of this recitation took place after the interrogators gave up and dumped him back in his cell — the chain association was that strong.
  • Mark is tested for a reaction at a point when being able to verify his complete non-involvement in Aral Vorkosigan's heart attack would be very convenient. Results? Mark should definitely avoid fast-penta interrogations. (It's almost certainly due to Ser Galen making sure Mark had the same induced allergy ImpSec gives its own agents.)
  • Ekaterin found that it removed constant pain she felt as a result of her life in a loveless marriage. Said marriage has just ended in the "suspicious" death of her husband, which was why she was given the drug.
  • One character in Komarr, after being subjected to it, states that she might start taking it as a way to free up her thought processes, visualize complex situations more easily, and make it easier to think outside the box.
  • One attempt to use it in Ethan of Athos reveals another weakness: if the person it's used on doesn't understand the question, instead of saying so, they'll try to translate it into a question that they do understand, resulting in an answer that the interrogator might not understand, as it may not have anything to do with the original topic.
  • No-Sell: Haut women are immune to fast-penta. Haut men are very resistant.
• Tuckerization: Many characters are named after fans of the series. A helpful list shows the dozens of names derived from them.
• Turned Against Their Masters: The quaddies run a relatively non-violent version of this in Falling Free.
• Twerp Sweating: In Gentleman Jole, Gen. Fyodor Haines complains that even being a base commander doesn't give him enough credibility with boys interested in his 15-year-old daughter.
  Adm. Jole: I’d think you were in an excellent position to intimidate suitors.
  Haines: But everyone knows I’m not allowed to use the plasma cannons for personal purposes.
• Tyke Bomb: Mark Pierre Vorkosigan. It is telling that the people he was assigned to kill are the ones that give him his own name.

Tropes U

• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: To be fair, Baron Shiv isn't really ugly by any means, but he's not exactly described as a looker. Baronne Udine, meanwhile, is half-ghem and half-haut. That is, half unbelievably beautiful and half mind-shatteringly beautiful.
• The Unfettered:
  • The lengths to which Ezar Vorbarra is willing to go to clean up his own government are... extreme. He declares a war he plans on losing so that his son will die in the crossfire and the "war party" faction be politically discredited. After he uses the Ministry of Political Education to enact a minor purge, he goes ahead and purges them too, because they were becoming too powerful. He very possibly let a civil war happen just because it was convenient.
  • Miles' persona as Admiral Naismith, compared to his duties as Lord Vorkosigan.
  • In A Civil Campaign Kareen muses that Cordelia is the most "unfettered" of all, due to her sheer indifference to Barrayaran mores, and the immovable moral center which she naturally possesses.
• Ungovernable Galaxy: The absence of FTL communications and the limitations on where it is possible to travel to and from using the Wormhole Nexus results in this. There is no unified interstellar human government, with most colonies (and Earth itself) being independent. Some multi-system powers such as the Barrayaran and Cetagandan Empires exist, but they generally only control a handful of systems (three and eight respectively in these cases).
• Universal Universe Time: Averted. For example, Barrayar has a 26.7 hour day. When Ivan is temporarily posted to Komarr, he grumbles that the 19-hour day length doesn't give him enough time to sample the nightlife after work.
• Un-person: Mara Mattulich's punishment for infanticide was to be declared dead before the law, losing all property to the mother of the child (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 Mara herself growled "Some leniency". 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 graveyard was purposefully flooded due to a new dam, burying her utterly.
  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.
• Unproblematic Prostitution: As with so many other things, the Betans have this one worked out, with sex therapists being a licensed and respectable profession. On Sergyar, Cordelia helped, with Aral's muscle behind it, to unionize the sex workers, importing a Betan herm professional to instruct them on how to work legally. Cordelia and Dr. Titania have maintained healthy, legal prostitution on the planet since.
• Unto Us a Son and Daughter Are Born: Aral and Helen Vorkosigan, Miles and Ekaterin's children.
• Unusual Euphemism: "Shopping".
  Miles: [to Ekaterin] "... Maybe you can go shopping." He waved them off, smiling. "Just don't haul home any severed heads." He glanced up to find Venn and Greenlaw both staring at him in some dismay. "Ah—family joke," he explained weakly. The dismay did not abate.
• Unwanted Assistance: Duv to Miles after Miles, having accidentally sabotaged Duv's chances with Laisa Toscane by introducing her to Gregor, offers to assist Duv in his courtship of Delia Koudelka.
• Unwitting Pawn:
  • Lieutenant Vormoncrief, who did truly love Ekaterin (Or at least did truly lust for Ekaterin), kept butting into her life to "save" her from Miles, all at the prodding of Miles's political rivals. He managed to also draw in several of her relatives. Emperor Gregor himself eventually had to get involved to tell everybody (except Ekaterin) to grow up, as he did not have the time to deal with their gullibility.
  • Memory. General Haroche nearly succeeds in doing this to Miles.
  • Cetaganda. Ghem-General Chilian was being used by his haut consort Vio for a treason plot, without his knowledge.
    Miles: [thinking] Yep. Ghem-General Chilian definitely has an appointment with an unfriendly air lock. Poor sucker.
• Upper-Class Twit:
  • Ghem-Lord Yenaro and his dissipated buddies from Cetaganda.
  • Ivan sometimes pretends to be one.
  • Byerly Vorrutyer, notorious Vorbarr Sultana "town clown." And domestic counter-intelligence agent.
  • Tej (and the rest of her family) refer to commoners as grubbers. Ironically, they still do this even though they have technically been ousted from their techno-fiefdom.
• Uterine Replicator: The central technological innovation of the series. It was developed sometime before Artificial Gravity, and aside from the standard medical properties of easing birth and treatments of the fetus, it has been used for genetic experiments (mostly outlawed now, but it produced the Quaddies and the hermaphrodites). Most children are born using these. According to Cordelia, the real war going on in Barrayar is the old guard saying "We didn't use them, you shouldn't either" and the new guard who do — and Barrayar is changing drastically, and the men who obsessed with their own toys won't even notice it til it's too late. One unscrupulous Lord tries to use it to expand his district's population; Miles sighs at the plot and says someone was going to try to exploit the technology at some point. A solution making it very costly to the Lord is found using the existing laws, making a nice buffer til actual laws regarding the technology are written.
• Uriah Gambit: Emperor Ezar Vorbarra reluctantly deploys one to get rid of his heir, the Evil Prince Serg. Since Serg was a warmonger with dreams of conquest, letting him go into a battle in which he got killed counts as a case of Hoist by His Own Petard, while still allowing him to remain a hero to Barrayarans by going out in a blaze of glory.

Tropes V

• Victorian Novel Disease: Ekaterin mentions that when girls pretend it is the Time of Isolation, if they pretend to romantically die of disease, it is one "that makes you interestingly pale and everyone sorry and doesn't involve losing bowel control."
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • Prince Serg in Shards of Honor. We later learn Aral was goading him into leading the charge so that the Escobarans would kill him.
  • Miles goads Count Vordrozda and Admiral Hessman into one at the climax of The Warrior's Apprentice.
  • Richars Vorrutyer in A Civil Campaign. He was encouraged by Byerly into making an unwise attack on Dono. His abrasive personality may have doomed him to failure, as exemplified by his political mistakes and his performance at the Council of Counts. Twit.

Tropes W

• Walking Transplant: The fate of clones from Jackson's Whole. Old, evil, and very rich patrons will commission clones that they can transplant their brains into to extend their lifespans.
• War Is Hell: Emphasized in Shards of Honor, with the Barrayar-Escobar War, and Barrayar, with Vordarian's Pretendership. Nobody wins these things; our heroes just lose less. Somewhat.
• Warrior Prince: The Hegen Alliance Navy, Emperor Gregor Vorbarra and Admiral Count Aral Vorkosigan, Joint Commanders. Gregor pulls rank on Aral to get a seat on the Command Deck. This is in some ways the acid test of Aral's regency — he could have legitimately overruled Gregor, citing concerns for the safety of the Imperial person, but does not. Aral is loyal enough that he instead lets go of the reins... although doing so does make his ulcers flare up something awful.
  • After it was all over, Aral admitted that Gregor had probably been right, too. The propaganda angle of the Emperor leading the charge to save the Hegen Hub paid off very nicely, for one thing.
• Warrior Therapist: Cordelia. Miles too.
• Water Torture: In Shards of Honor, Cordelia repeatedly dunks the head of her psychologist (who wants to force her into a rather severe treatment program) into her aquarium in order to find out how many guards she had brought.
• Weapon for Intimidation: Aral, in Shards of Honor, prefers a nerve disruptor or plasma arc to a stunner for this reason. Miles is less than impressed three decades later when someone pulls the argument out.
• We ARE Struggling Together: Barrayar, until quite recently.
  "I could take over the universe with this army if I could ever get all their weapons pointed in the same direction."

  —Aral Vorkosigan, Shards of Honor
• We Could Have Avoided All This: Miles notes had Cavilo simply ferried Gregor back to Barrayar, she could have earned a king's ransom as a reward. Instead, she succumbed to her two Fatal Flaws: Complexity Addiction and Chronic Backstabbing Disorder.
• We Do the Impossible: House Vorkosigan. As Cordelia remarks:
  "The difficult we do at once. The impossible takes a little longer."
• Wedding Deadline: Ivan and Tej have to marry before the police get through the doors to arrest them.
• Weddings for Everyone: At the conclusion of A Civil Campaign we have:
  • Gregor and Laisa waiting to go on their honeymoon.
  • Miles and Ekaterin safely engaged.
  • Mark and Kareen with their Mutual Option arrangement.
  • Delia and Olivia Koudelka getting ready to fight over who gets married first, with their father moaning about what this will do to his finances.^note We know that 6 months later in "Winterfair Gifts", both Olivia Vorrutyer and Delia Galeni are in attendance, so they must have settled it. No word about the financial angle—maybe some gifts, or Count Vorrutyer chipping in to his wedding, at least?
  • Mark musing (and by Cryoburn he is proved right) that Martya and Enrique seem to be getting very friendly.
• Welcome to My World: Martya's tart response when Miles wonders why René's genes should trump his competence in A Civil Campaign. As a girl, she is ineligible to become a count, however competent.
  Martya: If you want sympathy you've come to the wrong store, Miles.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Apparently Miles had a man tortured to death, hijacked a spaceship, commandeered a mercenary fleet and won a minor war to impress his dad. Or possibly his late grandfather. Or maybe his love interest at the time, his bodyguard's daughter, who was the impetus of the entire trip. Though to be fair to Miles, he had little idea of Bothari's true psychotic nature and didn't realize he'd resort to torture when asked to question someone. "Impress his dad" can be taken as a proxy for "justify my existence".
  • He'd also felt this relationship with his grandfather, Piotr, which is why he is devastated initially when he fails to get entry into the military. Piotr dies before he's inducted into the military, and Miles spends a good chunk of the series trying to impress a dead man.
• We Will All Fly in the Future: Although groundcars are still widely used (apparently even these are some sort of hovercraft: "the groundcar rose on its skirts") aircars, lightflyers, float-bikes, and lift vans are also in very widespread use. In A Civil Campaign, Armsman Pym wonders when Vorbarr Sultana is going to get its "municipal traffic control system" for groundcars up and running; Miles replies they're prioritizing the "automated air system" on account of the increase in fatal lightflyer accidents.
• We Will Use Wikiwords In The Future: ImpSec and Holovids, among other examples.
• Wham Episode: Memory. Miles is drummed out of ImpSec and becomes an Imperial Auditor; Simon is Brought Down to Normal and learns how to have an actual life. All of the Vorkosigan Saga books to date have been published in omnibus editions... except for Memory; Bujold herself called it "the pivotal Memory left as a stand-alone." There's even a recommendation that you only read the later books in the series after you've read Memory.
• Wham Line: In Cryoburn: Count Vorkosigan, sir? It was foreshadowed in the very first Miles Vorkosigan adventure, The Warrior's Apprentice when he was addressed as Lord Vorkosigan when his grandfather died. In a later book, he admitted dreading hearing those exact three words, "Count Vorkosigan, sir?" and begged his father in absentia to live a long life.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: How vital to the functioning of Kyril Island was Lieutenant Ahn's supernaturally good nose for weather?^note Presumably not THAT vital. Ahn was supposedly about fifteen percent more accurate than the computer models, but they ran to above 70% accuracy on their own... Way better than any real-life weather prediction yet achieved. Miles worried about not having it, but presumably his replacement did not either.
  • The lowered accuracy wasn't going to mean the destruction of the base; Miles's concern was how bad it was going to look on his record. Of course, by the time he left the base, that was the least of his worries...
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?:
  • Miles is sent to kill a genetically engineered monster in a laboratory basement. While there, he rescues a beautiful slave girl, who is chronically lonely and frightened by her imprisonment. They are the same person.
  • The quaddies were created and enslaved by a MegaCorp, then slated for sterilization when they were rendered obsolete. Additionally, they're listed on the company's books as post-fetal experimental tissue cultures rather than as human beings.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Miles has been on both the giving and receiving end of these:
  • At the end of Mirror Dance, he confronts Taura and Quinn over essentially abandoning Mark to be tortured for five days. He then cashiers Bel Thorne for having knowingly led his troops into a botched and unsanctioned mission under false pretenses, which resulted in a number of deaths. Subverted in that Bel already expects the expulsion and is perfectly okay with it. Miles isn't angry when he does expel Bel, either.
  • About the first quarter of Memory is an extended one of these for Miles, culminating in Simon Illyan firing him.
  • More than one person in Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, on finding out about Simon Illyan's actions, asks "what the hell, Simon?"
• What Would X Do?: Faced with a hostage situation in Ethan of Athos, Quinn ponders "What would Admiral Naismith do in the same situation?" as she seeks inspiration.
  • A drunk Private Xaveria in Brothers in Arms, having ended up leading five Dendarii soldiers into the wrong side of a police siege that necessitated the direct intervention of Admiral Naismith, claims the same source of inspiration when he reveals to Naismith that his attempts to stave off arrest by claiming a deadman's switch were a pure bluff. Miles' reaction is somewhat mixed, thinking inwardly that Xaveria is "too damn observant."
  • In Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, Ivan muses that Miles gets "all forward-y momentum-y", but it's just not his style.
• What You Are in the Dark: Or, in Miles' case, What You Are in an Old Wing Chair in a Small Upstairs Room. Simon Illyan later reveals that he thought Miles was joking about the following interchange; he was not.
  Simon: Miles? Are you all right?
  Miles: I'm just... wrestling with temptation.
  Simon: Who's winning?
  Miles: I think... I think I'm going for the best two falls out of three.
• When He Smiles: When Aral — the frighteningly stern yet chivalrously professional Barrayarran officer — gives Cordelia-his-prisoner a sudden grin, she is shocked and discomfited by how boyish and appealing it is.
• Where It All Began: Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, of the Book Ends variety. It begins where the very first chronological Vorkosigan story began in Shards of Honor: Cordelia with a blond officer (Rosemont/Jole) exploring Sergyar. In Shards, it was a freshly discovered planet, in Gentleman, it's a fully established colony. Much reminiscing about the past ensues.
• Who Watches the Watchmen?:
  • The Imperial Auditors are the Barrayarran answer to this question. They are handpicked by the Emperor to investigate any matter he thinks needs special attention, and are chosen for two qualities; incorruptibility and the ability to stand up to very dangerous people without flinching.
  • In Mirror Dance, Mark wonders who psychoanalyzes Cordelia, who psychoanalyzes everyone, pondering "Who shaves the barber?" He later gets his answer: Emperor Gregor.
• Wild Child: "The Flowers of Vashnoi" revolves around mutant children who have grown up in the irradiated Vorkosigan Vashnoi region, who are short-lived because, well, they're living in the aftermath of heavy nuclear strikes.
• Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?:
  • Miles is terrified of nerve disruptors (energy weapons that destroy brain and nerve cells), and rightly so; if all you have going for you is your intelligence, what could be more terrifying than a gun that could render you brain-dead with a headshot? He also develops an understandable dislike of the cold after a chain of events on 'Camp Permafrost' that ended with him soaking wet in subzero conditions and crammed inside a radio receiver using static to transmit an SOS.
  • Quinn's fear of plasma arcs — it is fairly reasonable, considering her past traumatic experience.
  • Ivan is afraid of enclosed dark spaces filling with water thanks to Mark and Galen's method for holding him hostage on Earth. So in Captain Vorpatril's Alliance he gets trapped in a collapsed tunnel filling with water after an accidental explosion.
    • Insistent Terminology: Ivan counters that it's a perfectly rational fear.
• Woman Scorned:
  • 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.
  • 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 speculates Donna's sex change was backed by a lot of rage; Miles replies she never suffered fools lightly.
• Worthless Yellow Rocks: Cordelia is bemused by the value Barrayarans place on gold, which to her Betan sensibility is categorized as "metal, soft, good conductor." That changed as the series went on, to the point that Cetagandan gold was the main part of a hidden treasure on Barrayar. (Word of God admitted that she should have realized gold was rare universe-wide.)
  • But the coins' primary value comes from their value to coin collectors as (previously) rare coins. Ivan says that releasing them all at once onto the market will crash the price they can get for them.
• Worthy Opponent:
  • Count Vorhalas cannot stand Aral and is his most implacable political enemy, but his honor and principles are absolutely unimpeachable, and he rejects out of hand any attempt to bring Aral down through Dirty Business. Vorhalas is opposed to Aral because he allowed his son to be executed because of a drunk duel. Aral had to choose between compassion and political stability — and chose stability. Vorhalas also has deep-seated guilt for Miles' condition, however, which was caused by the actions of his other son who was being manipulated by a royal usurper.
  • Miles and Emperor Fletchir Giaja become a pair of Worthy Opponents, to Ivan's horror.
    "Ivan." Miles let his voice grow unexpectedly chill. "Why should the haut Fletchir Giaja decide he needed to be polite to me? Do you really think this is just for my father's sake?" He ticked the medallion and set it spinning, and locked eyes with his cousin. "It's not a trivial trinket. Think again about all the things this means. Bribery, sabotage, and real respect, all in one strange packet... we're not done with each other yet, Giaja and I."
  • Aral actually finds it in his heart to claim that one of the men who had cuckolded him with his first wife was this. Mainly because he had done it with style and paid the proper Barryaran penalty in a stylish and honorable way.
  • Ghem Colonel Benin is a subversion being less an opponent and more a useful contact for Miles on the other side of the fence. He is as loyal to Cetaganda as Miles is to Barrayar but from time to time it is useful to their respective polities to be able to talk under the table.
• Wouldn't Hurt a Child: Bruce Van Atta's team isn't on-board with his strategy:
  "... But the odds aren't what they appear. The quaddies are creampuffs. Half of them are children under twelve, for God's sake. Just go in, and stun anything that moves. How many five-year-old girls do you figure you're equal to, Fors?"
  "I don't know, sir," Fors blinked. "I never pictured myself fighting five-year-old girls."
• Wretched Hive: Jackson's Whole is a planet-sized version. An amnesiac Miles, on realising what planet he's on, blurts out "Oh, Shit! I'm on Jackson's Whole!" and makes a mad dash for the nearest exit.

Tropes X

• Xanatos Gambit:
  • Commander Cavilo famously gave Miles a salient piece of advice in The Vor Game. It provides the lead quote on the Trope page.
    Cavilo: The key to strategy...is not to choose a path to victory, but to choose so that all paths lead to a victory.
  • Miles takes this lesson to heart, and later echoes it to Cetagandan Emperor Fletchir Giaja in Cetaganda. (He quickly shuts up when he realizes he was making a Stealth Insult to the late Dowager Empress.)
    "The best strategies run on rails like that," Miles pointed out. "Live or die, you make your goal."
• Xanatos Speed Chess:
  • Miles vs. Cavilo. Cavilo has an early edge, but Miles is a very quick study, and uses Cavilo's Chronic Backstabbing Disorder to good effect to earn the final victory. En route to that victory, he muses on what will happen if all his manic ploys collide in a massive Gambit Pileup, resulting in the invasion he's trying to thwart being called off before it ever happens; he concludes that should that happen, it'll be a victory by default and a damn near perfect war of manoeuvre, albeit one leaving him with "political egg on my face and a lynch mob after me from three sides, but Dad will understand. I think."
  • In Cetaganda, Miles comes up with one when finding out that recalling the gene banks from the governors made them kidnap a planetary consort and Ivan in a False Flag Operation that would leave both dead. His plan is to infiltrate the perpetrator's ship. Even though he's captured and ready to be killed himself, he's satisfied in that whether he lived or died, the perpetrator's plot was ruined and exposed. As quoted above, "Live or die, you make your goal."

Tropes Y

• Yaoi Fangirl:
  • In Captain Vorpatril's Alliance, Tej and Ivan are trying to come up with ways to get a divorce. When infidelity is brought up, Ivan balks at the idea of Byerly sleeping with Tej. When Tej hints at Ivan and By sleeping together, By's Love Interest Rish murmurs she'd love to see that.
  • Cordelia certainly was a fan of Aral and Jole fooling around even without her. She even dares Jole to kiss a hot blond guy at a kissing booth.
• Yes-Man: At one point in Memory, Miles tries to be the most literal possible version of this with Emperor Gregor. It does not work very well. That is because Gregor grew up with Miles. Gregor is, at the very least, Miles Savvy. Later, Miles admits that his job description as Imperial Auditor is best summed up as "Whatever you say, Gregor."
  Gregor: (after Miles says one "Yes, sire" too many) Stop that.
• Yet Another Stupid Death: Lazkowski Base on Kyril Island (AKA Camp Permafrost) gets a lot of these. The record for the most original and idiotic death (that we see, anyways) goes to the guy Miles found wedged in a drainpipe, having drowned trying to save his cookie stash.^note It was originally to be money, but Bujold realized it would make the death look less foolish and more sinister and mysterious.
• Yiddish as a Second Language: Miles uses Yiddish words somewhat frequently. So does Cordelia, from time to time. It is probably a Betan thing.
• You Are Number 6: In "Labyrinth" there is a character called Nine, the only survivor of a batch of ten genetic experiments whose creators never bothered to give them real names.
• You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: 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 dead-level "Captain".^note As in "You'll never be a Major". The last sobriquet unnerves Ivan because it sounds exactly like Aral when he's pissed off.
• You Mean "Xmas": Winterfair
• You Need to Get Laid:
  • In Barrayar, Cordelia suspects that Aral's subordinates are happy that she made it to Tanery Base because they think that Aral getting laid will calm the old man down.
  • "I don't think I've ever seen a human being who needs to get laid worse than you do right now." Elli to Miles. When they do finally sleep together, it does not have the expected effect; instead of falling into a contented doze, Miles bounces straight back to his usual hyperactive self as soon as he gets an idea. Elli, naturally, unloads some snark in his direction over this.
  • Later, Kareen muses that Miles' household and armsmen are desperately hoping that 'someone can get the little git laid' so that he'll calm down — but then dismisses it, since they're all too much under Miles's spell.
• You Should Have Died Instead: Piotr essentially saying that Mad Emperor Yuri's death squad killed the wrong son, near the end of Barrayar, is the final straw in his deteriorating relationship with Aral, leading to a five-year estrangement between them.

Tropes Z

• Zero-Approval Gambit: Aral and Miles Vorkosigan both are willing to engage in this, with them using their negative reputations to help them; Aral said he was saddled with being The Butcher (even though he wasn't responsible for the massacre that led to the nickname), but he would use the moniker because he "earned" it.
  Aral: There is no more hollow feeling than to stand with your honor shattered at your feet while soaring public reputation wraps you in rewards. That's soul-destroying. The other way around is merely very, very irritating.

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