Vorkosigan Saga/WMG: Difference between revisions

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** Confirmed. As of ''Captain Vorpatril's Alliance'' Ivan is happily married to Tej ghem Estif Arqua, a half-Cetagandan daughter of House Cordonah of Jackson's Whole.

*** As a side benefit, the conservative Vor lords would sooner put a ''mutant'' on the throne of Barrayar than a man whose elevation would mean they'd have a half-Cetagandan Empress who would bear quarter-Cetagandan Imperial heirs. Ivan has finally taken himself out of the succession entirely, and couldn't be happier about it.

== The Solstice Massacre was arranged specifically to discredit Aral Vorkosigan ==

By Grishnov, who as Minister of Political Education would be the logical person to be giving secret orders to the Political Officer of the Komarran Conquest. While Grishnov had likely not formalized his alliance with Crown Prince Serg by that time, he would be able to see even that far back that Admiral Vorkosigan would be his greatest rival for power among the men of his own generation. An Admiral Vorkosigan with an ''unblemished'' reputation as the conqueror of Komarr would have been an unassailable hero-saint to try and work against. By ordering the Massacre Grishnov simultaneously taints the most prestigious accomplishment of his future rival with a truly blashphemous scandal, he also guarantees that Komarr will forever be a source of political unrest and strife... thus creating a 'permanent emergency' granting more power and authority to the officials in charge of the Empire's internal security agencies, of which Grishnov is among the foremost.

* Parenthetically this means that Aral didn't really do anything to his Political Officer that Grishnov wasn't going to have done to the man anyway. He certainly couldn't let such a man actually go around ''telling'' anyone about it. As is, whatever scenario Grishnov had scripted for the man 'confessing' via the Vorish gesture of 'committing suicide' in his cell was happily eclipsed by Aral's murdering the man in a rage, which was even ''more'' convenient for Grishnov's purposes.