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Gregor had an older brother who died before the start of Shards of Honor.

If he were Prince Serg's oldest child, standard Barrayaran naming conventions would imply that he should be named "Ezar". He could be a second son -- Bujold hasn't written anything about Princess Kareen's family, so "Gregor" could easily be her father's middle name...

• Possible, but I think it would have been mentioned. As a parallel to Aral's second-son-ship, at the least. Perhaps the naming after grandfathers is the custom among the nobility but not royalty, or custom in rural districts like the Dendarii mountains, or some such. It's unlikely to be a universal custom for the entire planet, at least.
  • Remember that Serg had a fetish for raping and torturing pregnant women. There may be very good reasons for why nobody mentions the death of an older sibling for Gregor, the same reasons nobody ever mentions any of Serg's other crimes anymore.

Ivan's going to marry a Galactic

He's about due another stint of embassy duty, and he's pretty much run through all of his prospects at home. Plus now that both Gregor and Miles have produced heirs, he's out of the crossfire, and being physically normal he's under less pressure to be conventional about such things.

• The Amazon description of the next book heavily supports this, especially since it's about Ivan, and features him rescuing a female Galactic.
  • 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 forever taints the most prestigious accomplishment of his future rival with a truly blasphemous scandal and 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.