That may be the reason for the line later(?) in the series about cultures with an ethic of “death before dishonor” leaving only the dead and the foresworn. (I should look up the exact quote, but it’s been a long day.)
It’s from one of the later books yes, when Miles is talking to Ekaterin in A Civil Campaign.
It also has the line “What, when they issued you your honor didn’t they give you the version with a reset button? Mine’s right here.”
Probably, though it’s not explicitly stated in any of the books thus far (the only official suicide on the record is Aral’s first wife, though of course there are also a bunch of fulfilled death-wishes).
Barrayar has a serious Barrayar problem, suicides are just one of the symptoms
You’ve seen a lot of near misses, though - Koudelka in this book, Gregor in the Vor Game, etc. Miles himself mentions some suicide attempts that Bothari restrained him from completing. There will be more.
Thank you!
I’m pretty sure there’s also a reference in Shards of Honor to frequent suicides among people with permanent injuries (such as Kou), because the social opprobrium against being visibly physically damaged is so great.
Which is the one part of the military society I feel like Bujold gets wrong. There’s a big difference between a mutation and injury. In a military society injuries are proof of valor.
Sorry for the belated query, but who (of this year’s lot)?
Emily Tesh. And maybe Antonia Hodgson. I started a thread to discuss the Hugo nominees.
Also, I’m curious (now that voting is closed) what will win. Alas, I’ll have limited Internet connectivity when the results are released.
A scar, or even a missing leg or arm is easy to understand as a war injury, but neurological injuries such as Dubauer (and Koudelka) had are less obviously signs of valor - and will be hard to distinguish from the kind of congenital conditions considered mutations.
If you’ve grown up in a society where people who walk oddly (like Miles) or talk oddly (or can’t talk) are mocked and shunned (and you’d done the mocking and shunning yourself), it’s going be very difficult being on the wrong side of the line - even if you can show your military record to prove that you’re one of the good ones, and not a dirty disgusting mutie (see the treatment of the seriously deformed after WWI in France)
Yeah, “In a military society injuries are proof of valor.” is what those societies would like to believe about themselves, the reality often was very different.
Sort of like how they refer to themselves as “honor cultures”, instead of “cultures of savagery”.
See also “I like the war heroes who don’t get captured”.
Really, it’s a miracle that Aral developed an actual sense of honor, coming up through that.
You are quoting a man with no concept of military honor. Never served, never understood a thing about it in his life.
The point is, a lot of people in “honor societies” have a similar lack of concept of honor.
Well Bujold had to make the Vorkosigans exceptional in actually having honor instead of pretending to it like most people in such societies or the books would be rather grim.
I like to say that Miles Vorkosigan = (Tyrion Lannister - Lannister family) + Vorkosigan family.
Honor is a useful concept that is easy to twist in stupid or self-aggrandizing ways, which IMHO is why it largely fell out of favor in roughly the era of the World Wars and was replaced with a more legalistic approach to the problems honor is supposed to address (which has its own issues). Thus, we talk about “war crimes” instead of “dishonorable behavior”.
The failure of systems (honor, moral, legal, social) is something of an occasional subtle theme running through the books, going back to at least Brother in Arms and Miles and Galeni discussing Galeni’s terrorist father and the “persons before principles” approach of Mile’s own parents. “My father was always a man of great—principles.”
It becomes practically stated outright in a later book, but there is a recurring pattern of both the right person (usually Miles, it’s his series) creating a desirable outcome regardless of what rules and procedures would demand (or in spite of them), but also the wrong man in the wrong place creating disaster despite any rules meant to stop it.
There’s a similar pattern, or theory of behavior in a couple of other military scifi series, and for all I know, available elsewhere.
That there are individuals who thrive on chaos, which I would argue, Miles does. He’s most alive when things are going sideways and he’s finding ways to turn that to his advantage.
The problem is, seemingly most people don’t. If anything they want chaos minimized, so that every day is like the one before, though ideally just a bit better.
Being able to thrive and get results from chaos is a great trait. Creating chaos because it’s the situation you thrive in is a danger to your own people as a leader.
Miles is… challenged in this aspect. But because he (as you rightly point out @Der_Trihs) has his own personal honor and morals, he is mostly good at keeping his desire to create chaos firmly pointed at his enemies, or sadly, sometimes his own life.
“Honor” (meaning a social system based on savagery) has fallen out of favor and been replaced by legalism many, many times in history, going (at least) all the way back to the Noahide Laws, supposedly given to all descendants of Noah (i.e., everyone). But it’s a bad penny that just keeps on coming back up again.
See also Mark, in Mirror Dance, who really did mean well. And who eventually finds what his right place is (which is not the same place as Miles’ right place).