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Mun
Name: Tori
Livejournal/Dreamwidth Username: tori-angeli
E-mail: phoenixrider@earthling.net
AIM/MSN: mtangeli
Current Characters at Luceti: Archie Kennedy, Julian Bell
Character
Name: Gregor Vorbarra
Fandom: The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold
Gender: Male
Age: 25
Time Period: During The Vor Game, after stowing away and before running into Miles.
Wing Color: Black and silver. Mostly black. Slender silver stripes on the insides of his wings, very similarly patterned to a peregrine falcon.
History:
Commander Cavilo, both 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?
-Gregor Vorbarra, The Vor Game
To make things a little easier for the uninitiated, the Vor of the planet Barrayar are a military caste serving essentially as a feudal aristocracy. Barrayar's government is feudal, more or less, with no written constitution.
Gregor was born to Prince Serg and Princess Kareen Vorbarra. At the time, his grandfather Ezar was Emperor. There is little to say about Gregor’s childhood until the death of his father in the Escobaran War, a conflict secretly engineered by Ezar solely to place his own son among the casualties. Serg, like much of the family, was a product of generations of Vor inbreeding, but worse than usual. He was a psychopathic and sadistic monster even the rest of his screwed-up family was relieved to be rid of, lest he inherit the throne (in which case he might have been worse than the infamous Mad Emperor Yuri, who attempted to slaughter all his cousins to preserve his reign). Old Ezar passed away in his sleep, establishing Lord Aral Vorkosigan as his regent until Gregor should come of age. Shortly after came the War of Vordarian’s Pretendership, during which Gregor survived his first-ever assassination attempt. He went into hiding under the protection of Lord Aral and Lady Cordelia Vorkosigan. His mother, Princess Kareen, was told he was dead, and quietly submitted to allowing Vordarian’s usurpation not only of her son’s future power but of herself. Only when Cordelia presented Kareen with one of Gregor’s shoes as proof that he was alive did Kareen resist, and in doing so, died attempting to assassinate the man who tried to kill her son. Cordelia herself ordered the beheading of the Pretender, clearing the way for Gregor’s inheritance.
He was five years old.
There being questionable wisdom in granting the reign over an entire planet to small child, Aral Vorkosigan continued as Regent throughout Gregor’s childhood. Moreover, he and Cordelia raised Gregor alongside their own son, Miles. Aral groomed him to be a wise Emperor. Cordelia groomed him to be a good man, and hopefully a happy one as well. Still, they couldn’t do anything about the intense security following the child Emperor around everywhere, watching his every move, crouched in anticipation of attempts to dispose of the last Vorbarra. He grew up hearing of his parents only as near-mythical figures, his father Barrayar’s greatest hero, his mother a martyr. No one spoke a word to him of Serg’s disastrous and violent mental illnesses that caused his own father to plot his death.
He grew up a preternaturally quiet and melancholy child. His playmates (Miles, Miles’ cousin Ivan Vorpatril, and Elena Bothari) were all at least five years younger than he, and Miles later recalled him tolerating the play he had outgrown simply because there wasn’t anything else to do. He was, nevertheless, very close to his foster parents and foster brother, and later to one of the younger Counts, Henri Vorvolk, who might be considered the closest thing Gregor has to a best friend.
He entered the military college at age seventeen or so and, after graduating, was assigned to station duty in orbit around Barrayar. He didn’t feel like it counted as a real risk. When he reached the age of twenty, the Regency was cast aside and Gregor became Emperor of Barrayar (and, consequently, ruler of Komarr and Sergyar as well) in deed as well as in name. Aral Vorkosigan remained as his Prime Minister, one of the few men in all the world he could trust. His only moment of doubt in the Vorkosigans came during the events of the book The Warrior’s Apprentice, when at the impressionable age of twenty-two he heard whispers of a conspiracy against him when Miles accidentally acquired a large fleet of mercenaries, thus violating the law against a Vor lord having a private army (by one particular bloodline, the Vorkosigans could very much be considered the next in line to the Imperial throne). Remembering Miles always beat him at strategy games, Gregor pondered this, but ultimately cast aside his doubts when Miles returned home and offered to sign the mercenaries over to the Emperor. He hasn’t doubted Miles’ loyalty since.
Three years passed, Gregor performing the motions of attending social functions, signing things, kissing babies, etc., but never feeling like anything more than a mascot. It was enough to drive a young man already prone to melancholy into depression. What really did the trick, however, was finally learning the truth about his father. This revelation was entirely unauthorized, of course, out of the control of Imperial Security and Aral Vorkosigan, so neither ImpSec nor the Prime Minster could control Gregor’s response. He was attending a diplomatic function on Komarr, a planet conquered some years before by Barrayar. The night he found out, he got himself very drunk and stood on the balcony of the house he stayed in, pondering the history of madness in his family and spurred to terror over if and when such a madness would manifest in himself, and if not in himself, in his children. Self-doubts about his own interest in torture (a grotesque fascination which has nothing to do with actual sadistic inclination, as Gregor historically reacted very badly even to hunting, especially when he half-missed and had to chase down some wounded beast) and far too much alcohol inspired him to tip himself over the edge of the balcony. At the last instant, he caught himself.
Then, he realized he could climb down more easily than up. For the first time in perhaps his entire life, no one was around. His guards were nowhere to be seen. He climbed down to the ground and began to walk. He caught a ride to the nearest commercial space transport, which he boarded without looking back. At his current canon point, he is on a jump ship bound for the Hegen Hub.
Personality:
Gregor’s apparent Imperial sternness hid an almost painful personal shyness.
-Komarr
Gregor is an interesting study in the effects of both nature and nurture on a person’s development. He has, for example, much of his mother’s disposition and temperament. There can be little doubt that he’s a depressive, possibly depressed, man, both from his upbringing and from his family tendency toward mental illness on his father’s side. Many of his mannerisms, figures of speech, and what I like to call “Emperor Therapist” ways, however, come directly from his foster-parents. Lord and Lady Vorkosigan were his legal guardians since Princess Kareen’s death, and Miles Vorkosigan periodically comments on gestures Gregor “inherited” from Cordelia in particular. Gregor’s catch phrase, “Let’s see what happens,” is one he picked up from Cordelia.
Gregor is a personally warm, unobtrusive person easily overlooked when he wants to be. There’s no inextricable Imperial Presence, no conditioned grandeur, so distinguish him, although Admiral Oser in The Vor Game doesn’t buy his cover as Miles’ batman. “He doesn’t look like a batman. He looks like an officer.”
Still, Gregor is often described as assuming casual positions in casual company. He slumps (“compressed by the minute-by-minute box of his schedule,” notes the narrative), slings a leg over a chair arm, sits on the edge of a desk swinging one leg, you get the idea. He doesn’t buy into any sense of inborn regality, or the shiny splendor of his life (or the throne meant to receive the “Imperial ass,” as he puts it). He’s very self-contained, and his expressions are subtle—a Vorish trait very much seen in his mother in Barrayar, not found at all in his father in Shards of Honor. It’s not just the Vorish upbringing, though. Even Gregor’s Vor cousins remark on Gregor’s subtle expressions. In A Civil Campaign, Ivan warns By Vorrutyer that he does not want to see Gregor when he’s angry. By asks what Gregor looks like when he’s angry, and Ivan tells him he looks exactly the same as he looks any other time, and that’s the scary part.
A telling scene comes in Memory, in which Miles and Laisa compare impressions of Gregor. Miles, having grown up with his Emperor, dispels a few misunderstandings the off-worlder Laisa has about him. She tells him Gregor always looks strict in vids. Miles says it may look that way on camera, but really, he’s just glum, not strict. Laisa laughs when Miles tells her Gregor would be shy, but isn’t allowed. He’s not joking.
Even as a child, Gregor was very quiet. In Barrayar, the only book in which we see him as a child, he speaks seldom and when he does, he sticks to the point. He has never been prone to long ramblings, but rather internal conflict and speculation, something those closest to him can sometimes read in him when he looks thoughtful. This quietude shouldn’t be mistaken for stiffness. Gregor has a gift for stating things very succinctly while still being diplomatic.
His depressive tendencies are evident even from the wide-eyed and melancholy Child Emperor we meet in Barrayar, although it’s very possible those tendencies wouldn’t have become so full-blown if his life had been less tragic. In just over a year, little Gregor had lit funeral offerings for both parents and his grandfather, then spent his life under security so strict that Cordelia had to argue with the head of ImpSec just to let the kid spend fifteen minutes at a wedding reception held in his own home. Miles periodically assigns nicknames, in his own head, such as Glum Gregor or Gregor the Lugubrious. Ky Tung describes him as “neurasthenic.” Miles is not surprised by Gregor’s suicide attempt in the slightest, but he is surprised later in the series when Gregor makes Laisa Toscane laugh at a party. This gloomy temperament doesn’t seem to be the result of low self-esteem so much as a lack of self-identity and personal freedom (when Miles is detained by ImpSec and asks for a favor, Gregor retorts, “What, are you asking one prisoner of ImpSec to rescue another?”), and very possibly nature as well, considering his family history of mental illness. Gregor’s entire story in The Vor Game is a result of his search for who he might be on his own merit, without having his life built for him (“I think I could be replaced at half my functions by a life-sized plastic model, and no one would notice”). Self-esteem might be the improper word anyway. Personal honor is a closer concern. Gregor isn’t devoid of pride, after all—when they are on the verge of being put out the airlock, Miles bitterly comments that he didn’t think Gregor would protest so much, after having a half-hearted suicide attempt earlier in the novel. Gregor points out the difference, still fighting the guards leading them. “At my own hand, not at the whim of a bunch of…bloody peasants.” It’s the only time in the series he uses the P-word to describe anyone. Otherwise, he’s quite egalitarian. Still, in a moment of stress, it pops out, tellingly revealing that it’s impossible to be raised an Emperor and not have it stick to you.
There is a streak of an odd naivety in him—not in a sense that he doesn’t know about all the awful things in the universe, but that he’s never personally experienced many of them. Despite being in the military for a few years, he’s likely never seen combat. “Pretend patrols, surrounded by Security shuttles. It got to be painful after a while, all the pretending. Pretending I was an officer, pretending I was doing a job instead of making everyone else’s job harder just by being there.” At one point, he gasps when hit by a shock-stick, then once the alarm passes off, notes that it wasn’t as bad as he was expecting. After choking a man to escape a predicament, he looks sick. “I’ve never choked a man before. I…felt something strange, under my hand. I’m afraid I might have broken his neck.” The man was still breathing when they left him, so clearly Gregor doesn’t know what he felt. Even his escape from his own security was expected to be short-lived—he was sure from the beginning he wouldn’t get far before they caught up with him. If they had, The Vor Game would be a terribly short book.
Gregor is intelligent to the point of being wily. He draws the line at military strategy—Miles always beat him at tacti-go—but he’s a master of diplomatic thinking. When captured by Metzov, a Barrayaran, he performs a bit of weaseling even Miles admires. Metzov asks for his parole. “A parole is a promise given between honorable enemies,” Gregor tells him. “Your honor I am willing to assume. But are you thus declaring yourself Our enemy?” As the novel continues, it turns out that all of Miles’ scheming to rescue his Emperor is relatively pointless. While at first Miles doubted and wondered if Gregor had been swayed by the honeyed words of manipulator Cavilo, Gregor shrugged off those doubts. “She had the same hungry smile Vordrozda used to get. And a dozen lesser cannibals, since. I can smell a power-hungry flatterer at a thousand meters, now.”
“Do you know that you rescued yourself?” Miles asked him.
It doesn’t stop Gregor from wishing the beautiful, charming Cavilo had been “real.” But when confronted with his former captor, he says tiredly, “Commander Cavilo, both 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?”
Hand-in-hand with his natural intelligence is his uncanny ability to work with people. The fact that, in Mirror Dance, he puts Mark Vorkosigan, professional paranoid, at ease enough to open up, counts as an extreme example, although this is several books after his current canon point. A closer-to-current example is the end of The Vor Game, in which he becomes extremely popular on the planet of Vervain. Count Vorkosigan says, “He’s being feted in their capital even as we speak, I believe. They’ve gone wild over him.” It is strongly hinted that Gregor gets this ability from Cordelia Vorkosigan, whose Betan upbringing and understanding of the people around her makes her a better psychotherapist than a lot of psychotherapists. In Mirror Dance, when Mark meets Cordelia and hears her psychoanalyzing several people he knows, he wonders who “shaves the barber.” Later, he witnesses a conversation between Gregor and Cordelia. To his surprise, Gregor makes note that Cordelia’s psychoanalyzing is her own way of coping with a stressful situation, and Mark gets his answer to his question. Gregor is considerably less talkative than Cordelia, particularly at his current canon point, but this is clearly not a new ability of his. It’s his understanding of people that makes him so good at his job.
“I know flattery sends you straight up a wall,” says Miles in The Vor Game, “but dammit, you’re actually good at your job. You have to know that, on some level inside, after the Vervain talks. Stay on it, huh?”
Gregor is a young man with many self-doubts, most of them revolving around his genetics. “Try it alone in bed at midnight, wondering when your genes are going to start generating monsters in your mind. Like Great Uncle Mad Yuri. Or Prince Serg.” In this quote, he reveals to Miles that he has learned that his father, Serg, was a mad, cruel, sadistic man whose death was one of the best things that happened to Barrayar, although his madness was hidden from his people and especially his son. Miles realizes that this “had been the trigger of the depressive Gregor’s first real suicide attempt.” Gregor’s shattered illusions about a man he doesn’t really remember aren’t at all the point, and don’t seem to upset him. “I’m afraid I might enjoy it. The hurting. Like him.”
“Rubbish,” replies Miles. “I watched my grandfather try and get you to enjoy hunting for years. You got good, I suppose because you thought it was your Vorish duty, but you damn near threw up every time you half-missed and we had to chase down some wounded beastie.”
This doesn’t convince Gregor. “What I’ve read…and heard, is so horribly fascinating. I can’t help thinking about it. Can’t put it out of my mind.”
“Your head is full of horrors because the world is full of horrors,” Miles points out. Then, later, “Gregor, I’m sorry, but I just don’t think Mad Emperor Gregor is in the cards. It’s your advisors who are going to go crazy.”
“I suppose it would disturb the guards if I tried to shove a cream torte up your nose,” sighs Gregor.
We can see in later installments of the series that Gregor’s paranoia about his bloodline doesn’t get better with time, and never will. Too afraid to marry a Vor lady and further compound the inbreeding, he has the fortune to fall deeply in love with an off-world woman whose looks are the exact opposite of your typical dark-haired, tall, willowy Vor woman. This taste in women is shown at his current canon point as well, with his attraction to the petite, slightly thick blonde Cavilo. Lady Alys Vorpatril’s attempts to find him a wife among Vor women are met with as much indifference as if Gregor wasn’t attracted to women at all, to the point where someone suggests she start trying men (which “wouldn’t solve the heir problem”). Clearly, Gregor never explains things to her in order to make things easier on them both—she eventually has to figure out on her own that he will never fall in love with a Vor woman.
Gregor is not a naturally selfish person. His canon point is an exception, not the rule. The only other time canon shows him being selfish is with his politically questionable courtship of Laisa, when he tells Miles that she’s not for the Imperium or even for the Emperor, but for himself. Gregor allows himself few things that make him happy, having been raised to believe the Imperium is greater than its Emperor. He is a slave to it. But even his ill-advised attempt to run away is met with horror even by himself, as he knows it’s a bad idea even before the hangover sets in. Miles and Elena chat at length to each other about the chaos that will strike Barrayar—civil war, at the least—if anything should happen to Gregor, until Gregor tells them, “Stop it!” Elena’s cool reply is, “I thought that was your job.” Even then, when she jokes about offering him a job with the fleet she is in, he revels in the fantasy of being a mercenary for a moment. With moments like this, it’s hard to blame him for his desire to have something for himself, or for his impulsive escape. He’s someone without a life of his own, who feels very keenly the enforced sacrifice of his own self for the sake of his entire society. He can’t change anything, and he can’t resent those who brought him up to be a good Emperor, but his longing, his hunger for his own identity is there throughout the entire series. Relief is found only when he exercises the freedom to choose his family life, later in the series when he marries and has children.
In Luceti, where he is not Emperor and no one has heard of Barrayar, and he can no way or desire to go back home, who knows what he’ll decide he really is?
Strengths:
I'm Vor, ma'am. In a sense, the Vor. Risk in service is the Vorish trade. I wouldn't assume my value was infinite, if I were you.
-Gregor Vorbarra, The Vor Game
Physical
Gregor can hold his own in a fight. It takes three guards to drag him to an airlock against his will, although he’s hardly beating them, just dragging his feet. He successfully tackles and strangles a fellow prisoner (presumably not a soldier, though) while trying to escape with Miles. He spent three years in the military academy learning combat and strategy, but spent his short military career in orbit on what he terms “pretend patrols.” In short, he has the know-how, but not the experience.
Mental
Gregor is extremely observant and brought up to think on his feet in a difficult diplomatic situation. He’s very careful about the things he says, being someone whose words have a great deal of weight, whose personal requests can easily be mistaken for Imperial commands. Still, a well-placed Imperial “We” can be a monster of a card to pull, and he only pulls it when it’s best. To catch Gregor making a diplomatic mistake is a little like catching Stephen Hawking screwing up long division. He’s so good at people, so learned at conversation and behavior, that he has an uncanny ability to put even the worst paranoids at ease.
He is able to manipulate his way out of a hostage situation (as the hostage) shortly after his current canon point—not a new ability, and one he doesn’t take any pride in, but one that didn’t require firing a single shot. Miles encourages him to stick with his hereditary employment, since he’s actually good at it. It does suit him perfectly, despite his doubts and claustrophobia, since Gregor makes an excellent Guile Hero.
Emotional
Very little actually flusters Gregor. At his angriest (in Memory), he never loses control of himself. Personal insults tend to roll off his back. He’s spent his whole life presumably learning not to take things personally. As a public figure, there are many who presume to know him even when he has never seen them personally. The emotional fortitude it takes to remain sane (not happy) with his background and situation, even with the support of his wonderful foster-parents, is enormous. He was raised by a man who learned to turn bad press to his advantage, after all. The little things don’t get to him.
Weaknesses:
Physical
Gregor is a squishy human. He has military training but no actual combat experience to speak of. He knows all the moves, but actually hurting someone is a horrific concept to him and one of the few things that will get him flustered.
Mental
Miles always beat Gregor at the game Tacti-go (something like Risk, probably). It’s a good thing the Emperor no longer leads his troops into battle, because while Gregor isn’t necessarily bad at it, it’s definitely one of many areas he leans heavily on his advisors for. He’s talented and even gifted in areas of diplomacy (considerably better than Aral Vorkosigan, who was Lord Regent while he was growing up), but at this canon point is underconfident and even capable of being swayed, his emotions overruling his natural intelligence in that area. His mental resources are as finite as anyone’s, and while no one could describe him as stupid, he just can’t be an expert in every field he deals in.
Emotional
At this time, Gregor has a certain lack of confidence and considers himself more or less a mascot (“Oh, being a mascot isn’t bad work, if you can get it”). He more or less behaves as one, as well, often following his foremost temptation to look to his advisors first (especially Aral Vorkosigan, as demonstrated in The Warrior’s Apprentice). More pressingly, he’s depressed to the point of being suicidal. His tumble off the balcony was drunken, half-hearted, and self-aborted, but real enough. He’s on a mission to find himself, whether or not he lost himself to begin with, and terrified to death of his own genes.
Samples
First Person: Q&A please.
Third Person:
Gregor remembered vacationing at Vorkosigan Surleau as a child. Aral Vorkosigan, then Lord Regent, had spent a summer building a tree house with his own two hands, refusing the assistance of his strong, able-bodied, not-retired armsmen. Miles had thought it was the best thing in the universe. He used to arrange Elena, Ivan, and Gregor in various positions as his crew, with himself as the captain of an imaginary ship. Gregor had, when play too immature for his own tastes had moved elsewhere, stood solitary with his hands on the railing, leaning, peering down at the grass below. He wasn’t afraid of heights, only morbidly fascinated with them. The older he grew, the less he remembered of that terrifying flight from the Imperial Residence during Vordarian’s coup, but the memory of twisting through the air with a dying Negri in control of the lightflyer, his skin bubbling off his bones from a plasma burn, screaming for the mouse-quiet Gregor to shut up, never faded. Softened, became dreamlike, but never faded. He remembered the terror.
He remembered tipping over the edge of a balcony. That was just last night, or this morning, or something.
This treehouse was better than the one at Vorkosigan Surleau. It was an actual small house, not a platform with railing. Gregor rolled to his hands and knees, feeling an odd stiffness in his back. No, not just in his back. Outside his back. He twisted to peer at the wings.
…Oh.
As if in independent response, the wings ruffled, fluttered, and folded behind him. It felt like a hard shudder, and goosebumps stood up on his skin at the same time. Black wings, with subtle silver stripes on the insides like a falcon’s. House Vorbarra colors, not Imperial colors, but still marking him as surely as a uniform he couldn’t take off. Whose work? Cetaganda? Jackson’s Whole? Both had the capability, and neither had any moral qualms with kidnapping the Emperor of Barrayar and giving him an apparent mutation. Cetaganda’s motivations would be political. Jackson’s Whole would do it for a fee at someone else’s political motivations, possibly Komarr’s. Gregor reached behind and tugged at the root of one wing. That was all it took to convince him it was inexorably a part of his anatomy. When the color came back to his face and his stomach stopped threatening to rebel, he took a deep breath and stuck his head out the treehouse door.
Green everywhere. Trees and shrubbery native to Earth, but not the usual glade or garden created to look like a slice of that cultural centerpiece. An entire wilderness, like someone had adjusted the color settings of the woods he’d fled through when he was five years old, the ones he only knew weren’t a dream because he’d seen them many times since.
Where was this? More importantly, who was this? The intent to sabotage his standing as Emperor by giving him a supposed mutation was obvious, and he couldn’t think it altogether tragic. Wings to fly from this height instead of falling as usual. The perfect excuse never to go back.
If that was what he wanted.
This was a mistake. It had been a mistake, leaving Komarr. But at this instant, he couldn’t make himself care too much. Whatever else awaited—torture, humiliating interrogation, death—wasn’t even worth thinking about, as far underground as Captain Negri’s bones. Captain Negri’s ghost, however, was always said to have lingered.
Name: Tori
Livejournal/Dreamwidth Username: tori-angeli
E-mail: phoenixrider@earthling.net
AIM/MSN: mtangeli
Current Characters at Luceti: Archie Kennedy, Julian Bell
Character
Name: Gregor Vorbarra
Fandom: The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold
Gender: Male
Age: 25
Time Period: During The Vor Game, after stowing away and before running into Miles.
Wing Color: Black and silver. Mostly black. Slender silver stripes on the insides of his wings, very similarly patterned to a peregrine falcon.
History:
Commander Cavilo, both 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?
-Gregor Vorbarra, The Vor Game
To make things a little easier for the uninitiated, the Vor of the planet Barrayar are a military caste serving essentially as a feudal aristocracy. Barrayar's government is feudal, more or less, with no written constitution.
Gregor was born to Prince Serg and Princess Kareen Vorbarra. At the time, his grandfather Ezar was Emperor. There is little to say about Gregor’s childhood until the death of his father in the Escobaran War, a conflict secretly engineered by Ezar solely to place his own son among the casualties. Serg, like much of the family, was a product of generations of Vor inbreeding, but worse than usual. He was a psychopathic and sadistic monster even the rest of his screwed-up family was relieved to be rid of, lest he inherit the throne (in which case he might have been worse than the infamous Mad Emperor Yuri, who attempted to slaughter all his cousins to preserve his reign). Old Ezar passed away in his sleep, establishing Lord Aral Vorkosigan as his regent until Gregor should come of age. Shortly after came the War of Vordarian’s Pretendership, during which Gregor survived his first-ever assassination attempt. He went into hiding under the protection of Lord Aral and Lady Cordelia Vorkosigan. His mother, Princess Kareen, was told he was dead, and quietly submitted to allowing Vordarian’s usurpation not only of her son’s future power but of herself. Only when Cordelia presented Kareen with one of Gregor’s shoes as proof that he was alive did Kareen resist, and in doing so, died attempting to assassinate the man who tried to kill her son. Cordelia herself ordered the beheading of the Pretender, clearing the way for Gregor’s inheritance.
He was five years old.
There being questionable wisdom in granting the reign over an entire planet to small child, Aral Vorkosigan continued as Regent throughout Gregor’s childhood. Moreover, he and Cordelia raised Gregor alongside their own son, Miles. Aral groomed him to be a wise Emperor. Cordelia groomed him to be a good man, and hopefully a happy one as well. Still, they couldn’t do anything about the intense security following the child Emperor around everywhere, watching his every move, crouched in anticipation of attempts to dispose of the last Vorbarra. He grew up hearing of his parents only as near-mythical figures, his father Barrayar’s greatest hero, his mother a martyr. No one spoke a word to him of Serg’s disastrous and violent mental illnesses that caused his own father to plot his death.
He grew up a preternaturally quiet and melancholy child. His playmates (Miles, Miles’ cousin Ivan Vorpatril, and Elena Bothari) were all at least five years younger than he, and Miles later recalled him tolerating the play he had outgrown simply because there wasn’t anything else to do. He was, nevertheless, very close to his foster parents and foster brother, and later to one of the younger Counts, Henri Vorvolk, who might be considered the closest thing Gregor has to a best friend.
He entered the military college at age seventeen or so and, after graduating, was assigned to station duty in orbit around Barrayar. He didn’t feel like it counted as a real risk. When he reached the age of twenty, the Regency was cast aside and Gregor became Emperor of Barrayar (and, consequently, ruler of Komarr and Sergyar as well) in deed as well as in name. Aral Vorkosigan remained as his Prime Minister, one of the few men in all the world he could trust. His only moment of doubt in the Vorkosigans came during the events of the book The Warrior’s Apprentice, when at the impressionable age of twenty-two he heard whispers of a conspiracy against him when Miles accidentally acquired a large fleet of mercenaries, thus violating the law against a Vor lord having a private army (by one particular bloodline, the Vorkosigans could very much be considered the next in line to the Imperial throne). Remembering Miles always beat him at strategy games, Gregor pondered this, but ultimately cast aside his doubts when Miles returned home and offered to sign the mercenaries over to the Emperor. He hasn’t doubted Miles’ loyalty since.
Three years passed, Gregor performing the motions of attending social functions, signing things, kissing babies, etc., but never feeling like anything more than a mascot. It was enough to drive a young man already prone to melancholy into depression. What really did the trick, however, was finally learning the truth about his father. This revelation was entirely unauthorized, of course, out of the control of Imperial Security and Aral Vorkosigan, so neither ImpSec nor the Prime Minster could control Gregor’s response. He was attending a diplomatic function on Komarr, a planet conquered some years before by Barrayar. The night he found out, he got himself very drunk and stood on the balcony of the house he stayed in, pondering the history of madness in his family and spurred to terror over if and when such a madness would manifest in himself, and if not in himself, in his children. Self-doubts about his own interest in torture (a grotesque fascination which has nothing to do with actual sadistic inclination, as Gregor historically reacted very badly even to hunting, especially when he half-missed and had to chase down some wounded beast) and far too much alcohol inspired him to tip himself over the edge of the balcony. At the last instant, he caught himself.
Then, he realized he could climb down more easily than up. For the first time in perhaps his entire life, no one was around. His guards were nowhere to be seen. He climbed down to the ground and began to walk. He caught a ride to the nearest commercial space transport, which he boarded without looking back. At his current canon point, he is on a jump ship bound for the Hegen Hub.
Personality:
Gregor’s apparent Imperial sternness hid an almost painful personal shyness.
-Komarr
Gregor is an interesting study in the effects of both nature and nurture on a person’s development. He has, for example, much of his mother’s disposition and temperament. There can be little doubt that he’s a depressive, possibly depressed, man, both from his upbringing and from his family tendency toward mental illness on his father’s side. Many of his mannerisms, figures of speech, and what I like to call “Emperor Therapist” ways, however, come directly from his foster-parents. Lord and Lady Vorkosigan were his legal guardians since Princess Kareen’s death, and Miles Vorkosigan periodically comments on gestures Gregor “inherited” from Cordelia in particular. Gregor’s catch phrase, “Let’s see what happens,” is one he picked up from Cordelia.
Gregor is a personally warm, unobtrusive person easily overlooked when he wants to be. There’s no inextricable Imperial Presence, no conditioned grandeur, so distinguish him, although Admiral Oser in The Vor Game doesn’t buy his cover as Miles’ batman. “He doesn’t look like a batman. He looks like an officer.”
Still, Gregor is often described as assuming casual positions in casual company. He slumps (“compressed by the minute-by-minute box of his schedule,” notes the narrative), slings a leg over a chair arm, sits on the edge of a desk swinging one leg, you get the idea. He doesn’t buy into any sense of inborn regality, or the shiny splendor of his life (or the throne meant to receive the “Imperial ass,” as he puts it). He’s very self-contained, and his expressions are subtle—a Vorish trait very much seen in his mother in Barrayar, not found at all in his father in Shards of Honor. It’s not just the Vorish upbringing, though. Even Gregor’s Vor cousins remark on Gregor’s subtle expressions. In A Civil Campaign, Ivan warns By Vorrutyer that he does not want to see Gregor when he’s angry. By asks what Gregor looks like when he’s angry, and Ivan tells him he looks exactly the same as he looks any other time, and that’s the scary part.
A telling scene comes in Memory, in which Miles and Laisa compare impressions of Gregor. Miles, having grown up with his Emperor, dispels a few misunderstandings the off-worlder Laisa has about him. She tells him Gregor always looks strict in vids. Miles says it may look that way on camera, but really, he’s just glum, not strict. Laisa laughs when Miles tells her Gregor would be shy, but isn’t allowed. He’s not joking.
Even as a child, Gregor was very quiet. In Barrayar, the only book in which we see him as a child, he speaks seldom and when he does, he sticks to the point. He has never been prone to long ramblings, but rather internal conflict and speculation, something those closest to him can sometimes read in him when he looks thoughtful. This quietude shouldn’t be mistaken for stiffness. Gregor has a gift for stating things very succinctly while still being diplomatic.
His depressive tendencies are evident even from the wide-eyed and melancholy Child Emperor we meet in Barrayar, although it’s very possible those tendencies wouldn’t have become so full-blown if his life had been less tragic. In just over a year, little Gregor had lit funeral offerings for both parents and his grandfather, then spent his life under security so strict that Cordelia had to argue with the head of ImpSec just to let the kid spend fifteen minutes at a wedding reception held in his own home. Miles periodically assigns nicknames, in his own head, such as Glum Gregor or Gregor the Lugubrious. Ky Tung describes him as “neurasthenic.” Miles is not surprised by Gregor’s suicide attempt in the slightest, but he is surprised later in the series when Gregor makes Laisa Toscane laugh at a party. This gloomy temperament doesn’t seem to be the result of low self-esteem so much as a lack of self-identity and personal freedom (when Miles is detained by ImpSec and asks for a favor, Gregor retorts, “What, are you asking one prisoner of ImpSec to rescue another?”), and very possibly nature as well, considering his family history of mental illness. Gregor’s entire story in The Vor Game is a result of his search for who he might be on his own merit, without having his life built for him (“I think I could be replaced at half my functions by a life-sized plastic model, and no one would notice”). Self-esteem might be the improper word anyway. Personal honor is a closer concern. Gregor isn’t devoid of pride, after all—when they are on the verge of being put out the airlock, Miles bitterly comments that he didn’t think Gregor would protest so much, after having a half-hearted suicide attempt earlier in the novel. Gregor points out the difference, still fighting the guards leading them. “At my own hand, not at the whim of a bunch of…bloody peasants.” It’s the only time in the series he uses the P-word to describe anyone. Otherwise, he’s quite egalitarian. Still, in a moment of stress, it pops out, tellingly revealing that it’s impossible to be raised an Emperor and not have it stick to you.
There is a streak of an odd naivety in him—not in a sense that he doesn’t know about all the awful things in the universe, but that he’s never personally experienced many of them. Despite being in the military for a few years, he’s likely never seen combat. “Pretend patrols, surrounded by Security shuttles. It got to be painful after a while, all the pretending. Pretending I was an officer, pretending I was doing a job instead of making everyone else’s job harder just by being there.” At one point, he gasps when hit by a shock-stick, then once the alarm passes off, notes that it wasn’t as bad as he was expecting. After choking a man to escape a predicament, he looks sick. “I’ve never choked a man before. I…felt something strange, under my hand. I’m afraid I might have broken his neck.” The man was still breathing when they left him, so clearly Gregor doesn’t know what he felt. Even his escape from his own security was expected to be short-lived—he was sure from the beginning he wouldn’t get far before they caught up with him. If they had, The Vor Game would be a terribly short book.
Gregor is intelligent to the point of being wily. He draws the line at military strategy—Miles always beat him at tacti-go—but he’s a master of diplomatic thinking. When captured by Metzov, a Barrayaran, he performs a bit of weaseling even Miles admires. Metzov asks for his parole. “A parole is a promise given between honorable enemies,” Gregor tells him. “Your honor I am willing to assume. But are you thus declaring yourself Our enemy?” As the novel continues, it turns out that all of Miles’ scheming to rescue his Emperor is relatively pointless. While at first Miles doubted and wondered if Gregor had been swayed by the honeyed words of manipulator Cavilo, Gregor shrugged off those doubts. “She had the same hungry smile Vordrozda used to get. And a dozen lesser cannibals, since. I can smell a power-hungry flatterer at a thousand meters, now.”
“Do you know that you rescued yourself?” Miles asked him.
It doesn’t stop Gregor from wishing the beautiful, charming Cavilo had been “real.” But when confronted with his former captor, he says tiredly, “Commander Cavilo, both 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?”
Hand-in-hand with his natural intelligence is his uncanny ability to work with people. The fact that, in Mirror Dance, he puts Mark Vorkosigan, professional paranoid, at ease enough to open up, counts as an extreme example, although this is several books after his current canon point. A closer-to-current example is the end of The Vor Game, in which he becomes extremely popular on the planet of Vervain. Count Vorkosigan says, “He’s being feted in their capital even as we speak, I believe. They’ve gone wild over him.” It is strongly hinted that Gregor gets this ability from Cordelia Vorkosigan, whose Betan upbringing and understanding of the people around her makes her a better psychotherapist than a lot of psychotherapists. In Mirror Dance, when Mark meets Cordelia and hears her psychoanalyzing several people he knows, he wonders who “shaves the barber.” Later, he witnesses a conversation between Gregor and Cordelia. To his surprise, Gregor makes note that Cordelia’s psychoanalyzing is her own way of coping with a stressful situation, and Mark gets his answer to his question. Gregor is considerably less talkative than Cordelia, particularly at his current canon point, but this is clearly not a new ability of his. It’s his understanding of people that makes him so good at his job.
“I know flattery sends you straight up a wall,” says Miles in The Vor Game, “but dammit, you’re actually good at your job. You have to know that, on some level inside, after the Vervain talks. Stay on it, huh?”
Gregor is a young man with many self-doubts, most of them revolving around his genetics. “Try it alone in bed at midnight, wondering when your genes are going to start generating monsters in your mind. Like Great Uncle Mad Yuri. Or Prince Serg.” In this quote, he reveals to Miles that he has learned that his father, Serg, was a mad, cruel, sadistic man whose death was one of the best things that happened to Barrayar, although his madness was hidden from his people and especially his son. Miles realizes that this “had been the trigger of the depressive Gregor’s first real suicide attempt.” Gregor’s shattered illusions about a man he doesn’t really remember aren’t at all the point, and don’t seem to upset him. “I’m afraid I might enjoy it. The hurting. Like him.”
“Rubbish,” replies Miles. “I watched my grandfather try and get you to enjoy hunting for years. You got good, I suppose because you thought it was your Vorish duty, but you damn near threw up every time you half-missed and we had to chase down some wounded beastie.”
This doesn’t convince Gregor. “What I’ve read…and heard, is so horribly fascinating. I can’t help thinking about it. Can’t put it out of my mind.”
“Your head is full of horrors because the world is full of horrors,” Miles points out. Then, later, “Gregor, I’m sorry, but I just don’t think Mad Emperor Gregor is in the cards. It’s your advisors who are going to go crazy.”
“I suppose it would disturb the guards if I tried to shove a cream torte up your nose,” sighs Gregor.
We can see in later installments of the series that Gregor’s paranoia about his bloodline doesn’t get better with time, and never will. Too afraid to marry a Vor lady and further compound the inbreeding, he has the fortune to fall deeply in love with an off-world woman whose looks are the exact opposite of your typical dark-haired, tall, willowy Vor woman. This taste in women is shown at his current canon point as well, with his attraction to the petite, slightly thick blonde Cavilo. Lady Alys Vorpatril’s attempts to find him a wife among Vor women are met with as much indifference as if Gregor wasn’t attracted to women at all, to the point where someone suggests she start trying men (which “wouldn’t solve the heir problem”). Clearly, Gregor never explains things to her in order to make things easier on them both—she eventually has to figure out on her own that he will never fall in love with a Vor woman.
Gregor is not a naturally selfish person. His canon point is an exception, not the rule. The only other time canon shows him being selfish is with his politically questionable courtship of Laisa, when he tells Miles that she’s not for the Imperium or even for the Emperor, but for himself. Gregor allows himself few things that make him happy, having been raised to believe the Imperium is greater than its Emperor. He is a slave to it. But even his ill-advised attempt to run away is met with horror even by himself, as he knows it’s a bad idea even before the hangover sets in. Miles and Elena chat at length to each other about the chaos that will strike Barrayar—civil war, at the least—if anything should happen to Gregor, until Gregor tells them, “Stop it!” Elena’s cool reply is, “I thought that was your job.” Even then, when she jokes about offering him a job with the fleet she is in, he revels in the fantasy of being a mercenary for a moment. With moments like this, it’s hard to blame him for his desire to have something for himself, or for his impulsive escape. He’s someone without a life of his own, who feels very keenly the enforced sacrifice of his own self for the sake of his entire society. He can’t change anything, and he can’t resent those who brought him up to be a good Emperor, but his longing, his hunger for his own identity is there throughout the entire series. Relief is found only when he exercises the freedom to choose his family life, later in the series when he marries and has children.
In Luceti, where he is not Emperor and no one has heard of Barrayar, and he can no way or desire to go back home, who knows what he’ll decide he really is?
Strengths:
I'm Vor, ma'am. In a sense, the Vor. Risk in service is the Vorish trade. I wouldn't assume my value was infinite, if I were you.
-Gregor Vorbarra, The Vor Game
Physical
Gregor can hold his own in a fight. It takes three guards to drag him to an airlock against his will, although he’s hardly beating them, just dragging his feet. He successfully tackles and strangles a fellow prisoner (presumably not a soldier, though) while trying to escape with Miles. He spent three years in the military academy learning combat and strategy, but spent his short military career in orbit on what he terms “pretend patrols.” In short, he has the know-how, but not the experience.
Mental
Gregor is extremely observant and brought up to think on his feet in a difficult diplomatic situation. He’s very careful about the things he says, being someone whose words have a great deal of weight, whose personal requests can easily be mistaken for Imperial commands. Still, a well-placed Imperial “We” can be a monster of a card to pull, and he only pulls it when it’s best. To catch Gregor making a diplomatic mistake is a little like catching Stephen Hawking screwing up long division. He’s so good at people, so learned at conversation and behavior, that he has an uncanny ability to put even the worst paranoids at ease.
He is able to manipulate his way out of a hostage situation (as the hostage) shortly after his current canon point—not a new ability, and one he doesn’t take any pride in, but one that didn’t require firing a single shot. Miles encourages him to stick with his hereditary employment, since he’s actually good at it. It does suit him perfectly, despite his doubts and claustrophobia, since Gregor makes an excellent Guile Hero.
Emotional
Very little actually flusters Gregor. At his angriest (in Memory), he never loses control of himself. Personal insults tend to roll off his back. He’s spent his whole life presumably learning not to take things personally. As a public figure, there are many who presume to know him even when he has never seen them personally. The emotional fortitude it takes to remain sane (not happy) with his background and situation, even with the support of his wonderful foster-parents, is enormous. He was raised by a man who learned to turn bad press to his advantage, after all. The little things don’t get to him.
Weaknesses:
Physical
Gregor is a squishy human. He has military training but no actual combat experience to speak of. He knows all the moves, but actually hurting someone is a horrific concept to him and one of the few things that will get him flustered.
Mental
Miles always beat Gregor at the game Tacti-go (something like Risk, probably). It’s a good thing the Emperor no longer leads his troops into battle, because while Gregor isn’t necessarily bad at it, it’s definitely one of many areas he leans heavily on his advisors for. He’s talented and even gifted in areas of diplomacy (considerably better than Aral Vorkosigan, who was Lord Regent while he was growing up), but at this canon point is underconfident and even capable of being swayed, his emotions overruling his natural intelligence in that area. His mental resources are as finite as anyone’s, and while no one could describe him as stupid, he just can’t be an expert in every field he deals in.
Emotional
At this time, Gregor has a certain lack of confidence and considers himself more or less a mascot (“Oh, being a mascot isn’t bad work, if you can get it”). He more or less behaves as one, as well, often following his foremost temptation to look to his advisors first (especially Aral Vorkosigan, as demonstrated in The Warrior’s Apprentice). More pressingly, he’s depressed to the point of being suicidal. His tumble off the balcony was drunken, half-hearted, and self-aborted, but real enough. He’s on a mission to find himself, whether or not he lost himself to begin with, and terrified to death of his own genes.
Samples
First Person: Q&A please.
Third Person:
Gregor remembered vacationing at Vorkosigan Surleau as a child. Aral Vorkosigan, then Lord Regent, had spent a summer building a tree house with his own two hands, refusing the assistance of his strong, able-bodied, not-retired armsmen. Miles had thought it was the best thing in the universe. He used to arrange Elena, Ivan, and Gregor in various positions as his crew, with himself as the captain of an imaginary ship. Gregor had, when play too immature for his own tastes had moved elsewhere, stood solitary with his hands on the railing, leaning, peering down at the grass below. He wasn’t afraid of heights, only morbidly fascinated with them. The older he grew, the less he remembered of that terrifying flight from the Imperial Residence during Vordarian’s coup, but the memory of twisting through the air with a dying Negri in control of the lightflyer, his skin bubbling off his bones from a plasma burn, screaming for the mouse-quiet Gregor to shut up, never faded. Softened, became dreamlike, but never faded. He remembered the terror.
He remembered tipping over the edge of a balcony. That was just last night, or this morning, or something.
This treehouse was better than the one at Vorkosigan Surleau. It was an actual small house, not a platform with railing. Gregor rolled to his hands and knees, feeling an odd stiffness in his back. No, not just in his back. Outside his back. He twisted to peer at the wings.
…Oh.
As if in independent response, the wings ruffled, fluttered, and folded behind him. It felt like a hard shudder, and goosebumps stood up on his skin at the same time. Black wings, with subtle silver stripes on the insides like a falcon’s. House Vorbarra colors, not Imperial colors, but still marking him as surely as a uniform he couldn’t take off. Whose work? Cetaganda? Jackson’s Whole? Both had the capability, and neither had any moral qualms with kidnapping the Emperor of Barrayar and giving him an apparent mutation. Cetaganda’s motivations would be political. Jackson’s Whole would do it for a fee at someone else’s political motivations, possibly Komarr’s. Gregor reached behind and tugged at the root of one wing. That was all it took to convince him it was inexorably a part of his anatomy. When the color came back to his face and his stomach stopped threatening to rebel, he took a deep breath and stuck his head out the treehouse door.
Green everywhere. Trees and shrubbery native to Earth, but not the usual glade or garden created to look like a slice of that cultural centerpiece. An entire wilderness, like someone had adjusted the color settings of the woods he’d fled through when he was five years old, the ones he only knew weren’t a dream because he’d seen them many times since.
Where was this? More importantly, who was this? The intent to sabotage his standing as Emperor by giving him a supposed mutation was obvious, and he couldn’t think it altogether tragic. Wings to fly from this height instead of falling as usual. The perfect excuse never to go back.
If that was what he wanted.
This was a mistake. It had been a mistake, leaving Komarr. But at this instant, he couldn’t make himself care too much. Whatever else awaited—torture, humiliating interrogation, death—wasn’t even worth thinking about, as far underground as Captain Negri’s bones. Captain Negri’s ghost, however, was always said to have lingered.
