Aral Vorkosigan - Family

Family

Aral’s early life (before the age of 44) is known primarily from his confessions to Cordelia in Shards of Honor. The narrative assumption is that he always tells her the truth.

Aral is the son of Count Piotr Vorkosigan, 10th count of the backwoods Dendarii district, and Princess Olivia Vorbarra, grand-daughter of a Barrayaran emperor. Aral’s paternal grandmother was a Vorrutyer; his maternal grandmother was from Beta Colony. Count Piotr and his wife had three children; Aral was the second of two sons.

When Aral was 11 years old, his siblings, his mother, and most of his cousins were massacred by the ruling emperor “Mad Yuri” Vorbarra; Aral tried to defend his mother with a dinner knife. Count Piotr led a military party which deposed Yuri, installing Ezar Vorbarra as the emperor in his place. Yuri was executed by being stabbed to death and dismembered, with Aral having the privilege of wielding the knife first. Because of the massacre, Aral is one of the few surviving descendants of the Imperial line, with a possible claim on the throne through his mother (though Barrayar does not recognize descent through the female line).

At the age of 20, Aral married a cousin from the Vorrutyer family (A Civil Campaign, ch. 3), an arranged marriage. That they loved each other is suggested by some drawings he made of her (Shards of Honor, ch. 15), but they had no children. During his absences from the capital she took two lovers. Ges Vorrutyer, a fellow lieutenant who was in love with Aral, told Aral (Shards of Honor, ch. 7), and Aral challenged both men to illegal duels. Aral killed them, but escaped charges because it was assumed the two had killed each other. His wife died, either a suicide or murder by Count Piotr, though Aral was rumored to have slain her to avenge his honor (A Civil Campaign, ch. 15). Aral then began to drink a lot and entered, or possibly was already involved in, a passionate affair with Ges Vorrutyer. Eventually Aral seems to have broken off the affair (Barrayar, ch. 3, and several references in Shards of Honor).

At age 44, at the beginning of the novels, Aral meets and falls in love with the Betan Survey captain Cordelia Naismith. According to her analysis, she provides a “solution” to his bisexuality, being both a woman and a soldier (Barrayar, ch. 5, repeated in Mirror Dance, ch. 16). They marry and have a child, Miles, who is physically handicapped. Count Piotr attempts both abortion and infanticide of this imperfect heir, and Aral becomes estranged from his father until Miles can use his legs, at about the age of 5. Aral and Cordelia are otherwise childless until, in Mirror Dance, they discover Mark, a clone of Miles created when Miles was about six years old. They acknowledge Mark as their son and, for a short time when Miles is MIA, the heir to the title of Count. By the time Aral dies, around 83 years old, he has four grandchildren, all Miles's children (Cryoburn).

Two other children are fostered by Aral and Cordelia. Elena Bothari is the daughter of Sergeant Bothari and an Escobaran woman he raped, brought back in a uterine replicator to Barrayar after the Escobar fiasco. Elena ends up marrying and settling in another planetary system. Gregor Vorbarra is the orphaned Emperor, educated by Aral and Cordelia, who live at the Imperial Residence during their estrangement from Count Piotr, during the period when Gregor is 5 to 10 years old. At Gregor's wedding, Cordelia and Aral stand in place of Gregor's parents. At Aral's interment at Vorkosigan Surleau, Gregor insists on having a place as one of the pallbearers "The man has carried me since I was five years old." "It's my turn" (Cryoburn, Aftermaths).