Thematic Role
Aral first appears in Shards of Honor as a dark romantic hero, already 44 years old and richly experienced, both violent and sexual. He is not tall and not handsome, but he is physically powerful, charismatic, and brilliant. Passionate and high-minded, he is tormented by memories of those he has killed (or not killed) defending his honor. Cordelia loves him, it seems, because of his painful regrets and his agonized desire to transcend the code which prescribed his crimes. At his death (Cryoburn Aftermaths), she comments that he should not be frozen to await revival, but be allowed release from painful memories.
Aral finds in Cordelia someone to whom he can confess his worst memories. She offers him a different vision of honor, which does not require bloodshed but is devoted to the protection of the living, such as her lobotomized Ensign Dubauer and the seventeen fetuses conceived by the Barrayaran military on female prisoners of war. In Mirror Dance, when he thinks he is dying, Aral attempts to offer his clone-son Mark some last words: “All true wealth is biological” (ch. 15, recalled by Mark in ch. 33).
Aral’s son Miles represents both his greatest moral challenge and his redemption. Barrayaran policy towards crippled offspring is abortion or infanticide. With Cordelia, Aral accepts Miles and encourages him to develop military and personal ambitions. Aral’s political career is in part directed towards reforming society so that it will accept Miles as Count Vorkosigan. In the short story “The Mountains of Mourning,” Miles must judge a case involving backwoods infanticide of a deformed child. This case echoes Aral’s first major decision during his Regency, whether to pardon a young man who had killed another in the traditional but outlawed practice of the duel (Barrayar, ch. 7). Aral’s decision in that case—to execute the boy as an example—contrasts with Miles’s decision; the latter is able to devise a bloodless punishment for the infanticide, breaking the cycles of bloodshed and vengeance.
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