Miles Vorkosigan
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Miles Vorkosigan is the fictional hero of a series of novels and short stories by Lois McMaster Bujold known as the Vorkosigan Saga.
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[edit] Biography
[edit] Traumatic Birth
Miles Vorkosigan is the son of Aral Vorkosigan of the planet Barrayar and his Betan wife Cordelia Naismith. While his mother was pregnant, she was injured by a poison gas (soltoxin) in an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate his father. The antidote to soltoxin gas turns out to be a violent teratogen that destroys skeletal development in the growing fetus. The only available treatment was experimental at best, and would have been fatal to the mother. The fetus was therefore transferred to an artificial uterine replicator in an effort to salvage his bone development.
[edit] Appearance
The treatment was incompletely successful, and he is born with "chalk-stick bones, friable as talc", and is described as "wizened as an infant homunculus."[1] He is unable to walk until age five.[2] Despite repeated corrective surgeries, his height only reaches four-foot-nine at maturity, and "his doctor still opined that the trade-off toward the end, between the length of his bones and their strength" resulted in "the last six inches of height [being] a mistake."[3]
Many people on Barrayar are prejudiced against him because they incorrectly believe him to be a mutant. Miles eventually has most of his long bones replaced by synthetics. Subsequent to his death and cryo-revival,[4] a surgeon manages to straighten his spine a bit, resulting in an additional centimeter (!) of height.
[edit] Abnormal Name for the Abnormal Lord
When his famous grandfather learns of the prenatal damage, he tries to kill the fetus in the replicator, and later tries to kill the infant because he believes that "We cannot afford to have a deformed Count Vorkosigan." This is prevented by Sergeant Bothari, who is devoted to Cordelia. It is because of this hostility the general refused to allow the child to be named after him, Piotr. Vor male heirs are usually named with the first name of the paternal grandfather as the child's first name, and the first name of the maternal grandfather as the middle name, so his name should have been Piotr Miles Vorkosigan. Cordelia instead endows Miles with her deceased father's full name as first and middle names, hence Miles Naismith Vorkosigan.
[edit] Youth
At the age of seventeen, he fails the physical exam to enter the Barrayaran Imperial Military Service. Soon after this, however, he takes a trip to Beta Colony, has (partly unintended) space adventures for a few months, and improvises a force called the Dendarii Mercenaries into existence. In later novels and stories the Dendarii Mercenaries obtains official status as a covert operations arm of the Barrayaran military, and Miles carries out "over thirty" missions as their commander over the course of the series. While in command of the Dendarii, he assumes the persona of "Admiral Naismith", speaking with a Betan accent. Naismith is believed by some to be a clone of Miles Vorkosigan, created by Cetagandan agents as part of a plot against Barrayar, a backstory for the character improvised by Miles during their adventure on Earth in Brothers in Arms.
During this adventure, the twenty-four year old Miles' life becomes more complicated when he discovers that he has an actual clone, created by Komarran terrorists with the intent of killing Miles and his family and ultimately becoming Emperor of Barrayar. His friends urge him to kill the clone, but due to the Betan influence on his upbringing Miles thinks of the clone as his brother and lets him go free. Four years later, Miles is killed while trying to rescue his clone-brother, and although he is successfully cryo-frozen and revived, he is left with a condition which causes periodic epileptic-like seizures, particularly under great stress. He tries to conceal this from Simon Illyan, his boss and chief of Imperial Security (ImpSec). Miles falsifies a report after he has a seizure in combat, but this is detected and he is fired from ImpSec, putting an end to his life with the Dendarii.
Almost immediately, he becomes suspicious of a plot against Illyan who has fallen ill and is being kept isolated; he requests the assignment of an Imperial Auditor to help him investigate the situation, but instead, the Emperor surprises him by making him the "Ninth Auditor", a temporary designation by tradition, but nonetheless endowed with full Auditor powers. His handling and solving of the case is reviewed by the other Auditors and his status as Auditor is made permanent.
[edit] Mid life - 30s on
Shortly thereafter, he accompanies one of his new colleagues, Lord Auditor Vorthys, to Komarr, home to the sole wormhole connecting Barrayar to the rest of the Nexus. (Barrayar conquered Komarr some years before Miles' birth in order to gain control of that vital access). Their mission is to investigate an accident involving the solar energy array orbiting Komarr; the accident turns out to have been caused by the secret testing of a new weapon with which Komarran conspirators hope to permanently destroy Barrayar's access to the wormhole. Miles is quartered with Lord Auditor Vorthys' niece and her husband, a Barrayaran official. In the course of the investigation, Miles survives yet another brush with death although his host, who has become ensnared in the plot, does not survive. To make a bad situation worse, Miles has fallen in love with his host's wife, Ekaterin, who just happens to be on the verge of leaving her abusive husband when disaster strikes. She is then instrumental in foiling the plot. The entire affair is classified as secret due both to the political nature of the conspiracy and the new technology of the Komarran secret weapon.
Ekaterin, now professing to be violently allergic to marriage, moves back to Barrayar with her son to stay with Lord Auditor Vorthys. Miles embarks upon a bizarre, if typically complicated, strategy: he will woo Ekaterin without telling her, in the hope that she can be persuaded to reconsider her stance. Miles is hoisted˜ upon his own petard during a particularly disastrous dinner party to which Ekaterin is invited. She is initially furious when she discovers his machinations. An additional complication arises when rumors accuse Miles of murdering her husband in order to marry her. Due to the Imperial security concerns, she is not at liberty to refute the allegations, even when her relations attempt to move her son to "safety". This provokes her to drastic action: she proposes to Miles herself in a most public fashion; he accepts without hesitation.
In Winterfair Gifts, they are married during the mid-winter festival that marks the beginning of a new year on Barrayar, and survive yet another attack in which Ekaterin is poisoned by one of Miles' Auditorial victims. The plot is foiled by Taura, one of his many former girl-friends, and Roic, one of his Armsmen.
Their honeymoon is delayed by a considerable period, during which they conceive twins in uterine replicators; while this is by now normal for well-to-do Barrayaran couples, it also conveniently allows the happy couple to leave the planet while their unborn children remain safely at home. In Diplomatic Immunity, Emperor Gregor dispatches his youngest Auditor to defuse a diplomatic crisis at a Quaddie space station. The couple becomes embroiled in yet another deadly, complicated situation involving potential war with Cetaganda. Happily, Miles survives a near-death illness caused by exposure to a Cetagandan nanotech biological weapon, and they are able to return to Barrayar just in time for their children's birth -- a son named Aral Alexander and a daughter named Helen Natalia.
At this point, Miles' full title is Lord Auditor Captain Miles Naismith Vorkosigan, heir to the Vorkosigan District as Lord Vorkosigan, or possibly Lord Auditor Captain Lord Vorkosigan. It is traditional for retired and discharged soldiers to retain their rank as a title. Additionally, the position of Imperial Auditor seems to attach a Lord at the beginning of the title. It is unknown how to distinguish between an Auditor and one who is also a Lord as a result of being the heir to a District.
[edit] Personality
Miles is one of the most striking characters in science fiction. He is both brilliant (especially in military tactics) and hyperactive; one of his girlfriends describes him as "addicted to adrenaline rushes." He compulsively and constantly challenges the world in spite of (or because of) his stature: sometimes with disastrous consequences, although more often his mind overcomes his physical weakness.
He has an ambiguous status on his home planet, being simultaneously a pampered and powerful aristocrat and a despised "mutie." At times he contemplates running away from Barrayar and its prejudice against disabled people, but he never acts on this impulse, perhaps because of his loyalty to his family and his Vor code of honour.
He has a strong tendency to manipulate people and is very good at bluffing. The Dendarii Free Mercenaries begin as pure imaginative figment, and through frantic improvisation he conceals his deception from his erstwhile recruits; their accomplishments make real his invention. With the early success of this "lie first, fix it later" strategy, he does not become fully aware of its ethically dubious nature until over a decade later, when (finally) it blows up in his face: first he is caught lying about his seizure disorder, and then the widow he loves is enraged when she discovers that he has been attempting to court her by stealth during her socially-recognized period of mourning.
By the later novels, Miles is living the (relatively) calmer life of Imperial Auditor, a sort of cross between special investigator and special prosecutor, for the growing Barrayaran empire. He is also preparing to settle down and raise a family.
In the course of what is already a lengthy series, Miles has been allowed to grow and evolve in ways most action heroes never do. While Miles grows, the series background does as well. The large supporting cast of characters that populate the Vorkosigan novels are well developed. The cultures of the various worlds and locations where the action takes place — Barrayar, Beta Colony, Cetaganda, Komarr, Kline Station, Athos, Jackson's Whole, Graf Station (Quaddiespace) — are distinct and skillfully worked out. Variety also appears in the stories themselves: Miles's challenges are varied from one episode to another, not just a new space battle in each book.
These strengths explain why the Vorkosigan series is among the most popular with readers and critics in current science fiction.
[edit] Admiral Naismith
Admiral Naismith is an alter ego Miles used and developed as youth until the novel Memory.
[edit] Creation of Naismith
Miles Vorkosigan developed an alternate identity as Admiral Naismith, under which he ran the Dendarii Mercenaries (formally the Oseran Mercenaries until Miles took over from Admiral Oser) until the novel Memory. It began as a lie but eventually evolved into a real cover identity. Even this was an improvisation, as Miles found himself facing charges of treason for raising a private army, and had to offer the Dendarii as a "Crown Troop" working in the service of Emperor Gregor to deflect the charges. Necessarily he had to be Admiral Naismith so that the Dendarii could carry out missions on behalf of Barrayar without the responsibility for those missions being traced back to Barrayar itself. Given the restricted life of a Vor lordling, and the galaxy-spanning horizons available to Naismith, Miles eventually came to value Naismith's life over the one he was born to.
[edit] Who is Naismith supposed to be?
Admiral Naismith is quite a formidable personality, able to convince and persuade (or manipulate) most people to see things from his point of view. He is also a good judge of personnel, an essential for a leader. Miles Vorkosigan himself once said to Emperor Gregor Vorbarra of Barrayar, "I guess Naismith is me with no brakes. No constraints." (The Vor Game) This characteristic makes him a very dangerous enemy, as he is willing to take risks that most normal people would avoid. He also improvises brilliantly. Sent into a Cetagandan prison camp to find and extract one important Marilacan guerrilla leader, he managed to convert the mission into a full-scale breakout of most of the prisoners, using nothing more than the force of his personality, a screwball religion espoused by one of the inmates, and some coded comments picked up by his support team, who had infiltrated the Cetagandan garrison to monitor the mission. (Borders of Infinity). The success of this mission, and the ensuing rebellion on Marilac, caused the Cetagandans to put a price on Miles' head.
In theory, Naismith is a Betan by birth and speaks with the distinctive nasal Betan accent, which Miles learned from his mother. The typical Barrayaran accent is described as guttural in comparison. The back story that Miles improvised when taking over the Oseran mercenaries had him being part of a larger unit of mercenaries but in time it became apparent that the former Oserans were the whole of the Dendarii Mercenaries. Veterans such as Captains Ky Tung and Bel Thorne eventually realized the deception, but kept the fact that they knew hidden from Miles himself. Officially only Miles, Elena Bothari, her husband Baz Jesek, Arde Mayhew, and Miles' second-in-command and lover Elli Quinn, knew the truth.
Later, Miles developed a cover that he was a clone made by the Cetagandans meant to infiltrate Barrayar by replacing Miles Vorkosigan. This turned out to be ironic, as there was a real clone made for just that purpose, but by Komarrans. When Miles encountered, and made peace with his clone brother Mark, this allowed Miles to cement his cover by having a Cetagandan officer witness both Miles Vorkosigan and Admiral Naismith in the same place at the same time.
Eventually, the split personality of turning Naismith on and off became a problem for Miles. This was especially true on Earth, when fleeing the Cetagandans required him to report to the Barrayaran embassy as Miles Vorkosigan and take cover there, while still commanding the fleet during a difficult and expensive refit. It was complicated by his developing affair with Elli Quinn, who was adamant that she did not like Lord Vorkosigan at all. It also complicated his dealings with various plots on his life, since he did not always know which were directed at Naismith, and which at Vorkosigan.
[edit] Decline and fall
Naismith - and Vorkosigan - suffered a setback during a botched rescue mission on the planet Jackson's Whole when Vorkosigan, trying to rescue his clone brother Mark who had impersonated Naismith for his own purposes, was fatally shot. Fortunately he was able to be cryo-preserved and eventually revived. Meanwhile Mark, despite gorging himself into obesity, had to become Naismith for a time. The chaotic story is described in the novel Mirror Dance.
As a result, Miles Vorkosigan suffered neurological effects resulting in seizures triggered by the buildup of stress-related neurotransmitters, ensuring that he is most likely to have a seizure when he most needs to be lucid. Covering up this, and its adverse consequences on a mission, resulted in Miles, in both personas, being fired from ImpSec. This precipitated a crisis for Vorkosigan, who felt that Naismith was not just a role to him, but almost a part of him. His mother, Countess Vorkosigan bet her husband Aral Vorkosigan that Miles would choose the little admiral and run off with the Mercenaries.
Miles Vorkosigan mourned the loss of Admiral Naismith for a long time. However Miles' new role as Imperial Auditor gave him the opportunity to use Naismith's talents once more. As Ivan Vorpatril described it, Vorkosigan as Naismith means "full tilt forward, no inhibitions, innocent bystanders scramble for their lives."
Naismith's final "death" may be said to have occurred around the time of Miles' betrothal to Ekaterin Vorsoisson. At that time, during the celebration of Emperor Gregor's wedding, ghem-General Dag Benin passed Miles a message from the Cetagandan Emperor, expressing condolences over Naismith's death. The clear implication was that the Cetagandans had finally realized the truth. Benin also informed Miles that the Emperor would prefer Naismith to remain deceased, to which Miles responded, "I trust his resurrection will not be required."
[edit] Ivan Vorpatril
No description of Miles is complete without mentioning his cousin, Lord Ivan Vorpatril, also known as "that idiot Ivan" or "Ivan, you idiot". Ivan has been, since childhood, Miles' foil, burden, workhorse, and (until Miles has children) his formal heir. He is everything Miles is not - tall, handsome, and athletic. He is a graduate of the military academy and gets assigned one plum posting after another.
[edit] Mark Pierre Vorkosigan
Mark Pierre Vorkosigan is Miles's clone brother.
