The point of view characters include women ( Cordelia in Shards of Honor, Barrayar ; Ekaterin in Komarr and A Civil Campaign ), a gay man ( Ethan of Athos ), and a pair of brothers, one of whom is disabled and the other a clone ( Miles and Mark Vorkosigan ).

In many novels, there is a contrast between the technology-rich egalitarian democratic socialism of Beta Colony and the heroic, militaristic, hierarchical society of Barrayar, where personal relationships must ensure societal continuity.

Aside from the questions of medical ethics this raises, it is a feminist issue on Barrayar, where the social roles of women have been entirely defined by their reproductive function.

Barrayar is a planet colonized by humans some four hundred years prior to Shards of Honor, the first Vorkosigan novel.

With the unexpected and odd arrival of Miles ’ cousin Ivan Vorpatril, he deduces that a political faction in the Council of Counts is attacking his father back on Barrayar by charging Miles with maintaining a private army — an act of capital treason.

Once there, he manages to defeat plotters who sought to seal off the only wormhole to Barrayar, and falls in love with his hostess, Ekaterin Vorsoisson, who is trapped in an unhappy marriage.

On Komarr, Ivan is asked by an ImpSec friend to protect a pretty young woman targeted by a criminal gang, and stumbles into a conspiracy involving Jackson's Whole politics, hired assassins, criminal syndicates, and an old and potentially dangerous secret on Barrayar.

Within the Vorkosigan Saga, Cetaganda is principally important for its unsuccessful attempts to gain control of the planet Barrayar, home to the saga's central character, Miles Vorkosigan.

After being captured by Barrayarans and then escaping twice, she eventually has to escape Beta and flees to Barrayar, becoming Lady Vorkosigan.

Both Cetaganda and Barrayar have empires, acquired by conquering other planets via neighboring wormholes.

Bujold devised for this planet a history which allowed for “ swords ‘ n ’ spaceships .” Barrayar in the lifetime of Miles Vorkosigan commands spaceships, computers, and other high technology, but its culture remembers dueling, examines newborns for defects and practices infanticide if any are found, celebrates the Emperor ’ s birthday by handing him bags of gold, and provides liveried life-sworn servants to carry love-letters sealed with the writer's blood.

Shortly after colonization, the 50, 000 settlers become isolated by a failure of the sole wormhole connecting Barrayar to the rest of humanity.

# Cordelia's Honor ( November 1996 ), combined edition of Shards of Honor and Barrayar with an afterword by the author.

A fourth war may have been the result of a Ba's attempts to frame Barrayar for the theft of Haut genetic material, but was prevented by Lord Auditor Miles Vorkosigan in the novel Diplomatic Immunity, when he uncovered the plot and took measures to expose it.

The late novel Diplomatic Immunity involves Miles rescuing a shipment of haut embryos stolen by a Cetagandan renegade, who had arranged for Barrayar to be framed for the theft and the associated murder of a haut Lady.

Weaponized poisons show up on the planet Barrayar as military stockpiles which should be destroyed ( soltoxin, fetaine ).

In all the books except Ethan of Athos and Falling Free, the protagonists are connected to the planet Barrayar, home of the Vorkosigan clan.

Moreover, days are calculated in terms of a “ standard hour ” no matter how long they are, so that Barrayar has a day 26. 7 hours long.

Some planets, such as Barrayar and Sergyar, have gravity and atmosphere similar to Earth ’ s, and supplies of water.

The worlds of Barrayar and Athos suggest aspects of preindustrial Europe and America.

The Komarrans allow the neighboring expansionist Cetagandan Empire to invade Barrayar in return for commercial rights.

Shards of Honor and Barrayar concern Miles ' parents, while " Dreamweaver ’ s Dilemma " concerns a distant ancestor of Cordelia Naismith, Ethan of Athos involves a few minor characters from other Vorkosigan novels, and Falling Free does not involve Miles or any of his family, though in a later novel, Miles encounters the descendants of the characters from Falling Free.

Captain Cordelia Naismith of Beta Colony meets the notorious Captain Lord Aral Vorkosigan of Barrayar.

Miles and Ivan are sent to the home world of the Cetagandan Empire to represent Barrayar at an Imperial funeral, and quickly become entangled in a murderous Cetagandan plot.

Miles travels to Jackson's Whole, ostensibly to buy weapons, but in reality to help geneticist Dr. Hugh Canaba leave his current employer to go to work for Barrayar.

A group of Komarrans working in the same terraforming facility as Tien have developed a revolutionary weapon with potentially devastating consequences for Barrayar.

Ekaterin decides to return to Barrayar to stay with her aunt and uncle ( Auditor Vorthys ) and complete her education.

As Barrayar prepares for an Imperial wedding, Miles attempts to court Ekaterin Vorsoisson without her knowledge.

Miles introduces Roic to Taura on her first ( and due to her short life expectancy, probably her last ) visit to Barrayar.

It is estimated that about 70,000 miles of forest highways will eventually be needed to fully serve the National Forests.

It is estimated that about 542,250 miles of forest development roads, and 80,000 miles of trails, constitute the system that will eventually be needed to obtain the maximum practicable yield and use of the wood, water, forage, and wildlife and recreation resources of the National Forests on a continuing basis.

Several efforts were made in this direction, and though not all of them survive to this day, the Brown & Sharpe wire gage system was eventually adopted as the American standard and is still in common use today.

Technical knowledge is a wonderful thing, but it's useless unless it eventually feeds the cash register.

in working with these patients the therapist eventually gets to do some at least private mulling over of the possible meaning of a belch, or the passage of flatus, not only because he is reduced to this for lack of anything else to analyze, but also because he learns that even these animal-like sounds constitute forms of communication in which, from time to time, quite different things are being said, long before the patient can become sufficiently aware of these, as distinct feelings and concepts, to say them in words.

But where the core of NATO is concerned, the Secretary of State has not only reiterated the United States' profound attachment to the alliance, `` cornerstone '' of its foreign policy, but has announced that five nuclear submarines will eventually be at NATO's disposal in European waters.

The most important French social theorist since Foucault and Lévi-Strauss is Pierre Bourdieu, who trained formally in philosophy and sociology and eventually held the Chair of Sociology at the Collège de France.

The Proto-Sinaitic script eventually developed into the Phoenician alphabet, which is conventionally called " Proto-Canaanite " before ca.

" For some people, a program is only an algorithm if it stops eventually ; for others, a program is only an algorithm if it stops before a given number of calculation steps.

As the ship moves, momentum is not conserved – the ship eventually comes to a stop again when not thrusting.

The number of boxes is finite, so eventually our choice procedure comes to an end.

The technique is a form of aversion therapy in which Alex receives an injection that makes him feel sick while watching graphically violent films, eventually conditioning him to suffer crippling bouts of nausea at the mere thought of violence.

Lynchehaun is said to have returned to Achill on two occasions, once in disguise as an American tourist, and eventually died in Girvan, Scotland, in 1937.

Among the neo-Platonists and eventually their Christian interpreters, Aphrodite Ourania figures as the celestial Aphrodite, representing the love of body and soul, while Aphrodite Pandemos is associated with mere physical love.

In order for one to achieve proper, firm and healthy Iman one must practice righteous deeds or else his level of Iman chokes and shrinks and eventually can wither away if one does not practice Islam long enough, hence the depth of practicing Islam is good deeds.

Also, a therapist might choose to have the subject partake in what is called " exposure therapy " where the person is exposed to virtual spiders and then eventually live spiders little by little until they have overcome the phobia.

( Construction is eventually completed in 1880.

Agathias expresses his hope that the Alemanni would assume better manners through prolonged contact with the Franks, which is by all appearances, in a manner of speaking, what eventually happened.

A marriage of sorts is arranged between Dido and Aeneas at the instigation of Juno, who was told of the fact that her favorite city would eventually be defeated by the Trojans ' descendants, and Aeneas's mother Venus ( the Roman adaptation of Aphrodite ), who realizes that her son and his company need a temporary reprieve to reinforce themselves for the journey to come.

A good example of the contempt the first democrats felt for those who did not participate in politics can be found in the modern word ' idiot ', which finds its origins in the ancient Greek word, idiōtēs, meaning a private person, a person who is not actively interested in politics ; such characters were talked about with contempt, and the word eventually acquired its modern meaning.

The final conflict was provoked by Antony, who is said to have been persuaded by his lover, the queen Cleopatra of Egypt, to retire to her land and give battle to mask his retreat ; but lack of provisions and the growing demoralization of his army would eventually account for this decision.

Bows eventually replaced the spear-thrower as the predominant means for launching shafted projectiles, on every continent except Australia, though spear-throwers persisted alongside the bow in parts of the Americas, notably Mexico ( where the Nahuatl word for " spear-thrower " is atlatl ) and amongst the Inuit.

This structure can be also seen as a series of concentric circles, where the gospel begins in the center, Jerusalem, and is expanding ever outward to Judea & Samaria, Syria, Asia Minor, Europe, and eventually to Rome.