Chapter Text
Barrayar has a lot of stories about evil women.
Isabelle Vorbarra was fifteen years old when her husband-the-Emperor died leaving guardianship of her and her son to his best friend, possible cousin and suspected murderer. Three weeks later he died from a heart attack and she was left to rule as regent until her son (one of the foremost Emperors in the early history of Barrayar and definitely the one who spent the most time writing on the issue of salic bloodlines) decided he was old enough and had his mother and half-brother executed.
There’s a picture in the Imperial museum, formerly part of Mad Lord Dono’s personal collection, of Emperor Henri’s coronation. It’s a dramatic piece: the shining (literally, Dono is not generally known for having much taste and the gilded artwork wouldn’t help anyone who wished to take on his case) emperor stands in a spreading pool of blood; each hand holds a severed head by the hair. The corpses of his mother and brother are crumpled in the background. The best part of the picture, or at least the most detailed, are the faces: the heads with their wild, staring eyes and gaping mouths, the emperor with his slight smile and glittering eyes.
Kareen had spent a lot of time in that museum when she was younger, avoiding relatives and prepared with the excuse of education. She had always rather liked the painting. Barrayar’s violent history had seemed a lot more romantic when looked at from a few centuries later. She never looks at her portraits. In a few centuries, perhaps someone will look at her and compose a better story.
If anyone Kareen completely trusted had ever asked her the difference between Ges Vorrutyer and her husband-the-Prince Serg (no one ever asked, there was no use in knowing) she would have told them that Vorrutyer wanted people to fear him, causing pain was just one way to get that fear. Serg liked the pain almost more than the fear. This wasn’t true, but then, Kareen doesn’t trust anyone entirely anymore (except Drou, but she doesn’t need to be told) so she doesn’t spend too much time thinking on lies she doesn’t have to tell. There are too many she does.
Kareen killed Vordarian by applying one of the delicate music boxes he had bought her on their rather aborted second courtship to the back of his head. Later, she’ll be rather amused that it’s her methodology that upsets people. If she had used her vorfemme blade she would have been defending her honor in the manner appropriate for a woman whose husband had died (though those who approved probably would think it also appropriate for her to turn her blade on herself after). If she had used a blaster it could have been a fight where she reached out to defend herself. The people like to be able to read a measure of honor in a dramatic story; perhaps it helps them ignore the complications. She suspects that’s something her regent can understand, they always seem most aligned in moments of dark amusement.
Personally, Kareen sometimes wished she had hated Vordarian. Some days she even wished she had loved him. Her mother told her, a little before her engagement, that one should endeavor to avoid both love and hate. They were both the product of pouring too much attention on someone who didn’t deserve it, an ever-burning grave offering. Kareen, young and passionate, but not enough to contradict her mother out loud, had watched her elders and thought she understood. Her mother swept through the world, always polite but with never a word beyond what was necessary. The Emperor chose a path and just barreled through, he looked at her for the first time at the birth of his grandson and that was the last time he looked at his son. Kareen, who could play politics with the controlled grace expected of her, thought that she would never learn their secrets and, deep down inside, didn’t want to.
She realized later that she had just believed the lies they were trying to tell themselves. Her mother had been the idealist she always accused her ever practical daughter of becoming. She had loved Barrayar more than Kareen could’ve ever imagined loving anything as a child. It was this love, even more than her icy formalities, which had cut Prince Xav to the quick every time he’d tried to speak to his half-sister. She had wanted to give Kareen Barrayar, because it was what she had always wanted. Ezar had loved his son as much as he loved his empire, though Serg never believed it and she wasn’t sure Ezar could have admitted it. It was this love which had made him hate himself as he protected a boy he would’ve killed in an instant if it was anyone else. Ezar had wanted to give Serg the security he’d never known, but he couldn’t give him both that and been true to his duties as Emperor.
Kareen has lied enough to want to admit the truth, if only to herself. She had loved Serg. It had been an arranged marriage but one she could’ve got out of. She couldn’t even say that he had really become someone else. He had always had that streak of cruelty, he had always viewed himself as someone set apart from the crowd, he had always had a taste for retribution and the edges of a paranoia that had made so many into victims. She couldn’t make herself feel any shock at what he had been by his death but there had been more, once. He had charmed her, yes, but she thinks he’d also given her truths. A chance to see the better man he could have been.
Serg wasn’t Vorrutyer, beautiful and blessed with easy charm (however shallow Ges’ charm had been). He’d been a solemn youth, underneath the courtesies. His seriousness had attracted her and in turn he’d seemed to like listening to her tales of Barrayar’s past and hopes for its future. That was what had really drawn her in, Kareen decided later, he had always paid close attention to what she was saying. She was more used to boys who seemed to think they were paying her a great compliment by saying they were too distracted by her beauty to follow her conversation. As if that wasn’t an indictment of either their abilities or her speech or both.
Serg had listened. He was intelligent, with a surprising wit and talent for caricature (years later Kareen can still remember his imitation of a particularly boring Count). His normal reticence would fall away when he talked about how Barrayar needed to change and she was swept up his passion. In dark of evenings, chaperons a careful distance away, he had even spoken of his own losses. Kareen hates Ges Vorrutyer. She burns with it still. Maybe she should hate Serg just as much. More. Perhaps she just wants to hold onto another picture in her mind when she looks into a young, too solemn face forever stuck with his father’s eyes. But he would only have that.
Kareen had liked Vordarian well enough. He had always disliked Serg. Once the emperor had taken her under his protection, offering space not full of Serg, he was certainly not the most objectionable man to come courting. He might have been trying to gain power, but he had at least convinced himself it was for the good of the empire. He hadn’t forgotten about her, either. The gifts had been a trifle clumsy but well meant. The interactions with Gregor had been stiff but always carefully following her guidelines. She killed him without remorse, there could never be remorse or even a hint of regret, not when he’d tried to kill her son, not when he believed it possible to supplant him, but she doesn’t look back on the moment with any true pleasure. It’s bad enough that, in those grey weeks when she thought Gregor was dead, it had been the one moment when she had felt alive. There are people she never wants to be. Who she will not let herself become.
When the fire had settled at the end of the brief would be war, they had brought Kareen’s son back. Even as she had held him, there had been a moment of understanding between herself and the regent over his head. Whatever else she feels towards Lord Vorkosigan over the years, she has always been completely certain that he was watching Gregor for the same signs as she was. The Vorbarra name carries many legacies. Lurking behind the sharp immediacy of Serg stands Yuri in his madness and all the other dark ghosts of her childhood. There are a long list of Emperors that could become figures of nightmare in a child’s dream. There are even more who could lurk in a woman’s daytime fears.
There are times Kareen is afraid her son doesn’t know how much she loves him. Sometimes (late at night, when the world feels as empty as it had when she’d thought she’d lost everything) she’s afraid he sees it right. He can’t be Serg. But she can’t be Ezar. She can’t be either of Gregor’s grandmother’s, lost in different ways. She can’t steal her son’s birthright (looking at the weight on his shoulders, she wonders if those stories were really about better mothers than she is). She suspects there’s a reason so many of the stories about giving everything for your children end in a sacrifice. But she knows well that she could fail him in death as much as in life.
Kareen doesn’t put away the stories, but in the hour she forcefully carved out to read to Gregor each night, she makes sure to tell the ones where they survive. Cordelia can hold Gregor without fear, but she can give him this. A kiss goodnight. A distraction for those who want him. A title that means something. A future. The night they hear about Komarr, she holds Gregor tight, not letting herself think about whether another boy his age would complain about his mother’s smothering affection. Sometimes the fears of the future intrude into the present.