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The first thing Princess Alys Vorbarra did when she heard of Serg’s death was marry lord Padma Vorpatril.
Their wedding was so rushed it was practically an elopement and for nearly a year, Alys was truly and incandescently happy.
It was a stupid thing to do, she would admit later on. They should have had more patience. Alys should have mourned Serg with all due ceremony, given every pretense of grief. She and Padma should have courted each other for a good respectable amount of time. He was the correct and obvious person for her to marry, from a political perspective, keeping her bound firmly to Dorca’s lineage and the Vorkosigans, cementing the stability of the Imperium, instead of feeding rumors and scandal, if they had only had patience.
But she had been so overwhelmed by happiness, when the word came. It had felt like a dream that she might wake from at any moment. She had felt that she needed to seize the opportunity as soon as she could, lest the mirage fade before she had a chance, lest this brief happiness should slip through her fingers.
And perhaps she had been right. Because regardless, there would have been trouble with Vordarian, and if Vordarian wished to cement himself on the camp stool, Padma would have been done away with regardless of who he was married to.
She refused to call Vordarian a misstep, only one terrible choice in an array of terrible choices. She’d led him on, certainly, she’d intended to use him when Serg came to power as a shield for herself and her son. She’d known what sort of man he was, a small man who thought himself large, one who would not flinch at murder and treason if he thought himself gallant in it. She had had plans, plans to use him, and dispose of him, by her own hand, perhaps. That would have made a pretty story, a good Barrayaran story, the Princess who wooed her husband's murderer and murdered him in vengeance with her Vorfemme knife in her own bed. And perhaps that plan would have gone awry, and perhaps it was foolish from the beginning, but she would not blame herself for Vordarian, because if Ezar had only told her his own plan, she would have been able to proceed sensibly. But he had only told her not to worry, that he had things well in hand, as if such reassurances from old men had ever meant anything.
And now Serg was dead and Padma was dead, and Alys was twice widowed in little more than the space of a year, but the past was finished and there was no use worrying over it.
What she did have to worry over was a positive maelstrom of suitors and all the political headache they entailed. It wasn’t as if she could demand a proper mourning year now, after all, when she had married Padma practically before Serg had had a chance to grow cold in hard vacuum.
She read the new letter from her latest suitor. This one was polite, at least, and his handwriting wasn’t too atrocious, and she didn’t think he was likely to arrange an unfortunate accident for Gregor, though of course she couldn’t really know until ImpSec investigated him thoroughly, which they wouldn’t do unless she told them she was taking his suit seriously. ImpSec’s time was at a premium, with plots springing up like mushrooms, not to mention the trouble beginning to bubble up on Komarr, and all the external dangers that might plague a now deeply unpopular empire with Cetaganda always half a misstep away.
“I’m a plot magnet, I know,” Alys had said to Captain Illyan about a week ago, “I unbalance things terribly by existing and being a potential access to power separate from Aral. Really it would have been easier for you if Vordarian had killed me. Then Aral and Cordelia could have had custody of Gregor and Ivan and everything would have been much simpler.”
“Don’t even think that way, your highness,” Captain Illyan had said with so much vehemence it had almost startled her, “If you’re going to wish for anything, wish that your damn fool of a husband hadn’t gotten himself killed.” Then he had caught himself on his propriety and blushed and added, “That is, I mean no offense to the late Lord Vorpatril, only-“
And Alys had actually laughed, he’d looked so flustered.
“No, no it’s alright,” she’d said, “I loved Padma dearly, but he died an idiot.”
An idiot and a coward, yes, but there was no point in wishing.
But she would have to choose someone to marry, and soon. All the choices seemed bad, potentially disastrous, but letting the uncertainty, the jockeying for position, continue was worse.
She had spent long evenings talking over possibilities with both Aral and Captain Illyan until the names seemed all to run together. She didn’t know any of these men at all, really. Serg had kept her isolated, and even when Ezar had protected her from him, the Prince still held power, and she had not dared to get close to any man apart from Padma, who was close to her already and apparently under Ezar’s protection, lest Serg become jealous and take out his wrath on him.
And there was the real trouble. She couldn’t do this again, not after Serg. She couldn’t .
“Fuck it,” Alys said. She wasn’t a woman who used coarse language, but she was at her wit’s end, and Lady Cordelia Vorkosigan was both a terrible influence and the only other person in the room, “I’m marrying Simon Illyan.”
Lady Cordelia raised an eyebrow at this outburst.
“Does Simon get a say in this?” She asked.
Alys blushed, but her mind was whirring. Because she could , couldn’t she, there was nothing to stop her.
“Well, I’ll ask anyway,” she said, “And see what he thinks.”