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When Gregor was 18, he was allowed to pick his own office in the Imperial Residence. Previously, he had worked out of a room near Lord Regent Vorkosigan's office, when he needed an office and was not merely decorative. He was almost at his majority and it was agreed by his advisors that he should begin establishing his own ways of doing the work of an emperor.
His options were laid out in front of him. Aral, presumably having something more important to do, was not there, providing Gregor the rare chance to make a decision without looking over his shoulder for Aral's approval. Except, of course, it was clear that his advisors had discussed his choices already and intended to help him along to their preferences. However, it was enough of an illusion to give him hope. Sure, he couldn't pick a broom closet, but he had five reinforced and redecorated rooms to choose from.
One of the advisors had preferred a room close to the heart of the building. One wanted the room with an escape tunnel. Gregor admitted to wisdom of this, even as he bridled at the subtle pressure from the man. A tour of the room had shown it to be cold and creaky, having been in the East Wing, the oldest part of the castle. After touring all the rooms, he had chosen the one in the newest part, the North Wing, which had been rebuilt with all the amenities and security available in the last 15 years.
It was several years before he wondered how close it was to where his mother had died.
Of course, he had known the North Wing had burned down during the Pretendership, and he had known his mother had died in the building. His memory of Cordelia and Aral explaining his mother's death had faded, leaving no specifics behind. He'd never requested any files on her. He didn't have any private photos of her. There were photos of her, taken at public events, but they looked nothing like what he remembered. The serene, poised woman in those photos was irreconcilable with the woman who had curled up in bed with him to tell him stories about dinosaurs over a plate of cookies . He looked at them only to make sure he remembered the shape of her face.
There were a few photos of her smiling at her wedding to his father. But in them he could see his own statesman's smile. The one you could hold through any ceremony, any conversation, anything, without it meaning much of anything. Aral, Lady Alys, and Captain Illyan never spoke of his father Serg. Others did, but no one who known him well. His friends had all died at Escobar. He had tried asking the Vorbarrra Armsmen, but realized that all of his father's and grandfather's Armsmen had died protecting him years before.
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It was only after his semi-disastrous adventure through space that he began to think about his mother's death. Cordelia had mentioned it in one of their now weekly lunches. It had been one of their many conversations about death; he had told her that her belief in an afterlife did not comfort him, and she had told him that dying should be done for love, like his mother. It had stunned him, not because it was a convincing counterargument, but because he had always thought of his mother as having died fighting the Pretendership. When he admitted such to Cordelia, she had told him simply that Kareen had cared far more for her flesh and blood son than the idea of an Emperor.
The idea fit warmly in with the woman who played with stuffed dinosaurs with him.
He had already read what he could on Serg, far more than he should have, but Kareen had only come up sparingly, as if the writers had attempted to preserve her modestly. Nothing was left of Negri's files, assuming he had ever written any of it down, and there was little need to make new records after Negri's and Kareen's deaths.
In the end, a direct order to Simon had given him more, a video file of Cordelia only a little more than a day after her arrival to deliver Vordarian's head. She looked tired and disheveled, and her voice was hoarse with a despair he had never heard from her before. She described the journey into the capital, finding the uterine replicator, killing Vordarian, and escaping, with his mother's death in the middle.
He consulted some floor plans after listening. His mother had died about 15 meters from his office. Not near or far. None of his original office options were any closer.
Cordelia had described the burning of the castle as a death offering to his mother. With that the dread he had felt, the fear that, because of the new floor plan, he unknowingly walked over the spot of his mother's death, evaporated. This North Wing was the place she had died, but it was also the memorial, and what better way to honor it than by living his life there.