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Feb. 5th, 2026 07:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
iniquiticityXav posting, but I ran out of steam.
my post about Xav's Wife seems to be going around again so i am going to do some Xav posting while i wait for my bread to toast, in which i must say that i think Xav probably had a pretty anguished life.
one thing we know about him is that he's only Yuri and Yuri's Sister's half-brother. He was born a bastard and he was probably a bastard well into his teens. While this isn't the WOG post i wanted to find, there is definitely one that says something like "an adult Xav could have attended his mother's wedding to the Emperor."
Even in Aral's day, Aral is very pointed to Cordelia that legitimacy is important. He says directly to her in Barrayar that "you can't just imply my ancestors were bastards. It's a mortal insult."
Can we imagine imagine a teen Xav as sort of a proto-Miles? Was he was protected from Public shame from his "disability" of illegitimacy by the glory, honor, fame, and terror of his father (we may call Dorca the Just but we must be under no illusions of the sort of brutality this man must have unleashed to break the power of the Counts), but did this "protection" rescue him from Private shame? The subtle exclusions, whenever possible; snickering about him behind his back; sabotaging him in ways with plausible deniability; brushing off any accomplishments or successes as just nepotism. Or was Dorca's reign so powerful even these were not permitted? Perhaps someone did get hanged or shot for insulting Xav in a particular way at some point? It is an unfortunately easy exercise to consider how Vor society might have punished Xav for his illegitimacy in more and more secretive ways. Absolute expertise in microaggressions! Or ... maybe it was permitted, to root out disloyalty to Dorca, that you might insult his bastard son? A life of being bait to find out who thinks the Emperor can't be the exception to the rule. Yeugh.
No matter what the case may be, this must have been a primary shaping force in his life, even more than it has on Miles. Even as kids Yuri was likely a bully, even if he wasn't a sneering asshole about Xav's illegitimacy, and that applies at any age difference between the two of them. Who did Xav associate with, as a child? Miles had Elena, and Ivan and even sort of Gregor, and his parents loved him with great wisdom and unconditional care and regard. What was Xav's mother like? Dorca marries her, so she must be around in some quantity. Dorca must have liked her? Not to mention this convert Xav into the Spare, which is a useful thing to have. Was Xav permitted to have a relationship with his mother? What kind of relationship was it? I find it hard to believe Dorca was a supportive and loving father. I'm think about Aral saying Piotr was mostly not around, in the capital, or with his troops, after Ezar's (Piotr's) rebellion. The only thing we know about Yuri's sister, Xav's half-sister, Ezar's wife and Serg's mother was that she was probably not all there. (This is also in the LMB mailing list archive.)
So despite the crushing stigma of his disability, which must have been worse than everything we see about Miles, right?, something or someone keeps Xav standing straight up. And impressively, too!
So what does Xav do? Like Miles, he becomes a charismatic leader of people. He is The Talker. He realizes that he cannot, at least as one man, win with violence. Miles couldn't win with violence because he's made out of tissue paper. Why Xav can't win with violence? Perhaps even as a teen he realized violence might trigger Yuri into murdering him, that seems possible. Perhaps Dorca actively forbid it? Perhaps he tried, at some point, and created some even worse scene than he started. Perhaps he tried and lost, and Dorca (or his mother) explained to him that there was only one way to win for him. Perhaps they told him in advance.
So, if Dorca and Yuri both die, either during the TOI or before the Ceta Occupation, either Xav dies or he becomes Emperor. No other house is going to let him just hang out. But at the same time, did he had to comfort Yuri (and Dorca...?) that he would never threaten Yuri about it? Before the end of TOI, those were his options. As we often hear from Miles, would they even accept him? Did he, in a strange and fucked-up way, feel worse being legitimized? What if he was actually now a threat to Yuri? Not that I think Yuri would have saved him from the massacre if he was still bastard-blood.
So. This is where we find our hero. Yikes.
But then the skies open. Miles never considers running away from Barrayar. He rejects every opportunity, no matter how cool Naismith is. Do we think Xav ever looked up at the freshly opened sky and thought that.... it must be better than this? Could the comparison actually have been early Gregor in TVG? Squeezed between all these people. Told to do one thing or another. Utterly unfree.
One wonders how the very early TOI-Enders approached the feudal Vor.
How early was Xav in space? How early was he The Diplomat? Did Dorca realize that everyone thought the Barrayarans were uncivilized and backwards and thus he sent out the bastard son who was The Talker? When did he meet Xav's Wife?
my post about Xav's Wife seems to be going around again so i am going to do some Xav posting while i wait for my bread to toast, in which i must say that i think Xav probably had a pretty anguished life.
one thing we know about him is that he's only Yuri and Yuri's Sister's half-brother. He was born a bastard and he was probably a bastard well into his teens. While this isn't the WOG post i wanted to find, there is definitely one that says something like "an adult Xav could have attended his mother's wedding to the Emperor."
Even in Aral's day, Aral is very pointed to Cordelia that legitimacy is important. He says directly to her in Barrayar that "you can't just imply my ancestors were bastards. It's a mortal insult."
Can we imagine imagine a teen Xav as sort of a proto-Miles? Was he was protected from Public shame from his "disability" of illegitimacy by the glory, honor, fame, and terror of his father (we may call Dorca the Just but we must be under no illusions of the sort of brutality this man must have unleashed to break the power of the Counts), but did this "protection" rescue him from Private shame? The subtle exclusions, whenever possible; snickering about him behind his back; sabotaging him in ways with plausible deniability; brushing off any accomplishments or successes as just nepotism. Or was Dorca's reign so powerful even these were not permitted? Perhaps someone did get hanged or shot for insulting Xav in a particular way at some point? It is an unfortunately easy exercise to consider how Vor society might have punished Xav for his illegitimacy in more and more secretive ways. Absolute expertise in microaggressions! Or ... maybe it was permitted, to root out disloyalty to Dorca, that you might insult his bastard son? A life of being bait to find out who thinks the Emperor can't be the exception to the rule. Yeugh.
No matter what the case may be, this must have been a primary shaping force in his life, even more than it has on Miles. Even as kids Yuri was likely a bully, even if he wasn't a sneering asshole about Xav's illegitimacy, and that applies at any age difference between the two of them. Who did Xav associate with, as a child? Miles had Elena, and Ivan and even sort of Gregor, and his parents loved him with great wisdom and unconditional care and regard. What was Xav's mother like? Dorca marries her, so she must be around in some quantity. Dorca must have liked her? Not to mention this convert Xav into the Spare, which is a useful thing to have. Was Xav permitted to have a relationship with his mother? What kind of relationship was it? I find it hard to believe Dorca was a supportive and loving father. I'm think about Aral saying Piotr was mostly not around, in the capital, or with his troops, after Ezar's (Piotr's) rebellion. The only thing we know about Yuri's sister, Xav's half-sister, Ezar's wife and Serg's mother was that she was probably not all there. (This is also in the LMB mailing list archive.)
So despite the crushing stigma of his disability, which must have been worse than everything we see about Miles, right?, something or someone keeps Xav standing straight up. And impressively, too!
So what does Xav do? Like Miles, he becomes a charismatic leader of people. He is The Talker. He realizes that he cannot, at least as one man, win with violence. Miles couldn't win with violence because he's made out of tissue paper. Why Xav can't win with violence? Perhaps even as a teen he realized violence might trigger Yuri into murdering him, that seems possible. Perhaps Dorca actively forbid it? Perhaps he tried, at some point, and created some even worse scene than he started. Perhaps he tried and lost, and Dorca (or his mother) explained to him that there was only one way to win for him. Perhaps they told him in advance.
So, if Dorca and Yuri both die, either during the TOI or before the Ceta Occupation, either Xav dies or he becomes Emperor. No other house is going to let him just hang out. But at the same time, did he had to comfort Yuri (and Dorca...?) that he would never threaten Yuri about it? Before the end of TOI, those were his options. As we often hear from Miles, would they even accept him? Did he, in a strange and fucked-up way, feel worse being legitimized? What if he was actually now a threat to Yuri? Not that I think Yuri would have saved him from the massacre if he was still bastard-blood.
So. This is where we find our hero. Yikes.
But then the skies open. Miles never considers running away from Barrayar. He rejects every opportunity, no matter how cool Naismith is. Do we think Xav ever looked up at the freshly opened sky and thought that.... it must be better than this? Could the comparison actually have been early Gregor in TVG? Squeezed between all these people. Told to do one thing or another. Utterly unfree.
One wonders how the very early TOI-Enders approached the feudal Vor.
How early was Xav in space? How early was he The Diplomat? Did Dorca realize that everyone thought the Barrayarans were uncivilized and backwards and thus he sent out the bastard son who was The Talker? When did he meet Xav's Wife?