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Dec. 27th, 2025 02:47 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
iniquiticityextended posting about ezar's filicide of serge, draft, probably incomplete
i will stun none of you that i have continued to muse on this question, "at what point do you think ezar realized he had to kill his own son?"
i actually think that there was no time where ezar was emperor that he didn't think he might have to do filicide. you know why? he married yuri's sister (full sister on yuri's side, half-sister on xav's side), so in his mind there was always the chance they'd have another yuri.
(i find it fascinating how intensely the books believe so many of one's problems can be fixed by a simple "gene clean." more on this at some other time.)
it seems like all the vorrutyers all really have the flair for the dramatic, and that's saying it real nicely to include dono. i wonder when this pattern started? why did dorca marry a vorrutyer if it was known a few generations back? was it to thank his pal, le sanguinaire? you'd think he'd be a little more forward-thinking than making an unhinged heir. but one supposes to break the power of the counts and unite them under your banner you have to be pretty ready to get dirty yourself. was it because she was extremely hot? did he find it sexy she was vorrutyer unhinged? or was it that was just what vorbarras did, marry vorrutyers?
so it's yuri, xav, his half-brother, and yuri's unhinged full sister.
i actually am not bothered by the "why was it not xav?" question. there are so many good reasons.
xav is progressive and galactic and already has an off-worlder for a wife. i would wager those are not super popular traits if you're trying to convince people you should be the emperor over the guy who is currently the emperor. this probably goes double for the counts, given that they just fought a war with a bunch of galatics? despite how important he was to the cetagandan effort, he's never described as a war hero the way piotr is. he was probably pretty old by barrayaran standards, at the time starting the war, and obviously none of them had any idea how long it would take. one could imagine that he did not want it. also, we have a strong sense of piotr's politics, and it is not at all hard to believe that piotr did not want xav to be emperor next. one wonders what piotr would have done if xav demanded the campstool? i think he probably would have gone along with it, but it wasn't ideal.
and why ezar? i also find a variety of easy answers for thiss.
ezar came equipped with an army, which is what P & X needed (green mountain HQ). piotr already knew him and, probably, was confident ezar wouldn't do this whole thing again. piotr knows ezar is an extremely competent military general and would be loyal to him. ezar is a vorbarra, which is close enough. do you think P&X went through all the vorbarras they could think of? or do we think they knew pretty close to the time they decided to do this war that ezar was the one, if he'd agree? i think my headcanon is that it didn't take piotr that long to know ezar was his first choice once he'd committed to doing the war. how do we think xav felt about that? was xav in the 'anyone but yuri' category?
or maybe piotr and xav didn't have an emperor in mind, but when they went to ezar, he said, "i'll help if i get the campstool." to piotr, i imagine, this would have been a no-brainer, because ezar was already a student of his. it isn't that ezar might turn against him, but better the potential betrayer you know than starting from scratch with someone else. and what would have xav thought about this? one can imagine xav not liking the idea of another military general taking the campstool, but maybe he doesn't have another option. again, he could be "anyone but yuri," so ezar it is.
so xav and piotr and ezar decide to throw their weight behind ezar. OK. great.
i guess legitimizing ezar through marrying yuri's deranged sister outweighed the fact that having a kid with yuri's sister, who was also mad, and also older? i can't imagine they weren't all aware of the risks! and yet if they've all suffered so much having this war, maybe this was just .... the way it had to be. although one would think there could have been some possibility of just making ezar the heroic line? or maybe dorca's heroism was still so strong in everyone's mind that there just wasn't any other option given that the sister existed.
i think ezar was already ready to kill his own son right there, even before the son existed. hoping for a dorca but preparing for a yuri.
i don't think ezar gave a single millimeter of fucks about yuri's sister/his wife. it's just so morbid, but, ugh, i find it so much easier to believe that the consent situation there to have serge was not remotely cool or OK or good. but that is completely and 100% not important here. they need a wedding and they need a dorca heir. poor woman. :/
anyway. she has serge. how long was serge alive before ezar realized this was the actual human he had to kill? do you think serge was a fucked up child, burning ants, etc, and ezar was just hoping he'll grow out of it?
i wonder what day ezar realized it was fucked. was serge in his teens? twenties? imagine that day ezar woke up and resolved, that day forward, that he has got to get this guy out of here. This dude is gonna ruin everything. This dude reminds you, literally, of the guy you went to war against and dismembered. And first he's your son and second you gotta wait until he has a kid. (if this was a decade or two before, this could even PRECLUDE wanting to deal with the war party.) waiting and fucking waiting. watching him marry some poor woman. she's FINALLY pregnant and it's a boy and FINALLY he can get her somewhere safe so she can have the new heir and ezar can start seriously figuring out how to get his son out of the picture.
maybe if gregor had been a deranged child than ezar wouldn't have bothered, but maybe at that point ezar's already moving in that direction.
my take from the conversation aral has with cordelia at the end of shards of honor is that ezar has been committed to killing serge for a while and wanting to tidy up the war party. So this plan was probably in the works for maybe 1-2 years (to get the whole escobar thing aligned with ezar's goals and then put it in action), but before that...? well, it was the plan for a long time.
i will stun none of you that i have continued to muse on this question, "at what point do you think ezar realized he had to kill his own son?"
i actually think that there was no time where ezar was emperor that he didn't think he might have to do filicide. you know why? he married yuri's sister (full sister on yuri's side, half-sister on xav's side), so in his mind there was always the chance they'd have another yuri.
(i find it fascinating how intensely the books believe so many of one's problems can be fixed by a simple "gene clean." more on this at some other time.)
it seems like all the vorrutyers all really have the flair for the dramatic, and that's saying it real nicely to include dono. i wonder when this pattern started? why did dorca marry a vorrutyer if it was known a few generations back? was it to thank his pal, le sanguinaire? you'd think he'd be a little more forward-thinking than making an unhinged heir. but one supposes to break the power of the counts and unite them under your banner you have to be pretty ready to get dirty yourself. was it because she was extremely hot? did he find it sexy she was vorrutyer unhinged? or was it that was just what vorbarras did, marry vorrutyers?
so it's yuri, xav, his half-brother, and yuri's unhinged full sister.
i actually am not bothered by the "why was it not xav?" question. there are so many good reasons.
xav is progressive and galactic and already has an off-worlder for a wife. i would wager those are not super popular traits if you're trying to convince people you should be the emperor over the guy who is currently the emperor. this probably goes double for the counts, given that they just fought a war with a bunch of galatics? despite how important he was to the cetagandan effort, he's never described as a war hero the way piotr is. he was probably pretty old by barrayaran standards, at the time starting the war, and obviously none of them had any idea how long it would take. one could imagine that he did not want it. also, we have a strong sense of piotr's politics, and it is not at all hard to believe that piotr did not want xav to be emperor next. one wonders what piotr would have done if xav demanded the campstool? i think he probably would have gone along with it, but it wasn't ideal.
and why ezar? i also find a variety of easy answers for thiss.
ezar came equipped with an army, which is what P & X needed (green mountain HQ). piotr already knew him and, probably, was confident ezar wouldn't do this whole thing again. piotr knows ezar is an extremely competent military general and would be loyal to him. ezar is a vorbarra, which is close enough. do you think P&X went through all the vorbarras they could think of? or do we think they knew pretty close to the time they decided to do this war that ezar was the one, if he'd agree? i think my headcanon is that it didn't take piotr that long to know ezar was his first choice once he'd committed to doing the war. how do we think xav felt about that? was xav in the 'anyone but yuri' category?
or maybe piotr and xav didn't have an emperor in mind, but when they went to ezar, he said, "i'll help if i get the campstool." to piotr, i imagine, this would have been a no-brainer, because ezar was already a student of his. it isn't that ezar might turn against him, but better the potential betrayer you know than starting from scratch with someone else. and what would have xav thought about this? one can imagine xav not liking the idea of another military general taking the campstool, but maybe he doesn't have another option. again, he could be "anyone but yuri," so ezar it is.
so xav and piotr and ezar decide to throw their weight behind ezar. OK. great.
i guess legitimizing ezar through marrying yuri's deranged sister outweighed the fact that having a kid with yuri's sister, who was also mad, and also older? i can't imagine they weren't all aware of the risks! and yet if they've all suffered so much having this war, maybe this was just .... the way it had to be. although one would think there could have been some possibility of just making ezar the heroic line? or maybe dorca's heroism was still so strong in everyone's mind that there just wasn't any other option given that the sister existed.
i think ezar was already ready to kill his own son right there, even before the son existed. hoping for a dorca but preparing for a yuri.
i don't think ezar gave a single millimeter of fucks about yuri's sister/his wife. it's just so morbid, but, ugh, i find it so much easier to believe that the consent situation there to have serge was not remotely cool or OK or good. but that is completely and 100% not important here. they need a wedding and they need a dorca heir. poor woman. :/
anyway. she has serge. how long was serge alive before ezar realized this was the actual human he had to kill? do you think serge was a fucked up child, burning ants, etc, and ezar was just hoping he'll grow out of it?
i wonder what day ezar realized it was fucked. was serge in his teens? twenties? imagine that day ezar woke up and resolved, that day forward, that he has got to get this guy out of here. This dude is gonna ruin everything. This dude reminds you, literally, of the guy you went to war against and dismembered. And first he's your son and second you gotta wait until he has a kid. (if this was a decade or two before, this could even PRECLUDE wanting to deal with the war party.) waiting and fucking waiting. watching him marry some poor woman. she's FINALLY pregnant and it's a boy and FINALLY he can get her somewhere safe so she can have the new heir and ezar can start seriously figuring out how to get his son out of the picture.
maybe if gregor had been a deranged child than ezar wouldn't have bothered, but maybe at that point ezar's already moving in that direction.
my take from the conversation aral has with cordelia at the end of shards of honor is that ezar has been committed to killing serge for a while and wanting to tidy up the war party. So this plan was probably in the works for maybe 1-2 years (to get the whole escobar thing aligned with ezar's goals and then put it in action), but before that...? well, it was the plan for a long time.