Vorkosigan Saga

The Vorkosigan Saga is a series of science-fiction novels and short stories by Lois McMaster Bujold, most of which concern Miles Vorkosigan, a disabled aristocrat from the planet Barrayar who creates his own private army at the age of just seventeen.

Barrayar Backstory

The planet Barrayar, a terrestrial world with no indigenous animal life, was colonized by humans principally of Russian, English, French, and Greek ancestry about three hundred years prior to the contemporary novels set on the planet. Shortly after colonization, the 50,000 settlers were isolated by a failure of the wormhole which connected Barrayar to the wormhole nexus of colonized planets. During the next two centuries, the planet evolved an imperial form of government reminescent to 19th century European aristocracy, in which the Emperor was supported by sixty regional counts, identified by adding the prefix Vor- to their names.

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Barrayar was eventually rediscovered by a different wormhole route connecting to the rich planet Komarr. The Komarrans rewarded this discovery by allowing the neighboring expansionist Cetagandan empire to invade Barrayar in return for any derived commercial rights. Despite a significant technological advantage, the Cetagandan invasion is driven back, in large part due to the contributions of one Count Piotr Vorkosigan.

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After a brief interregnum of the Mad Emperor Yuri, who was defeated by Vorkosigan and his cousin Ezar Vorbarra, the principal surviving heirs to the throne, and the subsequent maturing of Vorkosigan's son Aral Vorkosigan as the youngest Admiral in Barrayaran history, the decision was made to invade Komarr, both for protection of the planet and as payback for their collaboration in the Cetagandan invasion. An unsavory incident in which 200 Komarran leaders were executed during a truce, without Admiral Vorkosigan's knowledge or consent, created for him the nickname "the Butcher of Komarr" and led to significant problems for administration of the captured planet -- and for Barrayar's reputation in the larger Nexus.

Related Topics:
Ezar Vorbarra - Aral Vorkosigan - Nexus

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Vor may derive from a Russian word meaning thief or thief-lord i.e. bandit. It may be related to the Prussian von. There is also the Afrikaans Voortrekker, meaning, roughly, Pioneer.

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