Victorian Britons were deeply culturally invested in the idea of mothers as “Angels In The Home,” providing a gentle moral example to their husbands and children. This fantasy proposed that women could act as agents of reform in the British Empire both despite and because of not having the right to own property or vote. Being deprived of legal and political rights excluded women from effective participation in the public sphere, the realm of all politics and business. But these public matters intruded into the private sphere of the household, and women’s concerns extended out of it. Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan would be appalled by Victorian Britain, and it would be in awe of her. In her career in Barrayar’s empire, Cordelia is intimately familiar with the darkest depths of the overlapping portions of the Venn diagram of public and private.
Lois McMaster Bujold’s announcement of Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen gave rise to both excitement and trepidation, the last coming from readers who wanted more space opera from their Vorkosigans and less romance than other recent volumes in the series have offered. With due respect to readers who prefer public stories to private ones, or space battles to smooching, for Vorkosigans the categories are inextricably intertwined. In space opera, our heroes go to war. In romance, we get to see them come home. In Cordelia’s case, the space opera has had dramatic personal impacts, and the idea of coming home raises complicated questions. Where is home? What does it mean to go there?
Minor spoilers for Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, plus spoilers for previous books in the series.
As Bujold revealed when the book was announced, at some point Aral stopped being monogamous and resumed being polyamorous. The relationship between Jole, Aral, and Cordelia was not really discernible in earlier books, but Bujold has made it visible through this story. Romance lovers will read Gentleman Jole several times and then reread the previous books in the series, looking for the clues they didn’t see before.
When we last saw Cordelia, she was cutting off all her hair to burn for Aral, an offering far in excess of the cultural requirements of Barryaran widows. Aral’s former secretary, Oliver Jole, was one of his pall bearers. Now, three years later, Cordelia and Jole are contemplating how to move forward with their lives. From its earliest beginnings, Cordelia’s relationship with Aral was shaped by the context and demands of Barryaran politics. As Countess Vorkosigan, Cordelia was wife to the regent and Prime Minister, foster-mother to the orphaned Emperor Gregor, mother to a count’s heir, and the woman who beheaded the Pretender. She was a force of nature in Barryaran politics for decades, most usually an advocate for technology and human rights. As Gentleman Jole opens, Cordelia is Vicereine of Sergyar, a position that is important and impressive, but comparatively low key. She is pursuing long-deferred personal projects. Cordelia is as focused and determined as ever, and I’m so pleased to see the return of her perspective without the mediating lens of Barryaran surprise.
Sergyar is the planet where Aral and Cordelia met, already burdened with secrets of intergalactic significance, when she was a Betan Survey captain. This is where Reg Rosemont is buried, and where Cordelia was a POW. It’s named after the prince Aral helped kill in the war with Escobar, the war whose secrets Cordelia fled Beta Colony to keep. Now, Miles’ entire lifetime later, it’s the Wild West of Barryar’s empire. They got rid of the worm plague! And there’s a movement to reintroduce it as a form of tattoo art. Sergyar is a military outpost with a growing civilian population, lots of business opportunities, and an inconveniently located volcano. Its military base offers excellent career opportunities for the Imperial Women’s Service Auxiliary, a branch of the service we have not seen before.
Other things we have not seen before include skatagators, boot polo, and very nearly Oliver Jole, who was so far in the background of previous books that he was practically invisible. Jole became Aral’s secretary when Koudelka retired. A video of Jole ripping off his shirt goes viral on Sergyar’s information networks, in case you were worried he might have let himself go since Miles described him as a recruiting poster, back in The Vor Game. Jole, about to turn fifty, is an admiral, commanding the Sergyar Fleet and contemplating the next moves in his career. His relationship with Cordelia looks both forward and back. In their nostalgic moods, Cordelia and Oliver provide new perspectives on events we have seen primarily from Miles’ point of view. In their present tense, they deal with the world they built in several previous novels’ worth of space opera.
In the past, Bujold has admitted to thinking of the worst thing she can do to her characters, and then doing it. If she has done that here, the worst thing she can do to Cordelia is an unannounced visit from Miles, accompanied by Ekaterin and their six children. Ekaterin seems to have had a mellowing influence on Miles, and I enjoyed seeing him again, even though he and his entourage are primarily an inconvenience. He is not conducting an official investigation at this point, nor is he called upon for any plumbing projects. His parenting philosophy shows Cordelia’s influence. The most notable impact of all this space opera has been the liberal application of Cordelia’s influence to virtually everything.
Over the course of her career, Cordelia has devoted a great deal of her influence to improving Barryaran women’s access to galactic medical technology. I admired the starship projector, and the historical significance of the plasma mirrors is undeniable, but the uterine replicator is indisputably Bujold’s most important invention. In most of Bujold’s stories, uterine replicators change the conditions and complications of pregnancy. In Gentleman Jole, they offer an expanded set of possibilities. The real problem here is not so much the issue of reproductive technology, which is well established in this universe, but the question of what secrets should be kept, and which shared. Secrets have played an important role in Cordelia’s story. Here, Bujold contrasts Cordelia and Aral’s secrets to the scandalous lack of secrecy with which Aral conducted his affair with Ges Vorrutyer after the death of his first wife. That relationship was toxic, destructive, and incredibly public. The relationship between Aral, Oliver, and Cordelia is its polar opposite—psychologically healthier, but a time bomb as long as it remains secret.
It’s not clear whether Bujold is ending her Barryar series here or passing the torch to a new generation of characters. Recent novels in the series have resolved most characters’ story lines. If this is an end, seventeen books is enough to do the Empire honor, and Sergyar is a fitting place to resolve Cordelia’s arc. If Bujold has more to say about this universe, it is more vividly detailed now than ever.
Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen is available now from Baen Books.
I liked this book when I read it months ago as an ARC. I wouldn’t put it with Memory or even A Civil Campaign, but for what LMB was trying to do with it, she did well. I have read complaints of “there is no plot”, but I think they are from people who want to see external conflicts when it is a contemplative internal/character study novel. This is a novel about some mid-life people deciding what do they want to do with rest of their lives from a career and personal basis, then having the courage to seize it even if it doesn’t fit Barrayar norms.
Basically I agree with Ellen.
I’m 2/3 through. Liking it so far. Very low key character study but I don’t mind that kind of book for the Vorkosigan series (Mountains of Mourning or Memory or Winterfair Gifts come to mind) as a change of pace compared to either the high energy ones (Vor Game or Brothers in Arms or Diplomatic Immunity) or the overfilled with and lots and lots of plot ones (Mirror Dance or A Civil Campaign). I do want at least one more high energy Miles one that achieves resolution of the longstanding Cetaganda issues and brings his older kids into plot importance.
I think the real story here is the cover design.
<shivers>
I agree that, to truly close this series, at least one more book to deal with Cetaganda issues is needed.
In the last books we had too many nods to the hidden danger of Cetaganda overwhelming biological weapons.
If we will not see them somewhat dealt with, Checkov will be quite angry in his grave.
For the rest, enjoyed the book and its grown-up-ness.
After Cryoburn came out, I remember reading somewhere that Bujold intended it to be the last book in the Vorkosigan saga chronologically. Which made me unhappy, because I didn’t like a huge event like Aral’s death being dropped on me as an afterword in a book without any followup. So I was delighted to hear that there would be at least one more book in the series. I was also pleased that this book focused on Cordelia, as she is just as important a character to me as Miles, but didn’t get nearly the attention she deserved.
The fact that Aral and Cordelia had been in a less than conventional marriage made total sense to me. While it had never been addressed in the series before, it fit their characters more than the thought that the two had settled down to happy monogamy. So I bought the premise of the story immediately. And it did a good job showing how the longer lifespan that Betans had achieved would change the course of their lives, and make it possible for “second acts.”
The book had a gentle pace, which I felt was appropriate. If this is to be the epilogue for the series, it is far more satisfying to end it on a peaceful note than it would be to give us yet another slam-bang adventure. The book reminded me very much of the works of Rosamunde Pilcher, romance novels that were always satisfying and rich in character development, as cosy as a favorite blanket. It was like a curtain call as all the characters from the series either showed up, or got mentioned. And, as a person of a fairly advanced age myself, it was nice to read a story where the protagonists had a few years under their belts.
If I had gone into the story looking for another grand adventure, or slapstick comedy, I might have been a bit disappointed. But I read with an open mind, and the story Ms. Bujold decided to tell made me very happy.
“the Imperial Women’s Service Auxiliary, a branch of the service we have not seen before”
Try the honour escort for Cavilo at the end of _The Vor Game_
“Being deprived of legal and political rights excluded women from effective participation in the public sphere”
No political rights yes, but only married women didn’t have full legal rights, widows and the single were much better off and even married women who had a well drawn marriage settlement and reliable trustees could do as they wished.
Thus Florence Nightingale and Angela Georgina Burdett-Coutts seem to have had “effective participation in the public sphere”
Little Egret in Walton-on-Thames
IIRC the “escort” for Cavillo wasn’t Barrayaran.
Jole notes that Barrayar and Komarr split the best male Imperial officers between them, but tend to overlook female officers, so Sergyar gets the cream of that particular crop. I’m stuck between hoping they settle on Sergyar and worrying about the consequences for the social evolution of the homeworld if they do.
“IIRC the “escort” for Cavillo wasn’t Barrayaran.”
I just checked. It was.
“intergalactic significance”
More like interstellar. Wormholes could go to other galaxies, I suppose, but the Nexus is a very sub-galactic scale.
At that particular moment, having Miles and family appear COULD have been the worst possible thing.
I got my copy on Monday and finished it all in one day. I liked it as a Cordeilea story. The “plot” of the book is what do you do now the kids are married and have families of their own, and it’s time to retire? No one is invading or trying to kill anyone we know and love. It’s a quiet character study. I agree there should be at least one more Vorkosigan book with the big Cetagandan hints dropped in this story and in Ivan’s too. This remains one of my favorite Space Opera series of all time. I have all the books except for the one that has Mile’s wedding and must remember to buy a used copy or download the e-book version one of these days.
Looking forward to reading this one. I’ve enjoyed the sample chapters Baen posted a while back. I probably fall in the category of those who would normally enjoy more space battles in my space opera, but Bujold is such an excellent writer that I’d probably even enjoy an outright romance novel in this universe.
@6 “No political rights yes, but only married women didn’t have full legal rights”
Last I checked, most people consider suffrage part of the full legal rights package, and in Britain women didn’t get the vote until 1918, seventeen years after the end of the Victorian Age. (I guess you could consider Isle of Man and New Zealand women gaining the right to vote in 1881 and 1893 respectively as achieving full legal rights in the Victorian Age, but that’s kinda pushing it.)
Look it up. The UK didn’t have a vote for every adult male even.
I believe the revisionist say 1914 Germany was “more democratic” than the UK.
In the US ” No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge
the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States”
Which does not include the right to vote (to this day).
@6
The UK also didn’t give a mother rights over her children until 1925. Prior to that her husband or father held the rights.
As for Florence Nightingale and Baroness Burdett-Coutts … well yes, as a rich, well connected, upper class woman you could do quite a lot, because the very upper classes did educate girls. Money buys freedom, always has.
Mary Kingsley is a better example of upper middle class going off on her own, she didn’t get tuition.
But if you weren’t any of those things, your life was very different. Most working class women were effectively indentured servants, the property of their husbands or fathers, with few rights of their own.
The colonies were different – the lack of population required more freedom, which is one reason NZ and Australia were so ahead of the game in the Suffrage movement, and the US a leader in repealing coverture. NZ granted women the right to own land a mere 20yrs after the founding of the colony, and nearly 30yrs before the UK would do the same.
“Look it up. The UK didn’t have a vote for every adult male even.”
Which means that not all UK men had full legal rights at the time. And no women did.
“Which does not include the right to vote (to this day).”
Not sure how this pertains your original comment about full legal rights and how single women and widows totally had them back then. Are you arguing that voting is a political right but not a legal right? (It’s both.) Or are you saying that since it’s not a right that’s ever been extended to all, it doesn’t count as one of the basic legal protections that the majority of adult citizens in most countries should expect to have as a matter of course? Because quite a number of civil rights movements of the last two hundred years or so would disagree.
To bring this back around to topic, though, I *love* the idea of time-travelling Cordelia tackling the Victorian Age, and yes, I can absolutely see the people of the time (both the reformers and the old guard) in awe of her. Actually, I just love the idea of time-travelling Cordelia in general. Is there fic for that, I wonder? *goes searching*
@15 – if you find it, please share! I want her to unionize some prostitutes, and some textile workers, and a coal mine, and then engage in some significant criticism of misguided efforts at housing reform, and and and
From Komarr: “He had brought a female medtech with him, in the uniform of the Barrayaran military medical auxiliary, whom he also introduced.”
From The Vor Game: “Two hard-faced women in Barrayaran auxiliary uniforms made sure Cavilo was watched both night and day. Cavilo did a good job of ignoring their presence.”
And then there’s Drushnakova who worked for Imperial Security.
Little known fact that the first women in the US to vote were in New Jersey in the 18th century. Many states originally had requirements for voting–a certain level of income and/or property ownership. The idea (as I understand it) was that a person needed a vested interest in a community to have a vote. In New Jersey, women who met the financial requirement could vote. Then, the changed the law for universal suffrage–but it was universal suffrage for men only.
I’m still not sure if that counts as a loss or a win for democratic principles.
As for the book: Eh, it didn’t really work for me. I can accept that Cordelia was OK with Aral having an affair with a man and that this might come to include her. That’s Betan philosophy. I’m not OK with Aral starting this affair behind her back.
I’m also really not OK with Aral having an affair with a low ranking officer in his line of command, one who was about thirty years younger than him. There’s a reason they prosecute officers who do that.
On the issue of the kids, I thought Cordelia seemed oddly hostile towards Miles. When Miles met his clone brother, Mark, he talked about the lingering guilt of knowing his parents didn’t dare have any other children when those children, just by their existence as alternate heirs, could endanger him as a mutie lord in a world where mutants were routinely killed at birth. Add in the members of his family who were killed just because of their bloodlines, and I don’t think it would have been wrong for Cordelia to discuss it with Miles rather than just saying it’s none of his business. It took her three years to be ready for this, and she expects Miles–who’s been dealing with his father’s death for the same length of time–to like it or lump it. No, he doesn’t have a vote, but discussing it with him and giving him time to adjust would have been a kindness.
I also admit to being lost on Cordelia deciding the girls won’t be Vorkosigans. Yes, that name comes with a lot of baggage, but not all of it is bad baggage. She was deciding to basically disinherit them as their father’s daughters for reasons I sort of get but would have appreciated her spelling out. She’s also doing this in the Barrayaran Empire. Miles has always been conscious of how new legal traditions are being set by the decisions people are making with new technology. Cordelia is a high profile aristocrat in this world who has just skewered the legal rights of daughters born posthumously by artificial means by the precedents she’s setting. I would have liked more explanation why she’s making that choice.
Aral’s slapdash method of starting his relationship with Jole can be chalked up to “Barrayarans” (OT3: Talking Illyan down off the ledge). They can’t be expected to conduct their relationships in a rational manner.
The rank and age difference on the other hand must have taken a lot of work to manage. Aral was probably freaking out. It could have seemed like the first step to the kind of corruption that Aral had spent so much blood to prevent. Even leaving aside the external factors, Aral would have been a wreck. And then there’s what the relationship could have done to Jole. I think even Cordelia with her genius level EQ would have had trouble from stopping it from exploding messily. At some point, Jole must have pushed hard to keep the relationship or I can’t see Aral or Cordelia taking the risk.
I really want to read that story.
Thank you for the correction RE: Cavillo’s escorts.
I think it’s pretty clear that Cordelia wants to keep her daughters away from Barrayar proper and on Sergyar, which is culturally much more galactic and egalitarian. Ensuring that they won’t officially be members of the Vor class helps that goal. I also think that she favors the devolution of the status-and-class system that the Vor represent and is working to prevent it from perpetuating itself on her new world.
There aren’t really all that many benefits to being Vor in the modern world that don’t come down to prejudice, and lots of detriments. Cordelia’s trying to break down the caste system out of self-interest as well as ethical objections.
I’ll admit, the premise didn’t really work for me either. In this case, it was an outgrowth of my feelings towards “all this stuff was going on in the background, and you never knew!” plots – it generally takes a lot of work to convince me that the New Plot Revelations could have happened without us noticing. If it’s a significant enough revelation to hang a new story’s plot on, it’s significant enough that it should have left some marks on the setting in the prior stories, and the author has to go over and beyond to account for that. (The Torchwood Institute’s background existence in new-series Doctor Who is another great example that I never really bought, though at least Who has the excuse of time travel able to go back and re-write history.)
I enjoyed the book a great deal anyway, which says a lot for Bujold’s ability to develop the premise and the characters. But there was a hump for me to get over.
I enjoyed the book. It’s not top tier Vorkosigan, but it’s certainly not the worst of the lot.
There wasn’t much of a plot. Jole was the only character who even had a decision to make, and frankly his choice was fairly well telegraphed. Cordelia’s decision was made off screen, pre-story, and the only concern might be how Miles might react. Even then, I thought it was basically a given that Mile would have to accept Cordelia’s plan for retirement but it was only a matter of how quickly he might accept and what he might do beforehand. And, yeah, he does get treated a bit unfairly (although being the hyperactive little git he is he may have earned it) because that is a lot to spring on a person with basically no warning. I would have like to see a bit plot given over to Jole and Cordelia solving/influencing the plascrete problem, the ground General’s daughter (Frankie), and the Centagandan cultural attache in addition to their personal ones. But overall I enjoyed the slice of life. I love Cordelia more than Miles and I am glad she’s getting a happy retirement – with romance even.
There are serious flaws. It’s much easier via flashback to overlook just how terrible inappropriate it is for Aral to have had a relationship with a direct subordinate and to have so much positive influence over the career of his near spouse. Jole might be smart, but there’s no doubt that he got where he is and is offered the top spot in the Barrayarian military because of Aral. But I think reading about that as it was happening would have been too much for me to accept. Given everything with Ges (including the sexual torture in Shards of Honor), Aral should have been way too wary to mix a relationship with work and powerless subordinates especially when it seems that until Aral, Jole assumed he was monosexual with an attraction to women.
Also Bujold might have a simplistic view of queerness. The whole thing where Cordelia diagnoses Jole’s with an authority/power kink because he had crushes on his teachers as a child is rather cringe-worthy. And there’s the whole history of monogamy being a key part of Aral and Cordelia’s relationship when they marries. (“He was bisexual. Now he’s monogamous.”) And I rather had the impression (although I haven’t reread recently) that Cordelia was looking for commitment/monogamy after her own heartbreak on Beta colony. But is she subscribing to the idea since bisexuals are attracted to both men and women that that they cannot be happy with a single person and monogamy.
My problems with these two areas are less because they are pushed to the background and ends up being backstory instead of at the forefront where they’d invite more scrutiny. Smart move by the author.
Overall, though, I did really enjoy it. It definitely feels like it may be her farewell to the series. Even with the focus on Cordelia; Miles as the Count, husband, and father also gets a happy conclusion. So we can feel like they’re all off having their happy ending even if no more is written about them. And of course if she writes another Vorkosigan novel, I’ll be very happy to read it. Wouldn’t mind seeing more of Gregor and Laisa and their kids.
In her interview on the Baen podcast Bujold talks about how Jole wasn’t actually in Aral’s chain of command during their affair; he’s the civilian prime minister at the time. Or something. But she definitely thought about it. There’s some fanfic over on AO3 by someone who picked up on Jole years ago, so there were some hints. (http://archiveofourown.org/series/4569). I’m a huge Cordelia fan and I really enjoyed the ARC and I’m looking forward to reading the hardcopy I picked up (and I got a signed copy, which I didn’t even notice until I got home).
Maybe Bujold will write the Cetaganda book from a Cetagandan point of view — that would be amazing.
I really loved this review, as much as I loved the book when i read it. A character study of mid-life Cordelia moving forward into a new future of her choosing was so deeply satisfying. As was Miles’ acceptance and support – though it took time, and realising he isn’t actually the be all and end all (and never was).
But do educated butterbugs do it?
#22: I don’t think there’s a contradiction in Cordelia’s approach to Aral’s sexuality. As a queer middle-aged person, I don’t think Bujold has handled the issue at all badly or simplistically.
When Cordelia and Aral married, Cordelia was 30. She and Aral were married for decades. Surely their relationship and their expectations have shifted many times during those years. Readers are often reluctant to see their favourite characters grow and change in anything except the standard hero’s-journey-to-self-acceptance way, but in real life, people’s attitudes to relationships go through enormous changes in a decade, let alone 40 years. Can we really say that there’s a whole history of monogamy, based on one remark during the first year of a decades-long marriage, especially since we’ve only seen Cordelia and Aral through other people’s eyes during most of their marriage.
i loved this book. It feels perfectly reasonable to me. People do unexpected things, until you get used to it, and then they are perfectly expected.
Aral married a Betan. Hardly surprising if he landed in a part of life where there is peace in being who you are, and grasping the unexpected joy of love in whatever places it comes to you.
This is Cordelia’s story. It’s Cordelia being Cordelia, which she continues to do without Aral. She was always too much herself to be only the Vicereine, Countess Vorkosigan. When Barrayar swept her away in civil war, it was Barrayar that broke. If this story doesn’t speak to you, maybe you’re not a woman who has learned to keep living and being yourself in changing times and with losses and in a culture where women are only their roles.
Having just finished reading Edward James’ Modern Masters of Science Fiction: Lois McMaster Bujold (University of Illinois Press, 2015), I wonder how much of the plot of Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen was written in response to Chapter 7 ‘Women, Uterine Replicators, and Sexuality’? James points out that LMB has not (as of 2012) portrayed a healthy, homosexual relationship in any of her writings. He states that, “there are no homosexuals among the major characters in Bujold’s worlds (apart from Athos’) who live happy and fulfilled lives” and even the relationships front and center in ‘Athos’ are not positive (Janos is a spoiled brat and Terrence isn’t really interested in a sexual relationship). Since LMB read the manuscript of James’ book and commented on it before publication, I wonder if she decided to “fix” this oversight in her writing and make sure that we (the readers) know that there was a happy, healthy, fulfilling, loving homosexual relationship going on behind the scenes. I, for one, am glad to see it!
@18; Ellyne, I too have a HUGE problem with Cordelia trying to write Aral and the Vorkosigan heritage out of THEIR daughter’s lives but it is totally in character. Cordelia pretty much hates everything about Barrayaran culture and it makes sense she’d reject not only for herself but for Aral’s postumous daughters. Personally I would LOVE for one or more of those daughters to in time rebel against her mother’s Betan bigotry and embrace the Vor ideal of service to Barrayar proudly changing her name to Vorkosigan.
I also have a lot of problems with Aral starting his adulterous affair behind Cordelia’s back and her being OKAY WITH THAT. I don’t really have a problem with her deciding that her marriage is more important than her anger and that a threesome sounds like a lot of fun but Aral broke his word to her, she should have been angry. Personally I think it would have been better if Cordelia, after watching the mounting UST between Aral and Jole decided that she thought Jole was pretty dreamy herself and proposed a threesome to the men.
Also why are bisexuals given a free pass when it comes to cheating? Why?
@29 Bigotry or the fact that being Vorkosigan cost her 40 years with Miles’ siblings? Not to mention the fact that it almost killed Aral at least twice and Miles a half-dozen times before it actually did. It got Mark tortured and raped, twice. Ivan escaped with nothing worse than mild claustrophobia but only by making himself small enough to hide in Miles’ shadow. Barrayar eats its children. Can you really blame her for trying to keep her daughters out of its maw?
Cordelia knew about Aral’s attraction to Jole. She also knew that Barrayarans can’t approach what they figure to be non-standard relationships in a rational fashion. Aral had to know that Cordelia wouldn’t object provided everything was safe, sane, and consensual. They may have even discussed the possibility of it. He must of known that Cordelia wouldn’t consider it an “adulterous affair.” Put it all together, it’s no surprise that Aral made a hash of starting the arrangement but if Cordelia had been on planet the only difference would be that it was better managed. And Ivan wouldn’t have needed to be talked off a ledge.
Wow, a whole lot of hate for Barrayar. Like I said, no accounting for taste. I kind of like the place.
@31 – Have you read Barrayar? I think it accounts for many readers’ reservations.
Yes I have read Barrayar. The place is very imperfect, though it improves. However they are imperfections I can live with.
Addendum: Imperfections I can live with BECAUSE they are improving.
22-34 My feelings too. As contrasted to some places on Earth I could mention which seem to be going retrograde.