A READER’S COMPANION TO A CIVIL CAMPAIGN BY LOIS MCMASTER BUJOLD COMPILED AND PRESENTED TO HER BY MEMBERS OF THE OFFICIAL LMB MAILING-LIST TO CELEBRATE THE SILVER ANNIVERSARY OF SHARDS OF HONOR 1986–2011 Dendarii Free Mercenary Press Hassadar 2 For Lois, long may she rule. 3 All original contents of this volume are copyright Lois McMaster Bujold 2011 and may not be reproduced, distributed, or sold in any form or medium whatsoever without her express written permission. The cover of the Baen edition of A Civil Campaign and excerpts from Shards of Honor, The Warrior’s Apprentice, Ethan of Athos, ‘The Borders of Infinity’, Falling Free, Brothers in Arms , ‘The Mountains of Mourning’, ‘Labyrinth’, Borders of Infinity, The Vor Game, Barrayar, Mirror Dance, Cetaganda, M e m o r y , K o m a r r , A Civil Campaign, ‘Winterfair Gifts’, Diplomatic Immunity, Cryoburn, Cordelia’s Honor, Young Miles, Miles, Mystery and Mayhem, Miles Errant, Miles, Mutants and Microbes, Miles in Love, and The Vorkosigan Companion are reproduced by kind permission of Baen Books. Excerpts from Dreamweaver’s Dilemma, posts to her Official Mailing List, posts to her LiveJournal account, posts to Baen’s Bar, and emails to the editors by Lois McMaster Bujold are reproduced by kind permission of Lois McMaster Bujold. The excerpt from ‘Runaway Roses and Defiant Skellytums’ is reproduced by kind permission of Erica H. Smith. The excerpt from ‘Of Marriage and Mutations’ is reproduced by kind permission of John Lennard. Excerpts from reviews of A Civil Campaign by Kate Nepveu and Robert M. Slade are reproduced by kind permission of those individuals. Excerpts from posts to the Official LMB Mailing List by James Burbidge, Walter Bushell, Katherine Collett, Kirsten Edwards, Mike Garrison, Natalie Getzoff, Elizabeth Holden, Judy R. Johnson, Paige Kalika, Paula Liebermann, Leanne Martin, ‘Megaera’, Louann Miller, Marna Nightingale, ‘Philomytha’, Gwynne Powell, Jeff Shultz, Erica Smith, ‘Tel’, Denis Trenque, William A. Wenrich, Micki Haller Yamada, and Tony Zbaraschuk are reproduced with the express written consent of those individuals. Excerpts from Gaudy Night, Busman’s Honeymoon, a n d The Letters of Dorothy L. Sayers, published by Hodder & Stoughton, are © The Trustees of Anthony Fleming (deceased), and are reproduced by kind permission of David Higham Associates. The Blackstone cover of A Civil Campaign is reproduced by kind permission of Blackstone Audio. The DAW cover for Love and Rockets is copyright © 2010 by DAW Books, Inc., and is reproduced with their kind permission. The editors, Nikohl K. and John Lennard, would like to offer warm thanks, first and foremost to Lois, for writing the books and looking through this text ; also to Eleanor Wood of Spectrum, Lois’s agent, for help with the legalities ; to Toni Weisskopf at Baen Books, both for her permissions and her help ; to Katherine Collett for help with proofreading ; and to Nancy L. Barber for the essential coding. 4 CONTENTS Editors’ Introduction ; References and Abbreviations Part I: The Major Intertexts Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre Georgette Heyer, A Civil Contract Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night William Shakespeare Part II: ‘A comedy of biology and manners’ Part III: Annotations Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Chapter Thirteen Chapter Fourteen Chapter Fifteen Chapter Sixteen Chapter Seventeen Chapter Eighteen Chapter Nineteen Epilogue Afterword: LMB’s continuing romance with romance Index of authors and works cited ; Members of the Official LMB Mailing List ; Bibliography. 5 Editors’ Introduction In March 2010, Official LMB List member Tora K. Smulders- Srinivasan, anticipating the release of Cryoburn later that year, did some sums and pointed out that if we all re-read the Vorkosigan Saga as we ought, in preparation, allocating two weeks to each novel and one to each novella, we’d finish bang on publication date. So off we went on what became in effect a rolling Vorkosiverse seminar, averaging 35+ digests a week, with the role of questioner switching two or three times a month while a Good Time was Had By All. With a head of steam well-raised by the time we hit A Civil Campaign in September, this Companion was born of a suggestion by Nikohl K.. Much intertextuality had been uncovered in discussions that people wanted to be able to access again in coherent form, and the happy notion took root that a volume such as this should be created as a present to Lois and the Dendarii Nexus website to celebrate a quarter-century of Vorkosiganity in 2011. As the contents-page shows, the editors have been concerned to be as thorough as possible, providing mini-essays on the major intertexts and subtitle, and chapter-by-chapter annotation of particular allusions (including those to other books in the series) and generic tropes. That said, this Companion is principally concerned with LMB’s sources and intertexts, and does not attempt to provide a full critical commentary either on the exquisite internal construction of A Civil Campaign or on the many story-arcs that (to date) terminate in it. The Companion is not intended for first-time readers of A Civil Campaign, for whom it would be crammed with spoilers, but for those who, having enjoyed the novel, wish to understand its subtleties of art and craft more fully. All readers are also warned that there are within the annotations some spoilers for all Vorkosiverse volumes, including that crucial datum from Cryoburn. Many List members have contributed and are named at the back ; Nancy Barber heroically undertook coding for the website ; and Lois herself has been kind enough to look it over, making corrections and offering additional comments. The editors warmly thank them all. NK, JL 6 References and Abbreviations Bracketed page-references to A Civil Campaign, of the form ‘(n, n1, n2)’, are to the Baen first-edition hardback (1999), mass-market paperback (2000), and omnibus Miles in Love (2008), in that order. ‘ACC’ is used in annotation where no page-reference is appropriate ; references to any other book include a short or abbreviated title, the abbreviations used being: Works by LMB ACC A Civil Campaign B Barrayar BA Brothers in Arms BI ‘The Borders of Infinity’ BIn Borders of Infinity C Cetaganda Cb Cryoburn CC The Curse of Chalion DI Diplomatic Immunity DD Dreamweaver’s Dilemma EA Ethan of Athos FF Falling Free HH The Hallowed Hunt K Komarr L ‘Labyrinth’ M Memory MD Mirror Dance MM ‘The Mountains of Mourning’ PS Paladin of Souls SH Shards of Honor SR The Spirit Ring TSK The Sharing Knife VG The Vor Game WA The Warrior’s Apprentice WG ‘Winterfair Gifts’ When a Vorkosiverse anthology is cited the title is given in full. 7 Other works BH Dorothy L. Sayers, Busman’s Honeymoon GN Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night JE Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre OED Oxford English Dictionary, 2/e PP Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice VC L. S. Carl & J. Helfers, eds, The Vorkosigan Companion WW LMB & Roland J. Green, eds, Women at War 1H4 The First part of Henry IV 1H6 The First Part of Henry VI 2H4 The Second Part of Henry IV ADO Much Ado about Nothing AWW All’s Well that Ends Well AYL As You Like It CYM Cymbeline ERR The Comedy of Errors H5 Henry V HAM Hamlet JC Julius Caesar KL King Lear LLL Love’s Labour’s Lost MM Measure, for Measure MND A Midsummer Night’s Dream MV The Merchant of Venice MWW The Merry Wives of Windsor R3 Richard III ROM Romeo and Juliet TN Twelfth Night TEM The Tempest TGV The Two Gentlemen of Verona WT The Winter’s Tale ‘s.v(v).’, from Latin sub verbum, means ‘under the word(s)’—in practice often ‘under the sub-heading’ ; ‘p-o-v’ is ‘point-of-view’. Comments by “LMB on Baen’s Bar” were made in her ‘Miles to Go’ forum. All posts quoted have been silently edited for typographical style (the List is plaintext) and typos ; other changes are [crotcheted]. 8 Part I : The Major Intertexts For Jane, Charlotte, Georgette, and Dorothy— long may they rule. Alone among LMB’s work, A Civil Campaign is dedicated not to a personal acquaintance but to four late queens of romance—Jane Austen (1775–1817), Charlotte Brontë (1816–55), Georgette Heyer (1902–74), and Dorothy L. Sayers (1893–1957). As LMB explains matters in the ‘Afterword’ to Miles in Love: I’d been itching to write a Barrayaran Regency romance ever since I’d realised I’d given Barrayar a regency period. I dedicated it to four inspiring female writers. I’d read Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre fairly early on, but I only came to Georgette Heyer and Dorothy L. Sayers in my twenties, when my reading branched out, and I’ve only picked up Jane Austen fairly recently. Heyer remains my favorite comfort reading—A Civil Campaign is very much a tribute to her—though there was a period when her inherent class-ism got up my nose. Sayers’s work, even more than that of C. S. Forester and Arthur Conan Doyle, is a model for the kind of wonderful character development that can only be done over a long series. […] The tale offered many delicious levels of play, not least that of dissecting a lot of romance tropes under a true SF knife. What happens to the old dance between men, women, and DNA when new technologies explode old definitions of, well, everything? What happens to a tradition-bound society whose channels of property and power assume gender divisions and functions that new science throws into a cocked hat? Just what rude things do those butter bugs symbolize? What happens to two supposedly immiscible genres when you put them both in a bottle and give it a good shake? What can each say about the other? Chamomile tea and blasters: give me both! [Miles in Love, ‘Afterword’ ; ‘Putting It Together’, in VC] 9 Yet fascinating as this is it barely begins the story, for in the case of each dedicatee a particular novel seems to be intertextually summoned : Austen’s Pride and Prejudice (1813), Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), and Sayers’s Gaudy Night (1935) by plot, and Heyer’s A Civil Contract (1961) by title (with much other Heyer in tow).