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History of Barrayar

© Compiled by Anna Hodosh

Date Common events on Barrayar Vorbarras Vorkosigans
Mine * **      
- 2300 - Firsters arrive on Barrayar. Connection to rest of wormhole nexus disappears. Time of Isolation begins.    
- 2500-2700 - Bloody Centuries on Barrayar. Rise and establishment of native feudalism.    
~2500 - - Strengthening of the Emperor rule on Barrayar.    
- 2525 -     A Kosigan is created Vor on Barrayar.
~2660 - -   Time of Dorca's grand-uncle  
early 28ct. - - The Ten-Years' War.
Siege of Vorbarr Sultana.
   
~2715 - -   Emperor Vlad get married to Lady Vorlightly  
~2730 - -     The metropolitain Vorkosigan House is built up.
- - 46   Dorca Vorbarra born  
2750-55 - -   A Regency confirms  
late 28ct. - - Unification of Barrayar. Volopoulous Law passes. Dorca Vorbarra accedes to (or seizes) the Barrayaran throne.  
~2772 - -   The secound Dorca's marriage  
- - 74   Xav Vorbarra born.  
2796 2695 95   Ezar Vorbarra born.  
2798 2693 94     Piotr Pierre Vorkosigan born.
~2793-2798 2703 92 New wormhole connection to Barrayar via Komarr discovered. Time of Isolation ends.    
~2795-2800 - -   Xav Vorbarra helds the post of ambassador to Beta Colony and marries  
- - 96   Olivia, the elder Xav's daughther, born  
2813 - 97 The First Cetagandan War begins. Cetagandan invasion and occupation of Barrayar.    
2815 - -     Piotr wages guerilla war at Dendarii Mountains
2820 - -   Dorca's Time. Piotr gives the General's rank
2828 2728 28     Aral Vorkosigan born.
2833 - 27 The First Cetagandan War ends.    
2835 - 36   Death of Dorca Vorbarra; accession of his son, "Mad" Yuri.  
2838 - -     Cordelia born (the second children of Miles-Mark Naisimth and his wife Elisabeth from the Beta Colony)
2839 2739 39 Civil War begins. Yuri attempts to exterminate all other descendants of Dorca Vorbarra. Piotr Vorkosigan and Xav Vorbarra back Ezar Vorbarra in. Ezar claims for Barrayarian throne. Death of Count Piotr's wife and elder son
2841 2740 41 Civil War ends. Ezar gets married to Yuri's sister (aka Dorca's daughter). Mad Yuri is killed. Ezar accedes to the throne. Serg Vorbarra born.  
2846 - -     Aral gets a commission
2848 - -     Aral get married to Vorrutyer girl (Ges's sister)
2850 - -     Aral dueles; his wife suicides herself
2855 - -     Aral breaks off with Ges Vorrutyer
~2855-60 - - Infanticide becames a criminal offence.    
2857 - - The Karian mutiny. Soltoxin attack.   Aral promoted to Capitain.
2860 - -     Cordelia joins the Betan AstroSurvey
2862 - -     Aral is moved from ship duty to Generall Staff
2864 - -   Wedding of crownprince Serg and princess Kareen  
2862 - -     Aral promoted to Admiral rank
2867 - -   Karen and Serg are divorced in fact. Ezar takes his daughter-in-law under his personal protection  
2868 2767-2768 - Conquest of Komarr. Solstice Massacre Gregor Vorbarra born Aral demoted to captain and dispatched at first to the Lazkowski base and then to the "General Vorcraft" battlecruiser
2869 - -     Cordelia becomes the ship captain
2872 2772-2773 72 The new planet (later named Sergyar) discovered. Barrayar defeated in the Escobar War
Serg Vorbarra killed. Death of Ezar. Gregor's accession to the throne under the Regency of Aral Vorkosigan Aral re-promoted to Commodore's and Admiral's rank; then he retires from Military Service. Aral and Cordelia meet, fall in love, and wed.
2873 - - Vordarian's Pretender War Kareen's death Miles Vorkosigan born
2876 - - The Barrayarian Imperial Service regulations is modernized    
2877 - - Komarr Revolt    
2879 2778 79 The rule for ordinary subjects about lifetime oath to one Count is repealed   Mark Vorkosigan born
2889 - - Komarrans are allowed to join Imperial Service Emperor Gregor comes to power Aral steps down from the Regency and becomes the Prime Minister.
2890 - - Count Vordrozda's and Hessman's plot   Piotr's death. Miles matriculates to the Imperial Military Academy
2893 - - Vervani War; Hegen Hub Alliance defeats Cetaganda   Miles graduates from Academy. He is promoted to Ensign, then to Lieutenant.
Galen takes Mark away from Jackson's Whole
2898 - -     Mark and Miles meet for the first time
2901 - - Cetagandan occupation of Marilac ends.   Aral steps down from the Prime Ministership (for health reasons);
Mark adopted to Vorkosigan family
2902 - -     Aral becames the Viceroy of Sergyar
2903 - -     Miles retired being in the Capitain's rank. He becames an Imperial Auditor.
2903 - - The accident with Komarran Soletta Gregor weds Laisa Toscane Miles betrothed with Ekatherin Vorsoisson

* - John W. Braue, Miles Vorkosigan/Naismith: His Life And Times by John W. Braue, III ¿ 1999 by John W. Braue, III ( braue@ratsnest.win.net, 20.08.99)

** - Barrayarian TimeLines (see www/dendarii.com/other_links.html)


QUOTATIONS:

Starting date (associating to a standard system of chronology)
... Miles is about the 29th or 30th Century.
(LMB in Mailing List Plot FAQ)
- Today is November 2, 97, Earth Common Era.
("Borders of Infinity")

Strengthening of the Emperor rule on Barrayar.
The Imperium is like a very large and disjointed symphony, composed by a commitee. Over a three-hundred year period.
("Mirror Dance")

Time of Dorca's grand-uncle
Yes, but this is the cellar of the old old stables. Not Dorca's, but Dorca's great-uncle's. He kept over three hundred horses. They burned down in a spectacular fire about two hundred years ago...
("Barrayar")

Ten-Years' War
...he went out with a friend to see the pole-barge regatta on the river this morning. They have it every year; it commemorates the relief of the city by Vlad Vorbarra's forces during the Ten-Years' War.
("A Civil Campaign")

Vlad Vorbarra's marriage
Most other emperors had been safely married for years before they landed on the throne. Prior to Ezar one had to go back almost two hundred years, to the marriage of Vlad Vorbarra le Savante and Lady Vorlightly, in the most gaudily archaic period of the Time of Isolation.
("A Civil Campaign")

The metropolitain Vorkosigan House is built up.
It was the pre-electric Time-of-Isolation design that gave it such an air of fabulous age, Mark decided. The arcitecture he'd seen like it in London all dated back well over a millennium, though this pile was only a hundred and fifty standart years old. Vorkosigan House.
("Mirror Dance")
Vorkosigan House is about two hundred years old, now. It was built by my great-great-great grandfather, the seventh Count, in a moment of historically unusual family prosperity ended by, among other things, the building of Vorkosigan House... It replaced some decaying clan fortress down in the old Caravanserai area, and not before time, I gather.
("A Civil Campaign")

Regency
We haven't had a Regent in a hundred and twenty years, God knows what protocol they'll dig out and dust off.
("Barrayar")

Time of Isolation ends
It's only been eighty years since Barrayar made contact with the wider galactic civilisation again.
("Barrayar")
This station had been built nearly a century ago, when fresh explorations of the wormhole had yielded up the rediscovery of Barrayar.
("Komarr")

Xav Vorbarra on Beta Colony
My maternal grandfather was Prince Xav Vorbarra, the diplomat. He held the post of ambassador to Beta Colony for a time, in his youth, before the First Cetagandan War. I believe my grandmother was in your Bureau for Interstellar Trade.
("Shards of Honor")

Ceta's invasion begins
... There were about 15-20 years between the end of the Time of Isolation and the beginning of the Cetagandan invasion, by the way.
(LMB in Mailing List Plot FAQ)

Piotr's birthdate
The man was seventy-two standard years old, middle-aged for a galactic, old for harsh Barrayar... His father, Count Piotr, had lived twenty years more than that, a whole other lifetime.
("Mirror Dance")

Guerillia war against Cetagandians
... we were fighting the Cetagandans up in the Dendarii Mountains back behind Vorkosigan Surleau... I wasn't much older than you, then.
("The Warrior Apprentice")

Piotr promoted to General rank
Piotr had acquired his present rank at the age of twenty-two, fighting the Cetagandans in the fierce guerrilla war ... Rank was all then-emperor Dorca Vorbarra could give him at the time; more tangible assets such as reinforcements, supplies, and pay were out of the question in that desperate hour.
("Barrayar")

Aral's birthdate.
It wasn't just technology we lost, in the Time of Isolation. That we put back on again quickly, like a borrowed coat. But underneath it ... we're still pretty damned naked in places. In forty-four years, I've only begun to see how naked.
("Barrayar")

Ezar's birthdate. When Civil War begins and ends.
Date of Aral's commission

"How long have you served me, Aral?" asked the Emperor.
"Since my commission, twenty-six years. Or do you mean body and blood?"
"Body and blood. I always counted it from the day old Yuri's death squad slew your mother and uncle... How old were you?"
"Eleven, sir."
"Eleven. I was just the age you are now. Strange. So body and blood you have served me-damn, you know this thing is starting to affect my brain, now . . ."
"Thirty-three years, sir."...
The old man cleared his throat again. "I always meant to ask what you and old Yuri said to each other, that day two years later when we finally butchered him in that old castle."
("Shards of Honor")

Olivia Vorbarra-Vorkosigan and her older son die
Aral's mother's grave dated exactly to the start of Yuri's War. A space was reserved beside her for Piotr, and had been for thirty-three years. She waited patiently for her husband.
("Barrayar")
Intellectually, he'd known Aral Vorkosigan was the old General Count Piotr Vorkosigan's younger son, but that lost older brother had been dead for sixty years.
("Mirror Dance")

Ezar's marriage
The most recent wedding of a ruling emperor had been the scrambling mid-war union of Gregor's grandfather Emperor Ezar to the sister of the soon-to-be-late Mad Emperor Yuri...
("A Civil Campaign")

Cordelia's birthdate
... Old folks, too, of thirty-three and forty plus.
("Shards of Honor")

Infanticide becames a criminal offence.
Infanticide for obvious birth defects is still going on secretly in the back country, do you know, despite its being outlawed for fur decades?
("Brothers in Arms")

Aral's first marriage begins... and ends
He was married, at twenty, to a girl of high rank of eighteen.
("Shards of Honor")
And me -- me, of all men, to have to make that decision! Who should have been publicly executed twenty-two years ago for the self-same crime!
("Barrayar")

Aral breaks off with Ges Vorrutyer
The more I look back on Vorrutyer, the more he seems a tragic figure. Still obsessed with a love affair that was over eighteen years ago.
("Barrayar")

Karian mutiny
Soltoxin. It's been fifteen, sixteen years since I last smelled that stink, but you never forget it. It's a poison gas...
I was there, at the destruction of the Karian mutiny. Just about your age, I think, or a little younger. The smell brought it all back, just now.
("Barrayar")

Cordelia joins the Betan AstroSurvey
- Astronomical Survey? I thought your mother served in the Betan Expeditionary Force, in the Escobar War.
- Before the war, she had an eleven-year career in their Survey.
("Komarr")

Revocation of the "serfdom" - an ordinary subjects' lifetime liege oath
Among our father's early reforms, when he was Regent, was that he managed to impose uniform simplified rules for ordinary subjects who wanted to change Districts, and switch their oaths to their new District Count... Effectively, the new law gave every Imperial subject the right to vote local governement with their feet. Our parents drank champagne with dinner the night the vote slipped through, and Mother grinned for days. I must have been about six, because we were living here by then, I remember.
("A Civil Campaign")

Aral's Regency ends
My father gave away 275,000 marks the day before he left the Regency, just so he would have the exact financial balance as the day he took it up sixteen years earlier.
("The Warrior Apprentice")

Imperial Service opened for Komarrans
So, all right, the route to the top of dear old caste-consious, army-mad Barrayar was and always has been throught the Imperial Military Service. It was opened to Komarrans for the first time just eight years ago.
("Brothers in Arms")

The Barrayarian Imperial Service regulations is modernized
- ... I'll update regs as I go along.
- Your father and the General Staff did that fifteen years ago. It took them two years.
("The Warrior Apprentice")