FIC: Aral Vorkosigan - 'Monsters'

[fajrdrako]

Title: Monsters
Author: fajrdrako
Fandom: Vorkosigan novels by Lois McMaster Bujold
Character: Aral Vorkosigan
Challenge: theatrical_muse: Prompt #240: - Discuss an individual who scared you
Rating: G
Words: 315
Disclaimer: Not mine, no claims, all property of Lois McMaster Bujold.
Notes: Cross-posted to aral_vorkosgian, and theatrical_muse.


Monsters

My earliest fears were the usual sorts of things - monsters under the bed or in the broom closet. Mother would comfort me, all soft skin and lavender. Father told me that soldiers were brave, and taught me to fight monsters with a sword or gun. If you're strong, he said, nothing can get you.

So I stopped fearing the monsters of my imagination, and started fearing real people. The Emperor, my cousin, and his soldiers. They killed people who disagreed with him. They killed people who agreed with them. They killed relatives and strangers and there was no anticipating who, or when, or why.

I killed Mad Yuri with my own hands and my own weapon. Regicide. I killed my cousin, because he had gone mad... was it an act of mercy or of revenge? I can't truly say, but it was a relief when the monster was dead.

Then there were other monsters to take his place. Ges, whom I loved till my heart broke. The people who liked violence for its own sake, because of the thrill of power it gave them. Thewar-makers, the tyrants, the people who prey on the helpless.

I was my father's son. I fought them all. For Emperor Ezar, for my dead mother, for my own conscience, I fought for what I believed in, and over and over, there were people to oppose me. Once I said to Ezar, "Uncle: does it never end?"

"Not until the end of time," he said, with a blaze in his eyes that gave me heart.

Reprisals, executions. We purged a village of rebels in the mountains. We discovered and foiled a conspiracy on an eastern island I'd never heard of.

Later that night, half-drunk, sexually exhausted, my head aching, I looked into the mirror and wondered whether I was looking at a monster or a hero.

I still don't know.

Comments

[duncanmac.livejournal.com]

I may have weeds in a metaphorical garden ... but his "weeds" are man-eating menaces!

Wow. It's a scary life -- and a comment (to a degree) on how well we hide our demons.

I sometimes think that the contemporary USA has disturbing resemblances to Barrayar in this period, ranging from their fascination with violence to their semi-royal (or semi-imperial) leadership. Even the French do not have so strong a "leader principle." [Further political commentary deleted, as I know you have no taste for same.]

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I may have weeds in a metaphorical garden ... but his "weeds" are man-eating menaces!

Yes. Shudder!

I sometimes think that the contemporary USA has disturbing resemblances to Barrayar in this period, ranging from their fascination with violence to their semi-royal (or semi-imperial) leadership.

Interesting and eerily convincing thought. Perhaps periods of historical change follow patterns.... And I do hope that the contemporary USA is on the cusp of changing for the better.

Further political commentary deleted, as I know you have no taste for same.

I have no taste for political polemic, and no respect for politics as a sociological phenomenon. But at the same time I find the subject fascinating - rather like Aral's attitude to politics, which so perplexed Cordelia. Because it's all about people and their actions, and what works, and what doesn't - hugely complex, hugely consistent over time in the oddest ways. So: I like contemporary politics as the current edge of history unfolding like the horizon in front of us.

[duncanmac.livejournal.com]

Perhaps periods of historical change follow patterns ...

I certainly have believed this for a while. So too have many historians, both amateur and professional, ranging from Toynbee's "challenge and response" of various human "civilizations" to a popular theme about the "rise and fall" of societies such as the "Western" civilization. [At a guess, the latter is from Oswald Spengler's _The Decline of the West_ (lit. "The Downfall of the Evening Lands" in the original German, IIRC).]

Since I have studied History at the undergraduate level (I would have wound up with a B.A. was I not convinced partway through that getting a job in the 1980s with one, even in academe, would have been *impossible*), I too am intrigued with history, contemporary or otherwise. Certainly describing "contemporary politics" as an example of history makes sense. However, I also remember one singular fact from a Historiography course I took, where the prof pointed out that, even with access to the same information [in this case, the minutes of cabinet meetings from Wilhelmine (pre-WW1 and during-WW1) Germany], different historians obtained totally different conclusions. Simply put, History does not speak for itself, though many may think otherwise.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

No historian would think history speaks for itself - otherwise historians would have no use at all!

No, history doesn't speak at all, we need to be constantly working at it to make sense of history at all, and even then the popular perception of history is about 50% nationalistic bunk and 40% outright lies.