A question and some answers

[dira]

I just lost about forty-five minutes in the mailing list archive trying to answer this question, so it's probably best to give up and ask if anyone knows: is there an established form of address in the Vorkosigan books for Counts and Countesses? That is, are they "Your Excellency" or "Your Grace" or some such? The only address-forms I can remember are Gregor being an Imperial Majesty (I think? Imperial Master, to Miles?) and then the various permutations of My Lord and My Lady, which, as Miles tells us, implies a specific relationship.

Any thoughts, anyone?

[After I typed that it occurred to me to look up the English forms of address for Earls and Countesses, which are Your Lordship and Your Ladyship, which sounds really familiar, but then I lost another half hour rereading a couple of chapters of Mirror Dance trying to find an example. HELP.]

And in exchange, answers! Specifically:

Full Publisher's Weekly Interview with Lois McMaster Bujold on Genreville, which includes this semi-answer to "What are you working on next?":

Something. No contract yet. It went well last midwinter, but plowed into the ground in the spring.

And this post to the Lois McMaster Bujold Mailing List, from Herself: It's so shiny! CryoBurn first printing arrives, which details the contents of the CD that comes with the first printing. If I'm reading this right, anyone who buys the first printing hardcover edition of CryoBurn will get a nice new legal and probably DRM-free ebook version of CryoBurn as well as nearly everything else in the Vorkosigan universe (in omnibus form), plus other essays and extras.

Comments

[reginagiraffe]

A Count is addressed as Count Vorwhatever. A son of a Count is addressed as Lord Vorwhatever. The son of Lord Vorwhatever is addressed as Lord FirstName. Which is how Miles knew his grandfather was dead when woken up being refered to as Lord Vorkisigan, instead of Lord Miles.

Aaaaand... this doesn't really answer your question.

Time to reread! *g*

[dira]

Over on the LJ crosspost, someone found a single instance of Countess Vorkosigan being addressed formally as "Lady Vorkosigan" which I presume exists JUST TO MAKE ME CRAZY. *g*

[lannamichaels]

I think there's an instance of "Lady Cordelia", too. Mirror Dance, I think.

[dira]

Between that and the timeline Mirror Dance canon is squarely in the department of MAKES MY HEAD HURT as a fic-writer. *g*

[lannamichaels]

Miles Vorkosigan is spending as much time dead for tax purposes as can reasonably be managed. ;)

[philomytha]

Yep. Gregor and Kareen Koudelka both refer to her that way in MD. It seems to be what people call her when they're friendly but want to use a title.

[dira]

This is what I get for actually researching this question instead of making something up and moving on with my life. /o\

[jmtorres]

Perhaps it was a slip? Someone who hadn't seen her since before Piotr kicked it?

[dira]

Nope, it was a protocol man of Gregor's, briefly addressing her before introducing Gregor.

[neery]

Now that I've had some time to go through a bunch of the books with the search function, and not just grabbing random examples in a hurry before I had to run off, I'm inclined to agree with reginagiraffe and dismiss that one instant of "Lady Vorkosigan" as some sort of slip-up on the author's part.

[lannamichaels]

I think it's all "my lord" and "my lady", or shortened to "milord" and "milady". Gregor gets to be someone's Imperial Master occassionally, I think when they're doing things directly for him in the name of the Imperium, like giving someone an elephant. I don't think he ever gets addressed as Imperial Master, though.

I think Miles telling that person not to call him my lord was just because that person didn't know what it meant, or the background behind it, and so it was just meaningless syllables, not that everyone who calls someone "my lord" is in a specific liege-relationship with that person.

[beck_liz]

Gregor gets "sire"d a lot, too.

As to Miles telling that one person not to call him "my lord", I think your interpretation is right.

[dira]

Well, in that very very specific case it was Bothari and Elena who are in liege-relationships, more or less, Elena's sort of hereditary. But, yeah, anyway, there is a lot of generic my-lord-ing as well.

Clearly I should have just MADE UP my thing to have the character call the other character, instead of all this attempting to research nonsense.

[elements]

But what about when Pym is calling Ekatrin "milady" and it's weird, weird enough for her to make note of it, and then for her to realize after the bug butter dinner party *why* Pym was calling her that.

It could either mean that Pym was giving her Lady status when she's not (until Miles) high Vor, OR it could mean that Pym was calling her something Armsmen generally only call their liege-ladies.

I was just reading the Answers essay in Dreamweaver's Dilemma and will try to find the bit again where, I swear I remember this, Bujold actually explains all the forms of address.

[lannamichaels]

I think it comes down to what Kareen was considering when she met Ekaterin: whether or not she was Lady or Madame, then deciding that since she didn't make a point of her Lady rank, she didn't have one. So when Pym was calling her milady, it was a slip that she was married to Miles (like "milady-to-be" that Roic is doing in Winterfair), because that's his hipe.

This is just my readings of the Barrayaran social structures. I haven't read Dreamweaver's Dilemma. :)

[dira]

I just checked my copy of DD - she really just explains the titles, and doesn't elaborate on forms of address. (And there actually seems to be a flub even in there, when she says "a count's son is a count", so ... who the hell knows.)

But, hey, as Lois always says, the Author Reserves the Right to Have a Better Idea, so. I will just have to have a Better Idea of my own. *g*

[zvi]

Baen has (cleverly, to my way of thinking) made a practice of releasing backlist on a CD with the new hardcover in a not only DRM-free but a license-to-copy format for several years. the fifth imperium may be the most popular site on the internet that collects those releases, but it's not the only one.

I sort of wonder what license cryoburn on the disk will have.

[dira]

Oh, huh! Well, the e-ARC of CryoBurn was no more DRM'd than any other Baen release, though I don't remember whether it explicitly gave license to copy.