Catherine Nemeth
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
“The Mountains of Mourning” shows the Barrayan system in action. In the case of someone getting disappeared by ImpSec, the only recourse would seem to be to be family/friends going to their Count and asking him to intervene, which would probably mean him going to the emperor, as ImpSec seems to be operating without any restraint except from the Emperor & Auditors. That suggests ImpSec has a fairly recent origin?
Lois McMaster Bujold
You know I don't, actually, have a 30-volume set of The Encyclopedia Barrayarica in my garage, right...?
That said, ImpSec most likely originates to when the counts were pared down to bodyguards of 20 armsmen each, making it much harder for them to make disruptive local wars on each other, Dorca the Just's great achievement. The Emperor, natch, with his wider responsibilities and hazards, needed more than the 20 men due Count Vorbarra, so the seeds of ImpSec likely started just before the end of the Time of Isolation when that occurred. Whatever it was then got upwhacked, along with everything else, by the Cetagandan invasion. ImpSec proper got its start after the invasion, with Yuri taking whatever Dorca had left him and expanding it. More renovations when Ezar took over, and yet more reform under Aral and Illyan, which the books touch on.
There is an enormous amount of varied common or customary law in play all over Barrayar, quite non-uniform, which I don't often get into because that's not what my books are about. But just as the fact that characters eat food implies a working agriculture somewhere, the fact that Barrayar is not a dystopian hellscape, but rather a bunch of people muddling along somehow, implies a working legal system out there, operating at all required levels. It has rather more in common with British models than American, or continental ones that have their roots ultimately in Roman jurisprudence.
Re: British law, strong book rec: Uncommon Law by A. P. Herbert, if you can find a copy. It's parody, but such a close one that many people have mistaken it for nonfiction.
Ta, L.
You know I don't, actually, have a 30-volume set of The Encyclopedia Barrayarica in my garage, right...?
That said, ImpSec most likely originates to when the counts were pared down to bodyguards of 20 armsmen each, making it much harder for them to make disruptive local wars on each other, Dorca the Just's great achievement. The Emperor, natch, with his wider responsibilities and hazards, needed more than the 20 men due Count Vorbarra, so the seeds of ImpSec likely started just before the end of the Time of Isolation when that occurred. Whatever it was then got upwhacked, along with everything else, by the Cetagandan invasion. ImpSec proper got its start after the invasion, with Yuri taking whatever Dorca had left him and expanding it. More renovations when Ezar took over, and yet more reform under Aral and Illyan, which the books touch on.
There is an enormous amount of varied common or customary law in play all over Barrayar, quite non-uniform, which I don't often get into because that's not what my books are about. But just as the fact that characters eat food implies a working agriculture somewhere, the fact that Barrayar is not a dystopian hellscape, but rather a bunch of people muddling along somehow, implies a working legal system out there, operating at all required levels. It has rather more in common with British models than American, or continental ones that have their roots ultimately in Roman jurisprudence.
Re: British law, strong book rec: Uncommon Law by A. P. Herbert, if you can find a copy. It's parody, but such a close one that many people have mistaken it for nonfiction.
Ta, L.
More Answered Questions
Lucy
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
I tried to post a comment about Penric, but it was rejected because I'm not a friend of yours. I'd really like to be one of your book friends. I've been reading your books since Shards of Honor first came out. I was working in a bookstore at the time and devoured it and all those since. Except Penric. Problem there locally here in Lafayette, Louisiana. May I please be your friend?
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