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passing at that dinner scene in Brothers in Arms where the earbugs were late arriving.
    There is the usual rainbow of human races in the Vorkosiverse, too, beyond Barrayar and Beta Colony. The homogeneity of those rather suburban planetary settings is simply a result of their colonization histories. Both were, in quite different ways, "lost" colonies. The original colonizing groups were likely up to eighty percent Caucasian, and the minority racial phenotypes present among the founders were subsumed over time. The mixed genes are still in there, which is why the most common coloration on Barrayar is black hair, brown eyes, and olive skin. "Race" is an arguable concept anyway in a universe where anyone can alter any genetic trait at will in their offspring, and, with rather more medical difficulty, even in themselves. Even "species" turns out to have fuzzy borders.
    I tried to use as many ethnic names as possible to reflect Barrayar's colonization history. French, Russian, Greek, and British names thus should appear a lot, with an odd smattering of names of totally unrelated ethnic origins depending on who chanced to be among the fifty thousand Firsters.
    I'm occasionally asked whether Miles's mother Cordelia could be a secret agent of Beta Colony. I think while she is certainly not an agent of the Betan government, she is a vector of Betan culture. She feels that her homeworld has many strengths that Barrayar can learn from, not least a great deal of practice at living with what advanced technologies and biotechnologies can do to a society. So, she is an agent of change and for progressive thinking. Although that's plenty enough to work up a great conspiracy theory with, and I'm sure those Barrayarans who resent and resist change have.
    As to how Cordelia, a soldier of an enemy planet, could not only get access to Barrayar but thrive there, several factors contributed. First of all, Aral wanted her, and he has a certain amount of power in this situation. Aral was also expected to marry and have a son, since Barrayar is one of those cultures where it is part of one's social duty as a member of the aristocracy to create the next generation. His father Piotr certainly wanted Aral to get on with the job, and Piotr is also a man with a great deal of clout.
    Cordelia also created her own status by being an enemy soldier, and a successful one. She became admired, rather the way some American military history buffs admire General Rommel ("The Desert Fox" of WWII fame in North Africa), who although he was the enemy was good at what he did and had some interesting positive qualities. It is quite possible to admire an honorable enemy, especially if one is a militarist and attached to the military virtues oneself. And most critically, Emperor Ezar wanted Aral married so that he would not be trying to stage a coup by marrying Kareen, the dowager crown princess. Cordelia might not have been Ezar's first pick, but she was the woman on the spot.
    As for villains in the Vorkosiverse—I have some realistic ones and a few extraordinary ones, and I have to admit, the more over-the-top sorts are very handy to have around. Though I've always wondered, looking at the high-end villains in James Bond movies for example—if they have all the resources they display in the course of the plot, why haven't they just invested them all in mutual funds and retired? They clearly don't need to be villains in order to meet any rational need they could have. Few real people just go out and say "I'm going to be villainous today!," barring the sort of resentful unbalanced loser who has become wound up in his own personal status emergency, which he has decided to share with everyone around him. There is a natural preference for the high-end villains in adventure fiction, however, because the satisfaction of defeating them is unimpaired by messy ambiguities. Waxing the bad guy fixes the problem simply and cathartically, and now the reader can close the book, turn