Not everyone would envy young Lord Miles Naismith
Vorkosigan, even though he had formed his own mercenary
fleet before attending the naval academy, and even though
his mother was the beautiful Cordelia, the ship captain
who has taught the Lords of Barrayar much about the perils
of sexism. Even the fact that Miles is the third in line
to the throne and personally owns a major chunk of his
home planet would not tempt any normal person to change
places with him.
When assassins came to rid the world of his father, his
mother, pregnant with Miles, was in the line of fire, and
Miles was but an egg for the omelet in an all too literal
sense. Thanks to heroic medical intervention, Miles
survived his near fatal brush with war gas - as a pain-
filled dwarf with bones as weak and brittle as some malign
composite of chalk and glass. Miles is often mistaken for
a mutant by his mutant-loathing countrymen.