Simon Illyan—Gregor Vorbarra Relationship

Simon Illyan and Gregor Vorbarra’s relationship is at once a long record of Imperial service and a personal bond formed across Gregor’s childhood and reign. Illyan served Gregor from the age of five, while Gregor came to regard him not merely as a subordinate but as a custodian of the Imperium whose service could not be separated from his identity. When Illyan’s memory chip failed, Gregor’s trust was tested by decisions about access, investigation, and the possible loss of the man who had served him for decades.

Service Across a Lifetime

Illyan’s service to the Emperor began before Gregor’s reign. At eighteen, he entered officer training for Emperor Ezar, through a regional school rather than the Imperial Service Academy, which Illyan described as then requiring more points, money, and prestigious names. His career stretched across two generations of Imperial rule. By the time he spoke with Miles Vorkosigan, Illyan described himself as having completed two twenty-year spans in the Emperor’s service, while acknowledging that he had never expected to reach a third.

His service to Gregor began when the future Emperor was five. Illyan had remained in that role as Gregor grew into full adulthood, making their connection longer and more continuous than a normal relationship between an official and the adult ruler he serves. Illyan understood that he could not simply discard this history: he said that he could not be who he was—or what he had been—without knowing what that service meant. Miles recognized the achievement, but Illyan stressed that it was not his alone, locating his life’s work within a larger institution and shared history.

An Institution, Not Merely a Master

Illyan’s loyalty to Gregor did not make him servile. Miles described him as someone who had come to feel that the Imperium was a creation he helped maintain, and compared his investment in it to an artist’s relationship with a medium. Illyan could perform the role of Gregor’s servant with great skill while remaining, in Miles’s judgment, unusually independent in spirit. This distinction gives the relationship its particular character: Illyan served the Emperor, but his commitment extended to the political creation and public order that the office embodied.

The bond also exists within Barrayar’s competing accounts of authority. Miles explained to Lucas Haroche that the military often behaves as though Vor status does not matter, while the high Vor behave as though it matters greatly. He called these competing fantasies, but insisted that both men were oath-sworn to uphold the existing system. In that account, Illyan’s place cannot be reduced to noble inheritance or military rank. He was not Vor, yet had developed a deep investment in the Imperium and its preservation. His closeness to Gregor was therefore grounded in sustained service and responsibility, not shared aristocratic standing.

Trust During Illyan’s Breakdown

When Illyan’s memory chip malfunctioned, Gregor faced uncertainty about whether its removal would restore him, leave him partly recovered, or change his personality and cognition. The possibility that he might not get his chief of Imperial Security back made the decision more than a technical question. Asked whether anything on the chip should be saved, Gregor could identify no secret or memory that Illyan had confided to him. Although Gregor had been an adult for more than fifteen years, he said that even Illyan’s own father might be the only other person able to answer what should be preserved. The old secrets, as Gregor put it, had kept themselves.

Gregor nevertheless accepted that Illyan’s immediate welfare and uncertain future had to take precedence over preserving the past. After Miles, acting as Imperial Auditor, advised removing the chip, Gregor consented. His decision acknowledged both the possibility of loss and the limits of what he knew about Illyan’s inner life. The relationship appears here as trusting but not omniscient: Gregor could entrust Illyan’s fate to Miles’s judgment, yet could not claim access to every private memory that had shaped his servant.

Authority, Access, and the Investigation

Gregor’s response to Illyan’s breakdown also shows how personal concern operated through Imperial institutions. Miles had been blocked from seeing Illyan and told that he might be stunned if he continued pressing for access. He argued to Gregor that he had a right to see Illyan not as an ex-subordinate but as his father’s son, invoking a Vor obligation that passed around ImpSec’s military hierarchy. Miles’s argument exposed the different kinds of authority surrounding Illyan: official command could restrict access, while family and Vor obligations offered another route to claim it.

Gregor answered the crisis by appointing Miles acting Imperial Auditor to evaluate Illyan’s breakdown. He described an Auditor as his voice, eyes, ears, and listener: an independent probe able to go where the Emperor could not. Miles’s independence was precisely what made him useful. Gregor bounded the appointment by requiring that Miles’s actions relate to the assigned event and by asking for due care, sufficient evidence for any arrests, and the customary decorum of an Auditor’s investigation. This was an institutional expression of trust: Gregor did not direct the inquiry to protect his own authority, but gave Miles room to report an independent view of the failure surrounding Illyan.

The investigation culminated in the discovery that implicated Lucas Haroche. With the forensic test glowing red on the opened air grille, Miles ordered Haroche’s arrest on the capital charge of treason and named General Allegre acting chief of ImpSec pending Gregor’s approval. The scene makes the stakes of Gregor’s trust concrete: Illyan’s breakdown had become a test of whether the institution charged with protecting the Imperium could examine its own leadership. Gregor’s relationship with Illyan thus extends beyond private affection or hierarchical obedience. It is expressed through decades of service, the painful decision to risk losing the past, and the willingness to expose the security apparatus to independent scrutiny when Illyan’s welfare and the Imperium’s integrity were at stake.