[LMB] Ivan's love life (was Ivan and ???)

[Paula Lieberman]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mitch Miller" <mitchmiller at entertainmenttax.com>


> Agree totally.  A lot of people seem to be conflating brains and ambition.
> They are two entirely separate qualities.  Ivan has brains and polish,
> but not ambition.  You can get very far on ambition and polish, you don't
> need brains to succeed.  Ivan's cousin has all three, which makes him the
> man he is, but that doesn't make Ivan a bad or stupid guy.


There are differencies between "idiot" and "stupid."

There are lots of people who are intellectually lazy, aren't "stupid," but 
lack common sense... Or, I had an uncle with four earned degrees from 
Harvard.  When it came to common sense... he managed to give himself a 
sunburn inside in throat with a heat lamp, he had a sore throat, and figured 
the sunlamp would help, but fell asleep under it with his mouth open--and 
got a sunburned inside throat!  That was merely the most extreme example.

Common sense and intelligence are NOT correlated.  "That idiot Ivan!" 
referred to Ivan lacking in what Aral regarded as reasonable amounts of clue 
and awareness.  It wasn't that Ivan was stupid, it was that Ivan lacked a 
level of awareness that Miles had and that Aral was accustomed to--Aral was 
not, after all, a 20-something father, he was quite a bit older and more 
mature and seasoned, and Ivan was a young callow sort of various young 
Georgette Heyer male characters, lacking in seasoning and doing stupid 
things because they were young and immature.  He wasn't at the level of the 
brother who wanted to join the Army, the family wasn't letting him, and who 
was running around in bad company (I don't remember which book, POSSIBLY it 
was The Convenient Marriage...  the lead male's comment about "your brother 
can't possibly be as bad as my [sister?]" was in there, I think--or on 
second thought, his comment about what his valet was going to think... or 
maybe not the valet. Perhaps I;m conflated some characters and books 
there....

Anyway, I;m thinking of some o the  typical young rather heedless male 
characters in Heyer... not exacty Sir Peregrine Taverner because he fell in 
love and wanted to get married at a quite young age, but maybe--ah, the 
brother of the lead male in The Grand Sophy, who was next oldest son in the 
family.

> Plus, there are all kinds of different smarts -- staying out of the 
> political
> line of fire is Ivan's, and he's done that quite well.

Ivan had a mapped out lifeplan to a degree--he would as a typical Vor lord 
life path, go into the military, have adventures of various types, be loyal 
to his cousin the Emperor, and eventually marry and have children... but he 
was too busy gallivanting around to notice when the supply of eligible 
interesting females of his own social stratum started evaporating.   That's 
an example of cluelessness, however....

> (Two of the smartest people I ever met -- the only ones who could 
> regularly
> beat me at Trivial Pursuit -- worked in the mail room of an accounting 
> firm
> I once worked for.  One was a Yale grad, the other had graduated from a 
> seminary.)

Ivan got on my less than complimentary side with his treatment and attitudes 
towards women--rather callous and unthinking and exploitationist.  I know 
that there are mixed feelings about Elli Quin, but he earned and deserved 
her scorn.

I suppose, I want to see remorse on his part for his lack of consideration 
towards not only her, but women in general, and taking them for granted, 
from Warrior's Apprentice through to his rude awakening that no Lady 
Vorpatril was going to drop like a desirable ripe pluckable plum for his 
permanent delectation into his hand....