A Civil Campaign

A Civil Campaign is a science fiction novel by the American writer Lois McMaster Bujold, first published in September 1999. It is part of the Vorkosigan Saga, and by publication order it is the thirteenth full-length novel in the sequence.

The book is set on Barrayar as the marriage of Emperor Gregor to Laisa Toscane approaches, and it follows Miles Vorkosigan's attempt to win Ekaterin Vorsoisson, recently widowed after Miles foiled a terrorist plot on Komarr. Fearing that an open courtship would drive her away, he takes the indirect route and commissions a garden beside Vorkosigan House so that he has a reason to spend time in her company. In the same period his clone brother Mark is pursuing a romance of his own with Kareen Koudelka, and the two campaigns interfere with each other. Barrayaran society is full of rules about who may say what to whom, and Miles is a politically important man whose behaviour is watched and turned into ammunition by people who would like to use it against him.

The title is an acknowledgement of the Georgette Heyer novel A Civil Contract, and the book is written closer to a comedy of manners than to the military plots of the earlier Vorkosigan books: courtship, family dinners and social obligation take the place of campaigns and sieges.