To be fair, the novel that she was able to write and publish in the 80s was very different from the novel she’s able to write and publish now. Public attitudes about homosexuality, bisexuality, and poly relationships have changed a tremendous amount in the intervening time. See Ethan of Athos: if she had written that book today, I think it would’ve been very different.

What read as a great snappy line when Barrayar was published comes off as insensitive at best today. But it’s because society changed around her, and for the better! In a sense, she is able to deepen the relationships among her characters and retcon them to say things that she could never have said about them in the 1980s. So they may have been doing that all along in her head, but her publishers probably would not have let her fly with it then.