See proposed backstory:

The second son of a fallen house, Ged is on a diplomatic mission

ostensibly for the sake of his home capital. [What this mission is I have
no idea] However in truth he is trying to bring back the fortunes and
esteem of his house, usurping power and climbing societal ladders by
any means necessary.

He was sent on this mission because he stepped on one too many toes
back home (more accurately slept with the wrong governor); it is a
form of banishment, because by the time he makes it back those whom
he had known will have already died.

So is the nature of long distance travel, that when one travels

lightyears away from home they return far past people’s expected life
spans~

Although resigned to his situation—to never again seeing family and his
dear partner, an admiral’s son—he views his mission as his reason for
being. He wishes to raise the name of his family from the dust in a few
ways:

1) find out who or what order was behind the political manipulations
that worked to expel his family from his home world’s
oligarchy, the senate, removing his grandfather’s title of
Governor.
2) wreck retribution on said person or order.

Honor is his motivation, for if he forsake and forgave what he sees as

the crimes of his predecessors, he would despair, removed as he is
from his history and social fabric. When he first boarded this ship he
was struck with the possibility that he could simply start anew and be
satisfied with his position in life, away from the capital. But how could
anyone truly start anew with a clean slate, unconcerned with one’s
family and past, to embrace the freedom, to embrace natality (in the
Arendtian sense)? To embrace a future divorced from the wrongs of the
those who came before, as forgiveness does, is too much for him, Ged
realised. It is too terrifying.