Novinha

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Novinha (Dona Ivanova Santa Katarina von Hesse) is a fictional character from Orson Scott Card's science fiction saga the Ender's Game series. She is first introduced in the novel Speaker for the Dead and appears in its two sequels, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind. She lives on the Portuguese colony of Luistania.

Back when the descolada originally swept thorugh the planet, her parents found a cure, but caught the disease and died shortly afterwards. Novinha isolates herself from the world afterwards, becoming known as a hard, cold girl. When she becomes an adult, she takes the xenologers' test and becomes an xenologer, studying the pequininos, a sentient species. Through the help of Pipo, the head xenologer, and his son Libo, she is able to find happiness and love.

However, Pipo is soon found vivisected and dead in the hands of the pequininos, an alien species that he is studying. Novinha is convinced that it was her fault. To stop Libo, her lover, from gaining that same knowledge and being killed, she shuts herself away from him. She refuses to marry Libo, because if they did, Libo could access all of her files, and he would learn the same secret that Pipo did. They marry separate people. Novinha marries a man named Marcos, who is sterile; all of "their" kids were actually fathered by Libo. Although this was in their agreement, Marcos was still bitter about the situation, as the children reminded him of Novinha's infiedelity. He often drank and beat Novinha, as she did not allow him to hit the children.

In order to further stop the flow of information, she shuts herself away from her children. When her oldest son, Miro, becomes Libo's apprentice, she refuses to serve him. Every day, when he came home for dinner, she would take his plate away. This went on for a year until Libo was murdered by the piggies; to celebrate, Novinha stayed up late and served Miro dinner. When her oldest daughter, Ela, expresses interest in xenology, Novinha refuses to help. Instead, Novinha loads her down with assignments and refuses to let her take the xenologer test. Despite the moratorium, Ela manages to do some limited research.

After the death of Pipo, Novinha calls for a speaker. 22 years later, when she is 40 and with six kids, Ender Wiggin arrives on the planet. He produces rapid results, unspinning the web of lies and deception that Novinha built up. During the speaking, he reveals the entire truth: how Novinha really loved Libo and worked hard to prevent him from dying, her marriage to Marcos, and the truth surrounding the children. Novinha and Ender marry shortly afterwards.

Later in the series, however, one of Novinha's children, Quim, decides to become a Catholic missionary to the piggies, and goes out to one of their more distant tribes. He is killed by the fanatical pequeninos. Novinha becomes convinced that this is Ender's fault, and she leaves him to stay with the Children of the Mind, a religious organization that requires members to be married, but chaste.

Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game series
International Fleet	Admiral Chamrajnagar | Hyrum Graff | Mazer Rackham
Battle School	Petra Arkanian | Bean | Han Tzu | Alai | Achilles de Flandres | Ender's jeesh | Other Battle School students
Ender's family	Ender Wiggin | John Paul Wiggin | Peter Wiggin | Theresa Wiggin | Valentine Wiggin
Other	Novinha | Han Qing-jao | Si Wang-mu | Jane | The Hive Queen | Minor characters
Books | Characters | Concepts