Vesper Lynd

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James Bond character
Vesper Lynd
Gender	Female
Role	Bond girl
Affiliation	MVD, MI6 (novel) HM Treasury, Mr. White's organization (film)
Current status	Deceased
Portrayed by	Linda Christian (1954) Ursula Andress (1967) Eva Green (2006)

Vesper Lynd is a fictional character of Ian Fleming's James Bond novel Casino Royale. In the 1954 TV version she was played by Linda Christian. In the 1967 film version she was played by Ursula Andress. In the 2006 version she is played by Eva Green.

Contents 1 Novel biography 2 Film biography 2.1 1967 2.2 2006 3 Trivia 4 External links

[edit] Novel biography

Vesper is an MI6 agent loaned to Bond, much to his irritation, to assist him in his mission to bankrupt Le Chiffre, the paymaster of a SMERSH-controlled trade union. She poses as a radio seller working with Mathis and later as Bond's companion in order to infiltrate Royale-les-Eaux, the casino in which Le Chiffre frequently gambles. After Bond takes all of Le Chiffre's money in a high-stakes game of baccarat, Vesper is kidnapped by Le Chiffre's thugs, who also nab Bond when he tries to rescue her. Both are rescued after Le Chiffre is assassinated by a SMERSH agent, but only after Bond has been tortured.

Vesper visits Bond every day in the hospital, and the two grow very close; much to his own surprise, Bond develops genuine feelings for her, and even dreams of leaving the service and marrying her. After he is released from the hospital, they go on a holiday together, and eventually become lovers.

Vesper holds a terrible secret, however: she is a double agent working for MVD, and worked with Bond because she was under orders to see that he did not escape Le Chiffre. (Her kidnapping was staged in order to lure Bond into Le Chiffre's clutches.) Prior to her meeting Bond, she had been romantically involved with an RAF operative. This man had been captured by SMERSH, and revealed information about Vesper under torture. Hence, SMERSH was using this operative to blackmail Vesper into helping them. After the death of Le Chiffre, she is initially hopeful that she and Bond can start a new life, but realizes this is impossible when she notices a SMERSH operative, Gettler, tracking her and Bond's movements. Consumed with guilt and certain that SMERSH will find and kill both of them, she commits suicide, leaving a note admitting her treachery and pledging her love to Bond.

For his part, however, Bond's outrage at her betrayal outweighs his grief for her loss, and he resolves to bury any feelings he has for her and think of her as nothing more than a traitor. He phones his superiors and informs them of Vesper's treason and death, coldly saying "The bitch is dead now."

Bond's feelings for Vesper are not totally extinguished, however; Fleming's eleventh novel, On Her Majesty's Secret Service, reveals that he makes an annual pilgrimage to Royale-les-Eaux to visit her grave. In the novel Goldfinger, moreover, when a drugged Bond believes that he has died and is preparing to enter heaven, he worries about how to introduce Tilly Masterton, who he believes has died along with him, to Vesper.

Vesper is Bond's first canonical romantic interest, and she has many typical Bond Girl qualities: among others, she is beautiful, has excellent fashion sense, is sexually available, and has an adventurous streak. On the other hand, she is more of a permanent presence in the series even despite her suicide, as the above paragraph indicates. Other than Bond's future wife Tracy she is the only woman in the series to whom Bond proposes and is practically the only romantic interest to be a fellow intelligence agent. (Gala Brand is a policewoman, not an intelligence agent, and she ultimately rebuffs Bond's advances, being engaged to another man; Tatiana Romanova is in the intelligence business but works for the KGB; and Bond's relationship with MI6 employee Mary Goodnight remains ambiguous at the end of the final book to feature her). Vesper's suicide and her simultaneous revelation that she is a double agent have a strong psychological and motivational effects on Bond that reinforce her "standout" nature. In many ways, then, Vesper is not the formulaic Bond Girl that first appeared in the following novel Live and Let Die in the person of Solitaire.

[edit] Film biography

[edit] 1967

Vesper Lynd was portrayed by Ursula Andress (who portrayed another Bond girl, Honey Ryder, in the 1962 film version of Dr. No) in the 1967 version of Casino Royale.

In this version, which bore little resemblance to the novel, she was a comic character with no trace of the inner turmoil so prevalent in the novel. In the film, Vesper is depicted as a former secret agent who has since become a multi-millionaire with a penchant for wearing ridiculously extravagant outfits at her office ("because if I wore it in the street people might stare"). Bond (played by David Niven), now in the position of M at MI6, uses a discount for her past due taxes to bribe her into becoming another 007 agent, and to recruit baccarat expert Evelyn Tremble (Peter Sellers) into stopping Le Chiffre (played by Orson Welles).

Vesper and Tremble have an affair during which she eliminates an enemy agent sent to seduce Tremble ("Miss Goodthighs"). Ultimately, however, she betrays Tremble to Le Chiffre and SMERSH, declaring to Tremble, "Never trust a rich spy" before killing him with a machine gun hidden inside a bagpipe. Her ultimate fate is not revealed, however in the opening credits (which includes scenes from the movie) she is shown as an angel playing a harp, just as the 007s are shown at the end of the film after everyone is killed by an atomic explosion.

[edit] 2006

In the 2006 film version of the novel, Vesper is a treasury agent assigned to make sure that Bond adequately manages the funds provided by MI6. However, she is secretly working for the anonymous organization that Mr. White, one of the film's villains, represents. She is extorted into this role by a threat to her French-Algerian boyfriend's life. The necklace she wears depicts an "Algerian love knot," and, presumably, was a gift from her boyfriend. As in the novel, she becomes Bond's lover, but chooses a tragic end, trapping herself in an elevator as it plunges into a flooded building. Bond opens the elevator and takes her out of the water. Bond tries to revive her, but she is dead. The film does not indicate the fate of her boyfriend. Bond still holds the disdain he feels for her betrayal in the novel, uttering the same quote "The bitch is dead (now)", but M reprimands him and reveals Vesper's reasons for her manipulation by the villains. When Bond opens her cell phone afterwards, he finds that she has left him the name of the mastermind of the plot (Mr. White) and his phone number. Vesper is one of only two main James Bond girls in the film series not to survive; the other being Tracy Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

[edit] Trivia

• Fleming created a cocktail recipe in the novel that Bond names after Vesper. The "Vesper martini" became very popular after the novel's publication, and gave rise to the famous "shaken, not stirred" catchphrase immortalized in the Bond films. The actual name for the drink (as well as its complete recipe) is uttered on screen for the first time in the 2006 adaptation of Casino Royale.
• According to the novel, Vesper was so named by her parents because she was born on a stormy evening.
• "Vesper" was an ancient name for the planet Venus, suggesting that the character is the embodiment of love.
• Vesper Lynd is a pun on West Berlin. Like her namesake, the city of Berlin, Vesper's loyalties are split down the middle.
• The character of Vesper Lynd does not appear in the 1954 adaptation of Casino Royale. Instead the character was replaced by Valerie Mathis, played by Linda Christian. Unlike her novel counterpart, Valerie is not revealed to be a traitor in this adaptation.

[edit] External links

• Vesper Lynd at MI6.co.uk