Cordelia Naismith

Cordelia Naismith is the name of two fictional characters by American writer Lois McMaster Bujold. One is from the science fiction series the Vorkosigan Saga. The other is the title character of the Victorian era Sherlock Holmes short story "The Adventure of the Lady on the Embankment" included in her anthology Dreamweaver's Dilemma.

Vorkosigan Saga

Cordelia Naismith, who first appears in the novel Shards of Honor, is a citizen of Beta Colony, and was a member of the Betan Astronomical Survey, which was converted into the Betan Expeditionary Force during wartime.

The homeworld of the Vorkosigan Saga Cordelia Naismith first appears in the short story entitled "Dreamweaver's Dilemma" which is also included in the Dreamweaver's Dilemma anthology that contains "The Adventures of the Lady on the Embankment".

Early years

Cordelia is born on Beta Colony the daughter of Elizabeth Naismith, a doctor, who co-wrote the article Ethan read in a medical journal in the beginning of Ethan of Athos.^[1]

During Cordelia's time as the commander of a vessel in the Betan Astronomical Survey, she despises the military mindset due to her upbringing with Beta Colony's liberal and anti-militarist values. She explores jump-points and newly discovered planets in the Nexus, a job requiring advanced mathematical and scientific knowledge and no small degree of daring, as well as interpersonal skills, as her crew is composed of non-military civilian scientists that Cordelia often considers "a group of prima-donnas and cry-babies."^[2] On a survey mission on the newly discovered world that would later be named Sergyar, she is captured by the controversial Admiral Aral Vorkosigan of the Barrayaran Imperial Military Service, scorned by galactic society at large as the "Butcher of Komarr". They spend an arduous period on the planet's surface together, and during that time, they fall in love. However, given their positions on opposing sides of a military struggle, they do not act upon their feelings, though Aral asks her to marry him.^[2]

The Escobar War

Aral and Cordelia cross paths again a short time later during the war precipitated by Barrayar's abortive attempt to invade Escobar, into which Beta Colony is brought as an ally of Escobar. Cordelia receives a promotion to captain and is transferred into the Betan Expeditionary Force (the Betan military). She is captured along with her crew after she successfully breaks the Barrayaran blockade, allowing vital military supplies and weapons to reach the Escobarans, which become instrumental in turning back the invading Barrayaran forces.^[2]

During her time as a military prisoner she is brought to the attention of Ges Vorruyter, a high-ranking commander of the Barrayaran forces and a notable sadist and pervert who enjoys tormenting and raping female captives. She is spared a violent rape at the directives of Vorruyter when Sergeant Bothari rejects his orders and kills him by slicing his throat because Bothari knows that Cordelia is important to Aral Vorkosigan. Later, upon the conclusion of the war, many of her compatriots and allies believe that she is the heroine responsible for slaying Vorruyter, earning her a brief status as a heroic celebrity on Beta Colony.^[2]

However, her favorable opinion of Aral Vorkosigan, protestations of his honor and integrity and later her profession of love for him, quickly earn her the suspicions of her government, who believes that she has been psychologically conditioned and brainwashed to serve as a Barrayaran deep-cover mole, using the cover of a faked love affair as a means to transmit intelligence to Barrayar. After several attempts by her Betan superiors at remedying this non-existent psychological tampering, including being drugged against her will, and being told that her mental state would prevent her from resuming her command, Cordelia flees to Barrayar (assisted by Arde Mayhew)^[3] and becomes Aral's wife, and thus Lady Cordelia Vorkosigan, only to learn that the retired soldier she thinks of as her husband is to be pressed into government service as the new Regent of Barrayar upon the death of the elderly and gravely ill Emperor Ezar Vorbarra. Upon her husband's appointment, she is titled Regent-Consort.^[2]

As Lady Vorkosigan and Regent-Consort

Upon the death of Emperor Ezar, a period of political instability ensues, replete with assassination attempts on both Cordelia and her husband, the new Regent. While pregnant, Cordelia is present at a soltoxin poison-gas attack on her husband by political terrorists. While both Cordelia and Aral are given the antidote, the teratogenic antidote has disastrous effects on her unborn child. Aral Vorkosigan is rendered infertile by the poison. Cordelia is moved to attempt to save her fetus, despite any damage he has sustained in the attack, by placing him in a uterine replicator, a new technology on Barrayar at the time.^[4]

While the uterine replicator is safely ensconced in the imperial capital city, the political instability flares into full-scale insurrection when Count Vidal Vordarian and his conservative Vor allies mount a coup d'etat and seize the Imperial Residence in the hopes of apprehending both the child-Emperor Gregor and his mother Princess Kareen, whom Vordarian hopes to marry and use to seize the throne. The ensuing civil war becomes known as the War of Vordarian's Pretendership, in which Gregor is rescued from the palace by loyalists and Princess Kareen is killed. Count Vordarian is also killed and beheaded during an attempt by Cordelia and her allies (Sgt. Bothari and Ludmilla "Drou" Droushnakovi) to break into the Imperial Residence to rescue her gestating fetus, as the uterine replicator requires attention and not the neglect given by Vordarian.^[4]

Cordelia becomes known as the 'woman who executed Vidal Vordarian' after presenting his severed head to her husband, several of his staff, and several of Vordarian's partisans who are present negotiating a settlement, thus bringing the insurrection to an end. This incident earns her no small degree of awe and respect from the military-minded Vor caste, all the more pronounced due to her being a woman.^[4]

In addition to Aral's role as Regent, and Cordelia's affiliated social position as Regent-Consort, Aral and Cordelia are appointed the distinct status of being the legal guardians of the child-emperor Gregor, and Cordelia is given essentially a guiding role over his formative years and education, placing the Betan in an enormously powerful position to mold the emperor's political and social attitudes and thus affect Barrayar's future as a whole. The full repercussion of her new role goes almost entirely unnoticed by the Council of Counts and the more conservative elements of Barrayaran society.

The chief initial reason for Cordelia not having any more children is not due to the inability to procreate (with Betan medicine, functioning cells are all that are required to reproduce), but because any healthy children have the potential to weaken Miles' stature (and endanger his life) in his family due to his deformity. Barrayar had suffered great damage due to nuclear war, and non-viable mutations in children were common and universally met with euthanasia during its less enlightened past. Miles' grandfather, Piotr, himself almost euthanized Miles. Mark Pierre and Miles' acceptance by conservative Barrayar as Aral's heir, as well as Miles' healthy children, born at the end of Diplomatic Immunity give her space to defer future children until Aral's retirement, when they plan to have more children.

Mother of Miles and Mark Vorkosigan

As a result of the soltoxin antidote given to her, her child, Miles Vorkosigan, suffers severe physical deformities which are partially ameliorated by additional treatment received in the uterine replicator; her father-in-law, Count Piotr Vorkosigan refuses to allow the deformed child to use his name.^[5] Instead, he is named Miles Naismith Vorkosigan, after Cordelia's own father.

Cordelia and Aral intentionally have only one child,^[6] their son Miles. They later discover that a clone of their son Miles, named Mark Vorkosigan, has been created without their knowledge.^[7] While his legal status as a Vorkosigan is questionable on Barrayar, Cordelia unquestionably accepts him as her son. She endorses him openly to the rest of Barrayaran society, buffers his culture shock to Barrayar, buys him a ship to use to find Miles and even helps his love life by acting as a go-between for him, his girlfriend Kareen Koudelka and Kareen's parents.

As Countess Vorkosigan and Vicereine of Sergyar

Upon Count Piotr's death,^[8] she becomes Countess Vorkosigan. Later, after Emperor Gregor achieved his majority, Aral is named Viceroy of Sergyar. Cordelia becomes Vicereine Countess Vorkosigan, being appointed co-leader of the planet, rather than the title being merely one of courtesy as the spouse of a viceroy. Their new positions require them to move to Sergyar to assume its governance and settlement.

When her husband dies from an aneurysm on Sergyar, she makes the decision to not have him cryoprepped and frozen since over two hours have passed and any chance of reviving him would have been as a mental vegetable at best.

Cordelia chooses to settle on Sergyar.

As a Widow

After the death of Aral Vorkosigan, Cordelia chooses to remain on Sergyar and continue her role as Vicereine for a few years. In Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen, Cordelia and Admiral Jole, commander of the Sergyaran Fleet, develop a romantic relationship and decide to retire to neighboring homes on Segyar. Cordelia had genetic material saved from Aral and uses it to create a daughter, Aurelia, with the stated intention of raising up to six daughters under the surname Kosigan, providing them a link to their father while separating them from the military caste she has never fully approved of.^[9]

Ideology and policies

Cordelia maintains an independent and assertive front, being a full partner to Aral. This is a bit disconcerting to Barrayaran society, where women are just barely beginning to look beyond being wives and mothers. Because she is known as a Betan emigrant, her unique status as a female military hero is/was vaguely ignored by Vor society, partially due to her conscious decision to be apolitical and remain out of the spotlight, initially bending her energies to rearing both her own son (Miles) and Gregor.

She heartily encourages imports of civilized thinking and goods that allows more freedom and independence for the people of Barrayar. As Countess Vorkosigan, she was the architect of a large-scale scholarship program, making galactic standard educations in medicine and science available to Barrayaran students with promise, and not just to those born Vor.

Cordelia is also opposed to natural childbirth, even more than Betans (who still sometimes practice it as an option), due to the soltoxin attack that nearly robbed her of her first child. She is aiding the new generation of Barrayaran women of the upper- and middle-classes in the use of uterine replicators; she believes that alone is radically changing Barrayaran culture from within.

As Vicereine of Sergyar Cordelia uses her authority to influence the development of Sergyar's culture, including instituting rights, health care and education for sex workers in an attempt to replicate the system of licensed sexual therapists on her native Beta Colony.

Cordelia, religiously, is "some sort of Betan Presbyterian, a rather Unitarian-style but definitely Christian-descended religion.^[10]

Personal appearance and style

Countess Cordelia Vorkosigan is a tall woman with roan-red hair leavened with gray, which she wears parted in the center and long in the back (in her youth, her hair was a coppery red) and 'sea grey' eyes. Although not accounted a great beauty, with her face having a nose a bit too bold, and a jawline a bit too strong, she is nonetheless an attractive woman. She wears what would be deemed appropriate wear for a Vor-class matron, long flowing skirts and tailored bolero style jackets, but will slip into her Betan Astronomical Survey fatigues in private for comfort and nostalgia.

Early in her marriage and new to her status as Lady Vorkosigan, she relies upon Lady Alys Vorpatril's expertise in Barrayaran fashions and etiquette, as to not socially embarrass her husband to his political foes.

"The Adventure of the Lady on the Embankment"

Cordelia Naismith awakens as an amnesiac on a river embankment, wet and naked. Scotland Yard calls in Sherlock Holmes to help piece together her story and history.^[11]

Written by Lois McMaster Bujold, published in 1997 as short story in Dreamweaver's Dilemma

References