Cordelia Naismith - Vorkosigan Saga Character - As Lady Vorkosigan and Regent-Consort

As Lady Vorkosigan and Regent-Consort

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

While the uterine replicator was safely ensconced in the imperial capital city, the political instability flared into full scale insurrection when Count Vidal Vordarian and his conservative Vor allies mounted a coup d'etat and seized the Imperial Residence in the hopes of apprehending both the child-Emperor Gregor and his mother Princess Kareen, whom Vordarian hoped to marry and use to seize the throne. The ensuing civil war became known as the War of Vordarian's Pretendership, in which Gregor was rescued from the palace by loyalists and Princess Kareen was killed. Count Vordarian was 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 would have failed due to neglect under Vordarian.

Cordelia become 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 were present negotiating a settlement, thus bringing the insurrection to an end. This incident earned her no small degree of awe and respect from the military-minded Vor caste, all the more unique due to her being a woman.

In addition to Aral's role as Regent, and Cordelia's affiliated social position as Regent-Consort, Aral and Cordelia were appointed the distinct status of being the legal guardians of the child-emperor Gregor, and Cordelia was 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 went almost entirely unnoticed by the Council of Counts and the more conservative elements of Barrayaran society.

The chief initial reason that Cordelia did not have any more children was not due to the inability to procreate (with Betan medicine, functioning cells were all that were required to reproduce), but because any healthy children would 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, made Cordelia's desire for more children moot.