Sanctum Application

[admiralscaptain]

OOC INFORMATION
Name: Poppy
Contact Information: poppyfields
Personal Journal: N/A
Age: 29
Characters Played: N/A
IN-CHARACTER INFORMATION
Name: Cordelia Naismith Vorkosigan
Fandom: Vorkosigan Saga
Age: 38
Canon Point: directly post-Barrayar epilogue
Original Universe or Alternate Universe? Original
Personality:
Cordelia works to change a world. She does it for the glory of God, for her sacred honor, and to have a world where the children she loves can survive.

Astrocartographer and Survey Captain
Cordelia was born and raised on Beta Colony, and so it is necessary to understand what a unique world Beta Colony is to understand it’s impact on her. Her upbringing was that typical of the hyper-progressive desert world. One of the earliest colonizations in space, it’s claim to fame is just how technologically advanced it is, and it’s wealth in its knowledge and scientific achievement. True poverty is unknown, sexism and homophobia nonexistent, and crime minimal. Sex is a very free thing, young people are on contraceptives and given a great deal of education. Genetic engineering and cloning, as well as the option to have children in uterine replicators, a safe technological alternative to one’s own womb, are considered common.

It’s not so idyllic as it sounds even if the absolute minimum existence is one where being well-fed and medically cared for as well as having guaranteed access to comconsoles and the planetary information network (read: computer and internet). Freedoms are tightly restricted—antisocial behavior is immediately met with (potentially extensive) therapy, reproduction requires licensure of both “co-parents”, and their orderly society only exists in the framework of severe regulation. She grew up very intelligent and her cultural upbringing strongly informs her personal morals. Still, for a Betan, she considered herself somewhat personally awkward in her youth. Her duties in the Astrological Survey speaks to her intelligence as it is noted for being the absolute cream of the crop-- one character describes it as being immensely challenging to get into, impossible for a non-Betan save for the fact that they have an affirmative action style policy for non-Betans. In her late twenties, she had been in an abusive relationship and she sacrificed some of her ambition and honor for a love that didn't really exist, an experience that marked her as well.

As a result of her early experiences, she came into her thirties having a strong understanding of and value for herself. She has the traditionally Betan tendencies towards certain kinds of hyper-analytical behavior. In response to excessive stress, she often finds herself using it as a self-soothing mechanism. In what some view as an unusual twist, she's the Betan equivalent of a Presbyterian. Her love of her God is great, and she finds herself calling on her religious beliefs as another well of strength to draw on. Much of her personal honor is wrapped up in her religious affiliation. It is her believe that God gives challenges to people as a gift to them, and it's a great failing to refuse to take them up.

Soldier and POW
Cordelia has a deep, distinct distaste for the military, and she has firsthand experience to back this. Her moral beliefs are incompatible, but she was the captain of an Expedition effort to deliver experimental weapons to protect one of their allies. Her actions led towards the deaths of many, deaths she mourned for greatly. She's known to view soldiers as children, an evolution as she has matured of her original stance that they were hired killers. She has grown over the years, and she considers her own word one of the most important things she can give. It is a curious parallel to the world she would eventually find herself on for much of the rest of her life. She fell in love with a Barrayaran soldier, a member of their warrior caste, but she was too devoted to her word to commit such a treason as, say, accept his repeated proposals of marriage the first two times they met. Still, her feelings for Aral Vorkosigan define her life in many ways both subtle and blatant.

At the age of thirty-three, her war experiences changed her. She had seen great honor and greater disgrace. She could not dare betray Aral to her own people, and at some point Betan therapy stopped being something that she would think to aid her and became her own people acting as her enemies. This speaks strongly to the values she holds most sacred. Those are so important to her, in fact, that she accidentally leads her own therapist to believe she's a brainwashed mole. The threat of being forced to betray someone that holds her heart is enough to highlight a much more rare, more dangerous part of her. When she is presented with the risk of being hospitalized without appeal, she abandoned her normal Betan approach to problem solving and started acting just as crazy as they thought her to be. Illustrating this would be how she half-drowned her therapist in her fish tank to gain information so she could flee from Beta Colony.

Refugee, Wife, and Mother
Cordelia is a refugee from Beta Colony, and such a novelty on the planet Barrayar that she never quite fits in. This fundamental incompatibility does not change that this is her home now because home is not a place to her, but rather the people she loves. She finds a refuge in watching Barrayarans in a scientific sense, like an anthropologist, and in dissecting the psychology of their actions. Psychoanalyzing others out of the blue in conversation is a bad habit of hers. In return, these backwards pseudo-Russian feudalists often don't know what to do with her. She considers a system of government where there is no reasonable constitution (and no constitution at all) and possessing a class of nobility to be a mass delusion they all cooperate to bring into reality. "Barrayarans" is one of her favored curse words, and she doesn't hide her acid judgement of idiocies that she sees.

A good example of the above would be how Barrayarans see their Emperor as practically semi-divine in his absolute importance to the Imperium, but she has an understanding of the reality of his existence. He is a young man, five years old and traumatized when he's first placed under her guardianship. Over the next five years, she raised the boy to have a downright Betan hue to his behavior and values, and is known as the only one that might talk about him like he's the shy, sometimes awkward boy he actually is. She is a striking influence on Barrayaran culture, and yet most people consider her to be utterly apolitical. Politics are the realm of her life-partner, her Regent husband, but there is much out there that is fair game. She tries not to cause too many social scandals, and her first months were the absolute worst for them because she has a frank and direct attitude about sex and gender that Barrayarans absolutely don't. While it used to make her self-conscious, she doesn't let it slow her down whenever it happens these days.

There are few people that would try to slow her down, for that matter. She is known for her ability to take sudden, dramatic actions with sweeping consequences throughout Barrayar. Her bouts of cold-blooded, decisive rationality can be disconcerting to those that are much more accustomed to her forgiving, maternal side. This is the woman that gave a mentally-ill rapist a safe purpose in life that redeems him and the duty of bodyguarding her own son, but yet is known to have brought a usurper's head to her husband in a shopping bag. (To her credit, the man had held her premature infant son hostage and would have been the death of him in a matter of days.) She's been accused of offering trust beyond reason, and her stance is that it gets results beyond measure. Her faith and strong principles carry her through, but she carries a great deal of weight.

It's a difficult task set before her, but Cordelia knows God gave her the tools she needs to accomplish it.

Is this character immune? Yes.
Background: Character specific page
On Beta Colony and on Barrayar
And here's the pages on the two books that make up her history up to her canon point, Shards of Honor and Barrayar.

At her present canon point, Cordelia is Lady Vorkosigan and the Regent Consort of Barrayar, mother to Miles and co-guardian to the ten year old Emperor Gregor Vorbarra.

Other Notables: N/A
Inventory: A set of hair combs, a few Vor lady outfits (along the lines of blouse, bolero, long skirt, and calf-high boots), and one of Aral's old fatigue jackets would be nice.
SAMPLES
NETWORK SAMPLE: PSL: Cordelia corresponding with a friend
LOG SAMPLE: PSL: Cordelia and child soldiers