- "A Degtiar empress named Lisbet
Trapped a satrap lord neatly in his net.
Enticed into treason
For all the wrong reasons,
He’ll soon have a crash with his kismet." - ―Miles's poem in her honor.[src]
Lisbet Degtiar (DEHG-tee-ahr) was a one-time Empress of the Cetagandan Empire, a member of its haut class, and supervisor of the Star Creche. She was the mother of Fletchir Giaja, the Emperor of Cetaganda (or more precisely, she designed him; using her own genome and that of the previous emperor along with whatever modifications seemed good to her). Against her son's wishes, she hatched a plot to subdivide the Cetagandan Empire into eight competing mini-empires, for the biologic good of the haut. The plot was put into action after the Empress' death by her Handmaiden Rian Degtiar and the Ba Lura but subverted by a haut-governor and then abandoned by the ladies of the Star Creche during the events of Cetaganda.
Later, a nameless ba attempted to carry out her vision with its own twisted interpretation, stealing a thousand haut embryos to start its own empire, with itself as Emperor/Empress. haut-lady Pel mused with some annoyance that Lisbet was too motherly towards her ba servitors, treating them almost as children.[1]
She was fond of using archaic metaphors, such as "that genetic engineering could only sow, that winnowing and reaping must still be done in an arena of competition."
Mentions[]
- Cetaganda
- Diplomatic Immunity chapters 9,18