- "Rian nodded. Her voice went very flat. 'She too will be offered a choice. To replace the servitor she destroyed—de-sexed, depilated, and demoted to ba, her metabolism altered, her body thickened ... but returned to a life inside the Celestial Garden, as she desired with a passion beyond reason. Or she may be permitted a painless suicide.'"
- ―Vio's fate[src]
Vio d'Chilian was a haut-wife to the ghem-general Chilian. Particularly beautiful even by haut standards, she had dark chocolate hair, vanilla cream skin, and light cinnamon eyes. She was also, however, furious to have been culled from the haut and ordered to marry a ghem; her revenge took the form of taking part in haut-governor Ilsum Kety's attempted take-over of the Cetagandan Empire.
Treason Plot[]
As part of an attempt by the haut governor of Sigma Ceta Ilsum Kety to gain a significant advantage over the other haut governors (who had also commited treason), Vio assisted in the theft of the Great Key of the Star Crèche. After ba Lura was sent to plant a counterfeit Great Key on the Barrayaran envoys who were attending the funeral of the dowager Lisbet Degtiar, she murdered the ba and planeted its body publicly at Lisbet's tomb.
When the plan was being hampered by Miles Vorkosigan, she took his cousin Ivan Vorpatril hostage under the orders of Kety, who thought he was the mastermind of the operation. Vorpatril was to be murdered to implicate Cetaganda in a plot against Barrayar, so that not only did it distract all parties from his actions, but would allow a stealthy getaway with the Great Key. However, she was distracted by Miles as haut consort Pel knocked her out.
After the attempted plot was foiled, Rian Degtiar stated that for her crime of murdering the ba, she would be offered two choices: be genetically altered to become a ba herself, or have a painless suicide. Her fate was never revealed, but the haut ladies did indicate that it was likely (and prefereable) she would choose death.