Cordelia's worst subject in school was English. She much prefers reading nonfiction. If she wants to go understand people, she'll talk to people, and that's where she thinks novels' strength tends to lay.
By the standards she was raised by, Cordelia, and almost everyone she knows, is insane. This almost never bothers her, which is also another way of saying it sometimes does.
Cordelia is deeply religious, but it doesn't really bother her that none of her friends and family are. It's something that defines her, not the people around her.
Cordelia has a temper, though she got it under better control as she got older.
The more stressed Cordelia is, the more logical she gets.
The time Cordelia is most dangerous is when fury combines with logic. She doesn't lose her head, but she does make other people lose theirs. (Yes, that was a terrible pun.)
Cordelia isn't very good at hating. She doesn't even hate Vordarian, really. In some ways, that makes the way she killed him worse.
Cordelia hates Barrayar more than anything else in the world. If the rest of her family didn't have their identities wrapped so deeply up in it, and she didn't love them so much, she'd leave it in a second. As it is, she fears she'll never leave it.
Cordelia's fascinated by pain. When she was younger, she dabbled in BDSM because of it. It took a while before she figured out it wasn't pain that fascinated her, it was the people that pain forged.
Cordelia doesn't love Bothari. How can you love someone who's like an extension of yourself?
Cordelia thinks that the emphasis Barrayarans place on their word is a little absurd. She'd change worlds to keep her word anyway.
The reports Cordelia's heard of Tian remind her a great deal of that last, disastrous relationship before she met Aral. She's impressed at how well Ekaterin's handled it.
She has no real fetishes. Unless you count the way Aral's eyes light up when she dresses up in her old Survey uniform for him.
As a teenager, Cordelia was very shy and reserved and didn't really fit in. Too brainy, too religious, too aggressive. That's a lot of the reason she went into Survey. Well, that and the challenge.
Cordelia is bisexual, but primarily attracted to men. And completely uninterested in anyone under the age of at an absolute minimum 40, and preferably older than her.
If Cordelia were in the least ambitious, she'd be ruling Barrayar by now. This has never occurred to her.
She was a little in love with Kareen. It's that pain thing again.
Miles is her son, and she loves him. Mark is her son, and she loves him. Elena is the closest thing she has to a foster daughter, and she loves her. Gregor's her protege as much as her foster son, though, and that complicates things. She still loves him, of course, but that's what caused her to make most of her mistakes as her teacher. She's never quite forgiven herself for letting him find out about his father from someone else.
Cordelia bullied Impsec into giving Gregor at least a semblance of a normal childhood when they could. She feels it was good for both of them.
To say Cordelia is arrogant is too pale a word. It's also not quite right. An arrogant person is one who says "I can change the world". There's no word for someone who says "I have changed the world, and so you have no excuse not to try to change it too."