Vesper Lynd was a fictional HM Treasury liaison officer and love interest of James Bond. The official adaptation of the literary character who first appeared in Ian Fleming’s 1953 novel, Casino Royale, the Bond girl appeared in the 2006 James Bond film of the same name, portrayed by French actress Eva Green. Green subsequently provided her likeness for the 2008 James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, the 2015 James Bond film Spectre, the 2021 James Bond film No Time to Die, and Activision’s 2008 video game, Quantum of Solace.
Biography
Background
In the 2006 film version of Casino Royale, Vesper Lynd is a foreign liaison agent from the HM Treasury’s Financial Action Task Force assigned to ensure that Bond adequately manages the funds provided by MI6 for the high-stakes poker game at the Casino Royale. However, she is secretly a double agent working for Quantum; the terrorist organization MI6 is trying to stop. She is an unwilling traitor. However, she is only helping Quantum because they have taken her lover Yusef Kabira hostage and threatened to kill him if she does not cooperate.
Casino Royale
“All right… by the cut of your suit, you went to Oxford or wherever. Naturally, you think human beings dress like that. But you wear it with disdain, my guess is you didn’t come from money, and your school friends never let you forget it. This means you were at that school by the grace of someone else’s charity: hence that chip on your shoulder.
Vesper is introduced on a train headed to Montenegro with James Bond. They quip at each other, and he establishes that she shares a similar past as an orphan. Vesper is initially skeptical about Bond’s ego and, at first, is unwilling to be his trophy at the poker tournament with Le Chiffre. She refuses to bankroll him after he goes bankrupt on an early hand. However, she assists Bond during his struggle with LRA leader Steven Obanno, knocking away the gun from the latter. She afterward retreats to the shower, feeling that she has blood on her hands from helping to kill Obanno. Bond kisses the “blood” off her hands to comfort her, and they return to the casino.
Poisoned by Le Chiffre’s girlfriend, Valenka, Bond struggles to connect a key wire to his automatic external defibrillator. Still, Vesper arrives and makes the proper connection, allowing the machine to revive him. Shortly afterward, she saves Bond’s life.
After Bond wins the poker tournament, Le Chiffre kidnaps Vesper and gives chase. They fall into Le Chiffre’s trap, but both are saved by Quantum henchman Mr. White, who shoots and kills Le Chiffre for misappropriating his organization’s funds.
Betrayal
While both are in a hospital to recover from torture, Bond and Vesper fall deeply in love, and Bond plans to resign from the service to be with her. As in the novel, Bond and Vesper go on holiday to Venice, hoping to start a new life. Unknown to Bond. However, Vesper embezzles the money and delivers it to a group of Quantum henchmen. When Bond realizes what has happened and goes after Vesper, the thugs take her hostage and lock her in a lift while they battle with him. After several explosions, the flooded building sinks, but Vesper resigns herself to death and locks herself in, even as Bond frantically tries to open the elevator. Bond finally extricates her and tries to revive her using CPR, to no avail. In her final gesture, she kisses Bond’s hands to clear him of guilt. Bo
As in the novel, Bond copes with his lover’s death by renouncing her, saying, “The job’s done, and the bitch is dead.” M replies, assuming that Lynd had cut a deal with her blackmailers to spare him in return for the money, and states, “I’m sure she hoped they’d let her live. But she must have known she was going to her death”. When Bond opens Vesper’s mobile phone, he finds that she has left Mr. White’s phone number, enabling Bond to track down and confront him at the movie’s end.
Place in the series
Vesper is Bond’s first romantic interest as presented in Ian Fleming’s original novels (although later prequel works by Charlie Higson would present other candidates).
Besides Bond’s future wife, Tracy, she is the only woman in the series to whom Bond proposes. She is practically the only romantic interest to be a fellow intelligence agent, apart from the film series’ Miranda Frost. (Gala Brand is a policewoman, not an intelligence agent, and she ultimately rebuffs Bond’s advances, being engaged to another man; Tatiana Romanova is in the intelligence business but works for the KGB, and Bond’s relationship with MI6 employee Mary Goodnight remains ambiguous at the end of the final book to feature her). The latter turns out to be Graves’ double agent.
Cocktail
Fleming created a cocktail recipe in the novel that Bond names after Vesper. The “Vesper martini” became very popular after the novel’s publication and gave rise to the famous “shaken, not stirred” catchphrase immortalized in the Bond films. The name for the drink (as well as its complete recipe) is uttered on screen for the first time in the 2006 adaptation of Casino Royale.
