Vesper Lynd is a fictional character of Ian Fleming’s James Bond novel Casino Royale. In the 1967 film version she was played by Ursula Andress. In the 2006 version she is played by Eva Green. Vesper is Bond’s first romantic interest as presented in Fleming’s original novels (although later prequel works by Charlie Higson would present other candidates). Other than Bond’s future wife Tracy, she is the only woman in the series to whom Bond proposes.

Vesper Lynd is a pun on West Berlin. Like her namesake, the Cold War-era city of Berlin, Vesper’s loyalties are split down the middle. In the novel, the character explains that she was born on a “dark and stormy” night, and her parents named her “Vesper” after the Latin word meaning evening to commemorate the night. 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 immortalised in the Bond films. The actual 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.

Ursula Andress as Vesper Lynd in the 1967 film.

Novel biography: Vesper Lynd works at MI6 headquarters as personal assistant to Head of section S. She is loaned to Bond, much to his irritation, to assist him in his mission to bankrupt Le Chiffre, the paymaster of a SMERSH-controlled trade union. She poses as a radio seller working with René Mathis and later as Bond’s companion in order to infiltrate the casino in Royale-les-Eaux in which Le Chiffre frequently gambles. After Bond takes all of Le Chiffre’s money in a high-stakes game of Baccarat, Vesper is abducted by Le Chiffre’s thugs, who also nab Bond when he tries to rescue her. Both are rescued after Le Chiffre is killed by a SMERSH agent, but only after Bond has been tortured.

Vesper visits Bond every day in the hospital, and the two grow very close; much to his own surprise, Bond develops genuine feelings for her, and even dreams of leaving the service and marrying her. After he is released from the hospital, they go on a holiday together, and eventually become lovers.

Vesper holds a terrible secret, however: she is a double agent working for MVD and worked with Bond because she is under orders to see that he does not escape Le Chiffre (Her abduction was staged in order to lure Bond into Le Chiffre’s clutches). Prior to her meeting Bond, she had been romantically involved with an RAF operative. This man had been captured by SMERSH, and revealed information about Vesper under torture. Hence, SMERSH was using this operative to blackmail Vesper into helping them. After Le Chiffre’s death, she is initially hopeful that she and Bond can start a new life, but realises this is impossible when she notices a SMERSH operative, Gettler, tracking her and Bond’s movements. Consumed with guilt and certain that SMERSH will find and kill both of them, she commits suicide, leaving a note admitting her treachery and pledging her love to Bond.

Bond copes with the loss by renouncing her as a traitor and going back to work as though nothing has happened. He phones his superiors and informs them of Vesper’s treason and death, coldly saying “The bitch is dead.” In the following novel, Vesper is not mentioned, but the “job at Royale” is.

Bond’s feelings for Vesper are not totally extinguished; Fleming’s tenth novel, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, reveals that he makes an annual pilgrimage to Royale-les-Eaux to visit her grave. In Diamonds Are Forever, Bond skips the song “La Vie En Rose” in Tiffany’s hotel room “because it has memories for him”; this is a song closely associated with Vesper in Casino Royale. Furthermore, in the novel Goldfinger, moreover, when a drugged Bond believes that he has died and is preparing to enter heaven, he worries about how to introduce Tilly Masterton, whom he believes has died along with him, to Vesper.

Eva Green as Vesper Lynd in the 2006 film.

Film biography: In the 1967 version, which bore little resemblance to the novel, she had no trace of the inner turmoil so prevalent in the novel. In the film, Vesper is depicted as a former secret agent who has since become a multi-millionaire with a penchant for wearing ridiculously extravagant outfits at her office (“because if I wore it in the street people might stare”). Bond, now in the position of M at MI6, uses a discount for her past due taxes to bribe her into becoming another 007 agent, and to recruit baccarat expert Evelyn Tremble into stopping Le Chiffre.

Vesper and Tremble have an affair during which she eliminates an enemy agent sent to seduce Tremble, Miss Goodthighs. Ultimately, however, she betrays Tremble to Le Chiffre and SMERSH, declaring to Tremble, “Never trust a rich spy” before killing him with a machine gun hidden inside a bagpipe. Though her ultimate fate is not revealed in the film, in the opening credits (which includes scenes from the movie) she is shown as an angel playing a harp, showing her to be one of the “seven James Bonds at Casino Royale” at the end of the film after everyone is killed by an atomic explosion.

In the 2006 film version of the novel, Vesper Lynd is a foreign liaison agent from the HM Treasury’s Financial Action Task Force assigned to make sure that Bond adequately manages the funds provided by MI6. However, she is secretly a double agent working for Quantum. She is coerced into this role by a threat to her boyfriend Yusef Kabira’s life. The necklace she wears depicts an “Algerian love knot.”

Lynd is initially sceptical about Bond’s ego and at first is unwilling to be his trophy at the poker tournament with Le Chiffre. The two promptly start out at odds with each other, engaging in games of wits and words. She refuses to bankroll him after he goes bankrupt on an early hand. However, she assists Bond during his struggle with Steven Obanno, knocking away the gun from the latter, though she afterwards 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. Lynd shortly afterwards saves Bond’s life when he is poisoned by Le Chiffre’s girlfriend, Valenka, connecting a key wire to the automatic external defibrillator that he missed, which revives him. Le Chiffre abducts her, and Bond gives chase; they fall into Le Chiffre’s trap, but both are saved by Quantum’s majordomo, Mr White, who shoots and kills Le Chiffre for misappropriating his organisation’s funds.

While both in a hospital to recover from torture, they fall deeply in love with one another. As in the novel, Bond and Vesper vacation, hoping to start a new life. Unknown to Bond, however, Lynd is still doing the bidding of Quantum. Despite complying with her orders to deliver the money, the thugs take her hostage when Bond confronts them, and lock her in an elevator while they battle him. After several explosions, the flooded building sinks, but Lynd resigns herself to death and locks herself in, even as Bond frantically tries to open the elevator. In her final gesture, she kisses Bond’s hands to clear him of guilt, an allusion to the earlier shower scene in which Bond had kissed hers to do the same for her. Bond finally gets her out and tries to revive her to no avail.

Also, as in the novel, Bond copes with his lover’s death by outwardly showing disdain for her due to her betrayal, saying, “The job’s done; the bitch is dead.” When he utters this line, M reprimands him, revealing that Lynd had cut a deal with Quantum to spare him in return for the $120 million. When Bond opens Lynd’s cellphone later, he finds that she has left him the name of the mastermind of the plot (Mr White) and his phone number, enabling Bond to track down and confront him at the movie’s end.

In the 2008 film Quantum of Solace, it is revealed that Yusef is a Quantum agent whose job it is to seduce high-ranking women in the world’s intelligence agencies. He is then “abducted” by Quantum, and the women are forced to become double agents in the hope of securing his freedom. This information vindicates Vesper in Bond’s eyes, making him finally see that her “betrayal” was not her fault.

See also:

• Bond girls