There might be something in canon Im forgetting/never came across which points away from this but: What if Anaander was originally a ship?
Like: What we know about Anaander's past is that she was exiled from the Dyson sphere and can't go back cuz the inhabitants consider everyone outside "unclean", and that there was an "original" body which she clones to create new nodes of herself, but none of this precludes her being a SHIP that was exiled since we don't really know what the ppl in the sphere consider a person.
The main thing that got me thinking about this(brought to the fore by This Post) were
Anaander's weird sense of camaraderie towards Breq/Justice of Toren
Anaander treating Breq the way she treats everyone(Badly: but also no real differentiating btwn humans and ships)
The way Anaander treats bodies is allot like how ships do, and nobody else does. I cant really remember it ever coming up, but the technology to create duplicates(even backups) is there, but nobody in the Radch uses it other than Anaander, which suggests a cultural prohibition(or a law Im forgetting). Anaander DOES have a connection to a particular body-design she has come to think of as 'hers", but ships are known to form such attachments -to crew members, and to particular ancillaries- and even those bodies Anaander treats with a sort of resource-management practicality we get some hints at Ships sharing
Anyway: just a theory! Idk if it really changes much about the series, but it's just an idea that popped into my head and I thought I'd put it out there.
