Hah! I like that idea; the Radchaai were like "uhh, whoever can't bear children (sorry, btw, when we're done conquering you we will FIX THAT), we aren't those people, so I guess..." at some point in the fictional translation chain to English. As far as who chose - I mean, Leckie, who wrote a thing defending the choice to use "she" and not "he" or a gender-neutral pronoun. But from a Watsonian perspective, I don't know, I don't think English or Earth are involved in this universe necessarily.

To my mind, Sievarden was in a bad spot and really wanted something stable, and then over time fell in loyalty-love with Breq and started idealizing her as an ideal patron. And Sievarden is very, very aristocratic and old-school and probably has notions about how important that relationship is. I love the idea of her running smack into the fact that this is in fact a spaceship and being really thrown.