I wish we were living in a world where I'm showrunner for a live-action space opera remake of the entire Mobile Suit Gundam series. Cima would be more than a side-character. She'd be one of my main POV characters.
Headcanon: Her grandfather was one of the first generation to come up to space and helped pioneer the process of building colonies, mastering the process of turning asteriod silica into a silcon-carbon steel for the massive O'Neill Cylinder Colonies used in Gundam.
Cima would grow up "working class rich" - not entitled, but not poor. The sort of girl who had the best clothes in high school, but was never afraid of getting her hands dirty. As to why she joins the military academy, she probably has more pride being a "spacenoid" than your average Zeon citizen because of her family history.
This is one of the changes I would make to her involvement in Operation British. The colony dropped is "Island Iffish" and as Cima explores the gassed colony, in horror over what Zeon had done, she comes across a plaque from Cima construction and sees a little concrete handprint nearby which has the handprints of her grandfather, father, and her - all side-by-side. She loses all faith in Zeon and realizes that they don't care about the legacy of spacenoids, it's all about power to them. This is where she first reaches out to start a coorespondence with Bask Om, a young Federation officer. She supplies him with critical Zeon information to help him rise in the ranks, and in turn he leaks Federation intel to help her stay one-step ahead.
Fast forward to the end of the war, Cima stayed out of the final battles and raids a Federation convoy moving valuable scrap metals and captured Gelgoogs. Her crew voice their displeasure at the thought of acting like Vultures, picking off scraps after the battle - but she reframes their actions - We're not Vultures, we're pirates.
And after that 0083 plays out the same, but I'd definitely build towards the 0083:Rebellion ending for her and her crew.
