The shortcomings of both the ensemble and the Franck-Condon method in describing vibronic effects and condensed phase interactions can be overcome by the cumulant approach. The method constructs the linear absorption spectrum directly from equilibrium timecorrelation functions of fluctuations of the electronic excitation energy, which can be conveniently sampled along ground-state molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of the system in its complex environment. While the method is computationally expensive, requiring the computation of tens of thousands of vertical excitation energies, it treats chromophore and environment fluctuations on the same footing, while the direct MD sampling approximately accounts for anharmonic effects. Additionally, the computational cost of the approach can potentially be significantly reduced using machinelearning techniques, making it a reliable and computationally competitive framework for modeling optical spectra in systems that strongly interact with their environments. In the present work, we investigate the effect of symmetry-breaking due to chromophore motion, solvent interactions and counterions on the lineshape of CV from first principles. We consider two solvents: toluene, a weakly interacting solvent; and methanol, a polar protic solvent expected to interact much stronger with the chromophore. The strong dependence of the experimentally observed spectral lineshape on solvent polarity indicates a significant coupling of CV to its condensed-phase environment, making it an ideal system to verify the accuracy of the cumulant method in this limit.