Melancholia

 In construction 

' Note: This is only for the evil counterpart of the original Plaisir, both Fused Melancholia and Serum Melancholia. Most of the informations concerning the original Plaisir is not accepted unless it overlapped with Melancholia's informations ' Melancholia (true name: Plaisir, later known as the Serum Melancholia after casted out by her good counterpart) is an evil fairy who was forced to served Moloch, and she is also Michael Langdon's apprentice and Neo-Hellfire's builder. In fact, she hated Moloch very much and decided to double-cross him under Michael's influnence, despite her good counterpart's intend to end those madness and save her own soul.

The evil side of Melancholia/Plaisir was delusional. She deemed Michael as her only true friend and fell in love with him in her own twisted way, but Michael never loved her. She is an OC character made by Officer Candy Apple and served as a minor villain in LOTM: Witnesses of Sleepy Hollow & Sword of Kings Crossover - The Corbin Files. She is also the main antagonist (although the Disc One Final Boss before FOLIE) of the upcoming LOTM: Witnesses of Sleepy Hollow Spin-Off - Firenza Junior.

Plaisir & Fusion Melancholia
Once, as a light fairy named Plaisir, Melancholia was light-hearted and lived inside Enchanted Forest with happiness. She always pursuited happiness and will be happy to see others be happy. However, after seeing her friends burned down her best friends and tormented her, corrupted her until she became his loyal killing machine, Melancholia became a twisted fairy who loves to see people cry and drinks their tears. Her darker personality reflected many monsters who served Moloch - heartless, cruel and egotistic.

In Old Timeline, she survived Years of Tribulation and became loyal to Triggers Hell when World War III started, and she built a evil organization named Neo-Hellfire to honor Moloch. During this time, she hid herself under the ocean, watching the war raging on while planning to unleash a great flood on Earth.

However, after the New Timeline Melancholia (pacted with Michael and became his apprentice) possessed her, the future Melancholia returned to be loyal with Moloch. She also fell in love with Michael and will do anything for him as long as he pleased.

After Michael's apparent death, the past Melancholia fell into disillusions and tried to restore her twisted romance by "bringing back" Michael, and she kept capturing humans and transformed them into a Michael after another, making their voice, physical appearance and even genes are as same as him. However, what she did not know is that Michael's soul fragment had observed everything secretly. Once she completed the 4000th Michael, Melancholia was impriosoned by Michael and her soul was devoured, and all of her clones and the entire Neo-Hellfire had been taken over by Michael's Legion, proving that Melancholia was nothing more than just a pawn to Michael, not a lover.

After all of the abuse she had suffered, Melancholia had finally seen through Michael's true nature and eventually turned to hate him. When James Colby had brought Moloch's Essence to Sword of Kings universe via his painting, Melancholia arrived at the future and merged with her revived future self again. This time, she joined forces of heroes to wipe Michael's Legion, Moloch's Army and possessed zombies as much as she could, eventually betraying Michael, Moloch and Leohart, thus redeeming herself.

After Moloch had defeated and all of the Team Witness had returned back to 2020 as the Years of Tribulation was over, Plaisir chose to stay with Katarina Couteau in order to fight against Triggers Hell, Moloch's remnants, Michael's Legion, Fallen Church remnants and eventually the Fallen (Isaac Westcott) himself.

After the Fallen's final death, Melancholia/Plaisir lived for 5 billions years since fairies are immortal. However, after the Darkness itself reemerged at Multi-Universe, Michael Langdon (escaped from Triggers Hell and hid himself to expand his legion secretly) had sprung to life once more. Michael's secret return also brought back his reign of the Fallen Roman Catholic Church as a new Dark Empire. After knowing Michael's resurrection, Plaisir set out to wipe out the demonic forces that haunted her for 5 billions of years.

LOTM: Crossover - The Corbin Files
Melancholia first appeared in her underwater facility beneath Atlantic Ocean, and she was observing the artificial monster known as FOLIE, made from the flesh and bones of the victims that Michael killed.

At this time, the 2036 Melancholia was already taken over by her past self which fell in love with Michael. She also ruthlessly killed one of her minions merely because he did not wake her up on time, and soon she heard a report from a messenger from Moloch. She was pleased to know about Michael's success, and she was very interested on Carl Robinson, whom she referred as Firenza Junior.

Feigning her loyalty with Moloch while concealing her disgust to the demon, Melancholia assured that she remained her loyalty to Moloch before sending the demon away. Then, she turned to her premature creation before she gloated at how much destruction it would make, and she planned to drown the whole world within the tide.

After he became the Pope, Michael went to Neo-Hellfire facility and Melancholia showed him their creation. Michael was very pleased with that, and vowed to Melancholia that they shall bring a new order out of chaos. Melancholia then officially became a Mother Superior. Secretly, however, Michael planted a part of his soul inside Melancholia in order to make her deluded with a "Michael Langdon" persona and feeling as if Michael was always there beside her.

Firenza Junior spin-off
Melancholia is the main antagonist in Firenza Junior spin-off.

After becoming Mother Superior, Melancholia posed herself as a dark judge and participated the medival torture used by Neo Inquisition on their rivals and prisoners. She spared many people who claimed Michael was brainwashed by Aleister Crowley on their own free will, while those who claimed Michael was a fiendish tyrant shall face her torture and execution.

Melancholia did this in order to preserve Michael's False Hero reputation and push everything (including Vatican's fallen) on Aleister Crowley, so that Michael will escape punishment if KnightWalker Family was lost, letting Crowley to take the blame. Ironically, Crowley was completely unawared for Michael and Melancholia's plan to let him take the blame.

After Carissa escorted a captured Carl Robinson to Neo Inquisition, a masked Melancholia started to question Carl and revealed the murder of the corrupt Duke Firenza - Carl's true father, while mocking Carl being a foolish royalty who did not know his parentage at all.

Melancholia then left the room, leaving her minions to torture Carl until Erica Butcher - Matt's sister and Carl's love one who worked for Global Pact Defense - broke in and saved him. Melancholia chased them and attacked them, but she failed. Looking at the two people running away, Melancholia then started to feel her head hurt when recalling her friends being killed by Moloch. Even so, her villany overwhelmed her coincience once again, and then she started to make a brainwahsed Biagio Busoni into her puppet by giving him the Hessian mark, turning him into a dark cultist working for Neo-Hellfire. During this time, Melancholia talks to Michael's shadow within her deluded mind, and "Michael" promised her to bring Eckidina KnightWalker's downfall with Moloch's power before they both overthrow Moloch and rule the Earth together. Believing it was the Pope's own wish, Melancholia smiled. However, for others, they only thought that the Mother Superior was telling to herself.

Meanwhile, Aleister Crowley had given her the Pope's order via phone, telling her to attack the Eastern Orthodox Church members who planned to overthrown the New USSR, before going to Aldgeyr Kingdom and help them to capture La Folia - which was a prologue of Michael's plan to weaken the Orthodox Church and to pact with Kanon Rihavein & King Hamdo. What is more, Patriach Krans was one of the wise people who believed that Michael was behind all of the chaos in Europe 1 week ago.

Seizing a chance to make a difference, Melancholia was glad to accept the mission, but when she arrived at her destination, Ukraine, her "Michael Langdon" persona started to take over her, making her deluded. She believed that herself was Michael and started to dress up as his "Unknown Grand Grimoire Figure" persona in order to attack the Orthodox clergies.



However, the Patraich had defeated her and unknowningly erased her "Michael" persona for a while. Upon realizing she was dressed up like Michael and played his role all along, Melancholia screamed and fled. After that, she felt too ashame to face the real Michael and began waiting in Syberia for her chance to kill the young Patraich, but then she was delighted since she spotted that Carl and Erica was in Russia as well, with Carl went missing and Erica was under the Patraich's protection.

More coming soon!

Lost Family Arc
"Those who shattered my dream to be together with my beloved one shall soak in the pugnent rain of my revenge..."

- The original Melancholia, vowing vengence upon anyone whom she deemed as enemies In Lost Family Sub Arc, the Fusion Melancholia became the hidden but true main antagonist, being the one who is responsible for luring Ichabod into the haunted Fredericks Manor. She was also one (alongside Henry Parrish / Jeremy Crane) who made the golem to be released from Purgatory, which caused troubles everywhere.

Almost immediately after the demise of the Future Melancholia, the original 2013 Melancholia who possessed her future counterpart was awakened from her hyper sleep, and she became mentally insane due to her "demise". She claimed that she felt nothing but hatred, pain and sorrow during her first "death". Therefore, knowing that her mind had in fact returned to the past, Melancholia vowed to hunt down the toddler Carl for vengence. However, once she realized that Carl was also in the past, Melancholia informed Moloch about this and then, she started an attack on Carl as well as Ichabod Crane.

Due to her defeat as well as the effects of Carl's blood still existed in her mental system, Melancholia began to become mentally unstable and paranoid. She began to have illusions that Carl seperated her from her beloved Michael Langdon, and she angrily vowed vengence, not just upon Carl, but also Ichabod Crane, Abbie Mills, Sister Mary Eunice and anyone who was enemies of Michael himself.

In Fredericks Manor, Melancholia committed a murder after kidnapping a teenager highly resembled Michael, by slashing his throat and wrote the name of Carl and Ichabod on two voodoo dolls. She cursed Ichabod and vowed to cut off Ihis head using the deathly Sword of Sorrow, which had finally came into use. Then, Melancholia told the Tree Monster (who had not attack her since she was Moloch's minion) to kill anyone who invade the house.

Later, when Lena Gilbert, a decendant of Lachlan Fredericks, had arrived at Fredericks Manor (along with her own bodyguard Sam) to return to her ancestor's estate, Melancholia sliced Sam's throat and killed him almost instantly. Then, after Ms. Gilbert arrived in the house, Melancholia ordered the Tree Monster to tie Lena Gilbert with its vines, trapping her in the door and trying to kill her slowly and painfully. Then, Melancholia left without being injured.

After the missing case was out, Ichabod and Abbie arrived at Fredericks Manor to save Ms. Gilbert, but they were all trapped inside Fredericks Manor. Abbie tried to find a way out before she managed to contact with the spirit of Grace Dixon, who had lead her to the very room where Katrina gave birth to her son.

In the room Abbie then saw everything happened in the past, realizing that the reason that how this house of sanctuary had turned into a pit of hell. Soon afterwards, she had found the secret passage and informed Ichabod everything about it. In a fit of rage, Ichabod killed the Tree Monster by destroying its roots underground.

After that, Ichabod left with Abbie and Gilbert, not knowing that Melancholia was watching the scene on the roof. A sadistic smile appeared on Melancholia's face, suggesting that it was far from over. In fact, it was only the beginning of her and her Master's plan. Later, Sister Mary Eunice informed Ichabod about Melancholia's presence, warning him about this wicked fairy's plan of insanity.

Appearance
In both timelines, Melancholia has green eyes, pale skin and a tall hourglass figure, yet her eyes will turn yellow when she went berserk. However, the future Melancholia has longer hair than her past self.

Usually, Melancholia wore suit, but when she was angry or excited, she immediately went berserk and will summon an origami armor that merged with her, turning her suit into a real black metal armor - and she called it her "Paranoia" form. In this form, Melancholia harnessed inhuman speed, strength and better fighting skills while her intellegence remained intact, making her extremely dangerous.

Fusion Melancholia
Because of her care, gratitude and romatic love for Michael, the fusion Melancholia who still had some sides of Plaisir, is not a Complete Monster, but still she has ruthless and psychopathic traits. Like Moloch, Melancholia has no tolerants to fools or failure. She even stabbed a minion of hers to death simply because he did not waked her up. At first, she hated humanity and considered humans as threats because long as she lived, she had witnessed corruptions, dictactorship and war. Her views of humanity was the same of Michael's view.



Melancholia also suffered from a split personality and she sometimes talking to a shadowy Michael inside her deluded mind, and she even dressed up as Michael while attacking Patraich Krans, Acqua of the Back and Orthodox Church clergies in Siberia. When her hood were hit down by the Patraich, Melancholia looked at herself within the mirror. Realized that she was playing Michael's role in her deluded mind, Melancholia screamed in terror before she escaped, showing her love for Michael had drove her mad. However, she was still deluded that she could not figured out that her "Michael" persona was planted by the original Michael inside her body in order to drive her insane.

Despite being manacing, Melancholia is not a completely serious person, since she had a dark sense of humor and loved to use sarcasm, making her sense of humor seemed twisted, but she could be a comic relief as well in certain circumstances.

Also, her romantic love for Michael - though she geniuely loved Michael, not seeing him as a possession - had became twisted when Michael made her a lure to make Carl Robinson came close to the cocoon of FOLIE, thus killing her future counterpart, hatching FOLIE prematurely and driving the past Melancholia as insane as Michael himself. Unknowing for Michael's demonic plan to outlive Melancholia so that he could release FOLIE earlier, Melancholia blamed Carl for her failure to raise FOLIE on Earth, since the love she had on Michael had blinded her.

After Michael's apparent death, the past Melancholia has become so twisted that she keep capturing humans and transformed them into a Michael after another, making their voice, physical appearance and even genes are as same as him. However, she became genuiuely heroic once she had realized that Michael never loved her, making her fell into a disillusion until Betsy Ross, Katrina Crane and Nick Hawley came to cheer her up, bringing back her original cheerful personality and casting the more melavolent serum Melancholia out.

After becoming a hero and joined the final stand, Plaisir embraced the true happiness she had always wished from Ichabod and his friends - a kind of true happiness that she never received from Michael or the outcome of letting people cry. It was a hard and unbelievable road to redemption since many people once considered Plaisir as an irredeemable monster.

Serum Melancholia
On the other hand, the serum Melancholia, who was splitting from the original Melancholia/Plaisir's body, was utterly different from any other versions of Melancholia. The serum Melancholia, formerly known as the "Shadow" Melancholia, was in fact the REAL Melancholia who controlled her vessel that became the so-called Original Melancholia and pressed her good counterpart, forcing her to commit evil plan in order to make Michael proud.

With no empathy provided by her Plaisir persona after being casted out, the serum Melancholia was lack of empathy and emotions. After being casted out, the serum Melancholia felt empty and boring due to without a body, and she soon went into some sort of state of madness, desperate trying to fill her old, wandering soul which contained nothing but pure hatred, evil and boredom. Therefore, after witnessing Dr. Jekyll's death along with Mr. Hyde, the serum Melancholia found out that the evil counterpart seperated from its host could only be destroyed when its good counterpart is dead.

Using this, the serum torturing her good counterpart by hurting herself, making the pain she suffered transferred on the body of Plaisir, so that Plaisir shall choose between a slow and painful death along with her evil counterpart, or embrace the darkness and despair by fusing with the serum Melancholia once again and turning into a unique Melancholia. During this time, Melancholia revealed to her heroic counterpart that this kind of torture is "funny to watch".

However, with the help of Mr. Gold, who managed to break the coonection between her and the serum Melancholia forever, Plaisir defied the serum Melancholia with her own will, not willing to turn back into evil once again. Then, Melancholia went berserk before she tried to kill Plaisir's friends in Team Witness, making an reminiscent of those dreadful events which broke Plaisir's spirit. Fortunately, she was casted into Nine Hells by the soul of Vanifer just in time, but not before she desperate trying to escape her fate and drag her heroic counterpart in Hell with her.

Equipment

 * Grand Grimoire (formerly)
 * Sword of Sorrow - The New Time Melancholia's equipment made by Michael Langdon as a gift to "remember [him]". The sword is always poisoned since Michael had boiled it in toxin, and can kill people within minutes even with the slightest cut. Melancholia knows this and she hardly use this sword unless in emergency, in order to avoid hurting people that was loyal and useful to her, but due to Moloch's inflence, she like to use it to cut some of her minions she deemed useless, especially when they failed her, so that she can let Michael see them crying in sadness.
 * Spear of Sin - The evil counterpart of the Spear of Virtue, which was made by the cultists form the Order of Terror centuries ago to destroy the Spear of Virtue.

Etymology
The name "melancholia" comes from the old medical belief of the four humours: disease or ailment being caused by an imbalance in one or other of the four basic bodily liquids, or humours. Personality types were similarly determined by the dominant humor in a particular person. According to Hippocrates and subsequent tradition, melancholia was caused by an excess of black bile, hence the name, which means "black bile", from Ancient Greek μέλας (melas), "dark, black", and χολή (kholé), "bile"; a person whose constitution tended to have a preponderance of black bile had a melancholic disposition. In the complex elaboration of humorist theory, it was associated with the earth from the Four Elements, the season of autumn, the spleen as the originating organ and cold and dry as related qualities. In astrology it showed the influence of Saturn, hence the related adjective saturnine.

Melancholia was described as a distinct disease with particular mental and physical symptoms in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. Hippocrates, in his Aphorisms, characterized all "fears and despondencies, if they last a long time" as being symptomatic of melancholia. When a patient could not be cured of the disease it was thought that the melancholia was a result of demonic possession.

In his study of French and Burgundian courtly culture, Johan Huizinga noted that "at the close of the Middle Ages, a sombre melancholy weighs on people's souls." In chronicles, poems, sermons, even in legal documents, an immense sadness, a note of despair and a fashionable sense of suffering and deliquescence at the approaching end of times, suffuses court poets and chroniclers alike: Huizinga quotes instances in the ballads of Eustache Deschamps, "monotonous and gloomy variations of the same dismal theme", and in Georges Chastellain's prologue to his Burgundian chronicle, and in the late fifteenth-century poetry of Jean Meschinot. Ideas of reflection and the workings of imagination are blended in the term merencolie, embodying for contemporaries "a tendency", observes Huizinga, "to identify all serious occupation of the mind with sadness".

Painters were considered by Vasari and other writers to be especially prone to melancholy by the nature of their work, sometimes with good effects for their art in increased sensitivity and use of fantasy. Among those of his contemporaries so characterised by Vasari were Pontormo and Parmigianino, but he does not use the term of Michelangelo, who used it, perhaps not very seriously, of himself. A famous allegorical engraving by Albrecht Dürer is entitled Melencolia I. This engraving has been interpreted as portraying melancholia as the state of waiting for inspiration to strike, and not necessarily as a depressive affliction. Amongst other allegorical symbols, the picture includes a magic square and a truncated rhombohedron. The image in turn inspired a passage in The City of Dreadful Night by James Thomson (B.V.), and, a few years later, a sonnet by Edward Dowden.

Creations

 * Neo-Hellfire Cyborgs
 * Neo-Hellfire Artificial Demons
 * Lobster Men
 * Deep Fiends
 * Michael Langdon's clones
 * Mutated Biagio Busoni
 * Mutated Matt Butcher
 * FOLIE

Melody
''There was a friendly, but naive king  Who wed a very nasty Queen '' The King was loved, but the Queen was feared Till one day strolling in his court An arrow pierced the kind King's heart He lost his life but his lady laughed

Quotes

 * "Let me ask you something, what does it matter if you send me back to Purgatory if it doesn't matter to me? I've proved my point. Firenza Junior's been driven mad. I've demonstrated there's no difference between me and everyone else."
 * "All it takes is one bad day, Arzonia... That's how far the world is from where I am, just one bad day. You had a bad day once, am I right? Oh, I know I am. I can tell. You had a bad day and everything changed. Dressing up like a armored bird doesn't hide it. It screams it."
 * "Is that Grimoire or Grimoires? For me, the answer is clear. There are MORE THAN ONE Grand Grimoires. Michael now has one of them, but where are the rest? Never mind. As long as we have this version with the Prophecy of Tribulations, we will know everything coming into our way."
 * "However, despite Michael's indifference of the other Grand Grimoires, I am, currently, still obsessed on finding them.I believed some of them were burned down in Salem Witch Trials and/or Auto-da-fé, at that time people were in sheer frenzy. Ignorance ruins innocence..."
 * "As for myself, there is nothing to worry about. As long as Lord Moloch exists, I shall never ever be ignorant. My future self was so foolish that she joined Triggers Hell and got the Grand Grimoire, but possessing her and merging with her memories means making myself to learn more things she knows that I was yet to know."
 * "You had a bad day and it drove you as crazy as everybody else, only you won't admit it. You have to keep pretending that life makes sense, that there's some point to all this struggling."
 * "People never need reason. They need excuse! That excuse often comes from that one bad day! I know you have, as much as I had. I hate to remember that day, and I made up lies to cover that. Therefore, if I really had one bad day, I dare doubt it is composed by multiple catalysts."
 * "Without knowing why, I began to enjoy people cry and with tears of sadness on their face. Building my own happiness on others' sadness, that wasn't supposed to happened, but the queer things is... It made me happy... What is wrong with me? What is W-R-O-N-G with me?"
 * "This is not the true happiness I wanted! Moloch made me into this... I had no choice but becoming his servant, thus making him my master, but in fact... I really hate him. That's no wonder why my future self had left him without carrying on his legacy. That's no wonder why my future self was not defeated by Team Witness. She was preaching to the converted."
 * "You may started to hate me, but sadly, this is who I am, and as long as I can see Michael smile, I will do anything for him! For years, I helped Michael to conceal evidence by making the corpses of our victims into bio-weapons, especially into our masterpiece - FOLIE, which is our mightiest work to recreate the Great Flood! However, this time there shall be no Noah's Ark."
 * "Since Moloch burned my friends to make me join him, I started to hate fire. So, I am gonna use water, the greatest foe of fire, to wipe out humanity's disgrace and corruption. The KnightWalker Family? They'll drown. Stalinists? Nazis? Fascists? Imperialists? They'll all drown, and the world will eventually bow down to us into a world full of purity and peace... and then WE WON'T NEED MOLOCH ANYMORE. We will dump him like a trash and rule the world ourselves."
 * ""M" was for the murderous look she gave me. "O" meant only that she was weak and old. "T" is for her terror as she fought Moloch. "H" is for her heart, which is now lost. "E" is for her eyes, swiftly dimming. "R" means rot, and soon rotting she will be. Put them all together, they spell "MOTHER", a word that is now a corpse to me. Happy Mother's Day, Mommy."
 * "My point is... I... Went... Crazy! And I'm smart enough to admit it. Why can't you?! Everything anybody's ever valued of struggled for, it's monstrous! Why can't you see the depressing side? WHY AREN'T YOU CRYING!?"
 * "Well, well, well, and on today of all days, do you remember my early work? It's flawed but still promising, just like you, Firenza Junior. Staring with the seasons, and moving through the weeks, I became stronger. My work will be more elaborated. Days were the secrets, Firenza Junior, and the End of Days is coming. I was there at your beginning, and I will be there at your end."

Affiliation

 * Triggers Hell
 * Moloch
 * Neo-Hellfire
 * Michael Langdon
 * Fallen Roman Catholic Church
 * Balam Alliance (indirectly)
 * KnightWalker Family (indirectly)

Trivia

 * The Supreme Croat Form of Melancholia was inspired by Yuki-onna, literally means "Snow Woman" in English, which was a creature in Japanese mythology.
 * Because of her trauma, Melancholia has a slight pyrophobia, making her dislike bombing and prefering to flood the world with water.
 * Mary-1-by-Eworth.jpgcholia was partly based on the infamous Queen Mary I of England (right; known to historians as "Bloody Mary") since she reflected the latter's ruthless, wrath and obsessive personality.
 * Melancholia is a good opera singer, and she sings her song while engaged a fight, mostly an operatic style.
 * She is obseessed with origami arts and could make origami models into real things.
 * Despite being ruthless and chaotic, Melancholia hated Eckidina KnightWalker, Junko Enoshima, Terra of the Left and Hiragi Kureto very much.
 * She believed a theory that art of paper folding was originated in Ancient China before arriving at Japan during Tang Dynasty and spawn the birth of Japanese origami.
 * Even though NOT being a Complete Monster at first, no doubt that Melancholia is one of the darkest villainesses ever within the entire LOTM: Witnesses of Sleepy Hollow storyline. However, after splitting from her good side, the serum Melancholia had become one Complete Monster after losing all her positive qualities without Plaisir straining her.
 * Melancholia could be compared to Harley Quinn who desired her master's love but eventually got severly abused/backstabbed.
 * Melancholia is the first delusional villainess appears in LOTM: Witnesses of Sleepy Hollow storyline, as she believes herself is a righteous person within a corrupt world she wants to purge.

Ivan the Terrible
Ivan IV Vasilyevich (Russian: Ива́н Васи́льевич, tr. Ivan Vasilyevich; 25 August 1530 – 28 March [O.S. 18 March] 1584), commonly known as Ivan the Terrible or Ivan the Fearsome (Russian: About this sound Ива́н Гро́зный​ (help·info), Ivan Grozny; a better translation into modern English would be Ivan the Formidable), was the Grand Prince of Moscow from 1533 to 1547, then "Tsar of All the Russias" until his death in 1584. The last title was used by all his successors.

During his reign, Russia conquered the Khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan and Sibir, becoming a multiethnic and multicontinental state spanning approximately 4,050,000 km2 (1,560,000 sq mi). He exercised autocratic control over Russia's hereditary nobility and developed a bureaucracy to administer the new territories. He transformed Russia from a medieval state into an empire, though at immense cost to its people, and its broader, long-term economy.

Historic sources present disparate accounts of Ivan's complex personality: he was described as intelligent and devout, yet given to rages and prone to episodic outbreaks of mental instability[3] that increased with his age. In one such outburst, he killed his son and heir Ivan Ivanovich. This left his younger son, the pious but politically ineffectual Feodor Ivanovich, to inherit the throne.

Ivan was an able diplomat, a patron of arts and trade, and founder of the Moscow Print Yard, Russia's first publishing house. He was popular among Russia's commoners (see Ivan the Terrible in Russian folklore), except possibly the people of Novgorod and surrounding areas (see "Massacre of Novgorod"), and he is also noted for his paranoia and harsh treatment of the Russian nobility.

Queen Mary I of England


Mary I (18 February 1516 – 17 November 1558) was the Queen of England and Ireland from July 1553 until her death. Her executions of Protestants led to the posthumous sobriquet "Bloody Mary". She was the only child of Henry VIII by his first wife Catherine of Aragon to survive to adulthood. Her younger half-brother Edward VI (son of Henry and Jane Seymour) succeeded their father in 1547.

When Edward became mortally ill in 1553, he attempted to remove Mary from the line of succession because of religious differences. On his death their first cousin once removed, Lady Jane Grey, was proclaimed queen. Mary assembled a force in East Anglia and deposed Jane, who was ultimately beheaded. Mary was—excluding the disputed reigns of Jane and the Empress Matilda—the first queen regnant of England. In 1554, Mary married Philip of Spain, becoming queen consort of Habsburg Spain on his accession in 1556.

Mary is remembered for her restoration of Roman Catholicism after her half-brother's short-lived Protestant reign. During her five-year reign, she had over 280 religious dissenters burned at the stake in the Marian persecutions. After her death in 1558, her re-establishment of Roman Catholicism was reversed by her younger half-sister and successor Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry and Anne Boleyn.

Jiang Qing


Jiang Qing (Chinese: 江青; Wade–Giles: Chiang Ch'ing, March 19, 1914 – May 14, 1991) was a Chinese actress and a major political figure during the Cultural Revolution (1966–76). She was the fourth wife of Mao Zedong, the Chairman of the Communist Party and Paramount leader of China. She used the stage name Lan Ping (蓝苹) during her acting career, and was known by many other names. She married Mao in Yan'an in November 1938 and served as the inaugural "First Lady" of the People's Republic of China. Jiang Qing was best known for playing a major role in the Cultural Revolution and for forming the radical political alliance known as the "Gang of Four".

Jiang Qing served as Mao's personal secretary in the 1940s and was head of the Film Section of the Communist Party's Propaganda Department in the 1950s. She served as an important emissary for Mao in the early stages of the Cultural Revolution. In 1966 she was appointed deputy director of the Central Cultural Revolution Group. She collaborated with Lin Biao to advance Mao's unique brand of Communist ideology as well as Mao's cult of personality. At the height of the Cultural Revolution, Jiang Qing held significant influence in the affairs of state, particularly in the realm of culture and the arts, and was idolized in propaganda posters as the "Great Flagbearer of the Proletarian Revolution". In 1969, Jiang gained a seat on the Politburo.

Before Mao's death, the Gang of Four controlled many of China's political institutions, including the media and propaganda. However, Jiang Qing, deriving most of her political legitimacy from Mao, often found herself at odds with other top leaders. Mao's death in 1976 dealt a significant blow to Jiang Qing's political fortunes. She was arrested in October 1976 by Hua Guofeng and his allies, and was subsequently condemned by party authorities. Since then, Jiang Qing has been officially branded as having been part of the "Lin Biao and Jiang Qing Counter-Revolutionary Clique" (林彪江青反革命集团), to which most of the blame for the damage and devastation caused by the Cultural Revolution was assigned. Though she was initially sentenced to death, her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in 1983. After being released for medical treatment, Jiang Qing committed suicide in May 1991.

Catherine de' Medici


Catherine de' Medici (Italian: Caterina de' Medici pronounced [kateˈriːna de ˈmɛːditʃi]; French: Catherine de Médicis pronounced: [katʁin də medisis], 13 April 1519 – 5 January 1589), daughter of Lorenzo II de' Medici and of Madeleine de La Tour d'Auvergne, was an Italian noblewoman who was Queen of France from 1547 until 1559, as the wife of King Henry II. As the mother of three sons who became kings of France during her lifetime, she had extensive, if at times varying, influence in the political life of France. For a time, she ruled France as its regent.

In 1533, at the age of fourteen, Caterina married Henry, second son of King Francis I and Queen Claude of France. Under the gallicised version of her name, Catherine de Médicis, she was Queen consort of France as the wife of King Henry II of France from 1547 to 1559. Throughout his reign, Henry excluded Catherine from participating in state affairs and instead showered favours on his chief mistress, Diane de Poitiers, who wielded much influence over him. Henry's death thrust Catherine into the political arena as mother of the frail fifteen-year-old King Francis II. When he died in 1560, she became regent on behalf of her ten-year-old son King Charles IX and was granted sweeping powers. After Charles died in 1574, Catherine played a key role in the reign of her third son, Henry III. He dispensed with her advice only in the last months of her life.

Catherine's three sons reigned in an age of almost constant civil and religious war in France. The problems facing the monarchy were complex and daunting but Catherine was able to keep the monarchy and the state institutions functioning even at a minimum level. At first, Catherine compromised and made concessions to the rebelling Protestants, or Huguenots, as they became known. She failed, however, to grasp the theological issues that drove their movement. Later she resorted, in frustration and anger, to hard-line policies against them. In return, she came to be blamed for the excessive persecutions carried out under her sons' rule, in particular for the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre of 1572, in which thousands of Huguenots were killed in Paris and throughout France.

Brides of Dracula
The Brides of Dracula are secondary antagonists in Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula. They are three seductive female vampire "sisters" who reside with Count Dracula in his castle in Transylvania, where they entrance male humans with their beauty and charm, and then proceed to feed upon them. Dracula provides them with victims to devour, mainly infants and children. Like Dracula, they are the living dead, repulsed by religious objects. In chapter three of the novel, two are described as dark haired and the other as blonde. In the novel the three vampire women are not individually named. Collectively, they are known as the "sisters", and are at one point described as the "weird sisters".

One of the three may have been identified in the short story Dracula's Guest as the vampire named Countess Dolengen of Gratz. Since Jonathan Harker is suggested to be the protagonist of the story he encounters her at her tomb in Munich which Dracula protects him from; saving his life from the vampire as well as, in the form of a great wolf, keeping him warm from the cold and yelping for nearby soldiers to come to their location. In the Dracula novel Harker writes about one of the female vampires in the moment he is with them stating, "I seemed somehow to know her face, and to know it in connection with some dreamy fear, but I could not recollect at the moment how or where."

Although the three vampire women in Dracula are popularly referred to as the "Brides of Dracula", they are never referred to as such in the novel, instead referred to as the 'sisters'; whether they are married to Dracula or not is never mentioned, nor are they described as having any other relation to him. Though it is mentioned by the sisters that Dracula does not love, nor has he ever loved them, the count himself claims he too can love and asked them if they remember his love from the past. The two dark-haired women, however, are described by Jonathan Harker to have "high aquiline noses, like the Count's".

It has been suggested from this that it may have been Stoker's intent that these two are Dracula's daughters, extending the sexuality metaphor of vampirism to incest. Even though it is never specified/made clear, it is possible that the term "sister" wasn't meant in the literal sense and is, instead, more comparable to the relationship of the women and not as they are to Dracula. As they are also depicted in the novel calling Mina Harker their sister after she was forced to drink the blood of Dracula and being afflicted with signs of vampirism herself. Mina and Lucy also call each other sisters in the novel despite not having any blood relation. Despite their words, the sisters have oddly never been recorded by the protagonists of the novel to have followed Dracula's orders without question. Dracula is angry at them for disobeying his commands by trying to feed on Jonathan, but he does show that he cares somewhat for them by offering them something to eat in the form of the contents of the "wiggling bag", and honors his promise to give them Harker when he leaves, though it is not revealed why he leaves them behind in Transylvania rather than taking them to London with him.

As vampires, the sisters are powerful in their own right; their beauty and playful charm belie lethal, predatory interiors. Their beauty and flirtatious manner appears to be their greatest power when it comes to bewitching their victims into a trance-like state. Harker and Van Helsing are both attracted to, and yet repulsed by them. They can seemingly appear out of nowhere and are inhumanly strong as shown when they kill Van Helsing's horses and are seen flying in the air with their dresses trailing behind them. They apparently do not live in fear of Dracula, as they disobey his orders not to feed on Harker before the house transaction is finished. The blond vampire can be seen defying him when she demands to feed upon Harker and they openly tease Dracula that he "never loves". One of the brunette vampires encourages the blond to feed on Harker first, saying ‘Go on! You are first, and we shall follow. Yours is the right to begin.’ depicting her to have some sort of status over the others. This may suggest that she could be his wife or consort; aiding this theory is the fact that when Harker comes across their sleeping quarters, he finds her tomb to be more opulent, as if meant for a loved one. As such there's a possibility that the blonde is the mother of the two dark-haired females, if they are indeed his daughters, but this is speculation. However, considering how easily Dracula was able to knock away the bride that almost fed on Harker, it is likely that Dracula is stronger than them and could dispatch of them if he wished which may be why the brides never attempted to try and directly challenge him. There is also some speculation that, despite their demeanor towards him, they may retain some love for him since they've never tried to leave the castle. The fact that Dracula promises them Harker when he leaves and gives them the "wiggling bag" leads some credence that Dracula likewise still cares for them.

The brides serve as foreshadowing for the threat of Vampirism in the story which, as seen with Lucy Westenra later on, includes his power of corruption over his victims once he has drained their blood and made them into vampires. It's fairly likely that the three women were previous victims of his, and are examples of his desire to make more Vampires like himself.

Avenger/Joan Alter
Avenger/Joan Alter's True Name is Jeanne d'Arc (Alter) (ジャンヌ・ダルク〔オルタ〕, Jan'nu Daruku (Oruta)?), also known as Jeanne Alter (ジャンヌ・オルタ, Jan'nu Oruta?), the Altered version of Jeanne d'Arc. Although designated an Alter, it does not mean that she is a different aspect of Jeanne d'Arc. A Jeanne of vengeance that Gilles de Rais, the French Army's marshal who grieved for Jeanne d'Arc's death, fabricated by means of the Holy Grail shortly after the execution of Jeanne in 1431. As a Heroic Spirit that is an exact opposite of the proper Jeanne, she is manifesting in the Avenger Class.

Since the proper Jeanne is not a hero, but a saint, the possibility of "summoning a different aspect of her" is nil. Because this black Jeanne has Gilles de Rais' anger... the prejudices and wishes for her to be like that... mixed in with her fundamental parts, a "side" that should never happen ended up being brought to the surface. As such, one can think that this Jeanne d'Arc is mostly made up by Gilles de Rais' prejudices; an existence encapsulating much of the corrupted Gilles' biases and feelings. The Dragon Witch that resurrected for the sake of getting vengeance against France. A holy woman who talks about justice as if she owned the place and, without having any doubts about that, is spurred on by the wrath against the people; that is the form which Gilles de Rais wished her to be like.

Bellatrix Lestrange
Bellatrix Lestrange (née Black) (1951 – 2 May, 1998) is a major antagonist in Harry Potter series, being the secondary antagonist in Harry Potter and the Order of Phoenix, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollow. She was a pure-blood witch, the eldest daughter of Cygnus Black III and Druella Black (née Rosier) and elder sister of Andromeda Tonks and Narcissa Malfoy. She was a member of the House of Black, an old wizarding family and one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. Bellatrix started her education at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in 1962 and was Sorted into Slytherin House.

After graduating from Hogwarts she became a Death Eater. She was fanatically loyal to Lord Voldemort and was among the most dangerous and sadistic of Voldemort's followers. While Bellatrix and Narcissa married pure-blood wizards, Andromeda married Ted Tonks, a Muggle-born wizard and was disowned by the family. Andromeda was burned off the Black family tree, just like Sirius Black, and they were forbidden to talk about her. At the end of the First Wizarding War, while searching for information on Lord Voldemort, Bellatrix, Rodolphus Lestrange (husband), Rabastan Lestrange (brother-in-law), and Barty Crouch Jr took part in the torture of the Aurors Frank and Alice Longbottom (parents of Neville Longbottom) driving them insane. They were caught and sentenced to life imprisonment in Azkaban for torturing the two Aurors.

Bellatrix escaped from Azkaban in the 1996 mass break-out, along with nine other Death Eaters. She participated in several battles of the Second Wizarding War, making it a particular goal to murder any relatives who were members of the Order of the Phoenix, including her cousin Sirius Black and niece Nymphadora Tonks. Bellatrix also murdered the Malfoy family's former house-elf, Dobby, who had become a firm ally of Harry Potter, with her knife. During the final battle, apart from Voldemort, she was the last Death Eater standing, but was eventually killed in a duel by Molly Weasley after her attempted murder of Molly Weasley's daughter, Ginevra Weasley.

Unknown to the world, however, before her death, Bellatrix gave birth to an illegitimate daughter named Delphini, whom she conceived with her beloved master, Lord Voldemort. Delphini was conceived sometime after the Battle of the Department of Mysteries in 1996 and before Bellatrix's death at the Battle of Hogwarts.

Edward Hyde
Edward Hyde, or better known as Mr. Hyde, is the main antagonist in the novella, "Strange Case Of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" by Robert Louis Stevenson. He is the vile, malicious and violent dark side of Henry Jekyll, unleashed by use of a potion. Over the course of the novel, Jekyll transforms into Hyde in order to keep his good and evil personalities separate, only to find himself addicted to the potion as Hyde slowly overtakes him. He has been the subject of many films, and was prominently featured in the first two volumes of The League of Extraordinary Gentleman, a graphic novel by Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill.