| Lord Asriel | |
|---|---|
| First appearance | La Belle Sauvage |
| Last appearance | The Amber Spyglass |
| Created by | Philip Pullman |
| Portrayed by | Daniel Craig (film) Timothy Dalton (stage) James McAvoy (TV series) Terence Stamp (radio) |
| Voiced by | Chris Edgerly (video game) |
| In-universe information | |
| Occupation | Experimental theologian and explorer |
| Children | Lyra Belacqua (daughter) |
| Age | late-40s to mid-50s through the main trilogy |
Lord Asriel is a character in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Asriel is a member of the aristocracy in a parallel universe dominated by the Church. Possessed of enormous determination and willpower, he is fierce in nature and commands great respect in both the political and academic spheres, being a military leader and a fellow of Jordan College in his world's version of Exeter College, Oxford.
Asriel is one variant spelling of the Hebraic name Azrael, who occurs in the Jewish and Muslim tradition, and is traditionally believed to be the Angel of Death in some sects of Islam, as well as some Hebrew lore. [1] [2] His dæmon is called Stelmaria, a snow leopard.
Prior to the beginning of the trilogy, Lord Asriel had been a highly respected member of the 'Brytish' aristocracy. He had been an explorer and did work in "experimental theology", through which he acquired much power, land, and money. After having an affair with another politician's wife, Marisa Coulter, that resulted in the birth of Lyra, his life changed. Mrs Coulter's husband, Edward Coulter, attacked Lyra and her foster mother intending to harm and possibly murder Lyra. Lord Asriel intervened and killed Coulter. When the church found out, Asriel was tried and lost all property. Six-month-old Lyra was sent to a convent. Lord Asriel, who hated the church, arrived one day and took Lyra to his alma mater, Jordan College, where she was brought up believing Asriel to be her uncle, rather than her father.
At the beginning of the trilogy, Lord Asriel visits Jordan College where he is almost poisoned by the Master. Asriel is saved by Lyra, who has secretly been watching the Master pour the poison into Lord Asriel's wine glass. Asriel is giving a Lecture to the Fellows of Jordan College hoping to raise money for an expedition. In the lecture he uses photograms of Dust and a city in the sky, as well as a severed head that he says is Stanislaus Grumman's. He travels to Svalbard but is imprisoned and guarded by the bear warriors known as the panserbjørne, led by Iofur Raknison. This action has been ordered by the General Oblation Board, which is headed by his ex-lover, Marisa Coulter. He receives hospitable treatment, and waits for a child on whom to perform intercision (a process to detach a child's dæmon that often results in the child's death). He is hoping to open a window in the aurora using the energy generated by the intercision in order to travel into a different universe. Eventually a child arrives, Roger Parslow, unwittingly brought by Lyra.
Asriel enters Cittàgazze and, after a battle, allies himself with the rebel angels under Xaphania. He travels to an empty world and builds an enormous basalt fortress, gathering armies from many different worlds to start his rebellion against the Kingdom of Heaven. Ruta Skadi finds him, and he tells her his plan, and gets her clan's support in the war.
Later, he has his allies, King Ogunwe and Lord Roke, find and rescue Lyra from Mrs Coulter. They capture Mrs Coulter, but Lyra and Will escape with two of Lord Roke's agents. Lord Asriel then attends to Mrs Coulter and tries to influence Lyra and Will, as they hold the key to renewing the Dust flow. Lord Asriel lets Mrs Coulter escape in an 'Intention Craft' and has Lord Roke follow her to gain information from the Consistorial Court of Discipline. They learn that the Church has made a bomb to kill Lyra, and Lord Asriel rescues Mrs Coulter just in time. He destroys Saint-Jean Les Eaux (the location of the bomb) with his Intention Craft.
Lyra survives, and Lord Asriel has his army search for her and Will's dæmons so the Authority's armies will be unable to control them. When Lord Asriel finds that the bomb has blown a hole under all the worlds into the abyss, he devises a plan to defeat the Authority's powerful Regent, Metatron. As his forces fight the armies of the Authority and the Church, Mrs Coulter tricks Metatron into trying to kill Lord Asriel and to take Lyra's dæmon. As they are standing on the edge of the abyss, Lord Asriel and Mrs Coulter sacrifice themselves, falling into the abyss and taking Metatron with them. All three are condemned to fall through the abyss for eternity.
Marisa Coulter was Edward Coulter's wife. Lyra, the product of Marisa's affair with Lord Asriel, was born when Marisa was just 21. Lyra resembled Asriel rather than Edward Coulter, so Mrs Coulter gave her to Asriel, who placed their daughter with a gyptian woman, later revealed to be Ma Costa. When Edward Coulter found out about the affair, he went to kill the baby Lyra, but Asriel fought and killed Edward. Asriel had his wealth and status taken away, and Lyra was placed in a convent. Asriel, outraged, took Lyra from the convent, and placed her at Jordan College, and ordered the Master to never allow Mrs Coulter to contact Lyra. However, Marisa eventually turns up, intending to take Lyra north. Lyra agrees, but escapes when she discovers Mrs Coulter's intentions for the stolen children, as the head of the Oblation Board. When Lyra is kidnapped and taken to Bolvangar, Marisa races in to rescue her just as Lyra and Pantalaimon are about to be severed. In the film adaptation, she comforts Lyra and tells her she is her mother. Horrified, Lyra escapes once again, and this time she seeks out Lord Asriel to deliver the alethiometer. Unknowingly, Lyra leads her friend, Roger, to his death at the hands of Asriel, as Asriel requires the energy release of severing a child from their daemon in order to open the rift between the worlds. At this time Mrs Coulter and Lord Asriel briefly meet, but Asriel leaves her to continue his campaign while Mrs Coulter hesitates.
Lord Asriel and Mrs Coulter meet once again in The Amber Spyglass, when Mrs Coulter is captured by Asriel's men. He rescues her once as well and takes her back to his adamant tower. She and Asriel join forces to defeat Metatron, the powerful regent of the Authority, simply to give Lyra, their child, a chance to live. They die together in a chasm between worlds to destroy Metatron.
From December 2003 to March 2004, London's Royal National Theatre staged an adaptation of His Dark Materials in which Lord Asriel was played by Timothy Dalton.
Daniel Craig played the role of Lord Asriel in the 2007 film adaptation The Golden Compass with Nicole Kidman playing Marisa Coulter. [3]
James McAvoy plays the role in the BBC television adaptation. [4]
| His Dark Materials | |
|---|---|
| The Book of Dust | |
| Companion books | |
| Characters | |
| Adaptations |
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| Other | |
His Dark Materials is a trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman consisting of Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife (1997), and The Amber Spyglass (2000). It follows the coming of age of two children, Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry, as they wander through a series of parallel universes. The novels have won a number of awards, including the Carnegie Medal in 1995 for Northern Lights and the 2001 Whitbread Book of the Year for The Amber Spyglass. In 2003, the trilogy was ranked third on the BBC's The Big Read poll.
Dogma is a 1999 American fantasy comedy film written and directed by Kevin Smith, who also stars with Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, George Carlin, Linda Fiorentino, Janeane Garofalo, Chris Rock, Jason Lee, Salma Hayek, Bud Cort, Alan Rickman, Alanis Morissette in her feature film debut, and Jason Mewes. It is the fourth film in Smith's View Askewniverse series. Brian O'Halloran and Jeff Anderson, stars of the first Askewniverse film Clerks, appear in the film, as do Smith regulars Scott Mosier, Dwight Ewell, Walt Flanagan, and Bryan Johnson.
Lyra Belacqua, later known as Lyra Silvertongue, is the heroine of Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials. In His Dark Materials Lyra is a young girl who inhabits a universe parallel to our own. Brought up in the cloistered world of Jordan College, Oxford, she finds herself embroiled in a cosmic war between Lord Asriel on one side, and a deity figure known as The Authority and his Regent, Metatron, on the other. Lyra also features prominently in the subsequent trilogy The Book of Dust.
The Subtle Knife is a young-adult fantasy novel published in 1997 and the second book in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. The novel continues the adventures of Lyra Belacqua recounted in the first novel, Northern Lights, as she investigates the mysterious phenomenon of Dust. Will Parry is introduced as a companion to Lyra, and together they explore new worlds in the search for Will's father.
The Amber Spyglass is the third and final novel in the His Dark Materials trilogy by Philip Pullman. Published in 2000, it won the 2001 Whitbread Book of the Year award, the first children's novel to do so. It was named Children's Book of the Year at the 2001 British Book Awards, and was the first children's book to be longlisted for the Booker Prize.
Lyra's Oxford is a 2003 novella by Philip Pullman depicting an episode involving the heroine of His Dark Materials, Pullman's best-selling trilogy. Lyra's Oxford is set when Lyra Belacqua is 15, two years after the end of the trilogy.
Northern Lights is a young-adult fantasy novel by Philip Pullman, published in 1995 by Scholastic UK. Set in a parallel universe, it follows the journey of Lyra Belacqua to the Arctic in search of her missing friend, Roger Parslow, and her imprisoned uncle, Lord Asriel, who has been conducting experiments with a mysterious substance known as "Dust".
Will Parry is one of the protagonists in Philip Pullman's trilogy His Dark Materials, along with Lyra Belacqua. He first appears in the series at the start of the second novel, The Subtle Knife, and continues through to the final book, The Amber Spyglass. Introduced as a 12-year-old boy, he meets and befriends Lyra in the world of Cittàgazze and teams up with her in order to uncover the mysteries of Dust and the disappearance of his father many years previously. He takes possession of the Subtle Knife which he uses to aid Lord Asriel in his bid to destroy the Authority.
In Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust trilogies, Dust or Rusakov particles are particles associated with consciousness that are integral to the plot. In the multiverse in which these trilogies are set, Dust is attracted to consciousness, especially after puberty; the Church within the series associates Dust with original sin and seeks its end. Pullman described Dust in an interview as "an analogy of consciousness, and consciousness is this extraordinary property we have as human beings".
A dæmon is a type of fictional being in the Philip Pullman fantasy trilogies His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust. Dæmons are the external physical manifestation of a person's "inner-self" that takes the form of an animal. Dæmons have human intelligence, are capable of human speech—regardless of the form they take—and usually behave as though they are independent of their humans. Pre-pubescent children's dæmons can change form voluntarily to become any creature, real or imaginary. During adolescence a person's dæmon undergoes "settling", an event in which that person's dæmon permanently and involuntarily assumes the form of the animal which the person most resembles in character. Dæmons are usually of the opposite sex to their human, though same-sex dæmons do exist.
Marisa Coulter, known simply as Mrs. Coulter, is a character in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy and one of the main antagonists of Northern Lights: the former lover of Lord Asriel and biological mother of Lyra Belacqua.
The Golden Compass is a 2007 fantasy adventure film written and directed by Chris Weitz that is based on the 1995 novel Northern Lights by Philip Pullman, the first installment in Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, which was published as The Golden Compass in the United States. It stars Nicole Kidman as Marisa Coulter, Dakota Blue Richards as Lyra Belacqua, and Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel, alongside Sam Elliott, Ian McKellen, and Eva Green. In the film, Lyra joins a tribe of seafarers on a trip to the far North in search of children kidnapped by the Gobblers, a group supported by the universe's rulers, the Magisterium.
The Golden Compass is a 2007 action-adventure puzzle video game developed by Shiny Entertainment for PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Portable, Wii, Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows, and by A2M for Nintendo DS. The game was published on all platforms by Sega, and was released in Europe in November 2007, and in North America in December. It is the video game of the 2007 film of the same name, although it is also partially based on the 1995 novel upon which the film is based, Northern Lights by Philip Pullman. The game was released prior to the film and features a slightly different sequence of events towards the end of the story, as well as additional footage at the end of the game not seen in the film. This was due to a last minute re-edit of the last half-hour of the film by New Line Cinema, which could not be incorporated into the game, as it was based on the shooting script. Due to this the game manages to portray motives and themes of the book in much more detail, including details only present in later books of the trilogy. The Golden Compass was the last game developed by Shiny before Foundation 9 Entertainment merged them with The Collective. A significant feature has Dakota Blue Richards and Freddie Highmore reprising their roles from the film.
His Dark Materials is a trilogy of fantasy novels by Philip Pullman consisting of Northern Lights (1995), The Subtle Knife (1997), and The Amber Spyglass (2000). This is a list of the fictional races and creatures in the novels.
This article covers the fictional locations in the His Dark Materials trilogy and related works by Philip Pullman.
The Secret Commonwealth is a 2019 fantasy novel by Philip Pullman, the second volume of his planned trilogy The Book of Dust. The story is set twenty years or so after the events of La Belle Sauvage and ten years after the conclusion of the His Dark Materials trilogy. Lyra Silvertongue is now an adult.
La Belle Sauvage is a fantasy novel by Philip Pullman published in 2017. It is the first volume of a planned trilogy titled The Book of Dust and is set twelve years before Pullman's His Dark Materials. It presents events prior to the arrival of the six-month-old Lyra Belacqua at Jordan College, Oxford.
His Dark Materials is a fantasy drama television series based on the trilogy of novels by Philip Pullman. It is produced by Bad Wolf and New Line Productions, for BBC One and HBO, with the latter handling international distribution. The show follows the orphan Lyra as she searches for a missing friend and discovers a kidnapping plot related to an invisible cosmic substance called Dust.
