See the formatted Divia FAQ at http://users.lmi.net/akr/fk/faq/divia.htm


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The Divia FAQ

Last updated February 20, 1999
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Index:
1.  Who is Divia?
2.  What is Divia's full name?
3.  Who plays Divia?
4.  Is there a FORKNI-L affiliation for Divia?
5.  In which episodes does Divia appear?
6.  What is her status as of her last appearance?
7.  How old is Divia?
8.  List Divia's family connections.
9.  What does Divia look like?
10. What kind of person is Divia?
11. What has Divia done in her life?
12. Briefly, what was Divia's life like?
13. At length, what was Divia's life like?
14. Divia-focused Episode-descriptions
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1. Who is Divia?

Divia is a character in the syndicated television program _Forever Knight_.
She is the mortal daughter and vampiric master of Lacroix.

2.  What is Divia's full name?

Divia lived her mortal life before surnames for women, and due to Roman
culture, exacerbated by her presumably illegitimate status, it is impossible
to extrapolate her name from her parents' names with any assurance.

3.  Who plays Divia?

The actress who has portrayed Divia is Kathryn Long, who has also appeared on
_Goosebumps_.

4.  Is there a FORKNI-L affiliation for Divia?

Some listmembers have called themselves "Diviants," on Divia's behalf.

5.  In which episodes does Divia appear?

She appears in "A More Permanent Hell" and "Ashes to Ashes"; there are
possible allusions to her in "Dead Air."

6.  What is her status as of her last appearance?

Divia is a vampire, staked by Nick and burned by Lacroix in "Ashes to Ashes."

7.  How old is Divia?

She was 10-14 when she was brought across, shortly before Vesuvius began
erupting on August 24, 79 AD.  She was 30-34 when sealed in an Egyptian
tomb in 99 AD.  In 1996, she was 1927-1931 years old.

8.  List Divia's family connections.

Qa'Ra, vampire father/master; Lucius (Lacroix), father; Selene, mother;
Lucius (Lacroix), vampire son.  Divia referred to Nick with the comment "one
always knows family," so she might also have connections with Lacroix's
vampiric children.

9.  What does Divia look like?

Divia is brown-eyed, with straight, thin, wheat-blond hair.  She wears her
hair in a bun in Pompeii, long and smooth in Egypt, and shoulder-length and
loose in TO.  She has a heart-shaped face, with a slightly pointed chin.  She
is perhaps 4'11, and perhaps 100 lbs.  In Toronto, she wears a black leather
jacket, black pants, and heeled shoes.  She has pierced ears in both Egypt
and Toronto.

10.  What kind of person is Divia?

As a vampire, Divia is universally considered evil by other characters.
Qa'Ra, Nick, Vachon, and Lacroix all comment on her "evil."  She has no
compunctions about killing, vampires (Lacroix: "Does it not trouble you to
have killed your own master?"  Divia: "Why should it?") or mortals ("We are
free to do as we please, to kill as often as we desire, bathe in mortal
flesh and blood.  To do everything that is forbidden.  No one can stop us").  However, as humans, Lacroix loved her "more than the gods."

Divia considers herself fiercely independent ("I would make my own way"),
fully committed to her vampirism ("everything our nature offers, without
restriction"), and bitterly betrayed by her ungrateful son/father.  It is
probable, from both Divia's behavior and what she says of Qa'Ra, that being
immortalized as an adolescent has left at least part of her mind permanently
immature, with the emotions of a young teenager.

Her attempt at daughter/father incest would have been a horrible
transgression in the society in which she was raised.

11.  What has Divia done in her life?

Very little, relatively speaking: she spent all but thirty-some years of her
nearly-two-thousand-year existence sealed in the tomb of Ayahotep, chief
priest of Pharoah Akhenaton, in the Valley of the Kings.  There is no record
of occupations, interests or skills beyond those which indulge vampiric
hungers.

12.  Briefly, what was Divia's life like?

Daughter of a successful prostitute and a powerful general, Divia was
brought across by Qa'Ra, who she then murdered.  She brought across her
father as Vesuvius erupted.  Twenty years later, in Egypt, she ordered him
to make love to her, provoking him to decapitate and bury her.  Somehow, she
survived.  In 1996, she was freed, and attempted revenge on her father by
killing all those around him.  Nick survived, however, and staked her.
Lacroix burned her body.

13.  At length, what was Divia's life like?

Daughter of a high-class madam and a powerful and ambitious general, Divia
was "healed as if by magic" from a serious illness by Qa'Ra, the ancient
vampire who brought her across.  This is presumed to be shortly before
Lacroix's return to Pompeii in "A More Permanent Hell," because though there
has been time for people to notice there is something odd about the girl,
apparently her lack of aging has not yet registered.  According to Divia,
Qa'Ra brought her across "because I was young, and my evil was as pure as he
had ever seen.  But then he tried to harness it, to make me in his image.
That could not be.  I would choose my own way.  I did what I had to do to
ensure that."  What she did was kill him: "Staked, scorched by the sun.
Then interred, with the symbol of the sun god to imprison him for all time."  It is not known if she killed him before she brought Lacroix across, or in the twenty years between AMPH and AtA.  It is those twenty years, however, which presumably provided the visions which overwhelmed Vachon as he suffered from her bite: "Men, women, children -- especially children.  I see them killing and being killed.  I can't stand the pleasure . . . .  I see her vision, her memories."

In 99 AD, Divia showed Lacroix the tomb in which she had buried her master,
and revealed that she was his murderer.  This appalled Lacroix, but Divia's
point in showing this to him was to convince him that, as vampires, they are
truly beyond all restraint.  She wanted him to become her lover.  Even more
appalled, Lacroix refused.  Divia began with persuasion, but apparently she
also attempted to command him through their master/fledgling bond, for she
commands him to come to her while she is vamped out.  Just when she thinks
he will, Lacroix beheads her.  She spends the next 1903 years trapped in the
tomb, sealed by the image of the sun god.  In 1996, freed by grave robber
Hamid Kharam, Divia immediately tracks down Lacroix in Toronto and attempts
to make him as isolated as he made her.  She kills Urs; she drives Vachon to
choose death before he dies of her poison; and she attacks, and believes she
has killed, Nick.  Others may have died off-screen, for the Raven was nearly
abandoned.  After goading and fighting Lacroix, she decides to kill him, as
well, and produces the scythe with which he tried to kill her.  Before she
can use it, however, Nick arrives and stakes her.  As her body begins to
smoke, she pleads with Lacroix, who moves instinctively to save her, but is
restrained by Nick.  Finally, Lacroix ignites her body, intending to stand
vigil until its ashes are scattered on the wind.

14.  Special Notes

How did she survive?  Lacroix: "Perhaps the evil that permeated the tomb
sustained her.  I don't know.  Does it really matter?"

When Lacroix is mortal, Divia refers to him as "General," and he does not
openly acknowledge her as his daughter.  When he comes across, she calls him
"Father."  When in Egypt, she calls him both "Lucius" and "Father."  In 1996,
she calls him all three of these, and speaks to Nick of him as "Lacroix."

As a mortal, Divia wore an oval cameo on a chain around her neck.  Perhaps
4" long and 3" wide, it is black, with gold trim, and a white profile of a
sharp-faced female with her hair in a bun.  It could be Divia herself.  This
cameo was in Lacroix's possession in 1995 (AMPH), and Divia used it as a
signal of her return in 1996 (AtA).

In AtA present, Divia appears to be wearing a ring similar to Lacroix's.

The Egyptian grave-robber who freed Divia and was decapitated by her was
named Hamid Kharam; his brother is named Hasheem Kharam.

Natalie described Divia's victims as having the appearance of having been
"attacked by a wild animal," and Divia's attacks were accompanied by the
sounds of a jungle cat.

15.  Divia-focused Episode-Descriptions

"Dead Air" -- c. 1440-1460, Europe

In retrospect, some have taken Lacroix's torture of a man he tells to refer
to him as "Oedipus" as a reaction to his mother/daughter, Divia, rather than
only to his father, as he claims in the episode.  This is crystallized by
the line, "Say you love me, father," which Divia repeats in AtA.  The entire
pattern of Nick "killing" his "father" in the first season is complicated by
our later discovery that Lacroix "killed" his "mother" in a similar way, as,
indeed, Divia killed her "father," Qa'Ra.

"A More Permanent Hell" --  79 AD, Pompeii and 1995, Toronto

Lacroix returns to Pompeii from a campaign against the Gauls.  He tells
Selene, "Hardly a day passed that I didn't think of you.  And . . . your
daughter.  I had word that she was sick, and then healed as if by magic."
Selene replied "Indeed.  There came a healer, an ancient one sent by the
gods.  He asked to be alone with her.  Divia rose from her bed that very
night."  However, Selene is reluctant to allow Lacroix to see Divia.  When
he does, he greets her with a smile and open arms; she turns away.  That
night, when Vesuvius begins erupting, Divia dismisses her mother as "doomed"
and gives her father a choice:  "Do you want to die, or live?  You only have
moments to decide."  Unaware of her vampirism, he replies "To live, Divia,
to live," and she brings him across.  Only after this does she take his hand
and call him "father."  In the present, staring at her cameo and musing on
the immortality she had promised him, he says, "You were right, Divia.  Damn
you for it."

"Ashes to Ashes" --  99 AD, Valley of the Kings, Egypt and 1996, Toronto

Freed from her imprisonment by grave-robber Hamid Kharam, Divia appears in
Toronto to wreak vengeance on her father.  She decapitates the grave robber,
places his body in the Raven "beer fridge," his head in a box with her cameo,
and then phones Nick at the precinct with an anonymous tip.

Flashbacks show that twenty years after Pompeii, she took Lacroix to Egypt
and revealed that she had murdered her own master because of his desire to
mold and control her.  Lacroix is distressed by the waste of what could have
been learned from someone who lived "long before the pyramids," but not
nearly as distressed as when, a moment later, Divia tries to compel him to
make love to her.  He objects decisively, and she replies, "Daughter, mother,
lover: why can't I be all three?  You need someone to love, Lucius, and I
need you!"  He decapitates her, and seals her body as she sealed Qa'Ra's:
"I put her remains in the sarcophagus.  The sun god on the lid acted on her
in much the same way as the cross does on us."

In 1996, Divia exacts retribution by killing those around Lacroix, attempting 
to make him "understand how it feels to be betrayed, and alone."  She lures 
Vachon to her by pretending to be an injured child; he says he's dying, and 
decides to die to escape the "evil" of the "memories" her bite inflicted.  
She tears Urs apart in Nick's elevator, and Urs does not regenerate.  She 
attacks Nick at the loft, and believes she's killed him, too.  She proceeds 
to the Raven, where she taunts, goads, threatens, and condemns Lacroix.  He 
is relatively passive until she says she has killed Nick, at which point a 
fight ensues.  Divia is able to toss Lacroix around with ease, and she says 
she is enjoying his pain.  Finally, she whips out the scythe he used to 
decapitate her.  Before she can use it, Nick arrives, and stakes her.  Her 
final words, as her body begins to smoke, are "Father . . . don't let me 
die.  Father . . .", and Nick has to restrain Lacroix from going to her.  
In the end, Lacroix ignites her body, wrapped as a mummy, on top of a car 
in a junk yard.  He apparently intends to stand vigil until she is dust, 
and says as much to Nick.

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END

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