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The Divia FAQ
by AKR original in 1996; |
Frequently Asked Questions about Divia:
- Who is Divia?
- What is Divia's full name?
- Who plays Divia?
- Is there a FORKNI-L affiliation for Divia?
- In which episodes does Divia appear?
- What is her fate as of her last appearance?
- How old is Divia?
- List Divia's family connections.
- What does Divia look like?
- What kind of personality is Divia?
- What has Divia done in her life?
- Briefly, what was Divia's life like?
- At length, what was Divia's life like?
- Special Notes
- Divia-focused Episode-descriptions
Divia is a
recurring character in the syndicated
fantasy television program Forever Knight (1992-1996). She is the mortal daughter and vampiric master of
Lacroix, the story's villain.
Divia
mortal life1 ends before surnames for women emerge, 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.
The actress who
portrays Divia is Kathryn Long, who has also appeared on Goosebumps and
other projects.
Some listmembers have called themselves "Diviants," on Divia's behalf.
The
character appears in "A More Permanent Hell" (AMPH) and "Ashes to Ashes"
(AtA). Possible allusions to her arise in "Dead Air"
(DA).
Divia is a
vampire at the last. In "Ashes to Ashes," Nick stakes her and Lacroix
burns her body. There is no reason to suspect this treatment is not fatal.
The
character is 10-14 when first brought across to vampirism, shortly before Vesuvius began erupting on August 24, 79
AD (AMPH). She is 30-34 when sealed in an Egyptian tomb in 99 AD (AtA).
In 1996 -- the present-day of the series -- she is 1927-1931 years old (AtA).
- Qa'Ra, vampiric master/father
- Lucius (Lacroix), human father, vampiric son
- Selene, mother
- Divia
greets Nick with the comment "one always knows family," so she might also have connections with Lacroix's
assorted vampiric offspring, including Nick and Janette.
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
present-day Toronto. 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.
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,
neither vampires (Lacroix: "Does it not trouble you to have killed your own master?" Divia: "Why should it?")
nor humans ("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's opinion
of her, that being immortalized as an adolescent has left at least part of her mind permanently immature,
mired in the emotions of a young teenager.
Her repugnant attempt at daughter/father incest would have been a horrible transgression in the society in which she was raised, as well as in modern society.
Very little. She spends all but thirty-some years of her nearly-two-thousand-year existence sealed in the tomb of Ayahotep, chief priest of Pharaoh Akhenaton, in the Valley of the Kings. No record exists of occupations, interests or skills beyond those that indulge vampiric hungers.
Daughter of a successful prostitute and a powerful general, Divia is converted to vampirism by Qa'Ra, who she then murders. She converts her father to vampirism as Vesuvius erupts. Twenty years later, in Egypt, she orders him to make love to her, provoking him to decapitate and bury her. Somehow, she survives. In 1996, freed, she attempts revenge on her father by killing all those around him. Nick survives, however, and stakes her. Lacroix burns her body.
Daughter of a high-class madam and a powerful and ambitious general, Divia
is "healed as if by magic" from a serious illness by Qa'Ra, the ancient vampire who,
rather than healing her, in fact brought her across to vampirism.
Presumably, this occus shortly before Lacroix's return to Pompeii in "A More Permanent Hell," because though
sufficient time has elapsed for people to notice there 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 must provid the visions that overwhelm Vachon as he
suffers 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
shows Lacroix the tomb in which she had buried her master, and reveals that she was his murderer.
This appalls Lacroix, but Divia's point in showing this to him is to convince him that, as vampires, they are truly beyond all restraint.
She wants him to become her lover. Even more appalled, Lacroix refuses.
Divia begins with persuasion, but apparently she also attemptd to command him through their
master/convert bond, for she orders 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 die off-screen, for the Raven is 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 in Egypt.
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.
How does
Divia survive decapitation? 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 to vampirism, 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
human girl in Pompeii, Divia wears 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 is in Lacroix's possession in 1995 (AMPH), and Divia
uses it to signal her return in 1996 (AtA).
In AtA present, Divia appears to be wearing a ring similar to Lacroix's.
The Egyptian grave-robber who
frees Divia and is decapitated by her is named Hamid Kharam. His brother is named Hasheem
Kharam.
Natalie
describes 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.
"Dead Air" -- c. 1440-1460, Europe
In retrospect, some have taken Lacroix's fifteenth-century torture of a man as a reaction to his mother/daughter, Divia,
and to his own self-hatred as a consequence of his mixed reactions to her, rather than only to his
own father, as he claims in the episode.
This is crystallized by the line, "Say you love me, father," which Divia repeats in AtA.
The implications of Nick "killing" his "father" (Lacroix) in the first season are complicated by
the later revelation that Lacroix "killed" his "mother" in a similar way, as, indeed, Divia killed her
"father" (Qa'Ra). Lacroix either calls his victim Oedipus, or
requires his victim to call him Oedipus; the dialogue is unclear on this
point. To his torture victim, Lacroix croons, "Tell
me you love me, father. Say, I love you, Oedipus. Say, I'm sorry,
Oedipus, and, forgive me, Oedipus, my son, for the treacherous introduction to
the world that I gave you."
Nick, disgusted by the torture, objects that "Oedipus
killed his father by accident!" Lacroix retorts, "Nobody
believes that. Not anymore." The classical literary figure Oedipus, of course, notoriously married his mother
and killed his father.
"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
replies, "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
bites him and brings him across to vampirism. 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.
In flashbacks
set twenty years after Pompeii, she takes Lacroix to Egypt and reveals that she 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 through death. She tears Urs apart in Nick's elevator, and Urs does not regenerate.
She attacks Nick at the loft, and believes she has 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
erupts. 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.
FAQ created and maintained by a Knightie.
Comments and constructive criticism are appreciated.
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