Angel

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Character.png

Full Name:
Liam/Angelus
AKA:
Position:
Champion of the Powers that Be
Age:
Ageless
Species:
Type:
World:
Music:
Darling Violetta - Catharsis of Sufferance
Quote-open.png ...Doesn't matter what you try. Doesn't matter where I am or how badass you think you've become. 'Cause you know what? I'm Angel. I beat the bad guys. Quote-close.png
— Himself, to Lindsey McDonald
Angel was one of the most famous vampires of all time in vampire history, legendary for both his savage villainy and his great heroism. Born Liam in 1727 in Galway, Ireland, he was sired by Darla in 1753 and changed his name to Angelus and was dubbed The Scourge of Europe, earning notoriety for being one of the most sadistic and brutal demons in history, and the most evil vampire ever recorded. Both The Master and the First Evil recognized how purely evil Angelus was. He was also known as The Demon with the Face of an Angel or The One with the Angelic Face because of his physical beauty. However, in 1898, Angelus was cursed by the members of Clan Kalderash as vengeance for killing a member of their clan. They returned his soul, forcing him to live eternally in guilt over the countless crimes he had committed. In the late 20th century, Angel, as he began calling himself, became an ally to Buffy Summers. After the two were forced to realize their limitations as a couple, Angel left Buffy and moved to Los Angeles, where he became a Champion of the Powers That Be and dedicated himself to "helping the helpless" in the hope of achieving atonement.

Personality

Angel tends to be reserved and is often seen as more wounded up and uptight in contrast to other characters, sometimes even rivaling Wesley and Giles. His most prominent and mocked trait was his tendency to be overly gloomy and brooding. Before moving to Los Angeles, he was inclined to spend much of his time alone, and was never open with friends or allies, with the exception of Buffy to an extent, though he still kept quiet about his past from her, as he felt it would disgust her. The sins he committed when souless are constantly at the back of his mind, to a degree where he felt for a very long time that he did not deserve happiness or redemption. He defied Whistler's wishes for him to help Buffy at first, and many years later, when he was offered a chance to live without his vampiric weaknesses with the Gem of Amara, he chose to destroy it instead, justifying that he needed to continue living with his punishment. He also refused Drusilla's offer to remove his pain with her Lorophage Demon because he felt that his guilt drove him to do good and kept Angelus at bay. While Angel's belief in his mission for redemption fluctuates frequently over being worth it, he still continued to help others as a champion.

Angel was quite self-detrimental and was prone to long spells of doubt, depression and regret. He still felt that he was far from deserving of contentment, but worked tirelessly to prove himself to his peers and the Powers That Be. Still, for a long time he believed himself a lost cause. When he fed off the body of a shop keeper in a moment of weakness in the 1970s, he resigned himself to a life of homelessness, and was not stirred out of it until Whistler showed him Buffy Summers approximately twenty years later. Though this state of mind changed somewhat when he fell in love with Buffy, it wasn't until he learned about the Shanshu Prophecy that he truly began believing in himself and his actions. Angel was also established as detached from reality, and didn't find many things in his life he could look forward to. Unlike humans, who grow and learn as they age, Angel was frozen in time.

He has an almost unhealthy obsession with his destiny; he will follow almost any metaphorical road as long as he believes it will help people (specifically Buffy or himself) to achieve what they were destined for. Because of this, he could easily make dangerous decisions.

Despite this, he nonetheless displayed a tendency to throw taunts and insults to his enemies or just those he intensely disliked. Angel also possessed a sense of humor despite his serious personality, usually in the form of dark sarcasm. He was also very self-conscious, and worried what other people thought of him very often. He believed he had little talent with words, and disliked public speaking. During his first year in Los Angeles with Angel Investigations, he displayed an acute lack of people skills, and was very anti-social and reclusive. He worried constantly what people would think of him, and was reluctant to drink blood around his friends. Simply put, Angel had difficulty trusting others, and it took him a long time to feel comfortable around his companions. Eventually, Angel became more comfortable with himself and social interaction the more he connected with people in Los Angeles, noting after a few months that he had come to think of his new colleagues as his family. He could also be unintentionally blunt in his reasoning and manner of speech, though this eventually became less frequent over the years. Angel's speech patterns were also established as cryptic and sometimes abbreviated, much to Buffy and others' frequent irritation. He had a tendency to bottle up his emotions, feelings and problems behind stoicism, causing him to appear difficult to read and secretive. According to his friends and despite his constant objection, he rarely smiled and only openly cried on one occasion.

Angel was also somewhat of a natural nurturing figure, easily sympathizing with the hardships of others and taking it upon himself to be the one to guide them through it. His chivalry and sensitivity frequently made him prone to seeing others as his complete responsibility, specifically "damsels in distress". Angel's protective instincts towards others are intensified towards those he deeply loves, even to the point of being somewhat extreme. This is made most obvious through his interactions with Connor, Cordelia, and Buffy. Because of his borderline martyr complex, Angel has repeatedly sacrificed his own happiness for the sake of the world or individual people who mean a lot to him, such as giving up his humanity to in an attempt to save Buffy from her prophesied death and destroying the Gem of Amara. However, while Angel enjoyed "helping the helpless", he was also especially motivated by the prospect of redemption in the form of Shanshu. The thought that he might someday be forgiven for his past and allowed to live on deeply affected him, causing him to latch on to it immediately. Over the years, Angel became increasingly ambivalent over the Shanshu Prophecy, varying between focusing on doing good to achieve the prophecy and trying to do good for its own sake, eventually convincing himself by the fallout of Twilight that it was no longer possible because of all the damage he caused with a soul and without.

For most of his ensouled depression, Angel's opinion of people was mostly uncaring and negative despite his newfound guilt for his sins. However, after meeting Buffy and seeing the well of inner strength she possessed, his outlook on humanity slowly changed. He naturally associated them with "always trying", no matter the cost, and more than once made reference to their right to choose over others' attempts to impose their own will on them. Angel admitted on two separate occasions he admired that about people, citing it as one of aspects that drove him to atone, a sharp contrast from his soulless counterpart who did not have faith in the "human condition" and believed their only purpose was to suffer and die. However, unlike Buffy, who adamantly refused to kill humans no matter how evil they were, Angel had no such reservations and would kill a human easily if they murdered or threatened innocents; for example, he unhesitatingly killed the human assassin Vanessa Brewer, whom Wolfram & Hart repeatedly prevented from being brought to justice for her crimes, when she was hired by them to kill three blind children.

Background

May, 1764: Angelus and Darla killed the wife and infant son of vampire hunter Daniel Holtz, and turned his young daughter into a vampire, forcing him to destroy her. Holtz then devoted himself to capturing Angelus and Darla, and chased them across Europe. He managed to kill almost four-hundred other vampires in the process.

1765: Angelus and Darla had a near miss with Holtz in Arles after making too much noise by ordering room service and then eating the waiters. Darla fled to Vienna, knocking out and abandoning Angelus in a burning barn and riding off on their only horse. After meeting again in Vienna and eating a troubadour in Madrid, Angelus and Darla became acquainted with the vampires James and Elisabeth.

1767: Holtz tracked them down in Marseilles and managed to put numerous arrows in Angelus." After voyaging to Morocco, Holtz briefly lost them in northern Africa.

1771: Holtz tracked Angelus to Rome and captured him. With the assistance of Monsignor Rivalli, Holtz tortured Angelus while trying to figure out how to get Angelus to help him to capture Darla. But instead, Darlacame to the rescue with a horde of vampires. Darla declined to kill Holtz, telling Angelus that she was having too much fun tormenting him and he was now "like family." With this, Holtz abandoned his hunt and retired to York until 1773 when a demon named Sahjhan offered to take him to the future in exchange for his promise to kill the Angel and Darla of that time.

1786: Angelus sired a Puritan by the name of Penn, who mimicked Angelus by wreaking havoc on his father and killing his family. Over time, he began copying Angelus' "signature" of the time, carving a cross-shaped mark on the face of his victims in order to spite God.

1789: A lone Angelus encountered The Beast in Prussia, standing in a field of bodies. The Beast sought Angelus' aid in killing the Svear Priestesses, a group who wished to banish the Beast who could not kill them himself. When Angelus declined to assist the Beast, he was violently attacked, but a group of Svear priestesses banished the Beast while Angelus was passing out.

December 25, 1838: Angelus won a card game and took his winnings by killing his opponent, a man named Daniel, in Dublin, Ireland, who was to be married the next day.

1860: a young woman named Drusilla from London caught the attention of Darla, who then presented her to Angelus, as a gift. Drusilla was "cursed" with the "sight"; the ability of foresight, something her mother saw as "an affront to the Lord." Drusilla and her sisters were all noted to be virgins, and Drusilla was described as being "sweet, pure and chaste." While posing as her priest in order to torment her, Angelus killed her family in front of her, which caused Drusilla to flee to a convent. On the day she was to take her holy orders, Angelus massacred the convent. After having sex with Darla on top of Drusilla, Angelus finally pushed her over the edge into complete insanity. It was at that point that he turned her into a vampire. Drusilla was Angelus' "masterpiece", an everlasting testament of his finest cruelty, as her immortality meant that her torment would never end.

1880: Desiring a companion of her own, Drusilla sired the mild-mannered and lovesick poet, William, to whom Angelus served as a mentor and role model for a while. William went so far as to consider the elder vampire his sire and "Yoda." Angelus taught William about the art of mass slaughter, including an incident during a wedding party where Angelus beat the groom to death with his own arm. When he realized how much William cared for Drusilla, Angelus had sex with her just to hurt him, an action William would never forgive. He abandoned Angelus' mentorship, and took on a reckless, rebellious persona that brought constant danger to Angelus' group, but remained a romantic at heart.

1883: Angelus killed a female servant named Margaret during a luxurious Christmas party in London. The woman had a young son, whom Angelus killed afterwards.

1888: William got himself, Angelus, Darla and Drusilla chased out of London and into an abandoned mine shaft in Yorkshire by an angry mob. Angelus and Darla outwardly wondered why they hadn't yet killed William, who had taken the alias "Spike", for his dangerously rebellious behavior. Angelus made an attempt to threaten him with mention of the Slayer, but Spike, who had never heard of the Slayer before, became instantly intrigued, and went on to develop an long-lasting obsession with; he murdered two Slayers, and became a particularly renowned vampire as a result.

1890: Angelus attended a production of Giselle by the Blinnikov, a Russian ballet troupe run by Count Kurskov. Despite being evil, he was moved to tears during the performance. The same year, Angelus and Spike used a trick that involved them holding hands and beheading their enemies with a length of wire in St. Petersburg, Russia.

1894: Angelus and Spike were captured in Rome, Italy by henchmen of The Immortal, a mysterious and seductive being with whom they both had a fierce rivalry. The two male vampires were restrained while The Immortal had a threesome with Darla and Drusilla, something that, incidentally, the female vampires never allowed Angelus and/or Spike to do. Angelus and Spike attempted to take revenge on the Immortal, but failed miserably.

1898: Angelus' unlife took a pivotal turn when he murdered the favorite daughter of a tribe of romani, the Kalderash clan in Borsa, Romania, who had been kidnapped and given to him by Darla as a " birthday present."To avenge her death, the Kalderash cursed him by restoring his human soul, thus afflicting him with a conscience and condemning him to an eternity of remorse for the crimes he had committed while soulless. Bedraggled and dirty, looking like a beggar, he attacked and tried to feed on a woman, but was unable to.

June, 1900 (Boxer Rebellion): In China, Angelus tried to resume his life with Darla, but found himself able to kill only animals, murderers, and rapists while protecting innocents from Darla. Darla noticed this, angry at his deception and inability to kill innocent humans while Spike had recently killed a Slayer. She confronted him about it gave him the chance to prove himself by feeding on a baby whose parents Darla killed. He refused and instead rescued the child by jumping out of a window.

1902: Angelus fled and lived in self-imposed isolation, controlling the temptation to feed by avoiding humans altogether. He traveled to the United States, and arrived in New York City via Ellis Island.

1920s: Angelus spent some time in Chicago, where he saved a little lap dog from being run over by a car; however, he was tempted to feed on the dog's owner, a young woman who tried to seduce Angel, only to be harshly rejected. In Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, Angel had a disagreement with a demon named Boone over a señorita, for which Boone called him out. Angel fought Boone for three-and-a-half hours until the sun came up and Boone honorably let him go. Angel then spent time in Missoula, Montana during the Great Depression.

World War II: Angel was coerced into undertaking a secret mission by the Demon Research Initiative. When they call him Angelus he informs them that he has shortened his name to "Angel". They sank him to the bottom of the ocean to rescue an American submarine crew from three vampires the Nazis had captured as part of their paranormal research activities: Spike, Nostroyev, and The Prince of Lies. After the American crew had captured the German submarine, the vampires had escaped their bonds and murdered most of the crew; the few survivors sought refuge behind a locked hatch. After the submarine suffered damage from a depth charge, Angel was forced to sire a mortally wounded Ensign Sam Lawson, as he was the only person who was able to repair the damage, and while Angel didn't care about the mission, he needed to have it succeed to get the U