Carmilla (Lords of Shadow)

Carmilla is the Dark Queen of the Vampires in Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and the second Lord of Shadow that Gabriel Belmont encounters and defeats.

Early Life
It is suggested that Carmilla had originally lived in or near the Bernhard family's Castle when it was owned by Friedrich von Frankenstein. She vowed to bring him to justice for the evil experiments that he committed.

Along with Zobek and Cornell, she founded the Brotherhood of Light and imprisoned a powerful demon, which escaped the control of the Bernhards, it was known as The Forgotten One. After decades of struggle against the forces of evil, Carmilla ascends to heaven and becomes a spiritual being second only to God. Unknown to her though, her physical remains gives rise to the Dark Queen of Vampires.

When she became a vampire, most of the Bernhards were driven out, and she kept Friedrich von Frankenstein alive to torture him and uses him to develop creations for her. She killed many of her retainers, turning them into Skeleton Warriors who guarded her castle. The castle became known as the Vampire Castle. She later took the child Laura from her parents, turned her, and made Laura her "daughter." Laura later commented that Carmilla still had some humanity within her somewhere, unlike herself.

She summoned the demon brothers Brauner and Olrox from hell and gave them vampiric powers. These became the lieutenant and commander of her Vampire armies. She later cast a spell of cold and ice and endless winter over her country, in order to make sure that the Vampires would not be as bothered by the daylight sun. Throughout the centuries the land became known as the Land of the Vampires. Most people had been driven out or changed, those who chose to stay lived in Wygol Village. The village became the vampire's source of food and a place to conscript more troops.

Events of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
When Gabriel arrived to confront her, she attempted to seduce him at first, trying to tempt him to her cause and convince him to join her (as well as possibly to save herself from defeat and death at his hands). However, the recently widowed Gabriel's will was not shaken, and he rejected her. Angered by this, Carmilla revealed her prior knowledge of him and his quest to resurrect his wife, denounced it as a fool's errand and engaged him in battle, summoning her Vampire Warriors to aid her.

Once they were all defeated, she used her vampiric powers to partially destroy the throne room, then metamorphosed into her true vampire form to fight Gabriel directly. However, after a long struggle that ended with half the castle destroyed and Carmilla seriously injured, Gabriel finally killed her by stabbing her in the heart with the Combat Cross, breaking off the stake attachment in the process.

After this, Gabriel was rewarded with Carmilla's Seraph Shoulders, granting him spectral wings and allowing him to double jump.

Events of Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2
Many centuries afterwards, Carmilla reappears in her castle in her former human form, where Gabriel, now known as the vampire lord Dracula, takes residence. She seduces him into drinking her blood which has a poisonous effect on him. In order to resist her influence, Dracula drinks blood from his resurrected wife Marie. After evading Carmilla in the castle's library, he chases her onto one of the rooftops, where she attempts to trick him by taking the form of Marie and force him to choose between which of the two is his real wife. Dracula makes the right choice and faces Carmilla in combat. As he gains the upper hand, despite the witch's best efforts, including regaining his Mist Form from her, Carmilla makes one final attempt to break Dracula by threatening to kill Marie, only to be impaled through the mouth by him with a piece of broken gate and finish her off for good.



Personality
As a human Carmilla was a woman who loved life, and could not stand to see vile experiments on humans like those that Frankenstein conducted. She was also most likely religously devoted to God as she spent her entire life fightning evil in his name with Cornell and Zobek.

As a vampire, most of her personality is twisted. She cares little for life as she killed most of the inhabitants of Bernhard castle, with the exception of Frankenstein. She is intelligent, manipulative, and deceptive as she tricked Gabriel into drinking her blood and nearly tricked him a second time.

Despite this, she seems to still possess some humanity after turning, as she tortured Frankenstein for centuries for his inhumane crimes, fulfilling the oath she made as a human to make sure he paid for his crimes. She also acts as a mother to Laura, suggesting she still has motherly instincts.

Carmilla also seems to be a seductress. She attempts to seduce Gabriel when he confronts her for the first time, and does so again nearly a thousand years later.

While it is not proven, there are subtle hints that she may have had a romantic interest in Gabriel. She attempts to seduce him the first time they meet and offers for him to stay with her for eternity, saying that she can show him "many pleasures". Throughout their first fight, she also refers to him frequently as "My Gabriel". She also was visibly frustrated when she realized he was collecting the pieces of the God Mask to bring back Marie. During her seocnd encounter with Gabriel she kisses him on the lips, and claims "I am yours now". She is angered further when Gabriel drinks Marie's blood a second time, and right before Carmilla is killed, she tries to kill Marie, probably out of spite since she couldn't have Gabriel. She seems to have wanted to keep Gabriel, as she was using her blood to make him loyal to her and her alone.



Powers and Abilities

 * Levitation: Before fighting Gabriel, Carmilla hovered above him in the air before calling her vampire warriors to aid her.
 * Control over Bernhard Castle: After her sister ascended to heaven, Carmilla gained complete control over the Bernhard Castle and transformed it into what would be known as The Land of Vampires.
 * Control over Vampires: Carmilla has complete control over all vampires living in and around the castle. The reason of course for why she is known as the lord of vampires.
 * Superhuman Strength: Carmilla, like all other Vampires possessed strength far beyond that of humans, although not much of this is shown.
 * Superhuman Speed: It can be assumed that like all other vampires and like Dracula, Carmilla can move at immense speeds.
 * Electrokenesis: Carmilla's breed of vampires seem to all have the innate ability to emit bolts of lightning from their hands, such as Laura and supposedly Dracula. Carmilla, being the founder of the vampires also has this ability. Interestingly, the Forgotten One also demonstrates this ability when facing a vampiric Gabriel. She could summon shockwaves of lightning, fire lightning bolts, call down lightning from the sky, create a protective dome of lightning, and create illusions of herself via lightning.
 * Seduction: Like the titular novel character of the same name, Carmilla has the power of seduction and can supposedly turn any human into her slave, however this ability failed against Gabriel when the two first meet.
 * True Form: As an Elder vampire and as a Lord of Shadow, Carmilla has the ability to transform into her true form which is a physical representaion of her personality. Her true form resembles both the vampire warrior and the two demonic vampires Brauner and Olrox. It is a massive bat like humanoid with elongated talons and fangs. Like almost all vampire true forms, Carmilla's true form has a unique ability that Carmilla can't (or doesn't) use in her regular form. It is a kind of lightning breath, a similar power can also be used with her wings in this form. It is similar to how Dracula/Gabriel can breathe fire in his true form.
 * Spectral True Form: In Lords of Shadow 2, during her fight with Gabriel/Dracula, she shows the ability to create a green spectral image of her true form from the waist up. This spectral image can attack her opponents with its fist's or channel lightning to attack from a distance. This form can send striaght arcs of lightning along the ground, grab enemies, cut them to pieces with it's claws and blow opponents backwards with its wings. However this forms mimics any movement that Carmilla makes, so it is limited only by her.
 * Force Fields: While levitating Carmilla can create electrical force fields that can protect her while her vampire servents fight her enemies.

Trivia

 * Hōko Kuwashima, Carmilla's Japanese Seiyū, also voiced Shanoa in Order of Ecclesia.
 * If you look closely at the red mirror (the Mirror of Fate) during the boss fight against Carmilla, you can notice that you can see Gabriel's reflection, yet you can't see hers. This could be due to a well-known trope in fiction that vampires don't have a reflection
 * In a certain way Carmilla was right about Gabriel all along. She said that there was no ressurection for Marie and he would become "one of them", since in the ending and DLC, Gabriel renounced his humanity and became the vampire lord, Dracula.
 * It's entirely possible that Carmilla knew of Gabriel's ultimate fate and sought to hasten it in order to better serve her own ends as her throne room is where the Mirror of Fate is located. Her dialogue also heavily implies that she knew of Gabriel's fate. When asked about this to David Cox on his twitter account, he merely replied: "I'd like to think so."
 * Intrestingly, the name of Carmilla originally belongs to the title character of a Vampire novel written by Sheridan Le Fanu. The novel predates Dracula, written by Bram Stoker, by 25 years. This shares a similarity with Lords of Shadow as the character of Carmillla existed before Gabriel took up the title of Dracula.
 * Carmilla's library stealth level in Lords of Shadow 2 has been cited by critics as one of the most difficult levels in the game, alongside Agreus' maze.