Mircalla "Carmilla" Karnstein
(Batman OC)
This is an OC that I have used in both Batman fanfiction and roleplays before The Dark Knight Rises was released. She was first created in a Hellsing RPG where she was the actual villain from the Sheridan Le Fanu story. When my friends and I created the Batman RPG, I thought she would be interesting enough as a Batman villain. I made her a human, gave her a backstory, and threw her into the mix. Over the years I've tried to make her an actual character that isn't connected to the novel or to any fandoms of mine, but that will require changing her name completely. Haven't thought of a good one yet.
First and foremost, the "face claim" I've always used for Carmilla has been Monica Bellucci:
I have always loved this actress. There is something remarkably gorgeous and different about her. Maybe it's the fact that she is an older woman but still has a very mature and sophisticated beauty to her. Maybe it's the fact that she will play anything from a vampire bride in Bram Stoker's Dracula to Mary Magdalene in The Passion of the Christ while providing the voice for Kaileena in the Prince of Persia video games. There was no other woman I thought would not only look the part of Carmilla but, if she ever brought Carmilla to life in a film (a film major can dream?), would capture the total essence of everything I wanted in this character.
In the Batman RPG, her father was Austrian and married an Iranian woman, and while the mother identified as a Muslim woman, she did not take her religion as seriously or as strictly as the rest of her family. My inspiration to make Mircalla a more avante garde Muslim came from Marjane Satrapi's comic book autobiography, Persepolis:
At the time I have very little information about Islam, but it was comforting to know that there was a Muslim character who was comfortable with not wearing a hijab, wore more westernized clothes and enjoyed more westernized things rather than stick to a more religious and traditional lifestyle. What's more, they were both Iranian and still embraced a lifestyle that was forbidden to them in their own country.
Unfortunately for Mircalla, this is where the similarities between she and Marjane Satrapi end.
Because of this, Mircalla was named after the antagonist in Carmilla rather than adopt a traditional Arab name. She lived in Austria for some time before she an her family moved to Metropolis for her education and then to Gotham City. This is where everything took a turn for the worst: Mircalla came out to her parents as a lesbian and confessed that she had fallen in love with a woman named Laura LeFanu. While she was not disinherited, her parents did not support the relationship, nor did they support the wedding that followed. They eventually warmed up to the marriage when they discovered that she was pregnant due to artificial insemination by a donor. After finally having her parents' blessings, Mircalla and Laura lived together in Gotham for a brief, happy time.
It was later revealed that Mircalla's father had made a few promises that he could not keep with Salvatore Maroni. This led to Mircalla's parents being murdered, and in order to cover their tracks, the mob paid a visit to Mircalla's home. Laura was brutally raped and murdered infront of Mircalla, who was about to meet a similar fate. She was kicked several times in the stomach and as one of the thugs attempted to rape her, she tore out his throat with her teeth. This horrible scene caused another henchman to shoot her twice, in the chest and then in the head. She was left for dead... except she did not die. Having lost her family and her baby, Mircalla went insane, took up the moniker of "Carmilla," and swore revenge against Salvatore Maroni and his men.
There wasn't a lot of inspiration I drew from other characters outside of Carmilla herself, but it wasn't until later that I noticed many similarities between she and the following characters:
In the case of The Bride from Kill Bill and Eric Draven from The Crow, both are central characters in a revenge story. Both have lost their families to a gang of criminals and murderers and the entire premise of their movies is to kill all who were responsible. I'll admit that these two characters didn't even occur to me while I was writing Carmilla's backstory, but I have no doubt in my mind that they unconsciously became a central part of my inspiration her story. In any case, I decided to take aspects of their stories and change them to suit Carmilla better.
I'll admit that there are plenty of "rip offs" rather than similarities that Carmilla shares with the Bride, from surviving a bullet to the head to using a sword (a saber in Carmilla's case) as a signature weapon to kill her enemies. The only major changes would be that Carmilla does not and probably never will get that happy ending that The Bride does, and while The Bride mistakenly thought that her unborn daughter was killed, I decided to kill Carmilla's child. There would be no reason to keep her alive in the story and no reason for Maroni to take the baby as his own when this woman and her family met nothing to him. Killing off her child in addition to the rest of her family would be enough to drive Carmilla into a horrible madness, one similar to the torment faced by Eric Draven.
In The Crow, Eric is beaten and wounded and forced to watch a gang beat and rape his fiance. Afterwards, Eric is thrown out of a window while his fiance is left for dead. His soul cannot rest because of everything he was forced to watch but could do nothing about, and so on the anniversary of his death, a crow brings his soul back to put the wrong things right. Unlike in Kill Bill, Eric's methods of killing the men who did this to him are slower and more sadistic. You can see the rage in every single one of his kills. He takes his time, destroying them psychologically and then entirely. This is something I wanted for Carmilla. Her kills would not be organized or strategic. There would be no clever traps, trickery, deceit, seduction, or any of those tricks you'd see from trained assassins. It is all pure, unadulterated violence, anger, and madness.
Which leads me to two actual inspirations for her character:
Sweeney Todd is not my favorite film or even my favorite musical, but if
there was one aspect of the movie that I found fascinating, it was how
the sweet and loving barber of Fleet Street became this unfeeling,
violent monster because of what was done to him. Again, he loses his entire family to a man with power and swears revenge. There is some semblance of a human being in there: he feels sorry and pain and even love on some levels (for his wife and daughter that he will never see again), but he can kill without any remorse or any shred of guilt. What's more, he even enjoys it when it comes to people who have wronged him. Carmilla will always be a character who is completely driven by revenge and will show no real regard for human life.
Also, while Todd finds an ally in Mrs. Lovett, in the Batman roleplay, Carmilla finds an unlikely ally in Dr. Jonathan Crane, AKA Scarecrow. Both Mrs. Lovett and Dr. Crane find themselves strangely attracted to characters who cannot love them in return. There is a partnership that is formed out of a mutual goal, but the attraction for the most part goes unrequited. And if there was ever a memorable thing about Sweeney Todd, it was the fact that the end was not happy. He doesn't get anything out of his revenge. In fact, in pursuit of his revenge, he ends up losing everything. That's something that Carmilla knows might happen to her: she acknowledges that she doesn't expect to live much longer after Maroni is killed. There would be nothing left for her.
While we never finished the roleplay, I've always considered that either she would die in battle or would find new lodgings in Arkham Asylum. And even then, I doubt she would even make any attempt to escape.
Last but not least, my main inspiration for Carmilla was this character:
When I saw The Dark Knight for the first time, the character I was the most drawn to was Harvey Dent. His character was the only one that felt natural and truly likable. As such, his story arc in the movie was the most tragic and horrible of all of the characters. This was a man who was on top of the world and had the potential to bring hope to those who had none, including the Batman. To see him fall from grace in this film was one of the most gut wrenching things I've ever experienced in a comic book movie.
Carmilla and Harvey never interacted in the roleplay despite the fact that the game itself took place in the Nolanverse storyline. Even so, her revenge story was intentionally similar to Harvey's. Again, she loses her loved ones to the same man responsible for disfiguring Harvey and killing his fiance. This loss drives her into a madness in the same way it does for Harvey. Two very happy, bright, good people suddenly make a 180 and turn into these damaged and violent people. For a time you can even sympathize with them, knowing that they have lost everything and do not expect to survive in the end. After awhile, it does reach a point where you realize that the people they once were are now no more, and that they are capable of committing horrible acts of violence even against people who have nothing to do with what was done to them. Carmilla has no problem killing innocent people in order to get to what she wants, and Harvey has no problem killing a child in order to make Gordon suffer as he did.
Carmilla is not my most interesting of characters. She is a stereotypical "revenge movie" character in many respects. Throughout the roleplay I have portrayed her as damaged, incapable of loving or even receiving love, incapable of trusting in others completely, and while she may have had feelings and a conscience in the past, it is long gone now. Which, now that I think about it, reminds me of another character:
And honestly? It doesn't get anymore damaged than Lucy. Take away the romantic aspect of Elfen Lied and this is Carmilla through and through.
Which needless to say, there is a lot of work to be done on this character. I feel that I could make her better than ever if I put more thought into how she operates or at least make her have several dimensions outside of "revenge and nothing else." But that is for another time. As she stands now, I think she could probably fit into the Batman Nolanverse decently enough.
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