Alexia Ashford, after her mutation.
Alexia Ashford is a character and villain from the Resident Evil series of survival horror games. She was the artificially-created "granddaughter" of Umbrella co-founder Edward Ashford and one of the three main antagonists in Resident Evil CODE: Veronica. She also appeared in the shooter games Resident Evil Survivor 2 - CODE: Veronica and Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles.
Biography[]
Appearance[]
Alexia is a British woman who has long-back length blonde hair and blue eyes. Her skin is revealed to be white during the FMV cutscenes after she was awakened from her cryogenic sleep. In Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles, she has a full fringe on her hair before she awakens from her cryogenic sleep.
In Resident Evil CODE: Veronica, she wears a short sleeved dark purple and violet long gown with long white gloves and walks barefoot (she removes her shoes before her transformation). She also wears a black choker with a red gem in the center.
In Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles, Alexia's hair is medium length, her long gown is fully violet and she also wears several bracelets on her left wrist. Her choker is replaced into a long necklace with a pendant. After her transformation, her skin becomes pale gray and she is covered with dark rooted skin at the right arm and left leg, leaving her midriff, right leg, and cleavage exposed. Her hair is formed into a hair-like skin with a large single half fringe at the right side and short fringe at the left. In the Darkside Chronicles, her first form has minor changes, she gains spikes at the back of her head and has a half fringe on the right, her skin becomes pale white and the rooted skin becomes gray.
Abilities[]
With her strength, Alexia is capable of lifting up people like Chris and she is able to use her blood to make fire. She is also capable of transforming if she experiences damage. In Resident Evil: Code Veronica X, she demonstrates these abilities in her fight against Albert Wesker. Although her attacks such as lifting her opponent by burning them with her blood is instant death so Chris needs to avoid her and to defeat her quickly before she can grab him. In her second form, she can summon several ants to damage her opponents. But in both her third and final form, any regular firearms didn't affect on her and can throw burning thorns to deal heavy damage. The only way to defeat her is to use the Linear Launcher.
Story[]
Birth and early life[]
Alexia's story begins when her disgraced father, Alexander Ashford, had damaged almost beyond repair the reputation of the family. To restore his lost honor, Alexander started genetic studies whose purpose was to find the gene that regulated intelligence. Succeeding, he took DNA belonging to the ancient matriarch of the family, Veronica Ashford, and "enhanced" it by including the dangerous intelligence-raising gene and his own DNA. From this union, twins were born...Alexia and Alfred. While Alfred was born with a low-genius IQ, Alexia was born with a phenomenally high one, and was considered the premiere of the two. She was so smart, in fact, that she became alienated from her peers and was isolated from everyone except her brother. This isolation embittered her and made her immensely egotistical, though it allowed her to finish college at age ten and be named the youngest Chief Senior Researcher of the Umbrella Corporation.
T-Veronica foundations[]
Some time around her tenth birthday, while she lived in the Antarctic Research Facility, her brother Alfred told her about a secret room, and explained that he needed her family gemstone to open it. She gave it to him, and the secret corridor was opened. Once inside, the twins learned the truth about their creation, and both grew immensely hateful of their father. Capturing him, they used him as a test subject for the T-Veronica virus that she had created by binding together the Progenitor Virus and the remnants of an ancient virus she had found within a queen ant. The experiment turned Alexander into the monster known as Nosferatu. Taking notes on her father's progress, Alexia discovered certain flaws in her virus, and planned to inject herself with it to become a superior being. Using the data she had obtained from her father, she discovered a way to harness the full power of the virus: by having herself cryogenically preserved, while the virus matured within her body for fifteen years. She tasked Alfred with her protection and then went into suspended animation.
Resurrection[]
Fifteen years late, she was thawed by her brother and awoke from her deep slumber. Discovering her dying brother just outside of her capsule, she cradled him in her arms and sung him a lullaby as he died. Now in full control of the virus she remotely controlled one of the massive tentacles resting below the Antarctic Base to destroy the escape vehicle of Claire Redfield and Steve Burnside.
She imprisoned Steve in a Coliseum with suits of armor and repeated the experiment that mutated her father, only with her own mutant strain. Later on, she appeared to confront Albert Wesker in the replica of the Spencer Mansion under the Antarctic ice.
There, she first evolved with the Veronica strain into the first step of what, she envisioned, was true godhood, shedding her human skin and hair and turning into a powerful being, that greatly resembled her human stage with gray skin, darkened vessels and arteries, and chitinous growths covering her body as a form of rudimentary armor. She also controlled her body's blood (which by then had acquired flammable properties, usable through bloodshed). She and Wesker engaged in a brief fight, Wesker quickly found Alexia impervious to any physical blows he could launch, and thus retreated and left Chris Redfield to fight Alexia, who soundly defeated her.
Defeat and demise[]
Weakened by her first defeat, she once again attacked Chris by fusing with one of the Veronica mutant breeder pods, creating countless imperfect larvae to attack him along with her tentacles, fire and insect-like appendages. Despite this, she was once again defeated. However, Alexia was not beaten yet; she responded by evolving further using the insects that lay below the platform covering her, then she shed the carcass of the breeder pod and became a giant dragonfly-like monster, capable of spewing great amounts of flame and absorbing all gunfire. Nevertheless, Chris managed to destroy Alexia, with an experimental weapon called the Linear Launcher, thus ending the Ashford family legacy.
Trivia[]
- Early in the game's development (as seen in the concept art below), Alexia's name was Hilda Krueger.
- Alexia's final form and destruction mimics her and Alfred's torture of the dragonfly, as shown in the filmstrip in Alfred's trophy room early in the game. Alexia refers to the mass of humanity as "ants" in her journal, and Chris must reassemble a dragonfly to form the key to the Antarctic facility's reactor room; thus, the dragonfly regains its wings. Metaphorically, Alexia's final form resembles a dragonfly, yet she is slain by Chris, "an ant".
- In the novelization of CODE: Veronica written by S.D. Perry, Alexia is depicted as a megalomaniac with delusions of goddesshood, considering all lifeforms beneath her. She only undergoes the first and second stages of her mutations, perishing after Chris succeeds in blasting off her two lower wings and then directs a blast from the Linear Launcher into her abdomen.
- In Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles, Alexia is a much darker character. She kills Alfred simply because he didn't wake her up on time, in contrast to her original appearance in CODE: Veronica, wherein she instead cradles Alfred's body and sings to his corpse. She also displays a much more talkative and less serious personality, light-heartedly mentioning Alfred's murder, taunting and giggling at the Redfield siblings even as they shoot at her, and referring to "Veronica" as if it was a separate entity with a mind of its own, e.g. "Thanks to you, Veronica's angry, and she makes me stronger". Overall, the personality chosen for The Darkside Chronicles fits with a shallow, spoiled young girl with severe delusions of grandeur; this choice has been controversial, with some fans feeling that this change markedly deviates Alexia for the worse, while others believe that it matches up perfectly with her background as an aristocratic, hugely narcissistic child prodigy. However, this depiction of Alexia should arguably not be considered canon, as The Darkside Chronicles, along with The Umbrella Chronicles, is simply a resumed version of the storyline. Alexia's depiction in Resident Evil CODE: Veronica is the one that should be considered canon.
- She seems to have had some sort of rivalry with William Birkin. In one of the EX files in the N64 port of Resident Evil 2, a note comments that a problem at the Antarctic Facility has caused massive damage. The note goes on to assure Birkin that he need not worry, "the Ashfords' reputation" is irrecoverably tarnished. Their rivalry was further alluded to in the remake of the first Resident Evil, in which Birkin writes how his discovery of the G-Virus will allow him to surpass Alexia.
- She is briefly mentioned in Wesker's ending in Marvel vs. Capcom 3: Fate of Two Worlds. Here, she is mentioned as an experiment gone right, in sharp contrast to Lisa Trevor.
Gallery[]
For more of this character, see their gallery.