Alexia Ashford

I still have some experiments to perform. Do you care to play along?

Alexia Ashford is a character in Resident Evil Code: Veronica, and is the main antagonist of the second half of the game.

Her story begins with her disgraced father, Alexander, who had damaged almost beyond repair the reputation of the family, once considered as one of the first and foremost of the globe. To restore his lost honour, 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 Ashford 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 as an accident with slightly above-average intelligence, Alexia was born with a phenomenally high one, and was considered the premiere of the two. She was so smart, in fact, 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 also allowed her to finish university at age ten and be named the youngest Chief Senior Researcher ever of the Umbrella Corporation.

T-Veronica Foundations
In February 1983, some time around her twelfth birthday, while she lived in the Antarctic Research Facility, her brother Alfred told her about a secret room in the place, and told her he needed her family gemstone, a large ruby inside a silver choker, to open it. Offering it to him, she aided him greatly in opening the secret corridor. Later, she was informed of the complete truth about her and her brother's births, and both grew immensely hateful of their father.

Capturing him in March 1983, they used him as a test subject for a special virus had created binding together the remnants of an ancient virus found within a queen ant and the Progenitor Virus. The experiment turned Alexander into the insane monster known solely as Nosferatu.

Taking notes on her father's progress, Alexia discovered certain flaws in her virus, and planned to inject herself with the virus to become a superior being. Using the data she had obtained from her father, Alexia discovered a way to harness the full power of her virus: by having herself cryogenically preserved as the virus covered her unconscious body and matured within for fifteen years. In December 1983, she had Alfred carry out her will while she was inactive, and proceeded with the cryostatic state.

Resurrection


Fifteen years after this, she awoke in the body of a twenty-seven year old woman, with the first sight of her new stage being the death of her brother (whose body she cradled in her arms). She sought to avenge his death, and using her new-found powers, she remotely controlled one of the massive tentacles resting below the Antarctic Research Facility to destroy the escape vehicle of Claire Redfield and Steve Burnside.

However, in the Darkside Chronicles, Alexia was the one who killed Alfred with her tentacles simply because "he couldn't even wake me up on time!" Also, she captured Claire and Steve for the purpose of subjecting them to her experiments.

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 Arklay mansion under the Antarctic. There, she first evolved with the T-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. Despite the fact she controlled her body's blood (which by then had acquired flammable properties, usable through bloodshed) she was soundly defeated by Chris Redfield.

This was also retconned in the Darkside Chronicles, as Wesker and Alexia never even meet. What occurs is that Chris and Claire encounter her in the Power Room, where, after swatting Chris around with one of her tentacles and destroying a timer bomb he was holding, she proceeded to mutate into her first form whilst giggling maniacally.



Death
I've just been hibernating for fifteen years... to become one with the Veronica Virus!



Weakened by her first defeat, she once again attacked Chris and Claire by fusing with one of the T-Veronica mutant breeder pods, creating countless imperfect larvae to attack them along with her tentacles, fire and insect-like appendages. Despite this, she was once again defeated by both gunfire and an experimental weapon called the Linear Launcher which Alexander Ashford had created in anticipation of Alexia becoming unstoppable. However, Alexia was not beaten yet; she responded by evolving further using the insects that lie below the platform covering her, then she shedding the carcass of the breeder pod and becoming a giant dragonfly-like monster, capable of spewing great amounts of flame and absorbing all gunfire. Nevertheless, Chris and Claire managed to destroy Alexia, with the Launcher's streams of superheated plasma, along with her mad dreams of world domination. The Ashford family were finished forever-along with another of the families that held a direct link to Umbrella.

Song
Alexia Sings a song while holding her dead brother.


 * "There was a friendly;
 * but naive King;
 * who wed a very nasty Queen.


 * The King was loved but;
 * the Queen was feared


 * Till one day;
 * strolling in his court;
 * an arrow pierced the kind King's heart;
 * he lost his life and his lady love."

Trivia

 * Early in the game's development, 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. Also, 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.


 * Alexia is set to appear in Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles as a non-playable character in the Code: Veronica scenario.