Alexia Ashford

"Thanks to you Veronica's angry, which makes me stronger!"

- Alexia to Chris and Claire Redfield

Alexia Ashford was the artificially-created "granddaughter" of Umbrella co-founder Edward Ashford.

Early life


Her story begins with her disgraced father, Alexander Ashford, who had damaged almost beyond repair the reputation of the Ashford family, once considered as one of the first and foremost of the globe. 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 Ashford family, Veronica Ashford, and "enhanced" it by including the newly-discovered intelligence-raising gene, before fertilizing a surrogate's egg with it. All of this was an attempt to "resurrect" Veronica, with whom Alexander had become obsessed.

From this union, twins were born: Alexia and Alfred Ashford. While Alfred was born as an accident with low level genius intelligence, Alexia was born with a phenomenally high one, and was considered the premiere of the two: Veronica incarnate. She was so knowledgeable, 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, and she began to view herself as special and set apart from the "ignorant masses". However, her exceptional knowledge allowed her to finish university at the age of ten and be named the youngest-ever chief senior researcher of the Umbrella Corporation (much to William Birkin's chagrin).

t-Veronica foundations


In February 1983, some time around her twelfth birthday, her brother Alfred told her about a secret room in Antarctic Base, at which she was working at the time, 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. Once inside, the twins learned the complete truth about their creation, and both grew immensely hateful of their father, to the point where the twins regard their father as "a miserable old man".

Capturing him in March 1983, 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 found within a queen ant. The experiment turned Alexander into the insane monster known only 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 put into cryogenic suspension for fifteen years while the virus, slowed by the ultra-low temperatures to a point where it would not destroy her tissues through overly rapid mutation, matured within her unconscious body. In December 1983, she assigned Alfred to protect her and carry out her will while she was inactive, and proceeded to enter the cryostatic state.

Resurrection


Fifteen years after this, she awoke with the first sight of her new stage being the death of her brother (whose body she cradled in her arms) who had activated the thawing process mere moments prior. Now in full control of the virus she sought to begin her plan of dominion over the world as its queen, and using her newfound powers, she remotely controlled one of the massive tentacles resting below the Antarctic Base to destroy the escape vehicle of Claire Redfield and Steve Burnside. Also, she captured Claire and Steve for the purpose of subjecting them to her experiments and to make them pay for killing her brother.

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.

Death


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.