Dante (Fullmetal Alchemist)

Infobox animanga character
name = Dante
series = Fullmetal Alchemist


caption = Dante by Hiromu Arakawa
first =
voiced by = Kazuko Sugiyama (old)
Yumi Kakazu (Young)
Cindee Mayfield (Old) (English dub)
Monica Rial (young) (English)
relatives = Hohenheim (Spouse)
Envy (Son)
age = 400+
born =
aux1 =
aux1 name =
aux2 =
aux2 name =

Dante is the main antagonist of the "Fullmetal Alchemist" anime, first introduced in "Dante of the Deep Forest". As the master of the Homunculi and a formidable alchemist herself, Dante is responsible for setting in motion the events of the series and the challenges its protagonists must face along the way.

Dante does not exist in the "Fullmetal Alchemist" manga, as the creator and leader of the Homunculi in the manga is an enigmatic being simply called "Father".

Character history

Dante first appears as the former alchemy teacher of Izumi Curtis, who in turn taught the protagonists Edward and Alphonse Elric. Soon after her meeting with the Elrics, Dante faked her death at the hands of the Homunculus Greed, who is in turn killed by Ed, although it is obvious to the viewer that her body was dead before Greed had arrived.

Much later in the series, it is revealed that Dante had transferred her soul to Lyra's younger body, thereby prolonging her life. Dante is actually around 400 years old and is able to escape death by continually transferring her soul to new, younger bodies with the aid of the Philosopher's Stone. Nearly 400 years ago, she was Hohenheim's lover, and together they lived for centuries using this technique. They even had a son; however, he died of mercury poisoning at a young age. Hohenheim's attempt to transmute him back to life created the Homunculus Envy.

The first Philosopher's Stone that Dante and Hohenheim made used those condemned as witches and those dying of the plague as the required human sacrifice. In the course of performing this transmutation, Hohenheim was nearly killed; Dante saved him by instinctively attaching his soul to the body of another man; thus the pair discovered "eternal" life. In addition to this first Stone, Dante and Hohenheim were responsible for the destruction of at least two ancient cities: one located where the present capital of Amestris, Central, now stands, and a "fabled lost city in the East" (in reality, Hohenheim's home city), each of which is said to have mysteriously disappeared overnight. The inhabitants of the cities were used as ingredients in the Stone, while the buildings were pulled underground with alchemy. However, some time prior to the beginning of the anime, Hohenheim left Dante, eventually meeting Trisha Elric twenty years prior and falling in love with her.

Suddenly left to fend for herself, Dante resorted to using the Homunculi to do her bidding. She seeks out Homunculi from the moment they are created (when an alchemist tries to bring a dead person back to life) and feeds them Red Stones, thus strengthening them. She convinces the Homunculi that they will be better off as true humans, and makes them believe that she can transform them into true humans with the power of the Philosopher's Stone. Hence, the Homunculi become her minions in helping her to create the Stone. In reality, she only wants the Stone for herself in order to continue cheating death. Only Pride and Envy seem aware of this. The former serves Dante in exchange for power and adulation while the latter does so to kill as many humans as possible.

Unwilling to risk creating a Philosopher's Stone herself, Dante seeks to manipulate someone else into unwittingly doing so for her. However, she reasons that only someone with nothing left to lose would go so far as to sacrifice the many human souls required to create a Philosopher's Stone. Thus she uses the Homunculi (especially Führer King Bradley, who is secretly the Homunculus Pride) to wage unceasing war, hoping to motivate a desperate alchemist to create a Philosopher's Stone, which the Homunculi would then steal for her. To this end, she orchestrates the slaughters in Ishbal and Lior, and later, to cover her tracks, she orders Pride to attack Drachma, a country to the north. In the latter campaign, she plans to use the chaos on the front lines as a cover for the planned assassinations of Roy Mustang and his subordinates by Envy, though he returned upon hearing that she disposed of Honenheim and refused to help until she reminded him of the Elric brothers had the Stone, giving Envy the pleasure to kill Ed (his replacement) and get her Al (the stone).

Due to her rapidly decaying body from over usage of the soul transfer, Dante had planned to transfer her soul into Rose's body next using the Philosopher's Stone that was inside Al's body. This way, she hoped to gain control of Ed, hoping Rose's feelings for him would allow her to control him and have him replace Hohenheim as her lover. But after Ed refused to aid her, Dante sent him away to the other side for a short while. When Ed did return and got killed by Envy, Al sacrificed himself to save his brother, destroying the Philsopher's Stone to Dante's dismay. As she escape into the elevator to find Pride to help her exact vengeance, she is devoured by Gluttony, whom she rendered crazed and mindless earlier.

In "", a lookalike of Lyra appears on Earth when Edward is having tea with Fritz Lang. She appears and bows to Fritz, leaving in a huff when Edward gawks at her.

Trivia

* refers to the first tercet of Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy, where Dante found himself lost in a dark forest. [The first tercet of the Inferno reads as:"Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita | mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, | ché la diritta via era smarrita." - Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) or "Midway upon the journey of our life | I found myself within a forest dark | For the straightforward pathway had been lost." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1882).]
* Dante had a cameo appearance in the television series "The Boondocks" in the episode "Let's Nab Oprah". She appeared with two other elderly women in a book store that was being attacked by Ed and Rummy.

Notes and references