Dante (Fullmetal Alchemist character)

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Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

[edit] Character History

Dante, first seen form, in "Dante of the Deep Forest".

Dante, in Lyra's body, in "A Rotted Heart".

Dante is the main antagonist of the Fullmetal Alchemist anime. She first appears in Episode 32 ("Dante of the Deep Forest"), 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 is apparently killed by the Homunculus Greed, who is in turn killed by Ed.

Much later in the series, it is revealed that Dante had actually faked her own death, thus leading Ed to believe that she was killed by Greed. In reality, Dante had transferred her soul to a younger body (Lyra's), 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 child, a boy called William; however, he died of mercury poisoning at age 18. 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 attaching his soul to the body of another man. 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," 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 twenty years or so prior to the beginning of the anime, Hohenheim fell in love with Trisha Elric and left Dante for good.

Dante, 400 years ago, in "A Rotted Heart".

Suddenly left to fend for herself, Dante resorts 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.

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.

It is unknown what becomes of Dante at the end of the anime, but it is assumed that she is dead: after a final confrontation with Edward and Alphonse, she is last seen fighting off a crazed, mindless Gluttony while attempting to return above ground in the elevator to Pride's office. When the elevator reaches its final destination, neither she nor Gluttony is inside. Moreover, since her body is rapidly decaying at the time, even if she managed to fend off Gluttony, her remaining life would be limited since she would be unable to transfer her soul into a new body without a new Philosopher's Stone. It is possible that she kept a spare Philosopher's Stone for dire emergencies. However, the soul transfers are imperfect, and Dante's soul erodes with each transfer, causing each new body to decay more quickly than the last. (According to Edward, this is a consequence of the Law of Equivalent Exchange: since she gains youth each time she transfers her soul, she must give something up in return.) After four centuries, her soul's capacity for sustaining a body is almost at its limit. Thus, even if Dante somehow managed to survive and transfer her soul once more, she would not have long to live anyway.

Last Words (Had she been devoured): (To Gluttony) You don't understand, do you? Just hold on, we'll find you something to eat soon, okay?

[edit] Notes

Dante's personality and motivation are very enigmatic. She is manipulative, single-minded, devious and vindictive. In her long years as a parasitic soul, moving from body to body, her personality has apparently changed considerably: as Hohenheim lay dying after creating the Philosopher's Stone she rushed to save him, but now she cares little for the lives of others, believing those who die in order to preserve her life to be "necessary martyrs." Dante exhibits a misanthropic view of the world, believing most human beings to be "selfish, ignorant creatures", unworthy of the knowledge of alchemy and the Philosopher's Stone. As such, she has no qualms over starting wars or taking countless lives, as she is convinced that she is ultimately protecting mankind from itself. This is all Dante cares about, global politics and wars are just mean nothing to her, she has control Ametris through her Homunculus Pride, and uses the whole country as a tool to gain the Stone.

Dante is an amazingly skilled alchemist - probably the second most powerful, after Hohenheim, featured in the series. Like Hohenheim, Ed, and Izumi (and later Al) she can transmute without a circle, completing complex transmutations just by clapping her hands. Though she has never crafted a Philosopher's Stone herself, it is not because she lacks the skill or knowledge but more likely because she fears the consequences; when Hohenheim first forged a Stone it nearly killed him. She also possesses other abilities that go beyond normal alchemy: she is able to summon the Gate using infants (whose souls are more strongly linked to the Gate than those of adults), transform Gluttony from a childish fool into a ravenous monster, and split the mind, soul and body of Hohenheim before sending him into the Gate. Dante is also the only known person to attempt a human transmutation specifically in order to create Homunculi (Greed and Pride).

She uses the symbol of a winged snake fixed on a cross (called a flamel), which is passed on to Izumi, and then to the Elric brothers. It is meaningful that the symbol is the opposite of the Ouroboros worn by the Homunculi. It represents a fixation on the volatile principle in alchemy, as opposed to the endless cycle represented by Ouroboros. In Dante's case, the symbol likely represents her belief that she is immortal and has conquered the cycle of birth and death represented by the Ouroboros. In real life, it is a symbol associated with the 15th-century alchemist Nicholas Flamel, who claimed to have created a Philosopher's Stone and used it to achieve immortality (one of the two main goals of alchemy, along with the creation of gold from lead).

The name Dante is likely derived from Dante Alighieri, considering the Homunculi's association with the Seven Deadly Sins which are prominent in the Divine Comedy.

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