Lady Murasaki (Hannibal)
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Lady Murasaki Shikibu Lecter is a fictional character featured in Thomas Harris' novel Hannibal Rising. She is Hannibal Lecter's aunt. She was portrayed by Gong Li in the film adaptation of the novel.
[edit] Character History
After the young Lecter escaped from the men who brutally murdered and cannibalized his younger sister, Mischa, he was a ward of the Soviet state. In 1946, his uncle Robert, Count Lecter, a respected painter, discovered him and brought him to France to live with his family.
Robert was married to a Japanese noblewoman named Lady Murasaki Shikibu. They had met in 1921, at an exhibition of Robert's paintings in the Tokyo Metropolitan. She was a young girl then, but Robert was smitten. In 1936, her father came to Paris as the new Japanese Ambassador to France, bringing his daughter with him, and Robert at once came to the embassy and offered to convert to Shinto. Her father said Robert's religion was not his primary concern; he understood that his real intention was to court her. Her father neither understood nor approved of their marriage, but at the intervention of her mother, who did, they were happily married until his death in 1946, during a confrontation with a butcher, Paul Momund, who had earlier insulted Murasaki in front of a young Hannibal.
Lady Murasaki covered-up for Hannibal when he murdered the butcher, although she was appalled by what he had done. She took him with her to Paris where she enrolled him in a boarding school. She continued to act as his guardian and his only family. Hannibal, in turn, had fallen in love with her the moment he saw her, and his visits bordered on courting. When Hannibal began to hunt and kill the men who had murdered his sister, she repeatedly tried to dissuade him. They came close to consummating their relationship when she asked him to promise not to kill again; he replied that he had already made a promise to his sister.
Hannibal's targets soon realised that they could use Lady Murasaki to get to him. They kidnapped her and tried to use her to lure him to his death. Hannibal successfully rescued Murasaki but she ran from him after she witnessed him kill the leader of the gang. She visited him one last time while he was being held by the police, and saw that he was emotionally dead; after helping to secure his release she returned to Japan.
Lady Murasaki was in many ways responsible for Lecter's iconic sophistication and mannerism; herself an ambassador's daughter, her influence on Lecter's mannerism in the novel is highly significant, as he is exposed to her strong cultural refinement. Also, it is through her tutelage of Japanese Martial Arts to Hannibal that allowed him to become so deadly and efficient a killer, with or without a weapon in hand.
[edit] Trivia
Hannibal Rising proposes that Lady Murasaki was the fictitious descendant of two real-life Japanese historical figures. One is, of course, her namesake, Murasaki Shikibu, the poet and author of the world's first major novel, The Tale of Genji (The fictitious latter-day Murasaki was very knowledgeable about poetry, especially her namesake's work, but not a writer herself). The other is Lord Date Masamune, a prominent daimyo during the Sengoku Period and a participant in the 1615 siege of Osaka.
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The Books The Films Main Characters Secondary Characters |
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