Leigh Teabing

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Sir Leigh Teabing CBE is a fictional character in the popular 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code and the 2006 film based on it. In the film, he was portrayed by Ian McKellen.

Teabing is a British Royal Historian, a Knight of the Realm, Grail scholar, and friend of Harvard professor Robert Langdon. Independently wealthy, he lives outside Paris in a château called Château Villette with his faithful butler Rémy Legaludec.

At some unrevealed point during his life, Teabing contracted polio. Although he lives in France, he regularly travels to Great Britain to receive treatment because of a distrust of French doctors. Teabing wears metal braces and uses crutches.

Unknown to everyone except Rémy, Teabing is secretly an enigmatic figure called The Teacher.

As the Teacher, Teabing contacts Opus Dei leader Bishop Manuel Aringarosa, who has just received notice from the Vatican that it will withdraw its support of Opus Dei. The Teacher tells Aringarosa that Opus Dei can gain the Vatican's support again if they are able to possess the legendary Holy Grail. Filled with enthusiasm, Aringarosa listens to everything the Teacher says, even permitting his trusted albino monk Silas to do the Teacher's bidding. The Teacher requests that for a short period Aringarosa and Silas cannot communicate with each other, until Silas has finished his mission. Without the knowledge of Aringarosa, the Teacher instructs Silas to kill the four top members (seneschal) of the Priory of Sion, a secret organization pledged to protect the secret of the Grail, and at the same time gain the whereabouts of the secret keystone which leads to the Grail. (The keystone turns out to be a cryptex, a portable vault that can only be opened by a password.) Teabing gains all this information by a secret spying base in his château.

After Silas shoots Jacques Saunière, leader of the Priory and curator of the Louvre Museum, Saunière leaves a trail of secret codes before he dies, leading the French police to suspect that Robert Langdon was the murderer. With the assistance of Saunière's granddaughter Sophie Neveu, Langdon escapes from the police and takes refuge at Teabing's, but not before retrieving the keystone Saunière left for Sophie at the Depository Bank of Zürich. At the same time, Teabing (as the Teacher) secretly contacts Silas to go to Château Villette to snatch away the keystone. However, after discovering that the keystone has to be unlocked with secret combinations, Teabing realizes that he also needs the help of Langdon and Sophie. With the help of Sophie, he subdues the intruding Silas. At the same time, the French police, who have successfully tracked down Langdon and Sophie, surrounds the château. The three of them, together with Rémy and the tied up Silas, fly to London via Teabing's private jet.

After they arrive at London, Teabing takes Langdon and Sophie to the Temple Church, which he says that clues to the Grail might be hidden in. However, this is only an opportunity for Rémy to conduct a fake kidnapping scene, in which he reveals to Silas that he is also working for the Teacher and instructs him to kidnap Teabing and leave by their limousine. However, Rémy panics when Langdon threatens to destroy the keystone and shows his face. Although the kidnapping scene was still successful, Teabing now knows that he has to get rid of Rémy.

At this point, Silas still doesn't know that Teabing is the Teacher. Teabing makes a phone call to Silas and Rémy from the limousine's rear compartment and tells Silas to take some rest at the London Opus Dei Centre. After making an anonymous call to the police telling Silas's whereabouts, he kills Rémy by putting some peanut powder in his cognac, as Rémy is highly allergic to peanuts.

He then heads off to Westminster Abbey, where the keystone's riddle leads to. Langdon and Sophie arrive shortly after Teabing, and there he reveals to them his identity as the Teacher. Langdon and Sophie are both stunned, and Teabing threatens to kill them if they don't join him. To show his sincerity, he hands over the keystone (the cryptex) to Langdon, but later Langdon throws the keystone up to midair. Teabing tries to catch it but it slips off his hands and crashes on the ground. Just when Teabing thinks the secret of the Grail is lost forever, Langdon reveals that he had already guessed the password needed to open the cryptex and retrieved the final clue inside. Before Teabing can know what the clue is, the police arrive in time and arrest him.

[edit] Miscellanea and differences

• Leigh Teabing's name is actually an anagram of the surnames of Richard Leigh and Michael Baigent — authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, a real book which espouses very similar beliefs to Teabing's (in the novel, Teabing explicitly references this book). Teabing's physical description resembles that of Henry Lincoln, the third author of that book. (On the other hand, the "portly" Teabing as described in the book does not much resemble the slender form of Ian McKellen who portrayed the character in the movie.)

• In the film, Teabing mentions a cannabis charge. In the novel, this isn't mentioned.

• In the novel upon arriving at Biggin Hill Executive Airport, Teabing threatens to sue the Chief Inspector if he enters the plane. In the film, he does no such thing.

• In the novel, Teabing tells his pilot to fly directly to London. In the film, he tells him to fly to Zurich, Switzerland, but changes the flight plan to London during mid-flight upon reading the cryptex's clue: "In London lies a knight a pope interred."