- "What happened next? Nothing, really. We took care of all the remaining devils and that was it. I still have a job to do that's far from done, which is to eliminate every last demon."
- ―Lady[src]
Lady (birth name "Mary") is a human demon hunter, who first appeared in Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening. She later appeared in the game's spin-off manga, as well as the Devil May Cry: The Animated Series and Devil May Cry 4. In the third game, she appears in numerous cutscenes, fights Dante as a boss character, and teams up with Dante during the game’s closing credits, though she is not controllable by the player. She also provides the game’s framing narration, telling the story of how she met Dante and Vergil, and how Dante picked the name "Devil May Cry" for his shop, which was something she had said while trying to comfort Dante over the loss of his brother.
Her original name, Mary, was given to her by her father Arkham, but she chose to renounce that name when her father murdered her mother. Dante first called her "lady" when she refused to tell him her name.
Description
Lady seems to be younger than Dante. When she is first seen in Devil May Cry 3, she wears a schoolgirl outfit and she also wears this outfit in the anime. This later changed into a formal outfit in the fourth game, probably by the amount of time that passes between the two installments.
Lady has dark, chin-length hair on both sides of her face and she has a fringe that reaches her eyebrows.
Like her father, she has the genetic condition heterochromia, which render each of her eyes a different color, as a result her left eye is red and her right eye is bluish-green. In her latest appearance, she wears sunglasses to conceal her eyes.
Personality
Lady is very fierce, rough, and tough enough to keep up with Dante. She is described as a "psychotic devil-hunting female". Although, when she kills her father, Lady breaks down and cries, showing a more sentimental side. She also appears to have a bit of a crush on Dante, as she appears to show a softer side when around him and she gets a little jealous when she learns that Dante is good friends with Trish.
She originally hated all demons, even half-demons, and wanted to exterminate all of them. Her greatest weapon at the time was her belief that what she was doing was right. This caused her to develop a moral bigotry against demons, believing them to be remorsless monsters unable to understand things like love or family. This may have been the reason why she did not initially believe in the legend of Sparda, she may not have been able to accept the fact that a demon is responsible for both the world's and humanity's continued existence.
However, over time and through her experiences with Dante, she learns that Sparda did exist and that humans and demons are equals in their capacity for both righteousness and depravity.
Story
Devil May Cry 3
Before meeting Dante, Mary's father, Arkham, killed her mother for reasons unknown to her. Because of this, she disassociated herself from the name her father gave her. She quickly developed a hatred towards not only her father for his horrendous act, but also against all demons, which she blamed for corrupting him. In a quest for revenge, she begins to climb the Temen-ni-gru in pursuit of Arkham.
She first meets Dante just after his battle with Cerberus. She fires a missile from Kalina Ann at Dante, who dodges the missile and rides it around the chamber like a flying skateboard. Dante releases it, and the missile blows a hole in the other side of the chamber. She then drives her motorcycle through the hole, continuing up the tower.
She fights her way up through the tower, taking a different path than Dante. As she approaches the top, she is confronted by Arkham, who calmly asks her why she points a gun at her own kin. She then claims the only family she had was her mother attempts to shoot him, but Arkham dodges her bullets and flips her off the side of the tower. She fires at him with her handguns as she falls, and one bullet grazes his cheek.
Below, Dante, in devilishly proper timing, catches her by the ankle. She then shoots Dante in the forehead, and he drops her. By jamming the blade of the Kalina Ann into the wall of the tower, she manages to stop her fall only a short distance away. Dante peers over the ledge to express his outrage at being shot, so she shoots at him again. This time Dante catches the bullet in his teeth, but leaves her be.
Still without a name, she presses on. She does not see Dante again until Leviathan nearly falls on her. Not sure what to make of it, she draws her gun as the eye begins to move. In a fountain of blood, Dante bursts forth from the eye. He starts to walk away, following a sign left by Jester, but she stops him. The two exchange a few words, but are attacked by demons. She and Dante stand back-to-back and fight off the demons. During the battle, Dante asks what her name is, to which Lady responds that she doesn't have one, and that he can call her whatever he likes. Dante, in a rather dismissive way, replies "Whatever, Lady" before leaping away and leaving the rest of the demons for her to deal with.
When Dante finds the seemingly dead body of Arkham, Lady arrives at the scene. Seeing the body of her despised father, she asks Dante if he is responsible. When Dante replies with an unsatisfactory, "So what if I did?" Lady flies into a rage and shoots at Dante, though he dodges or counters every shot. While venting her anger on Dante, she explains Arkham's sins and that he is her father. She laments about Arkham's death being her responsibility since they are family, but ultimately sends Dante on his way. Some time after Dante's departure, Arkham awakes, though he is still on the verge of death. He tells Lady that it was a demon who tricked him into killing his wife, and pins the blame on Vergil. After saying this, he takes his last breath. Lady then cries over him and promises to avenge his death by stopping Vergil.
Lady then catches up to Dante as he is fighting Vergil, and joins the clash. Soon after, Jester stops the battle. Jester reveals that he is in fact the alter ego of Arkham. Arkham also reveals that he lured Dante, Vergil, and Lady into that chamber, stating that all of them are the key in his plan to unlock the path to Demon World. In Lady's case, she is the descendant of a human priestess who Sparda sacrificed to seal the Temen-ni-gru. Jester mocks the brothers, saying they are weak. After slamming Lady's face into the floor, he stabs her thigh with the Kalina Ann in order to draw her blood and break the seal. Lady, Vergil, and Dante together try to put an end to Arkham, but, since they are weakened from having fought each other, he easily dispatches them and knocks them off of the rising platform on which they were standing. Lady very nearly falls again as the floor beneath her and the sons of Sparda collapses, but Dante catches her. She insists that it is her job to stop Arkham since he is her father, and uses the grappling hook on the Kalina Ann to ascend to the top of the tower. Dante, however, doesn't think she is a match for Arkham, and follows her by a different route.
Dante finally catches up with her at the Divine Library. When Dante goes to the top of the tower to teleport to the Demon World, Lady stops him and aims her gun at Dante, saying that it is her responsibility to stop Arkham and Dante should not interfere. Dante insists that it is his responsibility, too, and demands that Lady get out of the way. Lady refuses and they begin a fight. After her defeat, Dante remarks that this whole mess started with his father, and he should sort it out. Lady acquiesces, and entrusts Dante with Kalina Ann in exchange for his name. Some time later, Lady is shown catching a glimpse of Vergil going to the top of the tower.
After Arkham's acquisition of Sparda's power and subsequent defeat at the hands of Dante and Vergil, Arkham falls back to the human world. As Arkham, weakened and bloodied, tries to recover, Lady finds him. With Lady training her gun at him, Arkham pleads his innocence and begs her for his life. Lady shoots him regardless, several times. Lady then cries beside his body.
Lady reappears at the end of the game beside Dante, and converses about the aftermath. This is where she coins the famous phrase 'Devil May Cry' after seeing Dante shedding tears for his brother. Afterwards, the demons still left in the human world appear and attack both of them. Lady fights beside Dante. Then, the scene shifts to Lady's commentary about the future, the demons left in the human world, and about Dante's newly opened shop. Through her interactions with Dante, Lady realizes that demons are capable of both good and evil, just as humans are.
Devil May Cry: The Animated Series
Lady goes undercover to help Dante with a mission.
In the anime, she works as a solo devil hunter but sometimes calls on Dante for jobs, and sometimes for the money that he owes her. She also was unaware of Dante's another partner, Trish (from the first Devil May Cry), until they intersect at one of the jobs of hers. Lady is hired by a priest who claimed the blond woman was controlling the demons terrorizing the town he was in. After realizing that she was tricked and dealing with the demonic priest, Lady and Trish grow to like each other. Unfortunately for Dante, this means buying expensive clothes and leaving him with the bill. During the Abigal incident, Lady and Trish kill a large amount of lesser demons while Dante kills Sid. Also during the episode where she first meets Trish, Trish asks if Lady likes Dante, Lady quickly says no and goes on to point out Dante's flaws. During the series, Lady would often jokingly call Dante a "dumbass" and when Dante won a card game against her, she would automaticly assume Dante cheated, which he really did. During mission 09 Lady helped Dante win a card game to lure out a demon. After Dante won, he, under control of magic, offered to play a "game" with her and had a shootout with him, which Lady shot Dante with Ebony, but Dante later recovered, and mocked her aim saying she had barely missed his heart. Throughout the series, she would visit Devil May Cry to pick up money he owed her, or to hang out with Dante and Patty.
Devil May Cry 4
Lady is the one responsible for getting Dante and Trish involved in the events in Fortuna by assigning them there. She is the one who tells Dante and Trish about the Order of the Sword, a small congregation that gathers in the city of Fortuna. She also says that lately they started collecting Devil Arms and "even have butted in on some of [her] jobs". She also hints that the Order may have something more to them than what meets the eye.
Later on, after the events in Fortuna, she comes back to Dante's shop to pay for their services, implying that Dante doesn't have any debt to her anymore, even if the amount she paid was small. Trish complains about this small payment to which Lady reasons that the events that happened there escalated because of Trish's actions. She later accompanies Dante and Trish to their next assignment.
Other appearances
Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3
Lady in an ability card
Lady appears in Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 as an ability card for the mode Heroes and Heralds.
Project X Zone
Lady is revealed to be a playable characters in upcoming Capcom, Sega, and Namco Bandai crossover Project X Zone. This marks the first time when Lady is a playable character.
Monster Hunter Frontier G
Lady appears in a crossover trailer for Monster Hunter Frontier G, and her clothing is available to player characters as armor.
Weapons and abilities
While still a normal human, she is also an exceptionally skilled firearms expert and extremely acrobatic in close quarters combat.[2] Her signature weapon is the Kalina Ann, a customized missile launcher similar to a MANPADS. She also utilizes a VZ.61 Scorpion submachine gun with a small bayonet attached to it, as well as a CZ-75 handgun modified with match grade target sights, an extended barrel, and a compensator/barrel weight. Lady is a remarkably talented Devil Hunter, able to easily kill most demons with her weapons. In the animated series, Lady was shown to have some skill in hand-to-hand combat able to disarm Trish and go toe-to-toe with her in a physical fight for a short time despite her superior physical abilities as a demon.
Lady is shown to be an avid billiards player. She is shown several times playing it, the first time being in the second volume of manga[3] and the second time in the anime.[4] She is a capable player, able to strategically make a complicated strike to win a bet.
In Devil May Cry 3 and Devil May Cry: The Animated Series she owns a motorcycle. The first one gets destroyed by Dante. The motorcycle she rides in the anime is a red 1974 Ducati 750 Supersport.
Background
Lady shares her original name, Mary, with the Virgin Mary, who called on St. Lucia and Beatrice to aid the poet Dante Alighieri in his sojourn through Hell. As such, her chosen name of "Lady" is likely then a reference to one of the Virgin's other names, "Madonna" (Italian for "Lady").
Trivia
- In Devil May Cry 3, the player can unlock an alternate costume for Lady. She wears it only if the player chooses to use special costumes.
- In Devil May Cry 4's secret ending, Dante is looking at a magazine with Lady's picture in it.
- In the Polish version of DMC4, Lady does not recognize her nickname, and is referred to just as a woman. This is a bug in the Polish translation.
- At one point, Trish assumes Lady harbors romantic feelings for Dante, which Lady hastily denies.
- If you make a fresh DMC3 save file on the PlayStation 2 memory card, the icon will be a chibi version of Lady sitting on her rocket launcher and if you attempt to delete it she will cry.
- From DMC3 to DMC4, the scars on Lady's face appear to have healed and her breasts increased by three cup sizes.
- This may be explained by the amount of time that passes between the two installments, giving Lady time to mature and heal.
- She appears as an unlockable icon in PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale.
- In the official book from Capcom (Material Archive: Note of Naught, DMC3 artbook), is proved that Arkham, not Kalina Ann, is the one of Lady's parents descended from the priestess. So Mary got her priestess blood through him, and he turned into a demon later on by sacrificing his perfectly normal human wife.
References
- ↑ The Internet Movie Database
- ↑ Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening, Character — Lady: "While being a human female and therefore born of weak flesh and blood, she has made devil-hunting her life's work. She hates all demons and wants to destroy them all."
- ↑ Devil May Cry 3 - Code: Vergil - page 51
- ↑ Devil May Cry: The Animated Series, Mission : 02 "Highway Star"