Bride Not To Be

Can YOU

Name This Marvel Villain??

When you combine ambition and vengeance, few can top this villainess--and you can throw in a little ruthlessness for good measure. She's used those traits and a few more to get to the top, even becoming Queen for a time--though her insane lust for power, as well as making a particularly bad choice for an enemy, brought about her fall from grace. That conflict caused her death--or so it was thought.

Yet unknown to her enemies, she lived to plot anew--this time executing a fatal plan of revenge against the one who had ruined her scheme to claim yet another throne. Perhaps this scene from Sub-Mariner will jog your memory, where the vixen makes an attempt to wreck Namor's wedding day by disguising herself as his bride during the ceremony:

Yes, Llyra, who's sought revenge against Namor ever since he drove her out of Lemuria, where she'd manipulated circumstances to become Queen. Her scheme to become Empress of Atlantis didn't pan out--but her true claim to villainy was yet to come. Enraged, she kidnapped the real Dorma and laid a trap for Namor, whom she knew was sure to attempt a rescue. Just before Namor arrived, she smashed Dorma's cell of water which was keeping her alive, and fled--leaving Dorma to suffocate to death in the open air. Namor, delayed by Llyra's traps, arrived too late to save her.

Escaping retribution, Llyra bitterly made several more attempts to satisfy her thirst for vengeance, using allies, her mental powers, and certainly her devious nature. Yet her single-minded pursuit of Namor's death inevitably brought about her own.

In his grief, Namor abdicated his throne--which inadvertently doomed his comic, since Marvel found that Namor the loner didn't really appeal to anyone. (Sub-Mariner lasted only another 34 issues.) Atlantis didn't fare very well, either, going through one upheaval after another. The last I knew, from events in Uncanny X-Men and other appearances, Atlanteans have been reduced to various groups of nomads and even terrorist cells--a far cry from their glory days. Namor has fared much better--though how he can continually be so haughty in a royal sense seems absurd, without an actual kingdom to back him up.