Would never become so emotionally attached again. You're going to tell me you didn't feel anything after he was killed?",īancroft reluctantly admits, "Darius was different." In spite of the rules and his Watcher vows, he had come to respect and even careĪbout Darius, and after the Immortal was murdered by a man he had personally recruited, Bancroft must have sworn to himself that he Issue later, saying "You spent thirty years watching the man. Yet the Watcher Chronicles record that Bancroft suffered a breakdown after Darius' death, and when Joe Dawson presses him on the He registers no grief on learning that his latestĪssignment, Mei-ling Shen, has just been killed, and he takes a fellow Watcher severely to task for being obsessed with her Immortal. In the episode They Also Serveīancroft's attitude towards Immortals seems detached, and almost callous. He also recruited Joe Dawson, who eventually became Duncan MacLeod's Watcher,Īnd James Horton, the renegade Watcher who murdered the unarmed Darius on Holy Ground. According to the CD,īancroft was Darius' Watcher from 1962 until 1993. While Ian Bancroft (played by Michael Anderson, Jr.) would doubtlessly have denied that he was either Darius' friend or his enemy, in a way he was both. Some years later, in 1642, she encounteredĭuncan in Paris and attacked him, forcing him to take her head in self-defense.
Violane ran off after two years and returned to her former life of prostitution.ĭarius and Marie searched for her in vain. What she needed to know to survive, but in spite of all their efforts on her behalf When she became restless, he asked the Immortal Marie Guilliard to teach the girl
Darius befriended Violane and tried to assist her in making a better lifeįor herself by teaching her the healing arts and allowing her to assist him. In the novel Shadow of Obsession the young Immortal Violane was working asĪ prostitute in the streets of Paris when Duncan MacLeod found her and brought her Stilicho, was ambitious for a generalship in the Roman Army himself, and even dressed as a Roman on occasion. The real Alaric had received military training from the Romans as a young man, fought with the Roman General In the novel Alaric is portrayed as a hard-drinking boorish manĭressed in skins. North into Gaul to meet his destiny at the gates of Paris. Sacked Rome in August, Alaric marched into southern Italy where he died before the year was out, and Darius took his warband Or CD, but appears in the novel Shadow of Obsession as Darius' friend and fellow Goth warlord. If he was indeed Darius' first teacher he may have passed some of his autocratic attitudes on to his student.Īlaric I, King of the Visigoths, and the real historical figure who sacked Rome in 410, is not even mentioned in the series Portrays Xerxes I as headstrong, temperamental, governed by passion, and prone to executing people (even his relatives) Would enabled him to survive in The Game, so in that respect he could be considered a friend. While we know nothing of their student-teacher relationship, he must have taught Darius the Rules and the skills that
It is possible to speculate that Xerxes I could have been an Immortal, and could have changed his name and gone to ParthiaĪfter his first death, and eventually became the teacher of the Immortal Darius, and perhaps even gave him that name. Xerxes and his heir (also named Darius) were both murdered in 465 B.C. His queen (as in The Book of Esther), and historians equate him with Xerxes I, heir of Darius the Great of the Achaemenidĭynasty of Persia. But in a legendary and historical context, Ahasuerus was the Persian king who made Esther the Israelite The name Ahasuerus appears in theīible, but for all we know it may have been a common name in the ancient Middle East and does not necessarily refer to aįamous individual. Parthia, was part of the old Persian Empire, located in what is now northeastern Iran. Darius' first teacher is a mysterious figure, appearing only as an entry in the Watcher Chronicles CD.