Striga

Striga is a character in the Castlevania animated series. She is one of the four Queens of Styria and a member of the Council of Sisters, serving as the leader of the army of vampires. She was voiced by Ivana Milicevic in the English version of the show. Striga is a female vampire with androgynous features. She has long black unkempt hair, dark gray lips, and light green eyes. Compared to the other members of Carmilla's Council, Striga is not only more stocky and muscular, but is also considerably taller than her peers. She wears a dark blue cloak which hides her black suit of armor, a red sash, a dress in a darker shade of white, and a leather belt. It should be noted that the left pauldron of her armor appears to be fashioned after a raven or crow's head. Striga also wears an ornament in her hair that is based on the original Carmilla's mask (which first appeared in Castlevania II: Simon's Quest). Striga is the high general of Styria and its greatest warrior. She tends to be blunt, preferring honest "honorable" tactics. Lenore notes that while most of the sisters play with their prey, Striga would kill it and move on. Striga is not afraid to share her honest advice with Carmilla. Striga works closely with Morana, the two keep the kingdom of Styria running. They have long been lovers and work exceptionally well together - combining solid plans, supporting each other, and pushing each other to greater heights. Striga is pleased with her life but remembers the hard road that leads to being a queen of Styria. Morana helps Striga look past this and inspires her with the notion that she can soon lead the full military might of an empire. Striga is committed to making that dream and Carmilla's vision come true. Also, due to her warrior mentality, Striga possesses a very strong sense of honor and a strict code of conduct, as seen during her conversation with Morana, where she expressed surprise that any warrior would willingly turn on their employers and benefactors if offered more coin, than their initial offer by Morana to side with them instead, and later stating that "there was no honor in it". Striga has also shown to be a military tactic genius, as seen where after only a day of hearing about Carmilla's new plan to build their own empire for themselves by taking advantage of the chaos of Dracula's rampage, Striga had already figured out and thought of several highly effective military tactics, techniques and plans to properly police, defend and maintain the national border defenses of their new territories. She also managed to easily see the pitfalls to the plan thought up by Carmilla and accurately came to the conclusion that the sole thing that they were missing to make it work was that they severely lacked the numbers for their armies to create a suitable invasion and security forces to police their new lands. She was also able to see the other pitfall of utilizing Hector's abilities as a Devil Forgemaster, as due to his ability to transform human corpses into night creatures, they would need a gigantic amount of fresh dead bodies to rebuild and expand their armies and that acquiring such a gigantic number would possibly backfire to them and damage their food supply. It was also shown that similar to Carmilla, Striga has little to no respect for humans and possesses no pity or empathy for them. This is seen during her first meeting with Hector, where she dehumanized him by referring to him as an "it" and had little to no hesitation in agreeing to Carmilla's orders to keep him imprisoned in subhuman conditions in their dungeons. Later, Striga showed little to no hesitation in agreeing with Carmilla's plot to create their "corridor nation" of an "eternal food" supply and had already come up with several plans to imprison and herd the human population into concentration camps, further emphasizing the fact that she cares very little for humanity and only sees them as food. However, similar to Morana and Lenore, despite looking down on humans in general and seeing them as nothing more than livestock, Striga has admitted to acknowledging Humanity's willpower and strong desire to survive. This is especially seen when engaging humans in battle, where Striga has shown to expect honor and loyalty among human warriors, whether they are soldiers or even mercenaries. And during her fight against the human farmers during the survey of the land she wanted to conquer with Morana, Striga has shown to have developed a sense of respect and perhaps even admiration for the humans who choose to willingly fight against opponents they have no chance against, rather than live in regret at not fighting back at all against their potential oppressors.