Lord Asriel
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Lord Asriel is a major character in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series. He is the leader of a huge multiversal rebellion against a false deity known as The Authority.
Asriel is a member of the English aristocracy in a parallel universe dominated by an oppressive version of the Christian Church. He is described as fierce in nature and commands great respect in both the political and academic spheres, being a military leader and a fellow of Jordan College in his world's version of Oxford. His dæmon is Stelmaria, a snow leopard.
Though in the early part of the trilogy Lord Asriel is styled as Lyra Belacqua's uncle, it is later revealed that he is in fact her father, the child being the product of an illicit union between Asriel and Marisa Coulter, the wife of a prominent politician.
At the end of Northern Lights, Asriel succeeds in opening a doorway into another world through the process of intercision and makes his way to an unpopulated Earth. Here, he gathers a huge army together at what becomes known as the Adamant Fortress in order to wage war on the Kingdom of Heaven and to replace its tyrannical rule with a new Republic. How he accomplishes this is somewhat vague; he is described as having a mystical ability to get what he wants simply by wishing for it. It may be speculated that, being in league with rebel angels and by extension Dust itself, Asriel draws his unusual power from the universal consciousness that the golden particles represent.
Ultimately, Lord Asriel must sacrifice himself in a stuggle with the angel Metatron in order to save his daughter's life and to preserve the future well-being of the multiverse.