Marisa Coulter
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Marisa Coulter is a fictional character, the mother of Lyra Belacqua in Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series. In the series, she is often referred to as Mrs Coulter. She is extremely beautiful, and uses this to seduce and manipulate people. Although she is primarily a villainess, she eventually performs a supreme act of self-sacrifice. Her dæmon is a golden monkey.
In the "His Dark Materials" trilogy, Mrs Coulter is the head member of a particular faction of the Church known as the Oblation Board. Under Mrs Coulter's guidance, The Oblation Board has been secretly kidnapping children from Lyra's world, and then proceeding to use them as "lab rats" for their experiments at their laboratory in Bolvangar. The Oblation Board thinks that by cutting away the child's dæmon, they can prevent the child from ever having sinful thoughts such as homosexuality or lust when they reach puberty, and thus make them more compliant with the rules laid down by the oppressive Christian Church. The fact that Mrs Coulter can orchestrate such horrific experiments shows just how immoral, cold and ruthlessly ambitious she really is.
Mrs Coulter is also a former lover of Lord Asriel, another central character in the trilogy. Lord Asriel is the leader of the rebellion against the Church, and the father of Lyra Belacqua. Although it is not apparrent at first, towards the end of the final book in the trilogy it becomes obvious that Mrs Coulter still loves Asriel, and together they bring down (literally) Metatron, the right-hand man to the Authority and the mastermind behind the Church's offensive aginst Lord Asriel's rebellion.
Despite the fact that Mrs Coulter works for the Church and carries out it's bidding, her devotion is not what one would call absolute, as she is all to quick to turn against her former masters once she discovers the Church's plan to murder her daughter, Lyra.