Kai Winn
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On the science-fiction television series Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Winn Adami was the duplicitous woman who became Kai, the spiritual leader of Bajor, in 2370. She was played by Louise Fletcher.
Winn was a conservative Vedek during the occupation and claimed to have been beaten for her religious teachings.
She is apparently has a contemptuous attitude towards Bajorans who fought in the underground resistance cells because she feels she does not get credit for helping to fight for Bajor’s freedom from Cardassia.
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Conflict on Deep Space Nine
Winn makes her first appearance objecting to the teachings of Keiko O'Brien in the Deep Space Nine school in the episode ‘’In the hands of the Prophets’’. In particular she objects to Mrs. O'Brien's teaching of only the scientific information about the Bajoran wormhole instead of teaching the religious dogma which Mrs. O'Brien states is Winn's responsibility. Winn views Mrs. O’Brien’s teachings as blasphemy and eventually her influence results in all of her Bajoran students being pulled from the school and eventually a bomb detonated inside the school.
Commander Sisko met with Vedek Bareil on Bajor and asked him for help reigning in Winn but he declines to enter into the conflict at that point. When Sisko asks Bareil to arrange for him to address the Vedek Assembly, Bareil again declines stating that some of the Vedeks fear Sisko as the Emissary and some fear him because Winn has told them to fear him.
Winn also directs one of her supporters, a member of Chief O’Brien’s engineering crew named Neela, to assassinate Bareil, who is Winn’s chief rival in the Vedek Assembly. The assassination attempt was made during a speech Bareil was giving calling for an end to conflicts like the one over the school. When Neela comes to Winn and informs her that all the efforts to secure an escape route after assassinating Bareil had been discovered, Winn tells her that her inevitable capture at that point was the will of the Prophets and that she must accept it and carry out the plot anyways.
When Neela makes the attempt, she is stopped but Winn’s involvement, although suspected by Major Kira, was never proven.
Involvement with “The Circle”
Ever the ambitious opportunist, Winn aligns herself with Minister Jaro and his extremist group called "The Circle". The Circle's goal was to eliminate all external influences from Bajor including the Federation which would have served Winn's purposed in getting rid of Commander Sisko whom she resented as the Emissary of the Prophets. The reward for her support would have been the guarantee of becoming Kai.
Eventually it is discovered that The Circle is actually being supplied by the Cardassians and Major Kira manages to sneak into the council chambers and present the evidence to the Council of Ministers. When Kira announces she has the thumb scan of a Cardassian Gul signing off on a shipment of weapons to the Kressari who in-turn sent them on to The Circle. Winn immediately changes sides telling Minister Jaro that if he truly believes that the Cardassians were not supplying the weapons, he should not mind an examination of the evidence.
Election as Kai
When the election for the next Kai approached Winn sought out Kubas Oak who was arrested on Deep Space Nine by Odo and obtains information about the Kendra Valley Massacre which she uses to manipulate Major Kira into investigating Bareil who happens to be Kira’s lover at the time. Ultimately Bareil was forced to withdraw resulting in Winn’s election as Kai.
As Interim First Minister
Winn was briefly named as First Minister on an interim basis after the elected First Minister died of a heart attack and sought to make her appointment permanent. She immediately seeks Major Kira’s help in getting back soil reclamators from a group of farmers. Kira is selected because the group is led by Shakaar Edon who was also the leader of Kira’s resistance cell during the Cardassian Occupation.
Winn deceives Kira into presenting a compromise to Shakaar while at the same time sending security forces to arrest him. Kira defends Shakaar and both become fugitives along with the remaining former members of the resistance cell whom Winn was unable to have picked up for questioning. Shakaar and his supporters and the security forces sent to apprehend them realize that a civil war was highly likely given the situation.
Kira and Shakaar return to the capital with the security force commander to confront Winn. Kira tells Winn that Shakaar is there to enter the election and that if Winn decides to run against him, the fact that she almost started a civil war over farm equipment will be made public. Winn is forced to withdraw from the election and to save face released a statement in support of Shakaar who was obviously going to win either way.
The Reckoning
Winn vocally objected to the removal of a stone tablet addressing the Emissary from the sacred city of B’Hala which Sisko had discovered previously. When the wormhole began to behave strangely and various natural disasters occurred on Bajor, Winn met with Captain Sisko and insisted that these phenomena were signs of the Prophet’s anger at the removal of the tablet and asked as Bajor’s spiritual leader for him to return it. Sisko responded by asking as the Emissary for more time to study it. Winn disagreed and presented Sisko with a formal request from First Minister Shakaar to give it to her. Sisko concedes and agrees to give it back but he is compelled, presumably by the Prophets, to smash the tablet which releases both a Prophet and a Pah Wraith locked inside it. Winn immediately declares that Sisko smashed the tablet out of pettiness rather than give it to her.
Eventually the Prophet takes over the body of Major Kira and appears on the promenade and announces that it is time for the Reckoning and that “she” awaits Kosst Amojan, “the Evil One”. When Winn attempts to get the Prophet to speak to her, Kira states that she awaits the vessel of Kosst Amojen and then ignores Winn.
Sisko decides to evacuate the station and allow the battle to take place. Dax offers a plan to protect the station by slowly flooding it with chroniton particles which would drive out both the Prophet and the Pah Wraith. Sisko refuses citing the Prophets’ help in stopping the Dominion reinforcements from the Gamma Quadrant from coming through the wormhole after the minefield around the entrance had been destroyed.
As the evacuation neared completion, Odo reported a group of Bajorans refusing to leave. This group is Winn holding a prayer service in front of Kira. Sisko tells her she has to leave and he and Winn get into another exchange. During their argument, Kira announces that Kosst Amojan has selected its vessel and Jake Sisko, Captain Sisko’s son, appears on the promenade.
Sisko offers imself to the Pah Wraith instead of Jake but is hurled back by it. Dax tries to convince Sisko to let Wof initiate the chroniton emitters and end the Reckoning but Sisko again refuses saying he has faith that the Prophets will not let anything happen to Jake and orders Dax and Winn to leave.
While escorting Winn to a shuttle, Dax stops to help some children escape. Winn takes advantage of this and goes to Ops and initiates the emitters forcing both the Prophet and the Pah Wraith to leave Kira and Jake’s bodies.
As Kira is escorting Winn to her shuttle, Winn makes a remark about how she thinks Sisko would want to thank her for preventing the destruction of the station and for saving both his and Jake’s life. Kira confronts her about and tells her not to pretend that her actions were benevolent. Winn attempts to justify her actions as being for Bajor by citing that the natural disasters on Bajor have subsided and that is a sign she did the right thing.
Kira then tells Winn that she defied the will of the Prophets because she resented the fact that Sisko, a human and an “infidel” had more faith than she did as Sisko was ready to sacrifice his son if he had to. Winn asserts that her faith is as pure as Sisko’s to which Kira tells her she is confusing faith with ambition. She retorts by telling Kira that just because she was chosen by the Prophets as their vessel did not give her the right to speak for them. Kira shrugs it off and tells Winn that because of her interference, the Reckoning was stopped and that the Evil One was still out there and no one knew what that would mean for Bajor.
Betrayal of the Prophets
When she arrives on the station to help Sisko with his wedding, Winn finally receives what she believes to be a vision from the Prophets who tell her that a guide will soon appear to her. In reality this vision was actually from the Pah Wraiths and the “guide” is Gul Dukat who has been surgically altered to look like a Bajoran and become their Emissary.
Dukat and Winn become lovers and he convinces her that in order to restore Bajor, she must release the Pah Wraiths who are the true Prophets. To do this, Winn obtains the forbidden texts but the pages are blank. Her servant Solbor discovers what Winn and Dukat are planning and threatens to expose them and Winn kills him to prevent it. A bit of Solbor’s blood falls from the knife Winn stabs him with and the text of the Pah Wraiths is revealed. Later on Dukat attempts to read the texts himself but is punished by being blinded as the text is for only the Kai’s eyes. Winn accuses Dukat of trying to usurp her position in this effort and puts him out on the streets in retaliation. Eventually Winn discovers the way to release the Pah Wraiths from the Fire Caves and relents and has Dukat join her.
During a party in the holosuite celebrating the Federation’s victory over the Dominion, Sisko gets a premonition about something going wrong on Bajor. He goes down to the planet to the fire caves and confronts Winn and Dukat.
Redemption and Death
While Dukat and Sisko fight in the Fire Caves, Winn realizes she has made the wrong choice and that her ambition has blinded her. In an effort to correct all that she has done and redeem herself, she attempts to throw the book of the Pah Wraiths into the fire and destroy it. Dukat uses powers granted to him by the wraiths and translocates the book to him. She yells to Sisko that the texts are the key to stopping Dukat and the Pah Wraiths.
Dukat, infused with powers from the Pah Wraiths, destroys Winn for her action.