Nyssa Al Ghul

1774 - Nyssa Raatko is born by the Volga River in Russia, the daughter of Ra's Al Ghul and a Jewish peasant woman. She grows up hearing stories about her mother's 'Arabian prince'.

1786 - 12-year-old Nyssa Raatko's mother dies of tuberculosis.

1787 - 13-year-old Nyssa Raatko disguises herself as a boy as she leaves Russia for Persia to try to find her father.

1790 - 16-year-old Nyssa Raatko finds Ra's Al Ghul, who takes her under his wing, training her to join him.

1794 - 20-year-old Nyssa Al Ghul is killed in Sudan while raiding a temple with the League of Assassins. Ra's Al Ghul gifts her with a Lazarus Pit.

1809 - Nyssa Al Ghul, no longer willing to follow Ra's Al Ghul, parts ways with her father and returns to Russia.

1923 - Nyssa Al Ghul's youngest daughter is born in Paris. Ra's Al Ghul finds her and attempts to take her children. She refuses.

1941 - Nyssa Al Ghul's family is taken by nazis from a temple in Kiev. She sees her children tortured and murdered, and is taken to the Ravensbruck Women's Concentration Camp outside Berlin.

1945 - Nyssa Al Ghul, barely surving years in Ravensbruck Women's Concentration Camp, is brutally tortured and sterilized before the camp is liberated. Her spirit completely broken, she is left with no abilty to feel emotion or empathy, taking decades to heal even with her Lazarus Pit.

7 years ago - Nyssa Al Ghul stages an assassination attempt on Damian Wayne, in an act of revenge against her father. She battles Talia Al Ghul, and faces Ra's Al Ghul who forces her to confront her own nihilism. She returns to the League of Assassins, creating her own faction in contrast to Talias.

3 years ago - Nyssa Al Ghul works to establish Bane as the new heir to her father Ra's Al Ghul. Nyssa learns that Bruce Wayne has been contacted by Talia Al Ghul to defeat Bane, and her faction tries to stop him.

2 years ago - Nyssa Al Ghul's faction of the League of Assassins kidnaps the son of Kirk Langstrom, forcing him to hand over all his research and formulas.

now - Nyssa Al Ghul's faction of the League of Assassins initiates Bruce Wayne's Babel protocols, eventually driving him from the Watchtower. They are able to take him prisoner, keeping him alive thanks to the efforts of Talia Al Ghul.

Nyssa is the first Holocaust survivor in our timeline, and one of the hardest parts of writing her story was trying to determine what language we should use. We make an effort to not include a lot of graphic concepts in our timeline, but they do creep in occasionally, and ultimately it became clear that the horrors Nyssa endured are a necessary part of telling her story. Perhaps more crucially, it is just kind of important that depictions of the Holocaust, even in an innocuous little fan project like this, don't try to minimize that part of history.

That said... Nyssa Al Ghul has had very few appearances, and might be an even more obscure character if a version of her hadn't been included in early seasons of the CW Arrow show. In the comics, she's mostly just been a traditional villain in almost every story other the one that actually introduced her, which we'll try to base our version of her on.

Nyssa Al Ghul's Comic History

Nyssa Al Ghul was introduced in the Greg Rucka's Batman: Death and the Maidens from 2003, although her actual debut was in a back-up story in Detective Comics #783 that set up the miniseries. Her concept was pretty simple, but the themes at play in telling her story were anything but. Nyssa is revealed to be another, older daughter of Ra's Al Gul, born to a Russian Jewish peasant in the late 1700s who left her father out of a belief that humanity is actually worth saving, only to suffer through the worst of the Holocaust, losing any ability to feel emotions or empathy, and eventually returning to usurp Ra's place as the Demon Head.

This is a really great comic miniseries, but it's hard to recommend. They aren't graphic in their depiction of the horrors Nyssa endures, but they also don't shy away from it, and the result is absolutely horrific. You find it impossible to not empathize with Nyssa, seeing what she's endured. She is clearly depicted as villainous, even torturing and killing Talia only to resurrect her over and over to win her over, but the whole time it is really challenging to actually see her as a villain herself.

As Death and ther Maidens concludes, the status quo of the characters has completely changed, with Ra's having effectively consented to Nyssa killing him and taking control of the League of Assassins, and Talia loyal to her sister, already working as the new head of Lexcorp (since Lex was currently president) and gettin ready to become one of the leaders of the new Secret Society.

Nyssa did make a few more appearances after this series ended, but without the context of her background, she quickly seemed to fall into the role of an evil-for-evils-sake villain. By the time Ra's returned in 2007, she had already all but dissapeared.

Our Nyssa Al Ghul Story

Death and The Maidens is actually incredibly dareful in the way it lays out Nyssa's story; not only were we able to adapt it almost verbatim, we even used the dates given in the comic.

The changes really come in her modern appearances. Like the comic, we wanted her to start out basically lashing out at her father and his organizations, but we chose to make the catalyst of this attack the discovery that his daughter had given birth to a new potential heir. Her attack is actually on Damian. Similar to the comic, Ra's should be able to convince her that her misguided faith in humanity has been purged, and that she is ready to retake her place in the League. Instead of killing him and taking his place (which proved to not really be a lasting change), she will instead rejoin the League and begin her own faction inside it that is in direct competion with Talia's faction, who will forever hate her sister for trying to kill her son. From this point forward, we can use these competing factions to drive the story of the League, allowing Ra's to remain mysteriously aloof, watching his daughters vie for control.

Related Characters

Robin