Talia Al Ghul

35 years ago - Talia Al Ghul is born, the daughter of Ra's Al Ghul and Melisandre, a Shamanistic Seer of the Desert Mothers.

30 years ago - 5-year-old Talia's mother Melisandre is lost in a tragic accident, falling into a polluted Lazarus Pit. Her father Ra's Al Ghul devotes himself to her schooling, sending her all over the world to learn from the most gifted tutors.

18 years ago - 17-year-old Talia, aware of David Cain's training for Cassandra Cain, "the one who is all", privately plans to make sure her own child is not subjected to similar treatment.

15 years ago - 20-year-old Talia, working as her father Ra's Al Ghul's agent, goes to Metropolis to stop Victor Swann from disrupting shipping through the Metropolis docks. She works with Jefferson Pierce, telling him the history of the 100.

11 years ago - 24-year-old Talia bonds with Bruce Wayne, her father Ra's Al Ghul's choice as her consort. He rejects their proposal. She gives birth to his son Damian Wayne despite her father's reservations, beginning his training with the League of Assassins.

8 years ago - 27-year-old Talia Al Ghul attempts to recover Jason Todd's body to bring him back in a Lazarus Pit, but Bruce Wayne stops her.

7 years ago - 28-year-old Talia battles Nyssa Al Ghul when she stages an assasination attempt on Damien Wayne in an act of revenge against her father. Damien is moved from the League of Assassins Citadel to one of it's castles, where his training continues in earnest. Ra's Al Ghul forces Nyssa to confront her own nihilism. and she returns to the League, creating her own faction in contrast to Talia's.

3 years ago - 32-year-old Talia refuses to accept her father Ra's Al Ghul's selection of Bane as her new consort. In retaliation, Bane unleashes the League of Assassins bio-plague Contagion on Gotham, and destroys dozens of Lazarus Pits worldwide. Talia contacts Bruce Wayne, who defeat Ra's in single combat for the right to confront Bane, who he ultimately defeats.

1 year ago - 34-year-old Talia helps Bruce Wayne confirm that the Red Hood is Jean Paul Valley, not Jason Todd.

now - 35-year-old Talia insists that Bruce Wayne be kept alive when Nyssa Al Ghul's babel protocols lead to his capture.

Most modern readers will know Talia as the mother of Damian Wayne, and given how huge a role the current Robin has in modern DC, that's probably entirely correct. Long before this was her whole character, however, she was an absolutely spectacular new spin on the idea of a femme fatale in the story of Batman. She was somewhere between enemy and ally, her role in his world a scintilating proposal of something that could, but simply could never, be. Our Talia is, of course, Damian's mother, that's a huge part of her story. We just also wanted to work to make sure we can retain that delicate relationship between her and our hero throughout their history.

Talia Al Ghul's Comic History

In the early seventies, Denny O'Neal and Neal Adams's new, less Adam-West flavored take on Batman's stories introduced a new villainous idea in the League of Assassins. They weren't exactly threatening Batman, so much as they were just a part of the world that he had to contend with. While stalking Dr. Darrk, a rogue member of the League that had fallen out with their mysterious leader, Bruce first met his hostage, Talia Al Ghul. A series of adventures follow, with Bruce taken prisoner, Talia briefly seeing him without his cowl before he frees them both, and a climactic knife battle ending with Talia killing Darrk with a stolen gun. It's an epic first meeting that lingers on the potential for what will happen next.

This happened in Detective Comics #411, in May of 1971. The very next month gave us Batman #232, the renowned "Daughter of the Demon", which introduces Ra's Al Ghul. Bruce learns that Dick Greyson has been kidnapped, and then is confronted by Ra's who reveals that the same happened to his daughter Bruce joined them in their hunt for their missing loved ones, but soon deduces that the entire kidnapping was executed by Ra's himself, all in an effort to test Bruce as a possible heir and mate for his daughter.

Talia's role in this story is largely ornamental, with her hovering etherially in the background of Batman's conflicts with Ra's. From these earliest stories, she is depicted as being in love with Bruce, clearly eager for him to come to her as her consort and to take his place as the new leader of the League. For his part, Bruce was never entirely opposed to the idea; he clearly has strong feelings for Talia, and the League's resources are incredible. Unfortunately, Ra's is undeniably evil, and Bruce and Talia were fated to never be together.

O'Neal & Adams work on Batman fundamentally changed the way the character was depicted in comics. Ra's, Talia, and the League of Assassins contunued to be a major part of his world, although his relationship to them was essentially static at this point, so their status quo remained largely unchanged. Talia was often depicted as a lethal and merciless assassin in the service of her father, but we didn't see much change in regard to their unacted affair... that is unless you count the 1987 miniseries Batman: Son of the Demon by Chuck Dixon. In it Bruce finally begins to work with the Al Ghuls, and he and Talia's relationship is finally consumated. It ends when she claims to have lost their child, but the series ends with the reveal that she was actually lying. The is-this-cannon-or-not status of this story was very undecided for a long time, but we'll get back to that in a minute.

Talia began to appear more frequently as her own character in the early 2000s, taking over Lexcorp after Lex was elected President, and later serving as one of the founding members of the new Secret Society in the lead up to Infinite Crisis. Then, in 2006, Grant Morrison started their run on Batman and, in their very first issue, grabbed that weirdly cannon-adjacent concept of Bruce & Talia's baby and plunked him right into the middle of the core continuity in the person of Damian Wayne. Morrison's Batman run is of course the stuff of legends, but in putting Damian at the forefront, Talia very quickly became a major antagonist of the story, in some cases even surpassing Ra's himself. In more recent years, as Damian's role in DC has normalized she's become a slightly more sympathetic figure, but she's still largely defined by the role as Damian's crazy assassin mom.

Our Talia Al Ghul Story

When Morrison first brought Damian into the main story, they began by mis-remembering the events that lead to his conception, suggesting that it was actually non-consentual and that Bruce was drugged. Morrison has confessed that they actually did remember that incorrectly, but they went on to do all sorts of screwy stuff with their take on Batman, so this is really only the tip of the iceberg. Unfortunately, this set Talia up as a major villain in the series. She was already on her way there even before Morrison's run, with her involvement in the Secret Society, but all of this was a real departure from the way she, and her relationship with Bruce, had been depicted early on.

For this story to actually have weight, Bruce really should believe that being with Talia and leading the League would actually work, if circumstances were different. They are killers, and for that reason he ultimately can't join them... but it really doesn't work if Talia isn't, somewhere under all of that, ultimately a good person.

So out timeline is largely about that. We've worked through Talia's story and, while she continues to be a part of the League of Assassins, she is as close to a conscious as that organization has. Her sister Nyssa is now the more dangerous daughter of the Demon. Her work to train her son is even subtly in defiance of the will of her father, as she strives to steer the League to be something more than what it has been.

Talia Al Ghul's Future

As our timeline ends, Bruce Wayne is a prisoner of the League of Assassins, taken by Talia's sister Nyssa. She is working to make sure he is kept alive. Because of the way our timeline is built, Damian has not yet been recovered from the League of Assassins castle where he was trained. He will be found by Tim Drake as he searches the globe for the missing Bruce Wayne. It's notable that in our timeline, Talia doesn't send Damian to live with Bruce, but instead Damian chooses to join his father and surrogate brothers. In our timeline, while the League of Assassins has long wanted to develop their fabled perfect warrior "the one who is all', Damian was in fact NOT being groomed for the role. His training was set up by Talia specifically to isolate him from the League. In this way Talia is a much more sympathetic mother, actively working to protect her son from the world she lives in.

As the story continues, she will largely have a bigger role in the life of both Damian AND Bruce, wanting to make sure her son is safe, but also wanting to protect him from the League. Over in our Batman page, we speculate about a possible distant future of what could happen to Bruce, and Talia plays a huge role in it. We don't know if this is what's actually going to happen, but in many ways it seems inevitable that any future for Batman will almost certainly revolve around his relationship with Talia.

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