Victoria Bibeau
Dr. Victoria Bibeau (died 2018)[1] was a Canadian member of the Assassin Brotherhood.
A native of Quebec, Victoria was originally part of the Templar Order, working as a psychiatrist and researcher for the Lineage Discovery and Acquisition division of Abstergo Industries at the Aerie. She was also an employee at Abstergo Entertainment, tasked with helping analysts that had difficulties coping with the Animus' after-effects, such as the Bleeding Effect.
In 2016, Victoria departed from the Templar Order and Abstergo following the Ascendance Event. She was later recruited by William Miles into the Assassin Brotherhood, joining Layla Hassan's team on a mission to locate the lost Isu city of Atlantis, which led to the discovery of the Staff of Hermes Trismegistus, a Piece of Eden.
However, during the mission, Layla began to show signs of the Bleeding Effect which, combined with the Staff's influence, made her more aggressive and unstable. A concerned Victoria tried to forcefully end Layla's sessions in the Animus, only for the latter to lash out in anger and accidentally strike Victoria with the Staff, killing her.
Biography[edit | edit source]
Treating Fraser[edit | edit source]
In 2014, Victoria was asked to do a psychiatric evaluation of Robert Fraser, an Abstergo analyst who was believed to be suffering from the Bleeding Effect while reliving the memories of Arno Dorian, an Assassin during the French Revolution. She concluded that Fraser could have difficulties maintaining a professional distance from his subject going forward and recommended any outside activity related to the analyst's assignment be curtailed.[2]
Aidan St. Claire, Fraser's supervisor, would subsequently make it so that Fraser could visit Victoria whenever the project became too overwhelming. The two entered into a correspondence, with Fraser confessing that he had broken up with his girlfriend Anna, Arno's memories having caused him to fall in love with Élise de la Serre instead.[2]
Flashbacks of the Bastille plagued him on Bastille Day, with Fraser begging Victoria to take him off the case. She believed they needed to continue their work regardless, but offered to supply him with medication that could help. Victoria also recommended Fraser write whenever he felt the Bleeding Effect set in, in an effort to separate himself from Arno.[2]
In spite of this, the symptoms continued, and Fraser even began to hallucinate; once this came to light, he was made to take a medical leave of absence. He subsequently spent a week in the recovery center with Victoria, during which she instructed him to destroy all documentation on Arno's life and leak the unsequenced memories to the Assassins. Although Fraser succeeded in this task, he was caught and terminated shortly thereafter.[2]
However, Victoria pleaded misguided ignorance and thanks to her numerous friends in Abstergo who vouched for her, successfully convinced the Templars that she did what she did because she truly believed it was the right thing to do at the time. She was subsequently offered to join their cause and became a loyal member of the Templar Order.[3]
Looking for the Trident[edit | edit source]
Following her induction into the Order, Victoria was appointed as a senior researcher for the Lineage Discovery and Acquisition division at the Aerie. In 2016, she welcomed a group of four teenagers to the Aerie after they were captured by a Templar strike team while using a stolen Animus. With the help of her superior, Isaiah, Victoria tried to ease the captives' worries in the hopes that they would reveal what they had discovered about the Trident of Eden.[4]
Deciding honesty was the best policy, the two Templars told the teenagers about their Order, stressing the benevolence of their organization. They then told them that because of their ancestry, Sean, Grace, David, and Natalya were now a crucial part of their efforts to find the Piece of Eden. Victoria also revealed to them that Sebastian Monroe, their missing leader, was one of her former patients, whom she had forbidden from reliving the memories of his father to work through the numerous abuses he had endured during his childhood.[4]
This way, the Templars managed to convince Sean and Grace to reveal the location of the "Faith Prong", a segment of the Trident owned by Ulysses S. Grant until his death. At the same time, an informant within Abstergo called "Rothenburg", who had been inactive for some time, contacted the Assassins that had rescued the other two teenagers, Owen Meyers and Javier Mondragón. However, Monroe apparently got to Grant's former home first and left with the artifact before either the Assassins or Templars could claim it.[5]
Later, Victoria told Natalya, who was wary of the Templars, that they had contacted their parents to let them know they were safe and that Abstergo would offer a generous compensation for their help. She also told the teenagers that the second part of the Trident was somewhere in China.[6]
Assisting Hathaway[edit | edit source]
Around October and under the direct orders of Alan Rikkin, Victoria traveled to London to assist Simon Hathaway in his work on the Sword of Eden. Their first meeting was in one of Abstergo's restaurants, Tempest in the Teapot, where they discussed the Bleeding Effect. To Hathaway's initial annoyance, he had to introduce and retell her the summarized history of Jeanne d'Arc and her involvement in the Hundred Years' War since it would be crucial in their hunt for what Abstergo called "Piece of Eden 25".[3]
During their ride to the Historical Research division, the pair encountered Hathaway's former love interest, Anaya Chodary. She quickly noticed the rift between them, which she later commented on when Chodary was out of earshot. It was also Victoria who discovered the reason for Hathaway's first desynchronization while reliving the memories of his ancestor Gabriel Laxart after analyzing the chemicals released by his brains: teenage attraction.[3]
While in London, Victoria stayed in touch with Isaiah, helping him to manage the teenagers at the Aerie.[7]
Search for the second prong[edit | edit source]
With her work with Hathaway complete, Victoria returned to the Aerie to assist the four teenagers search for the remaining two prongs of the Trident of Eden. However, without Monroe's Animus core to narrow down which of their ancestors had come into contact with the prongs, Victoria and Isaiah resorted to sending the teenagers to different ancestors. Victoria personally assisted Natalya in reliving the memories of her Mongolian ancestor Bayan.[8]
During this time, Victoria became concerned over Isaiah's gradual manipulations of Sean, having promised that his time in the Animus would help create a prosthetic for him to walk again.[9]
Victoria later learned that David had been caught wandering the halls of the Aerie after hours. Though he claimed to have been sleepwalking, Victoria checked the security footage and learned that David had wandered into the garage. She and Isaiah confronted the teenagers and told them that they were to be confined to their quarters after hours.[10]
Victoria was absent during the Assassin raid on the Aerie, during which David and Natalya escaped, but Isaiah captured Owen, as well as Monroe, who had staged his own rescue attempt. Isaiah managed to turn Owen against the Assassins by claiming that they had set up his late father for the robbery that had sent him to prison, using the DNA sample Owen had on him to access Helix.[11]
Later, Victoria met Owen, Grace, and Sean in the lounge, where she tried to encourage them to return to the Animus. Owen refused to budge until he could talk to Monroe, whom Isaiah promised he could speak to, to which Victoria claimed no knowledge of such a deal. When asked where Isaiah was, she declined to answer, but Owen and Grace deduced that Isaiah was headed to China or Mongolia. The former then mentioned having seen the second prong in the Animus, which got Victoria's interest, but she was disappointed to hear that Owen's DNA was a dead end. After telling Owen to wait until Isaiah returned, Victoria told Sean to continue synchronizing with his Viking ancestor, Styrbjörn the Strong.[12]
Victoria later learned that Owen and Grace had escaped the Aerie with Monroe and followed them to Mongolia. Upon her arrival at the Templar encampment, she found it deserted, save for all five teenagers, including Monroe. Upon learning that Isaiah had retrieved the second prong and had taken his entire taskforce away, Victoria revealed that Isaiah had sent her a manifesto, stating his defection from the Order and that he was the one who had stolen the first prong from Mount McGregor. Victoria then identified Javier when he stated that Isaiah was close to completing the Trident, and deduced that the Assassins must be nearby. When Grace stated otherwise, Victoria's guards raised their weapons.[13]
Thankfully, after Natalya reasoned that the Assassins and Templars needed to work together against Isaiah, Victoria ordered her guards to stand down before calling out to the Assassins, asking for a truce until Isaiah was stopped. The Assassin Griffin emerged from a tent and agreed to her terms.[13]
Fighting against Isaiah[edit | edit source]
Thanks to her temporary alliance with Griffin and with the help of the teenagers, Victoria used Javier and the Collins siblings' ancestral memories to find the location of the last Trident prong: the Devotion Prong.[14][15][16] Learning that David's ancestor Östen Jorundsson had been the last holder of the artifact,[17] Victoria conferred with Griffin and agreed with him going to Sweden alongside Owen, Natalya, and Grace while she stayed at the Aerie with Monroe, David, and Javier.[18]
Later, Victoria was called by Sean, who had escaped Isaiah's captivity and requested her help to find Griffin's last known location.[19] Following Sean's rescue of Owen, Grace, and Natalya, Victoria learned of Griffin's death and issued a flight to recover the group.[20] With all the teenagers back at the Aerie, Victoria helped them ready the place for Isaiah's imminent arrival, preparing traps and gathering any weapons they could. Although Isaiah managed to break through their defenses, Victoria held her own before regrouping with Monroe and the teenagers.[21]
When Isaiah tried using the Trident's powers against them, the teenagers were unaffected and stood up to him. Victoria watched as the group fought and ultimately killed Isaiah, whereupon she reached for the Trident. However, the teenagers grabbed the artifact first and depowered it.[21] Keeping her promise, Victoria arranged for all of them to be brought back home and assured them that the Templars would leave them alone.[22]
Joining the Assassins and death[edit | edit source]
After the Ascendance Event, Victoria left Abstergo and the Templars. At some point between 2017 and 2018, she was recruited by William Miles into the Assassins and joined Layla Hassan's team, which was tasked with searching for the Staff of Hermes Trismegistus.[23]
When Layla found the Lost Histories written by Herodotos along with a Spear of Eden, Victoria accompanied her to their hideout in London, England. There, Victoria supervised Layla's health as she relieved the memories of Kassandra, the granddaughter of King Leonidas I of Sparta, to find Atlantis, where the Assassins believed the Staff to be located.[24]
After Layla found and gained access to Atlantis, Victoria accompanied her to the sunken city's throne room, where she was placed in charge of monitoring her friend's vital signs. Over the course of Layla's sessions in the Animus, Victoria grew increasingly concerned over the Staff taking hold of and influencing Layla's mindset. After Layla's session reliving the memories of Kassandra in a simulation of Hades, Victoria had to manually remove her from the session for her own good.[25]
Layla, while under the Staff's influence, struck Victoria with the artifact, inadvertently killing her. This left a horrified Layla to reel from her actions and Aletheia to question whether the Assassin was fit to wield the Staff, though she ultimately relented and gave Layla a second chance to prove her worthiness. Before leaving to reflect on her mistake, Layla requested Aletheia to look after Victoria's body until she returned.[25]
Legacy[edit | edit source]
After Victoria's death, Layla felt extremely remorseful for her actions. At one point, she tried writing a letter to Victoria's parents to inform them of the circumstances of their daughter's death and her role in it, but abandoned the idea halfway through.[26]
Even though there were extenuating circumstances regarding her death, with Layla being overwhelmed by the power of the Staff, her fellow cell members quickly grew to distrust Layla and did not accept her explanation for Victoria's death, leading William Miles to reassign Layla to work with Shaun Hastings and Rebecca Crane.[27] In 2019, still impacted by the accident, Victoria's former teammate Kiyoshi Takakura emphatically cited her death when explaining to Kō Risa and her cousin Mari the dangers of the Bleeding Effect.[28]
Within Layla's new team, there were different perspectives on Victoria's death. While Shaun understood the circumstances due to his experiences with Pieces of Eden[27] and witnessing a similar event when Juno influenced Desmond Miles to kill Lucy Stillman in 2012,[29] Rebecca was more wary, remaining sympathetic to Layla's plight but cautioning her against using the Staff's effects as an excuse for her actions. Layla also began smoking and taking pills in order to cope with the guilt of killing Victoria.[27]
Behind the scenes[edit | edit source]
Victoria Bibeau is a character first mentioned in the 2014 Assassin's Creed Unity: Abstergo Entertainment – Employee Handbook, before being featured as a major character in the 2016–2017 novel trilogy, Assassin's Creed: Last Descendants. She made her video game debut in 2018's Assassin's Creed: Odyssey, where she was voiced by Tara Nicodemo.
Despite the fact that the two books covered the same time period, Victoria was shown wearing a wedding ring in Assassin's Creed: Last Descendants – Locus, while in Assassin's Creed: Heresy, she confirmed to Simon Hathaway what was stated in her file, that she had neither a spouse nor a family.
In the Last Descendants trilogy, Victoria is described as having a slight French accent, although she has a neutral American accent in Odyssey, despite both her Assassin profile[23] and one of her email replies to Layla[30] saying she hailed from Quebec, Canada.
Gallery[edit | edit source]
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Victoria in Assassin's Creed: Last Descendants – Locus -
Victoria in Assassin's Creed: Odyssey -
Models of Victoria -
Head model of Victoria -
Victoria conversing with Layla -
Victoria's death, as depicted in Blade of Shao Jun
Appearances[edit | edit source]
- Assassin's Creed Unity: Abstergo Entertainment – Employee Handbook (first mentioned)
- Assassin's Creed: Rogue (mentioned only)
- Assassin's Creed: Last Descendants (first appearance)
- Assassin's Creed: Heresy
- Assassin's Creed: Last Descendants – Locus
- Assassin's Creed: Last Descendants – Tomb of the Khan
- Assassin's Creed: Last Descendants – Fate of the Gods
- Assassin's Creed: Origins (mentioned only)
- Assassin's Creed: Odyssey
- Assassin's Creed: Blade of Shao Jun (flashback only)
- Assassin's Creed: Valhalla (mentioned only)
References[edit | edit source]
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