Amanda (Highlander)

Amanda Darieux is a fictional character in the television series Highlander: The Series and Highlander: The Raven, portrayed by actress Elizabeth Ward Gracen. She is one of the Immortals, immune to old age and death except by beheading. Some Immortals play The Game, seeking each other out for a duel to the death, for which the survivor is rewarded with a Quickening.

Amanda was created to be a former lover of fellow Immortal Duncan MacLeod, the protagonist of the Highlander: The Series television series. She originally appeared in the 1993 episode "The Lady and the Tiger" as a "villain of the week" type character. However, the writers and fans enjoyed her cunning, lying, immoral, selfish, and manipulative ways and she remained a part of the series. She then starred in a short-lived series of her own, Highlander: The Raven.

Biography

Amanda Darieux is born in the Abbey of St. Anne in Normandy, France in 820 (though the exact date is unclear). She is poor, starving, and uneducated, and her skills as a thief are rudimentary at best. She is caught stealing food from a plague-ridden house and savagely beaten about the head, resulting in her first death. Since she allegedly consumed contaminated food, her body is to be cast into a cleansing fire in an attempt to keep from spreading the plague further. However, the Immortal Rebecca Horne saves her from that fate just as Amanda breathes her last.