Qianna

Qianna comes from a family full of witches and devil hunters, and grew up dealing with magic and demons/devils in one form or another. She met Vergil in their early teen years, Vergil having come to Qianna’s mother while trying to learn more about the Dark Knight Sparda, as well as to seek some form of protection from being harassed and hunted by demons day in and day out.

The tweens didn’t get along swimmingly at first; Qianna’s initial thoughts of Vergil was that he was a rude dweeb, and Vergil thought she was a frivolous girl (mostly just because she dared to want to have a normal life outside of dealing with hellspawn). Over his multiple visits they slowly became friends and close confidants (Qianna being one of the only people Vergil ever willingly opened up to about what happened to his family). Vergil is one of the very few people in Qianna’s life that calls her by her full name rather than Qiqi (pronounced like Kiki).

Their bond is cemented the day Vergil dropped by to visit and found Qianna’s mother forcefully performing a magical ritual on her daughter. The point of the ritual being to give Qianna the ability to consume demon and devil souls and use them to fuel her magic abilities and make them more powerful (which later evolves to her being able to use special abilities related to specific demons she consumes the souls of).

Due to the family’s history of witchcraft and devil hunting, they often became targets of those with power in the Underworld—Qianna in particular tended to be a demon magnet thanks to her natural talent in magic. Her mother felt this was the only way to ensure her future safety and ability to protect herself. However, Qianna consistently showed that she just wanted to live a normal life as a human, so her mother believed she would never have willingly agreed to the ritual, and thus why the choice was taken out of Qianna’s hands.

Read more...

Because of the traumatic stress and pain of the ritual (which involved fusing her soul with multiple demon souls), Qianna’s hair permanently turned white (which she would then often dye in the years after the ritual was forced upon her). Her originally brown eyes also darkened to appear fully black. The ritual did succeed though, and Qianna is able to fully utilize many types of magic without the need of a medium, extra rituals, familiars, or contracts with demons. However, she does have to continue to consume demon souls to use her higher magic and abilities due to them burning through the souls when they’re utilized.* Also, she’s an even bigger demon magnet due to the increase in her powers, so that’s a lot of fun.

Basing my logic somewhat on the Visions of V manga, being that a demon would would die/disappear without a body or host. Qianna never makes official contracts with the demons she takes souls from, so she isn’t a proper host to them, thus the souls steadily decay over time and need to be replaced.

After witnessing the amount of pain Qianna was forced to go through, Vergil made the decision to take her away from her mother, and the two of them made a deal that she’s travel with him until she had control of her new powers and could take care of herself. She ended up staying alongside Vergil even after that though due to their closeness and feeling safer with someone she trusts watching her back rather than living and traveling on her own. Vergil would never admit it, but he also liked having her by his side because it also made him feel safer as well.

Side note regarding Qianna’s abilities: Prior to the ritual, she did well with things like enchanting objects, creating seals, and was also able to use elemental magic (primarily frost/ice) to an extent. Post-ritual, these things became significantly easier and less draining to perform as well as had more potent effects. On top of that, depending on the type of demon soul she consumes, she’s able to use their special types of magic and abilities as well as create a sort of partial physical manifestation of their form. For instance, with a Green Empusa soul, she can heal and herself and others as well as hover, and would have transparent wings and have a sort of green haze around herself. With a Riot soul she can create large claw gauntlets over her own arms and hands. Generally, the manifestations look somewhat similar to Nero’s arms/wings when in his Devil Trigger modes.

The two of them stick together for several years as teenagers and develop a more romantic relationship with one another (which eventually involves being intimate with each other). In their late teens they meet Arkham, of whom Qianna immediately wants nothing to do with. Vergil has no love for Arkham either, but the spiky-haired doofus is well on his way to having his full blown obsession for ~Power~ (likely even more-so due to his feelings for Qianna giving him someone to worry about), so they begin to butt heads regarding if they should agree to work with the man or not.

She eventually agrees to go with whatever Vergil wants for the time being, but insists that they do some background research into Arkham and the tower he wants to raise (the Temen-ni-gru). During their time researching, they find out more about Arkham’s dark past as well as learn more about the tower, and Qianna can’t bring herself to stand by Vergil in the plan since it would very likely get a lot of innocent people hurt or worse, which she isn’t about at all. They have a nasty fight about it with it ending when Vergil claims that she’s just another weak human that gets in his way. He ends up leaving her behind in Fortuna to return to Arkham’s home and that ends up being the last time the two of them see each other for decades.

Qianna stays in Fortuna partly to find out more about Sparda and the Temen-ni-gru in attempts to distract herself from her heartbreak, but also because thanks to the special forces the Sparda cult there has created, it’s one of the few places in the world she’s visit that she could actually relax in due to others being able to fend off demons.

Sometime after Vergil’s departure, she finds out she’s pregnant with their child. She initially planned on terminating the baby, but bails on the decision last minute since she is still very much in love with Vergil and doesn’t want to snuff out one good thing the two of them made together. By the time Nero is born though, she reluctantly decides to give him up to a local orphanage since her mere presence would be too much of a danger for him to stick around and raise him herself.

After that, she goes to hunt Vergil down in hopes of knocking some sense into him, and even if she can’t, to at least let him known he’s a father. Unfortunately, she arrives at the Temen-ni-gru too late; Vergil has already gone and gotten himself trapped in the Underworld, leaving both her and Dante behind.