Matska Belmonde | |
---|---|
Position | Chair of the Silas Board of Governors |
Age | over 1200 |
Status | Undead
|
Portrayed by | Sophia Walker |
First appeared in | Something Wicked |
Last appeared in | The Carmilla Movie |
"I am death on dark wings." --Mattie
Matska "Mattie" Belmonde (also known as "The Rook") was the Chair of the Silas Board of Governors and representative of the Corvae Corporation. She was Carmilla's post-human life "sister", as they both were raised by The Dean. She and her sister appeared to have a very strong bond. She was killed by Summer Society member Danny Lawrence and became a servant of Ereshkigal, who used her as a ghostly messenger.
Information[]
Personality[]
Mattie was a powerful and very old vampire with great leadership qualities and a dark sarcastic sense of humour. She appeared to have traditional vampiric worldviews with apathy regarding humans and highly realistic thinking. She also appeared to be very cunning and educated. She had a very close relationship with her sister and best friend Carmilla. She had a huge amount of patience and would often be very polite, even to humans, but when pestered or accused of something she didn't do, she would tend to blow into an angry rage.
Being over 1200 years old, she came to value self-preservation over most things, showing little concern for those around her, save Carmilla. Like Carmilla, she enjoyed drinking hot chocolate, waltzing, and eating people. While Carmilla killed selectively and opportunistically, Mattie preferred engaging in massacres of more than twenty people at a time. When accused of murdering the Voice of Silas student reporters, her denial was based on there being far too few deaths he culprit.
History[]
In her human life, around 800 A.D., she lived in a grass hut by a river. The Dean found her and transformed her into a vampire to serve as her disciple, referred to as the Rook. At some point, she acquired an amulet and hid her mortal essence inside it, similar to a lich's phylactery in Dungeons and Dragons. As long as the amulet was intact, she would continue in undeath but would die upon its destruction.
When the Dean took Carmilla in 1698, Mattie grew close to her new sister. They spent a lot of time together, notably watching the moon landing in 1969, and they were fond of waltzing with each other. Carmilla is the only one she told of the significance of her amulet. On many occasions, Carmilla would beg her not to kill a human she took a liking to out of romantic or aesthetic attraction, and Mattie would humor her unless the Dean ordered the human be sacrificed to Lophiiformes.
At some point, Mattie joined the Corvae Corporation. By 2015, she became its representative.
In 2015, following the death of the Dean at the hands of Laura Hollis, she accepted a position as the Chair of the Board of Governors at Silas University, where she immediately went to work managing Lophiiformes' attempted escape from the underworld. To keep her power, she collected detailed information on the other Board members, including their mortal weaknesses. Viewing the human student body merely as livestock, she planned to auction them off to the Corvae Corporation, along with various other assets.
Finding Laura living in her new quarters, she attempted to kill her in vengeance but was waylaid by Carmilla, who had fallen for Laura and insisted she be kept safe. Mattie was annoyed but couldn't say no to her favorite sibling and allowed Laura and her human friends to continue to live until such time as she sold them to the Corvae Corporation. She continued to feed on other humans on campus.
Upon learning that Laura was broadcasting an unregulated news bulletin, she invited herself onto the show to counter Laura's "pro-human bias" and disseminate propaganda to keep students from effectively responding to local threats.
Laura attempted to remove Mattie from power by having Board member Baron Vordenberg challenge her in a debate. Vordenberg tanked the actual debate, but Lola Perry, influenced by the Dean's slow possession of her mind, unearthed Mattie's files on the other Board members, and they voted in Vordenberg to replace her as Chair. Vordenberg immediately carried out a fascist anti-vampire agenda, forcing her, Carmilla, and J.P. Armitage into hiding to keep from being slain by his secret police force, a union of the Summer Society sorority and the Zeta Omega Mu fraternity.
She and Carmilla ran off on their own but were located by the Summer Society, who engaged them in battle. Mattie escaped injury, but Carmilla was gravely injured, forcing Mattie to swallow her pride and go to Laura for help. Mattie attempted to intimidate Laura into being wholly subordinate to her, but Laura stood up to her, and Mattie agreed to acquiesce control while a guest of Laura's. Laura summoned LaFontaine to see to Carmilla's wounds and hid her and Mattie under the floorboards with J.P. to protect them from discovery.
To get the power to defeat Vordenberg's forces, Mattie drank Lophiiformes' blood. It gave her immense strength but momentary insanity. She returned home and passed out. When Vordenberg discovered her and threatened her, Summer Society warrior Danny Lawrence at his side, Mattie announced her intent to eat every one of Vordenberg's warriors.
In a moment of weakness, Carmilla betrayed the secret of Mattie's amulet to Laura, who in turn told Danny. When Danny heard Mattie's threat to eat her sorority sisters, she attacked her. Instead of merely beating her, Mattie chose to make a statement of power by slowly breaking Danny's arm while she futilely struggled. Danny responded by breaking Mattie's amulet, killing her.
Mattie was sent to the land of the dead, where the death goddess Ereshkigal chose her to act as her avatar and messenger. In the form of a spirit, she entered The Library to leave enigmatic clues for Carmilla, Laura, and LaFontaine. When they tried to summon Ereshkigal, Mattie showed up to represent her and let Laura challenge her at Scrabble for a favor. Following Laura's death at the hands of the Dean, Mattie showed up again to challenge Carmilla with a riddle game to bargain for Laura's life. Out of compassion, she made the riddle especially easy for her sister.
In 2020, Mattie appeared in Laura and Carmilla's kitchen to solicit her sister's help in defeating Lophiiformes' children.
Alternate Timeline #1[]
In a version of reality where Laura had not been suspicious of Mattie, they became friends. Laura came to respect her, and Carmilla openly discussed her trauma with both of them before engaging in a playful game of chase with Mattie. This is the best world, and it is made clear that this is not the world the characters get to have because of their own sins.
Alternate Timeline #2[]
In the reality constructed by The Library where Carmilla sacrificed Laura to Lophiiformes at the Dean's wishes, Mattie was an ardent supporter of the Dean in her desire to access the underworld but was sad that Carmilla was left depressed by Laura's death. When Laura from the main timeline showed up, saying that she needed Vordenberg's heart, Mattie was eager to help her sister by killing someone she disliked. She killed Vordenberg and collected his heart, but when she learned that Laura was going to let Mattie's reality be destroyed, she crushed Vordenberg's heart in petty vengeance. She died when the reality collapsed.
Powers and Abilities[]
As a Vampire[]
- Transformation - Like Carmilla, she can transform into black smoke. It is unclear if she can transform into any animals, but there may be an implication she has the power to transform into a murder of crows (if that wasn't entirely a misdirection by the Dean)
- Super strength and speed
- Otherworldly shrieking, an ability capable of stunning humans and disrupting electronics
- Immortality as long as her amulet is intact
As a Spirit[]
- Apparition - She can appear and disappear at will in a puff of black smoke.
Trivia[]
- She is the first character to be killed on-screen.
- She is the last character seen in season 2.
- While Carmilla has a strongly defined black panther motif, Mattie only has a loose corvid motif. She is connected to the Corvae Corporation, is called the Rook, and is implied to be able to transform into a murder of crows as a red herring when the Dean is actually behind the murder's appearance. It is unclear if Mattie has any animal transformation power.
- Her appearance as a spirit strongly resembles the character The First Evil in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Original Novella[]
Her character is based on Matska in J. Sheridan LeFanu's original novella.
Matska is an obscure character in the story, a racial caricature not well-defined. She was evidently riding with Carmilla and her mother in their carriage when it tipped over outside Laura's castle, but she did not exit the vehicle. Instead, she watched from the window as Carmilla's mother tricked Laura's father into letting Carmilla stay at his home, "nodding and grinning derisively" with eyes gleaming and "her teeth set as if in fury."
She is described as "a hideous black woman, with a sort of colored turban on her head" and is noted as having "large white eyeballs." Technically this character is unnamed, but she is generally assumed to be the Matska that Carmilla asks about when she awakens from being knocked unconscious.
What the name Matska means is a matter of scholarly debate, with different theories suggesting it could mean "mother", "mud", or "servant". If the first of the three translations is retained, then one would be driven to suppose that Carmilla's "Where is Matska?" did not actually refer to the black woman, but rather to her mother.