Anna Kingsford

is a 19th century magician, associated with Golden Dawn founders Mathers and Westcott as well as the legendary Anna Sprengel. Between the Lines 1
==Appearance==
When she was reanimated during the events in Shibuya, Anna's body looked to be around 30 years old with an intellectual face, with youthful skin apparently due to the injection of lipids and hyaluronan. She had pale skin, long, reddish blonde hair worn in a modified braid, done up into a form resembling a giant fried shrimp, and wore thin glases.
Her post-reanimation outfit could be described as a witch swimsuit, with Anna wearing the special orange suit that Ladybird wore, resembling a racing swimsuit, with black sleeves, a large pareo, and a shiny, pointed witch's hat with sun, spherical moon and star decorations hanging around its brim. A physical shut-off switch was installed on her back between her shoulder blades, with a light like a will-o’-the-wisp atop her hat while she was 'on'.
==Personality==
Anna's goal is to aid the people around her and believes a magician should help those in need. She also believes that magic does not require any special tools and preconditions, claiming not to understand the concept of a 'spell', and that the gates of the mystical should be open to all equally. She is willing to act against anyone whose behavior would maliciously harm others and goes beyond what she deems appropriate or necessary. The standards by which she holds magicians are also extremely high.
==Background==
Prior to her own cabal, Anna Kingsford belonged to the Theosophical Society, described as an assembly of psychics, Kabbalah experts and Rosicrucians, with magic techniques and ideology rooted in the rosy cross as a result.
Anna Kingsford was a magician who was Westcott and Mather's teacher, and Anna Sprengel was rumored to have been based on her, resulting in a connection being formed between the two Annas.
She died more than a century ago, not long before the foundation of the Golden Dawn, with her corpse being preserved somewhere.
==Chronology==
===Souyaku Toaru Majutsu no Index===
====Post-Handcuffs Arc====
On December 29th, as part of preparations against Anna Sprengel, Aleister Crowley accessed the science side's network via the former site of Windowless Building and found the location where Anna Kingsford's corpse had been preserved. Epilogue
====New Year's Eve Arc====
On December 31st, during the events in Shibuya, Aleister and Kihara Noukan took advantage of the absence of people caused by the effects of the battle between Aradia, seeking to kill Kamijou Touma, and the Bologna Succubus, trying to save him. Accessing the hidden treasure store in a restaurant kitchen in the Miyashita Ark, Aleister retrieved Anna Kingsford's body and prepared it for reanimation. Between the Lines 1
After the battle between Kamijou Touma and Aradia, as Anna Sprengel was pondering killing Aradia to provoke a change in the boy, a reanimated Anna Kingsford confronted her, quickly separating her from the rest of the world and easily defeating her, sealing her away into parchment charms in a film can. After a brief talk with Aleister on what a magician was in her mind, she was switched off, but not before warning Aleister that while she would do someone's bidding if it would lead to a positive result and help others, if their behavior went beyond what she deemed necessary, she wouldn't hesitate to turn against them. Epilogue
====New Year's Arc====
During the events from January 1st to 3rd, Anna Kingsford was active again and accompanied Aleister and Noukan (her actions causing some consternation for the golden retriever), as they interrogated their prisoner and investigated the Bridge Builders Cabal. Chapter 1 Part 6 Chapter 1 Part 8 Chapter 2 Part 7 When Touma ended up freeing and escaping with Sprengel on the morning of January 3rd, Kingsford comforted a distraught Aleister. Epilogue During the escape, she briefly clashed with Aiwass when Sprengel unleashed him in panic (a mild surprise to Kingsford, who didn't expect the Secret Chief's use for a sloppy direct attack), but after fighting enough to make it convincing, she intentionally avoided a finishing blow and allowed him to escape, with the intention of tracing his path back to his master.
Following the escape and the declaration of martial law in Academy City, the trio continued their movements against Anna Sprengel and the Bridge Builders Cabal across the next couple of days, with anti-recognition magic concealing them from Anti-Skill. Prologue Chapter 1 Part 4 Chapter 2 Part 3 Chapter 2 Part 6 Chapter 2 Part 7 Between the Lines 3 Epilogue While planning their actions, they used a room in School District 23's Science Tower as a temporary base. Early on December 4th, she briefly fought and defeated Mut Thebes together with Aleister in School District 6, when the Transcendent threatened to corner Touma's group, though they left her alive. Following Aleister's request to seek out the enemy they needed to defeat, Anna identified the danger from the Transcendents' ceremony to summon Christian Rosencreutz, with the group arriving in the ceremony's aftermath on the night of December 4th, just after "CRC" had felled the Transcendents and killed Alice Anotherbible, to Anna's consternation. Epilogue
In her subsequent duel with "CRC", Kingsford equally matched the Rosicrucian, but received a lethal neck injury when her opponent sneakily reanimated Alice's corpse for a surprise attack, before being bisected, though her non-alive, mechanically-animated state gave her some leeway to escape complete termination. Sensing something off with her enemy, Anna decided to make it seem like she had died, making a show of it to both awaken something in those who witnessed her seemingly pointless death, while also removing attention from herself so she could carefully observe "CRC" to find a weakness, though the latter ended up not being necessary. As "CRC" (actually Johann Valentin Andreae) met his end at a revived Alice's hands (witnessed by Index and Othinus), Anna decide to move to ensure that the young ones wouldn't meet a similar end.
As Alice's influence was causing chaos in the city on January 6th, Anna approached Aleister as he was in the middle of crying over her fate and his failure. Noukan noticed her first, trying and failing to prevent Aleister from spotting her, with the awkward revelation prompting Aleister to unleash magic at her. Chapter 1 Part 4 Afterwards, Anna reaffirmed the threat posed by Alice and predicted Touma's death, Chapter 1 Part 9 Chapter 3 Part 1 something that had been determined prior to her revival. Later that night, seeing in the stars that Touma was now aware of his fate, after consoling and imparting a final lesson to a distraught Aleister (who knew she would likely be heading to her own doom), Anna headed out to play her own role in the battle.
At the bridge where the Transcendents were fighting, she approached Anna Sprengel and guided her into countering the "resonance" with Alice that was giving the opportunistic Transcendents the advantage in the battle and allowing the Transcendents on Touma's side to win. Chapter 3 Part 5 Chapter 3 Part 7 Not long afterwards, she intervened as those Transcendents were struggling against Dinah. Sensing that her body approaching its limit, she decided to focus on injuring Dinah enough to create an opportunity that the Transcendents could use to defeat Dinah on their own. Chapter 3 Part 9
When Touma died, Anna visited him in the world of the dead. After commending him for his efforts and asking if he was really going to give up and accept his unfair death, offered to use her secret Hell Tour technique to overturn the predetermined ending and make a comeback. Epilogue
====Hell Tour Arc====
==Abilities==
Described as a great goddess of knowledge, Anna Kingsford was a wise and highly skilled magician, even among those considered expert magicians. Even as a reanimated corpse, she retains much of her former capability, though her body is in a more fragile state and refining her magical power at full strength would risk destroying the machinery.
Rather than flashy spells and special moves, Anna makes use of fundamental magic, common spells and basic ceremonies (such as anti-recognition spells, people-clearing fields, and even basic refinement of magic power), which even a novice may learn and be sick of, honed with her skills past the limit to the extreme, to the point where they could be considered special moves themselves, on a level that can overwhelm mere experts.
Anna Kingsford's skill and the connection formed between herself and Anna Sprengel, being the basis for her identity as a Transcendent, means that the latter cannot defeat the former. Sprengel believed the use of Aiwass could change this, Epilogue though subsequent events convinced her otherwise. Chapter 2 Part 1
===Fundamental Magic===
Being an expert among experts, Anna utilizes numerous types of magic, mostly basic fundamentals that have been honed to the extreme.
While her refinement of magic power after being reanimated was somewhat limited by the risk to the vital machinery, Anna could emit excess energy outside of her body. In addition to potentially deflecting certain projectiles, the mass of excess energy also made it easier for 'non-existent things' to manifest, which Anna herself compared to a humidifier increasing humidity to make it easier for frost to form on a window, which supported Aleister's use of Coronzon against Mut Thebes. In this instance, Mut Thebes was described as perceiving the magic power as an unseen, unknowable field with an oppressive density, without light, sound, shape or color.
In the field of anti-recognition spells and people-clearing fields, Anna's magic is at a level of expertise where it can conceal herself and other individuals from humans and mechanical cameras and sensors, described as apparently being effective even against 'mere' expert magicians and developed far enough to assassinate a superpower's head. Anna also possesses a temporal and spatial 'separation', that can isolate herself and a target from the rest of the world.
Anna can make use of simple standard symbols that make up most magic circles (such as a line, circle or triangle), understanding their meaning and drawing out their effects to their full extent. When facing "CRC"'s Citrinitas, she drew a single straight line across the ground with her foot to slice through the several hundred ton mass of conjured sand and return it to nothingness, with such a line being describe as a potential last resort with power capable of dividing the world between the user and their enemy to save their life. She was also capable of activating a magic circle drawn by Aleister Crowley, meant to track down the Bridge Builders Cabal using the connections formed by the sealed Anna Sprengel, merely by holding up her palm (with no poses or incantations). She can form words and simple symbols (such as an X) out of light in mid-air, and halt thrown objects in mid-air.
Being an expert capable of producing magic with just her body (with comparison to how the smaller human body corresponds to the larger world in Kabbalah), Anna is also skilled in the use of the five elements through their correspondence to the fingers (e.g. the middle finger for fire, the index finger for water, and thumb for ether). With a fire attack against "CRC", she held her open palm to her mouth and blew gently on her middle finger's tip without a single word, resulting in a rushing blaze described as surpassing that of a flamethrower and capable of easily burning up simple composite armor and special fibers, which also fed on power from a ley line. However, as with other magic that only uses the body to produce spells, physical damage to the body will restrict the actions a user can take with it.
As well as the Sephiroth, Anna also has knowledge of the Qliphoth and was capable of converting her spells from the heaven-to-earth Sephiroth to the earth-to-hell Qliphoth in order to use her magic while descending into 'hell'. Chapter 1 Part 3 While using this converted format, a casual wave of her right index finger was sufficient to diagonally slice through a minotaur acting as one of hell's gatekeepers. Against a harpy, she fired a bright beam of light that was like an artillery blast with a tremor and recoil - in this case, she verbally invoked Gevurah's correspondence to Agshekeloh, cruelty as the reverse of justice, the element of fire, and Golohab, the wicked name ruling Sphere 5i, with the command for the one bound by the name and number to obey her right finger/hand and display its power. She could also use the Qliphoth's nature as access route from hell to earth to form a pinhole connection and provide a vision of events in the regular world from hell.
By crossing herself with the phrase "Adonai Melekh Ne’eman", Anna could force back one of hell's gatekeepers and make it avoid her.
Anna is also skilled in the use of astrology, able to read the stars in a clear night sky to acquire information and determine events from afar. By drawing out patterns representing constellations and combining the constellations associated with a specific element (such as Cancer, Scorpio and Pisces for water), Anna can amplify and multiply the power of her elemental spells. She also possesses a sealing technique, associated with the introductory magic of storing planetary power in a charm and the link between the microcosm and the macrocosm. It allows her to separate the limbs and organs of a target and seal them away into corresponding parchment charms, keeping them alive but trapped. When using it against Anna Sprengel, she had a disk-like film can, with countless parchment charms pasted together into a disk.
===Post-Mortem===
During the events on New Year's Eve, Anna's corpse, which had been preserved for over a century by the wandering treasure keepers, was retrieved by Aleister and rigged with high-tech machinery, allowing her to be reanimated, to the extent of being able to refine life force into magical power. A physical slide switch, installed on her back between her shoulder blades, is used to switch her between active and standby modes.
Anna Kingsford retains most of her former capabilities as a reanimated corpse, but her rebuilt body is more fragile than her original living one, and she cannot refine her magical power at full strength without the risk of destroying the mechanical parts that are moving her, though she can somewhat mitigate this disadvantage by venting the excess energy outside her body. Being a preserved corpse forced into motion, there was also a level of progressive deterioration besides strain from exerting magical power and the accumulation of injuries from external causes.
Despite the apparent fragility of her mechanically-reanimated body, Anna was capable of slamming into someone with enough force to send them bouncing several dozen meters away. Additionally, being a preserved corpse moved by machinery and not truly alive to begin with, she had a certain amount of leeway to survive a lethal neck injury and bisection at the torso without being completely terminated, such that she could later reconnect her parts. Prologue Epilogue
Being already dead and belonging in the world of the dead, Anna can visit that realm anytime she wants without forcing her way in, merely stopping her moving parts to depart from the world of the living. Aside from this transition for herself however, Anna possesses a secret technique that could be called a , which she believed could allow Kamijou Touma to make a comeback after his death, referring to its usage as a . Epilogue This mainly involved accessing an existing false 'hell', an artificial phase that Johann Valentin Andreae had created as a resurrection device for himself, with the potential to return a single person to life, with the real hell swallowing the others.
==Character Art Design==
===Gallery===
File:Anna Kingsford (Design).jpg|Anna Kingsford's character design by Haimura Kiyotaka
==Trivia==
*Similar to her Toaru version, the real-life was an acquaintance of and influence on both Samuel Liddell MacGregor Mathers and William Wynn Westcott, having given lectures at the Hermetic Society which the two had attended before the foundation of the Golden Dawn. Dying in 1888, she was thought to be a possible inspiration for Anna Sprengel - they shared the same magical motto; Sapiens Dominabitur Astris ("the wise person shall be ruled by the stars").
**Whether this celestial motto was an influence on the celestial aspects of the attire (namely the sun, moon and star decorations hanging from her hats) and magic (planetary-based sealing) Anna Kingsford displayed in her Toaru series debut is currently unknown.
*The "Soror" in "Soror Kingsford 1888" (whether this phrase, with her family name and year of death, is a magic name or not is not currently known) is Latin for "sister".
==External Links==
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==References==
Category:Characters
Category:Magic Side Characters
Category:Magicians
Category:Deceased Characters
Category:Unaffiliated Magicians and Mercenaries