Alfred Ashford and Alexia Ashford

Alfred Ashford, 7th Earl Ashford, otherwise referred to as Lord Ashford, was a British nobleman and governor of Rockfort Island. He was the son of Veronica Ashford, 1st Countess Ashford, born through genetic engineering along with his sister, Alexia. Legally, however, the two were the children of the geneticist Dr. Alexander Ashford, 6th Earl Ashford. Lord Ashford was the final governor of Rockfort Island, having overseen the exodus of the islanders and installation of a prison camp for enemies of the Umbrella Corporation. He died soon after the island fell to a t-Virus outbreak orchestrated by an Umbrella rival group.

Alfred was born in 1971, the result of a three-year genetics project to create a child with genes relating to intelligence. The project, led by his cousin, Alexander, aimed to create a surrogate child who would continue the virology research led by his father, Edward, as part of a wider plan to ensure Ashford influence within Umbrella Pharmaceuticals, and deny total control of the company to their rival, Dr. Oswell E. Spencer, Earl Spencer. Though a clone of Alexander's great-great-grandmother, an anomaly during the procedure led to cloned zygote splitting with one of the daughter zygotes developing with an outwardly male appearance. The second twin, Alexia, was unaffected. The project was kept an absolute secret between Alexander and his father.

From birth, the twins were immediately divided based on their intelligence, with Alfred grew up idolizing Alexia. While he was found to have higher than average intellect, his sister was determined to be a genius, and thus her education was given the upmost priority, allowing her to graduate university at the age of ten. The two would then live together in the Antarctic Base, where Alexia was to conduct her t-Virus research in a project dubbed "t-Veronica". In early 1983, the two children discovered the truth about their origins after gaining access to Alexander's lab. Disgusted by this fact, the two forced him to take part in a human trial of t-Veronica, and then left him sealed in a hidden compartment beneath the facility director's office. Soon after, Alexia found out how to properly control the viral corruption, but the process involved fifteen years in cryostasis.

Seeing no other choice but to go ahead and complete her mad dream of godhood, she had Alfred seal her in the desired stasis. Ultimately, Alexander and Alexia were officially considered dead by the public, though no bodies were produced, and Alfred legally gained the title of 7th Earl.

Without a family at the age of twelve, the new Lord Ashford was left to continue his family's legacy alone. Driven by this, he overcame his grief and was able to graduate from a respectable English university in 1993, Lord Ashford entered employment with the Umbrella Corporation as the other Ashfords had done. Through the weight of his family name, he earned a number of jobs within the company which, while senior, were largely irrelevant in the company politics.

Alongside the position of Director of the Antarctic Base, he took full advantage of his inherited governorship of Rockfort Island. By the following year, the Hispanic settler population was driven out to give space for the construction of a concentration camp for Umbrella enemies, a boot camp for anti-B.O.W. training, and a private residence on the other side of a valley, where he hoped to live with Alexia one day. Having been given full control over these facilities, Lord Ashford chose to ignore the Antarctic Base and built up a dictatorial rule on Rockfort.

Still affected by the loss of his sister, Lord Ashford's mental health shattered, creating a dual personality: one that remained the insane Alfred Ashford, and another figment took over his memories of Alexia, creating a new personality closely resembling her. Due to the fact he remained oblivious as to the truth of Alexia's apparent return, he lived alone in his house on Rockfort Island, often allowing the Alexia fragment to take complete control above his body, dressing up like her and speaking in her voice, something which confused those who saw him from afar. There, he, or the fraction of his mind that represented Alfred, had long conversations with the Alexia shard, and developed militaristic tendencies and a massive ego, as his mind further eroded. Also due to his neurosis, while Alfred was posing as Alexia, he invented the person Tanya, as a way to mask who he was waiting for the moment to awaken from cryogenic stasis.

In his time as governor of Rockfort Island and Commander-in-Chief of its base, Lord Ashford enforced harsh measures on the prisoners, and people were violently tortured and executed seemingly at random. He did not act on impulses directly, however, and instead hired the prison camp's schizophrenic anatomist to perform ritualistic torture on, providing him with drugs to use. A bridge was constructed that would allow him to directly cross over from the governor's official residence to his private residence in 1994, and the entire workforce was subsequently executed to silence them. His secretary, Robert Dawson, was sent to the prison camp after spotting him dressed as Alexia.

As Ashford's career continued, his mental state became evermore-so erratic even taking his iron fist into account. His management of the Antarctic Base was of total neglect, and had earned the ire of his workers at the transport terminal, who were repeatedly denied vacation time while perpetually behind in deliveries. These delays led to global shortages of various chemicals in 1998, which were directly blamed on Ashford. From the middle of 1998, Umbrella HQ became aware of an apparent H.C.F. spy ring on Rockfort Island, and determined that the source of research leaks held a prominent role on the island. Believing an attack on the island was imminent, a T-078 Tyrant was shipped over with the intent on using it against attackers.

In December 1998, H.C.F. finally attacked Rockfort Island, with their operative within the military training camp detonating an explosive in its lab, leading to the ε strain escaping as an airborne pathogen. As with the Mansion Incident, this t-Virus strain quickly returned to its normal method of transmission after infecting a number of people. Those not killed by the carpet bombing or by H.C.F. found themselves infected or killed by their own men. Ashford escaped the disaster and armed himself with a sniper rifle for protection. He incorrectly determined one of the spies to be Claire Redfield, a prisoner newly transferred to the base, and made several attempts on her life. Switching between his Alfred and Alexia personas, he led Redfield and fellow survivor Steve Burnside to think for a time they were two people. After a confrontation at the private residence, Ashford departed back to the training camp, where he set off the auto-destruct for the island facilities, unleashed the T-078 Tyrant to take out survivors, and fled in his personal Harrier jet to the Antarctic Base.

However, upon arriving at the site, Lord Ashford found that the facility was overtaken by zombies that escaped from the planes that had evacuated from Rockfort Island after the HCF attack, what made him take shelter in his office. Sources differ as to how Ashford died after reaching Antarctic Base; in one account, he found Redfield and Burnside there and once again tried to kill them, but was shot and fell down a pit, from where he dragged himself to the cryogenics laboratory where his sister Alexia was and freed her, ultimately dying in her arms due to the severity of his injuries. If that account is true, Alfred's body would be stored in the same capsule where Alexia had hibernated, only for it to be discovered by Chris Redfield upon his future exploration of the base and his ring was then used to unlock a secret door to Alexander's lab. Already another account suggests that Alfred was strangled to death by his own sister shortly after he freed her, as punishment for being late in awakening her. Whatever happened, in both accounts, Alfred died shortly after his sister was awakened from her confinement.

Alexia Ashford was a member of British nobility, coming from the Ashford family. The adopted daughter of Dr. Alexander Ashford, 6th Earl Ashford, her real parentage was the result of a cloning experiment referred to as Project CODE: Veronica, and was biologically the daughter of Veronica Ashford, 1st Countess Ashford. Through her grandfather, Dr. Edward Ashford, 5th Earl Ashford, she was able to gain a position as a virologist within Umbrella Pharmaceuticals, an enterprise he co-founded.

Alexia and her brother Alfred, the future 7th Earl Ashford, were born around 1971 to an unnamed surrogate mother as part of Project CODE: Veronica. The project, led by Dr. Alexander Ashford, involved obtaining DNA from the embalmed body of his ancestor, Veronica and creating a genetically modified clone. The purpose of it was a vanity project intent on restoring the family's reputation with a child comparable to Veronica, whose intelligence was renowned, and prevent Dr. Oswell E. Spencer, Lord Spencer from taking full control over the corporation should Dr. Edward Ashford die. Whereas Alexia's genius intellect fulfilled all of Dr. Ashford's expectations, the higher-than-average Alfred did not compare, perhaps due to having been the result of a freak error during the cloning process intended solely to create Alexia. Nonetheless, both were raised by Dr. Ashford at his home under the Antarctic Base.

At the age of 10, Alexia graduated from a prestigious university and was employed by Umbrella Pharmaceuticals as one of its virologists. Isolated from other scholars by her young age, and from children by her intellect, Alexia's only comfort was her brother, Alfred, having already developed a loathing of her father as another member of the "ignorant masses".

In February 1983, sometime around her twelfth birthday, her brother Alfred told her about a secret room in the Antarctic Base, at which she was working at the time, and told her he needed her family gemstone, a large ruby inside a silver choker, to open it. Offering it to him, she aided him in opening the secret corridor. Once inside, the twins learned the complete truth about their creation, and both grew immensely hateful of their father.

Capturing him in March 1983, they used him as a test subject for the t-Veronica virus that she had created by binding together the Progenitor Virus and the remnants of an ancient virus found within a queen ant. Since her father didn't have a preparation before, the experiment turned Alexander into the insane monster known as Nosferatu.

Taking notes on her father's progress, Alexia discovered certain flaws in her virus and planned to inject herself with the virus to become a superior being. Using the data she had obtained from her father, Alexia discovered a way to harness the full power of her virus: by having herself put into cryogenic suspension for fifteen years while the virus, slowed by the ultra-low temperatures to a point where it would not destroy her tissues through overly rapid mutation, matured within her unconscious body. In December 1983, she assigned Alfred to protect her and carry out her will while she was inactive, and proceeded to enter the cryostatic state.

Fifteen years after this, she awoke with the first sight of her new stage being the death of her brother (whose body she cradled in her arms) who had activated the thawing process mere moments prior. Now in full control of the virus, she sought to begin her plan of dominion over the world as its queen, and using her newfound powers, she remotely controlled one of the massive tentacles resting below the Antarctic Base to destroy the escape vehicle of Claire Redfield and Steve Burnside. Also, she captured Claire and Steve for the purpose of subjecting them to her experiments and to make them pay for killing her brother.

She imprisoned Steve in a Coliseum with suits of armor and repeated the experiment that mutated her father, only with her own mutant strain. Later on, she appeared to confront Albert Wesker in the replica of the Spencer Mansion under the Antarctic ice.

There, she first evolved with the Veronica strain into the first step of what, she envisioned, was true godhood, shedding her human skin and hair and turning into a powerful being, that greatly resembled her human stage with gray skin, darkened vessels and arteries, and chitinous growths covering her body as a form of rudimentary armor. She also controlled her body's blood (which by then had acquired flammable properties, usable through bloodshed) and her head forms a skin-like hair with a short fringe on the right and long to the left. She and Wesker engaged in a brief fight, Wesker quickly found Alexia impervious to any physical blows he could launch, and thus retreated and left Chris Redfield to fight Alexia, who soundly defeated her.

In the Darkside Chronicles, the color of her mutation become pale blue and her gray skin becomes darker and gains long spikes in each side of her head instead of being a short and long single fringe in each side.

Weakened by her first defeat, she once again attacked Chris by fusing with one of the Veronica mutant breeder pods, creating countless imperfect larvae to attack him along with her tentacles, fire, and insect-like appendages. Despite this, she was once again defeated. However, Alexia was not beaten yet; she responded by evolving further using the insects that lay below the platform covering her, then she shed the carcass of the breeder pod and became a giant dragonfly-like monster, capable of spewing great amounts of flame and absorbing all gunfire. Nevertheless, Chris managed to destroy Alexia with an experimental weapon called the Linear Launcher, thus ending the Ashford family line.