| This article is about the Altean witch as she appears in Legendary Defender. For a list of other meanings, see Haggar (disambiguation). |
Haggar, formerly Empress Honerva, is an Altean user of dark magic and the high priestess of the Druids serving the Galra Empire. She acts as an advisor to Zarkon and only recently recalled her memories as his former wife.
Biography
She was originally an Altean alchemist named Honerva who was sent to Daibazaal to study the crater of a comet that fell from the sky the night before. Her studies led her to discover a new power source that could advance the planet beyond any other and that the crater was actually a rift to another reality. One of the first creatures she tested the effects of Quintessence on was her pet Kova. During this time she married the planet's ruler, Zarkon.
One day a massive beast escaped from the rift and she watched in amazement as Voltron was summoned for the first time to stop it. After many years her experiments with the Quintessence became unnerving, one of them was testing it on her sick cat which made it live longer than it naturally should. She then became obsessed with the potential of immortality that Quintessence could give them. Her husband joined her obsession and they tried to convince Alfor of their cause too, but to no avail.
During her experiments Honerva grew sick, and told her husband that the only way to save her was to expose her to the Quintessence. And so Zarkon tricked his fellow Paladins into going into the rift in order to save her. But they were both exposed to a combination of an overdose of the substance and the creatures from the other realm.
Presumed dead, Alfor evacuated the planet and gave orders to destroy it in order to close the rift forever. However the two woke up, corrupted by the Quintessence, and Zarkon rallied his armies to take revenge for their planet by destroying Altea, killing his former friend and enslaving the Galaxy.
Now going by "Haggar," she leads the Druids, an order of dark mystics in the Galra Empire, and serves as one of Zarkon's closest and most trusted advisors. She was responsible for grafting Shiro's cybernetic arm onto himself, having experimented on him during his time as a prisoner with the Galra.
Both a dangerous sorceress and a mad scientist, Haggar enjoys Zarkon's favor as he indulges in her twisted experiments to blend her unnatural magicks with abominable science to create powerful weapons to arm soldiers, terrible monsters (later dubbed "RoBeasts") and leech entire planets (and other sources) of the mystical energy known as Quintessence.
Personality
While originally a kind and gentle scientist and Altean alchemist, Honerva's daring and headstrong personality took a turn for the maniacal when she began delving deeper into her experiments involving quintessence, and slowly her mind and body began to warp into the being known today as Haggar. She began pushing the limits of the lifespans of several species, including herself, Kova, and even her husband, Zarkon. These alterations twisted the once harmless and charming scientist into a destructive mad sorceress obsessed with her work concerning immortality.
The consequence of being brought back to life by pure Quintessence, along with her long life and obsession with her work, has Honerva's memories become shrouded in her new persona, Haggar, and she eventually loses all knowledge and memory of her previous life, like when she was unable to recognize her original form in Zarkon's memories; however, there appears to be remaining traces of the person she once was. This shows when after Haggar recognizes Zarkon as her husband for the first time in untold years, her voice shifted to resemble her original voice, and carried a loving caress in it for her king and love. Even before remembering her love for him, Haggar's affections for Zarkon did carry over into her current personality enough to worry for the Galran emperor's mental health due to his obsession with capturing the Black Lion of Voltron, and his utter disregard for tactics by attempting to pilot his unsafe and life-threatening mech suit.
Other than her love for Zarkon, Haggar is a twisted and ruthless sorceress, sadistic in her research, which among other things includes creating prosthetic limbs, developing new methods for quintessence extraction, and interrogating prisoners. Haggar's raw intellect and over 10,000 years of experience have left her all but peerless in her skills, causing her to be immensely confident when dealing with anyone near her level. This was most prominently shown when she inadvertently unlocked Allura's latent mystical potential, and the younger Altean was able to overpower her, shocking and terrifying the dark sorceress to the point of retreating.
She has been shown to be somewhat mistrusting of her son's judgment as Emperor Pro Tem, due to Lotor's similar single-mindedness to his father, causing Haggar to question his priorities. However, following Zarkon's comatose state following his defeat at the hands of Voltron, Haggar had Lotor summoned. Her reasons for doing so were primarily based in keeping the Galra Empire united, as the Voltron Alliance managed to shake the decentralized Galran forces enough to free dozens of planets. Her concern for galactic domination shows that her loyalties to Zarkon extend to preserving his life's work, and that her reliance on her son to act as the face of the Empire is an extension of her will to keep her husband's ambitions from crumbling to ruin.
Haggar appears to suffer from dissociative amnesia, as over time she forgot everything regarding the relationships she had as Honerva, including her marriage to Zarkon and even the birth of her own son, Lotor. Since reawakening much of her long-buried personality, Haggar has been using quintessence periodically to unlock more memories, including those of her own child and her relationship to him. In these lucid moments when the dormant personality of Honerva is in control she is shown to deeply care about her son.
It is likely that she suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder, as she often speaks of Honerva as if she is a distinctly different person.
Abilities
Haggar is an Altean, thus has chameleon abilities and magic at her fingertips, the latter of which has been increased to greater levels by her transformation ten thousand years ago. As the High Priestess of the Druids, she is the one most suited to using quintessence, as demonstrated in her experiments. She also stopped aging for the last ten thousand years because her body has been infused with quintessence.
She can use her enhanced mystical powers for energy projection, forming shields, teleportation, augmenting her speed and mobility, levitating objects, generating illusions to confuse opponents, and detecting lies when interrogating someone. The witch can also sense universal energies like from the Voltron Lions and Alteans, and possess others with her magic through touch or eye contact. Through the latter, Haggar can see and hear everything they do through viewing windows, enter their minds to see their memories and wake them from comas, or possess them entirely to control their actions. After gaining the secrets of Altean alchemy, Haggar has reversed her transformation and can now open wormholes like Allura.
As an experienced Altean alchemist, she also experiments with science and robotic elements using quintessence, mostly on prisoners. She has developed Robeasts to battle Voltron, made Shiro and Sendak's robotic arms, and created devices she uses as amplifiers for performing greater witchcraft, like the Komar to extract quintessence from planets, and the weapon used to activate Naxzela's planetary mechanisms. She has also produced clones of Shiro that are possessed with her magic as part of Operation Kuron.
Notes
- Haggar's true nature as an Altean was revealed when Allura managed to take down her hood during their battle. It is not known how her Altean mimicking abilities relate to her current appearance, which appears to be the result of "dying" from over-exposure to quintessence and the dark creatures of a trans-reality rift. It is only known that she can revert the skin color of her face and her eye color to that of her original appearance, while her hands remain blue, though in "Omega Shield", she can fully revert her skin (including her hands) and eye color to her original appearance after her visit to Oriande.
- She is fiercely devoted to Emperor Zarkon, risking her life to unleash a massive, quintessence-draining spell against Voltron during their battle with him. It has been revealed that she is his past wife and the mother of his son, Lotor.
- Her original identity, Honerva, is a reference to her name in Go-Lion.
- After the death of her husband in "Blood Feud", Haggar is the only villain to appear in every season so far.