Dishonored was released in 2012 by Arkane Studios, published by Bethesda and set in the fictional city of Dunwall.
In the game, you play as silent protagonist Corvo Attano and must decide if you want to be stealthy, or brutally murder anyone you come into contact with, made easier by the supernatural powers handed to you by the mysterious deity at the beginning of the game.
As great as Dishonored is, I’m here to talk about one of it’s DLCs and one of it’s other characters.
Let me give you a quick run down of the Dishonored DLC storyline, there are two DLCs that are connected in story, Daud, the assassin who kills the Empress at the beginnig of Dishonored gets his own spin-off DLC and he gets a voice! You spend your time traversing through a new part of Dunwall in Knife of Dunwall and discovering that the evil villain may not be so evil after-all.
At one point of the Knife of Dunwall he hears the name Delilah, which is the name of a ship named after a witch, the witch in question, is Delilah Copperspoon, and here’s where things get relevant.
Delilah Copperspoon is the illegitimate daughter of Emperor Euhorn Kaldwin (Jessamine’s father, making them sisters) She was desperate to assume the proper role of a princess when she was younger, growing ever jealous of her sister and the attention their father gave her.
Eventually Delilah and her mother were thrown out of Dunwall Tower where they had taken up residence, all the while being “hidden” by the Emperor, guess he didn’t want anyone to know he was getting friendly with the staff.
Delilah and her mother struggled in the streets of dunwall, eventually her mother died and the young girl was forced to work odd jobs, she took up painting on the side and eventually met the great Anton Sokolov who greatly appreciated the ways she saw the world through her art. He quit tutoring her when her obsession with the Kaldwins took things too far. Delilah has an obsession with the occult and magic as well, with her supernatural powers she is able to create worlds in her paintings, but I’ll talk about that later.
Speaking of taking things too far, Delilah tried to posess young Emily Kaldwin through a painting, does that sound crazy? Well apparently not to Delilah in The Brigmore Witches where her end goal, provided Daud does not stop her, is to take Emily’s place in her body.
Daud ends up stopping her by trapping her in her own painting located in the void where he thinks she is gone for good.
Delilah’s art in Brigmore Witches is incredibly expressive and disturbing at the same time, hinting at the unstable mind of the character, Delilah’s art in Knife of Dunwall and Brigmore Witches was done by freelance french artist Veronique Meignaud.
In the second game, Delilah plays a big role, she’s back and she’s worse than ever, coming back from the dead to take what she feels is rightfully ‘her throne’ Delilah decides to plan a raid on Dunwall Tower, claiming that she is the true empress, she even involves some key members of Emily Kaldwin’s circle as people part of the conspiracy, Emily is locked in a room and essentially dethroned, while Delilah turns Dunwall into her own little playground.
Delilah’s paintings in this game are still beautiful and still laced with weird teleporting magic, but this time the artist behind them is Arkane Studios’ artist Sergey Kolesov. They seem to be less chaotic, but somehow still disturbing. Maybe it’s because Delilah’s world view has changed, she’s spent a long time coming up with a plan to destroy the people who hurt her and get what she felt she deserved, it’s reflective in her new art style that she feels more mentally capable of going forward, that she is no longer the lost and confused, defeated person that came before.
Her plan in Dishonored 2 seems like it’s working out fine, she is destroying the version of reality that Emily ruled in and painting her own world where she can rule, why she didn’t just do this in the first place instead of all the senseless murder and kidnapping, I’ll never actually understand.
Anyway, her masterpiece, her “magnum opus” as it were is called “The World As It Should Be” it is the artistic vision of her deepest desire, to be loved and accepted by her subjects in a way she never was by her father who cast her out of not only the tower, but her own family and the promise of being beloved and respected the way her sister was.
Everything is coming up Delilah, until her niece comes to stop her in a confrontation at Dunwall Tower at the end of the game, Delilah is ended and Dunwall is saved, but since the game relies on choice, what’s the canon of Delilah?
According to the Dishonored comic “The Peeress and The Price“, Delilah was once again trapped in her own painting by Emily, a fitting tribute to the artist who wanted to live in her own work.
Links to check out:
Arkane’s Website
Veronique Meignaud on Artstation
Delilah Copperspoon’s page on the Dishonored wiki where a lot of these images came from
Game Painting 