Michael Roa Valdamjong

Michael Roa Valdamjong is the main antagonist of Tsukihime. He is a vampire and a numberless Dead Apostle Ancestor who is ranked as "Extra" outside of the standard twenty-seven because they consider him to be a heretic who doesn't uphold the ideals of regular vampires. He is also called the Serpent of Akasha and the Infinite Reincarnator, which refers to his ability to reincarnate after entering Akasha, the root of everything within the universe, no matter how many times he dies. His seventeenth reincarnation is known as Elesia and his eighteenth is known as SHIKI Tohno, which is his latest as of the time period of Tsukihime. He is friends with Nrvnqsr Chaos, a fellow Dead Apostle Ancestor. In the anime, he is voiced by Yoshino Hiroyuki in Japanese and Kirk Thornton in English. In Melty Blood, he is voiced by Ken Narita, the seiyuu who voices Tetsuro Okonogi of the When they Cry series in the games.

Background
Roa was originally a priest of a Church who quickly rose to the top by utilizing all his father's inheritance. He created the "burial class", which served as the base of today's Burial Agency, along with Nabareck. With nothing left of his resources, he decided to leave the Church, giving the Agency to Nabareck afterwards. After betraying the Church to the Mage's Association, he was left uncredited, and Riesbyfe Strydeberg was surprised to hear about his involvement with it. He wished to realize an immortality different from that of Dead Apostles, but, in an attempt to overcome his limits as a mere human, he became a vampire in order to continue his research. When he considered a way to become a Dead Apostle, his heart snatched the moment he set his eyes on Arcueid Brunestud, and his plan went out of control thereafter without knowing it himself. He genuinely fell in love with her without noticing himself, but instead started hating her after it caused him to lose his innocence and turn away from his research. Upon her becoming weak to her vampiric impulse for the first time, he tricked her into drinking his blood, and became a powerful Dead Apostle. Taking the forces of a Dead Apostle Ancestor that had been sealed by the Church, he quickly rose in power among the twenty-seven. As he built up his power, he earned himself the scorn of the other Dead Apostles Ancestors, and eventually Altrouge Brunestud was left in charge of punishing this newcomer. He proved more powerful in battle, defeating her without killing her, and afterwards, the rest of the Ancestors decided to ignore his existence, and he was eventually destroyed by Arcueid who had joined forces with the Church. Over the next seven hundred years, he reincarnated fifteen times, and was endlessly killed by Arcueid each time.

Roa's seventeenth reincarnation, Elesia, who was later known as Ciel, was born in 1976 to a baker's family in a remote village in France after his sixteenth incarnation died. The sixteenth was destroyed by Arcueid before he had a chance to find a family bloodline with both wealth and power. He was only able to fulfill the requirement that his next incarnation would have physical potential, so he was born to a normal family without any social standing. In exchange, her body instead had high magical potential, which is the closest to power to his original body in all of his incarnations. Even though he would have to take a long period of time to take over the town without status, he was fine with waiting until later to obtain social standing. He caused various atrocities to the citizens as he used his new powers to slowly take over the town. After the town fell completely under his control, Arcueid inadverdently hunted him down and managed to find him after two days of searching. He was killed by her afterwards, after which Elesia's body was taken to the Church. She eventually revived with her original personality without any of Roa's influence, while Roa moved on to his next reincarnation. He managed to plan his eighteenth incarnation, and chose the Tohno bloodline with a proper amount of wealth and power. Choosing the Far East for his seventeenth revival was on a whim which was possibly just him wishing for a change of scenery, comparable to where his previous incarnations were born.