Anyanka

""Vengeance is what I do, Halfrek. I don't need anything else. Vengeance is what I am.""

- Anyanka



Anyanka (or Aud, Anya Emerson, Anya Christina Emanuella Jenkins) is a villainess who was once a vengeance demon with the title The Patron Saint Of Scorned Women in Buffy the Vampire Slayer TV series.

Early Life as Aud
Aud was born in Sjornjost, Sweden in 860. She grew up raising rabbits and became the outsider of her village, whose inhabitants labeled her as "odd because she speaks her mind." By the age of twenty, Aud had fallen in love with a man named Olaf, a Viking warrior who enjoyed hunting trolls and drinking at the bar. One night, Olaf drunkenly slept with a bar maid named Rannveig and a furious Aud resorted to magic to curse him with boils on his penis. She then turned him into a troll, and he was forced to flee from his fellow villagers, who did not believe his story.

Becoming Anyanka, The Vengeance Damon
The act of vengeance against her lover Olaf gained the attention of D'Hoffryn, a demon who offered to elevate Aud to the status of a vengeance demon. She was transformed into Anyanka, Patron Saint Of Scorned Women, and given an amulet with the power to grant dark wishes for the amusement of the pestilent gods. However, like all vengeance demons, Anyanka's interpretation of the wish expressed would often be rather loose and considerably more destructive than the wisher intended.

In 1199, Anyanka traveled to the Kastka valleys above the Urals to curse an unfaithful shepherd and was caught in the middle of a sorcerer's Ascension to the form of the demon Lohesh. She managed to escape, but was shocked by the death and carnage which claimed almost the entire village. She met up with the famous vampire Dracula in 1579 and was present at the Salem witch trials in 1692. In the 19th century, Anyanka became close friends with fellow vengeance demon Halfrek, who she shared a fierce rivalry with during The Crimean War. Despite their competition, Halfrek secretly admired Anyanka, and was impressed when a wish she granted sparked a revolution in St Petersburg, Russia in 1905. In 1914, Anyanka went to Chicago, Illinois to exact vengeance on a philanderer called Stewart Burns, transforming him into a grotesque demon and banishing him to a hell dimension for all eternity.

Arrives In Sunnydale
In 1998, Anyanka arrived at Sunnydale, California to punish teenager Xander Harris for cheating on his girlfriend Cordelia Chase with his best friend, Willow Rosenberg. Taking on the guise of Anya Emerson, she enrolled at Sunnydale High School and befriended Cordelia Chase in order to trick her into making a wish. Blaming the Slayer Buffy Summers for everything that was wrong in her life, Cordelia wished that Buffy had never come to Sunnydale, and was transported to a grim alternate universe where the Master had risen and both Xander and Willow were vampires. Unfortunately for Anyanka, Buffy's Watcher Rupert Giles discovered what was going on and destroyed her amulet, undoing Cordelia's wish and rendering Anya mortal again. D'Hoffryn refused to restore her powers and Anya was forced to live out her life as a human as punishment for her failure.

Determined to get her powers back, Anya tricked Willow into helping her retrieve her amulet from the alternate universe. Instead, they accidentally pulled out the vampire version of Willow, who proceeded to cause mayhem in Sunnydale. When Anya realised her mistake, she allied herself with the vampire Willow, but they were both captured by Buffy and the Scooby Gang, who forced her to send the vampire Willow back to her own reality. Anya continued to live her life as a high school student and, despite her abhorrence of all men, she yearned to have a date for the prom. She asked Xander to the dance because she knew he had no other date and he reluctantly accepted for the same reason. After the prom, Anya began to develop feelings for Xander and asked him out again shortly before graduation. However, these plans were put on hold when he told her that the Mayor of Sunnydale, Richard Wilkins was planning to ascend to true demon form on Graduation Day and eat all the students. Although she offered some advice to the Scoobies regarding the Ascension she witnessed in 1199, Anya was too afraid to help them fight the Mayor and decided to leave town. Xander refused to abandon his friends, so she left without him.

Becoming Xander's Girlfriend and a member of the "Scooby Gang"
Anya returned to Sunnydale several months later, still infatuated with Xander. She persuaded him to sleep with her in the hopes of getting him out of her system, but it didn't work and instead they began dating. Xander invited her to a Halloween party and she decided to wear a bunny suit as her scary costume. When the demon Gachnar attacked the party, Anya saved Xander and his friends by going to Giles for help. Worried that Xander did not really care about her, Anya was moved when he mistakenly believed that she had been killed by Spike and proceeded to beat the vampire up. The couple began to argue over where their relationship was going, but when a party they were attending was attacked by a poltergeist, Anya risked her life and braved painful injuries to rescue Xander from being drowned. Anya's lack of social skills soon made her unpopular with the rest of the Scooby Gang, particularly Willow, who had little trust for the ex-demon. However, she continued to help them for Xander's sake, and was eventually accepted as an official member. Anya supported Xander during the brief period when Spike's manipulations created a rift between the Scoobies. Soon after Giles took over The Magic Box, a local occult store, Anya was hired as an employee because of her talent at finances.

When Giles briefly left Sunnydale, he reluctantly left Anya in charge of the shop. During an argument, she and Willow accidentally released Olaf the troll from a crystal. It was revealed that Willow and Anya's mutual dislike stemmed from the fear of each that the other would hurt Xander. When Xander protected both women equally from Olaf, they finally came to an understanding and worked together to banish Olaf to the Land of the Trolls. As the Scoobies prepared to confront the hellgod Glorificus, Anya provided crucial advice by suggesting that they use the Dagon Sphere and Olaf's hammer in the fight. During the battle with Glory, Anya heroically saved Xander from falling rubble and was knocked unconscious, while Buffy sacrificed her life saving Dawn and the world from a dimensional rift; Anya later played a part in the spell to resurrect her.

The Return of the Vengeance Demon
Shortly before the battle against Glory, Xander asked Anya to marry him if they survived, and she agreed.

Anya began to feel frustrated when Xander refused to announce their engagement so soon after Buffy's death, but he finally did on Halloween. Later, during Buffy's birthday party, when all of the attendants ended up trapped within Buffy's house, Anya, desperate to escape, attempted to use peer pressure on Willow, who was just recovering from her addiction to dark magic, hoping to force her to use magic to escape, and only backed off when Tara harshly ordered her to do so. Later, Anya became convinced that Dawn had something to do with it, and ended up barging into Dawn's bedroom and digging through her stuff, discovering the sizable amounts of artifacts that Dawn had stolen from the Magic Box in the process. As it turned out, Dawn was, in a way, responsible: she had unwittingly wished to Anya's old friend Halfrek that no one would leave her.

On her wedding day, Anya's former victim Stewart Burns showed up and tried to manipulate Xander by showing him false visions of an unhappy future with Anya. Buffy defeated the demonic Burns, but Xander decided to call off the wedding anyway, the vision Burns had shown him of the future reawakening his old fears at turning out like his parents, and left Anya heartbroken at the altar. Hurt and angry, Anya accepted D'Hoffryn's offer to become a vengeance demon again.

Unable to wish vengeance on Xander herself, she attempted to get Spike drunk so that he would make the wish for her. Instead, she found comfort with Spike and the two had sex with each other in the Magic Box, to Xander's disgust. When Tara was murdered, Anya recognized Willow's thirst for vengeance but was unable to stop her from being consumed by dark magic and turning evil, Anya revealed to the other Scoobies that she was a vengeance demon again, but nevertheless aided them until Xander managed to get through to Willow and restore her humanity.

Return to Humanity and Death
As she continued being a vengeance demon, Anya discovered she no longer enjoyed her work. She spent a summer granting half-hearted wishes and soon gained a reputation as "Soft Serve" among her fellow demons. To gain her co-workers' respect, she turned a man whose girlfriend wished he were a worm into a Sluggoth Demon. However, Xander convinced her to reverse the wish and D'Hoffryn punished her by removing her ability to teleport. Encouraged down a darker path by Halfrek, Anya massacred a group of fraternity boys by summoning a Grimslaw Demon to rip their hearts out. She was later horrified by what she had done and, after an even battle with Buffy, begged D'Hoffryn to reverse the wish. D'Hoffryn agreed, but at the cost of a vengeance demon's soul, and Anya was willing to sacrifice herself for the boys. Instead, D'Hoffryn murdered Halfrek and turned Anya human once again so she would have to live with the pain of what she had done. Realizing she had always been dependent on others in life, Anya resolved to find a purpose for herself. However, when D'Hoffryn sent assassins to kill her, she sought safety at Buffy's house and re-joined the Scooby Gang. Anya and Xander finally made peace with each other, though had several last flings together. Anya admitted to Andrew that she secretly admired how determined humans could be in times of crisis, and in the final battle against the First Evil, she died when she was nearly sliced in half brutally from behind by a Bringer's sword. Her death was avenged by Andrew who kills the Bringer with his own sword. The last we see of Anya is her body, blood dribbling from her mouth as Xander called for her, and was left in the high school as the entire town of Sunnydale was consumed by the Hellmouth, therefore swallowing her up as well. Andrew comforted Xander by telling him that Anya died saving his life, to which Xander tearfully replied, "That's my girl. Always doing the stupid thing."