Gerard Bonneville

Gerard Bonneville is the main antagonist of The Book of Dust: La Belle Sauvage by Philip Pullman. He used to work for the Magisterium, but since they decided to kill him upon his discovery of Dust, they tracked him down and forced him to turn to a life of crime.

Bonneville is notable for his savage hyena daemon, whose appearance is so ugly it repulses anyone who looks at it. He also becomes more and more masochistic as the novel progresses, resorting to chopping off one of his daemon's forelegs because she annoyed him.

Origins
Dust was first discovered by a Russian (a Muscovite in Lyra's world) by the name of Rusakov, and he was the first to discover it, but it had to be proven. Gerard Bonneville was an agent of the Magisterium who was delving into deep philosophical matters such as the existence of other worlds and dimensions, and he was the first to scientifically prove the existence of Dust. He first discovers the particle has a conscious mind and proves that consciousness exists outside of human imagination. Delighted, he publishes a paper on the subject. Because the paper talks about the fact that there is no need to include spirituality on the subject (as Bonneville is a nihilist) he angers the Magisterium, and they put a death sentence on him. He flees across the world to Brytain, and he seeks to attack anyone with knowledge of Dust. He comes across Farder Coram von Texel who is part of the Oakley Street organisation dedicated to thwarting the Magisterium, and Bonneville attacks Coram.

Coram outwits Bonneville, despite being badly injured himself, and Coram hastily writes to Lord Nugent of Oakley Street saying they have an assassin to deal with. Bonneville makes his way to Oxford, and he takes up residence in a pub named the Trout.

In the novel
Gerard Bonneville approaches Alice Parslow (a kitchen girl at the Trout) and he seduces her for information on Lyra, he tells Alice she is beautiful and is infatuated with her, he takes her for dinner one night and they are across from the priory Lyra is being held in. Gerard asks Alice about the nunnery and their habits, but Alice is disturbed so she tells Malcolm Polstead (another kitchen worker) and he becomes scared of Bonneville. He is scared by Bonneville's hyena daemon which now has three legs, and is gnawing on the stump of one of her legs from Bonneville's brutal attack on her. However, Malcolm can't help but notice how pleasant Bonneville appears to be when he first catches Malcolm looking at him and he smiles benignly at Malcolm.

Rivalry with the Magisterium
But Malcolm has more pressing matters to deal with, such as the increasingly intrusive Consistorial Court of Discipline from the Magisterium, who are becoming more and more active in everybody's lives, even going as far as pushing religion on schoolchildren by forming the League of Saint Alexander, an evil organisation run by gangs of arrogant schoolchildren who make it their duty to report all atheists and non believers to the Magisterium, who fundamentally execute those they report.

Malcolm sees Gerard Bonneville break into the nunnery to get Lyra, and his daemon Asta notices that the window was open deliberately. Alice tells Malcolm that a younger nun named Sister Katarina has become traitor and is in love with Bonneville, thus proceeding to let the man in to kidnap Lyra.

Pursuing the trio
However, a massive flood (predicted by the gyptians) arrives and destroys half the country. In the chaos, the nunnery is destroyed, Sister Katarina is killed in the process of her making out with Bonneville, and Gerard Bonneville sadistically casts her aside and pursues Malcolm and Alice, who now adopted Lyra, almost seizing them. But they escape onto the churning waters.

More Than Capable of Murder
Bonneville returns at a mansion up the Thames when he locks Malcolm and Alice in a cellar, and he brags about a man from the past, Lord Murdstone, who allegedly performed intercision (the act of severing one's daemon from their soul) in the cellar. Bonneville gleefully revels in torturing Malcolm, and expresses his lust for Alice after he kills the man who owns the house. Then Bonneville pursues Malcolm and Alice down the riverbank to their boat, the titular Belle Sauvage but then Malcolm stabs Bonneville in the thigh; and he is presumed deceased, his daemon howls in agony, both legs apparently broken beyond repair.

Return
But then when Alice and Malcolm arrive in what appears to be a garden of ghosts, they apparently see Bonneville there, in a wheelchair, summoning ghosts to attack them. A minor sea deity releases them from the island when Malcolm convinces him Lyra is the princess of the king of Albion (Britain).

Final encounter and death
It seems that Alice got mistaken by the island being full of ghosts because the god who released them says that this is where people come to forget, implying they are living people. Bonneville's shadow is seen, trekking through the marshland and following them to an old, stinking cemetery. He appears in a storm, raping Alice and dragging her daemon away from her. But Malcolm comes in to the rescue (in the process splitting his daemonic knot and rendering him and his daemon capable of splitting away like witch's daemons) and he whacks the hyena daemon with an oar, injuring it to the point of death. In his dying throes, Bonneville says about Dust being the source of his misery and of its importance to the Rusakov field, then he dies and his daemon explodes.

Personality
Gerard Bonneville was previously a renowned scholar and scientist, he made several delves into the philosophical field and his study was accepted by the Magisterium so long as it did not conflict with their religious beliefs. However, Bonneville expressed his lack of interest in the spiritual world and thus angered them. He became a fugitive from justice and was then rarely seen in public, and then usually from the back. He became a prime target for Oakley Street because they wished to prevent him from harming Lyra (having evidence she was the daughter of Lord Asriel and Marisa Coulter) and they wished to interrogate Bonneville about the knowledge he had to empower their alethiometer research. However, Bonneville was an exceptionally hard man to track, as he avoided the Magisterium Consistorial Court of Discipline spy boats and he avoided all means possible of detecting him. This was all the more remarkable because he was a savage looking man, and he had a daemon so unforgettable that any witness could betray him. However, he used his charisma and intimidation to squash any such snitching. He lusted after women and girls a lot, not caring about age difference. He truly did seem to like Alice, as before he raped her he declared many times during their numerous encounters how they could've been an item.