The Twelve

"Frank: There is a sequence, a pattern to these kills. They're destabilizing from the ground up. Eve: To what end? Frank: Chaos."

- Frank Haleton explaining the Twelve's motive to Carolyn Martens and Eve Polastri.

The Twelve are the overarching antagonists of the Villanelle novel series written by Luke Jennings, as well as the TV series adaption Killing Eve. They are an organization of twelve individuals who use assassins to eliminate certain individuals across Europe. According to Frank Haleton, their primary objective is to spread chaos, but this is still uncertain.

Biography
Little is known about the Twelve, the members, their locations or their motives. However, what is known is that a few people referred to as 'Keepers', who are the only ones who know their names.

At some point, they made a deal with MI5 operative Frank Haleton, that they would supply him with money so he could provide for his children after their mother's death, and in exchange, he would tell them about everything that was going on within the agency along with anything else asides.

Eventually, they recruited Oksana Astankova and faked her death, saying that she died in a Moscow prison. Going by 'Villanelle', she became one of their best and most feared assassins, completing many assignments for them. In 2018, she became obsessed with MI5 operative Eve Polastri, which had made her lose focus, despite then sending her to successfully kill Frank for being a loose end. Although they intended on leaving her in prison to kill fellow assassin Nadia, they broke her out to kill her former handler Konstantin Vasiliev after he betrayed them to break her out.

A few days later, the Twelve deemed Villanelle no longer useful and sent their assassin-executioner Raymond Alagron to kill her when the time came. However, this was thwarted when the defected Konstantin helped her escape and the two became freelance contract killers. Weeks later, Carolyn Martens made a deal with the Twelve, that if Villanelle killed Aaron Peel, Raymond could kill her, in which she did. However, as Raymond was about to kill her, Eve intervened and killed him.

Trivia

 * According to Kenny, the Twelve use the name because it is a powerful number, 12 months of the year, 12 disciples and 12 days of Christmas. However, it is unknown if this was deliberate or just coincidental.