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| “ | Good afternoon, 47. | „ |
| ~ Diana Burnwood. |
| “ | You know that expression 'Know your enemy'? Well, that's my job. | „ |
| ~ Diana Burnwood. |
Diana Penelope Burnwood is the anti-villainous deuteragonist of the Hitman videogame series. She serves as the handler of Agent 47, providing him with clients, targets, and information.
She was voiced by Vivienne McKee in Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, Hitman: Contracts, and Hitman: Blood Money, Marsha Thomason in Hitman: Absolution, and Jane Perry in the World of Assassination trilogy.
History
Diana was born to Sir Peter Lloyd Burnwood and his wife Lady Nancy Burnwood on September 12, 1972. She grew up wealthy and was mostly conscientious and attentive as a student. She showed great potential in oral and written communication, and was above average in math and science.
Diana later attended the Wycombe Abbey School in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England, starting in 1985. Around the same time, a facility in Surrey owned by Blue Seed Pharmaceuticals leaked dangerous chemicals into the water throughout the Surrey/Buckinghamshire region. Diana's younger brother James Oliver Burnwood (1980-1989). During or shortly after James' funeral, Diana's parents died in a car bombing on the orders of Blue Seed executives and their connections at the secret society
As a teenager, she fell in with a female arms dealer and gang boss named Savi, who helped her exact revenge on Blue Seed executives (as seen in the comic book series Birth of a Hitman). The first time Diana confronted one of the executives alone in his office, she hesitated to pull the trigger and the executive was killed by one of Savi's snipers. Police soon showed up to investigate the gunshots, and Diana had to flee the police. Offended that Savi would put her in such a dangerous position, she hired away Savi's best men, overthrew and killed her and took control of the gang.
While attending University of Oxford, majoring in psychology and/or computer science, Diana uses some of Savi's old underworld connections to maintain a small murder-for-hire business of her own, most of her clients being abused women and other everyday people under difficult circumstances. During the mid-1990s she also instructed them to kill two more Blue Seed executives, Richard Torres. She graduated with a Bachelors from Oxford, followed by a 1-year Masters degree abroad, possibly at Yale.
By 1998, Diana found a day job as a counselor at Vincent DePaul Mental Healthcare Associates in Dublin, Ireland. That year, Diana's men had apprehended Blue Seed executive Cheryl Franklin, the final name on Diana's hit list. Diana instructed them to keep Cheryl hostage until she could confront her herself, but mere minutes later, rival mercenaries rescued Cheryl by force and rammed a car into Diana's office. She fled to the United States and was nearly killed trying to assassinate Cheryl at her home, when Erich Soders (a good friend of Diana's parents) rescued her. Soders offered her a job at the ICA, on the condition that she give up her vendetta against Cheryl Franklin and the rest of Blue Seed Pharmaceuticals.
Diana apprenticed under ICA handler Robyn Gore, who had an office disguised as an accounting firm and the fake surname Smythe. In late 1999, they jointly oversaw a contract out on Bricolage Technology founder Franklin Marchand - publicly known as a producer of satellite technology, he had a side business producing chemical weapons in Afghanistan, and a leak at one of his secret plants killed at least 500 people in the immediate area. He was set to make a rare public appearance at the Place de la Concorde in Paris to announce a relief fund for impoverished people in Afghanistan. The ICA sent a four-member team to shoot Marchand, but a separate client ordered a hit on Marchand and insisted it look like an accident - 47 subdued the ICA team in rapid succession, then held a cab driver at gun point to make him run down Marchand with his car. Afterwards, Diana met with 47 in a bar and delivered ICA's offer to audition him, and strongly recommended to the ICA that they hire him.
Biography
In the prologue of the 2016 game HITMAN, Diana welcomes a young 47 into the ICA facility, introducing herself as his handler. She's under the leadership of Erich Soders, the training director of the ICA. After a couple of simulated assassination exercises, she learns that Soders sees 47 as a threat due of his mysterious past, his uncanny skills and his lack of leverage so he planned to make his final test, a simulation of Soder's legendary mission in Cuba, fail augmenting the difficulty of it. Diana supports 47 through the test and finally awarding them field operation clearance.
In Hitman: Codename 47, Diana was only a minor character, as this was her first assignment as a handler as well as being a newly-appointed handler of an agent known only as 47, who up until that point was relatively unknown himself. As Agent 47's handler, her duties were to send him briefings and mission details before the start of a mission. However, she only communicated via texts, and never spoke to Agent 47 in person.
In Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, Diana speaks to Agent 47 through an Agency communication line and details his mission briefings in voice messages. This added layers of personality to Diana, and her role was gradually expanded in subsequent games.
In Hitman: Blood Money, Diana was a double agent and faked Agent 47's death, saving the Agency from liquidation, and dodging death herself. In the end, her efforts paid off when the Agency was brought back online. It was even implied that Diana was promoted to a higher position, despite the fact that she had apparently lost contact with Agent 47.
Diana played her biggest role yet in Hitman: Absolution, after betraying the ICA to save a cloned girl named Victoria. 47 is sent to assassinate her, but merely wounds her and rescues Victoria, later saving her from Blake Dexter and his associates and assassinating ICA division chief Benjamin Travis.
In HITMAN, Diana serves as handler for a series of seemingly normal missions before discovering that the missions were part of the machinations of a shadow war involving Providence and the Shadow Client.
In HITMAN 2, Diana, 47 and the ICA initially work on behalf of Providence to kill off the Shadow Client's allies, but Diana and 47 defect after the latter learns that the Shadow Client is Subject 6, his long-long childhood friend.
In HITMAN III, it's finally revealed to Diana by Arthur Edwards that it was in fact Agent 47 who killed her parents after showing her the forms confirming he accepted the contract. Unbeknownst to Arthur however, Diana forgives 47 due to their long standing friendship and makes a plan to triple cross him. After secretly injecting 47 with a serum to knock him unconscious, which she triggers with a remote after he kills Don Archibald Yates and Tamara Vidal, she pretends to betray 47 in front of a group of Providence guards. 47 later wakes up inside Arthur's train to kill him and possibly several other Providence members.
Abilities and Skills
- Master Manipulation: Diana proves to be quite manipulative and cunning, able to successfully fake her defection to the Franchise.
- Genius Intellect: Diana is highly intelligent, scoring well above the 90% rate of the ICA's specialized BHL/A tests.
- Multilingualism: She is fluent in six languages, though five of what they may be are unknown.
Personality
In the first four games, Diana Burnwood was an enigmatic woman who was entirely unseen in Codename 47 and Silent Assassin, and sparsely seen in Contracts and Blood Money. She was shown to be an amoral woman, not caring about who 47's targets are or even much of 47's wellbeing. However, she proved her loyalty by saving 47's life in Blood Money.
In Absolution, Diana is significantly more compassionate, risking her life to save Victoria by betraying the ICA. She persuaded Agent 47 to turn against the ICA to rescue Victoria from a miserable life of crime and ultimately succeeded.
In the World of Assassination trilogy, Diana shares elements of both of her previous incarnations, retaining the mystery and grandeur of her classic counterpart and the hidden honor of her Absolution counterpart. She is also more grandiose in her briefings, speaking at length about the achievements and crimes of 47's targets, and is more talkative in-game, devising ways to help 47 assassinate his targets. She is shown to be firm and strict, unafraid to threaten and dismiss men like Lucas Grey or the Constant, but adopts a more friendly and playful, though still formal, tone with 47, occasionally joking or giving him advice. The tragic deaths of her family play a large part in the story.
She is also known for being very stoic and skilled at hiding emotions, such as when she confronts 47 about the murder of her parents. Even though she is furious at him, she manages to keep a calm and collected façade while chewing him out, enough to make 47 feel genuinely remorseful. Notably, one of the only times she loses her cool is during the final Patient Zero DLC campaign mission, when she realizes that 47 will be required to assassinate some innocent civilians to contain the virus.
47 and Diana have a mutual respect for each other, with Diana going so far as to forgive 47 for her parent's deaths, as the two of them have been companions for over two decades. They have an almost friend-like bond between each other, something 47 doesn't portray towards anyone else.
Appearance
In HITMAN, Diana is a tall, blue-eyed, redheaded Englishwoman. She wears a black dress and blue coat. Her appearance changes drastically between games. In the first four games, she is portrayed as an older woman with an air of elegance and sophistication to her. Hitman: Absolution shows her as much younger and more conventionally attractive (infamously having a scene where she showers.) HITMAN is more in the middle with these portrayals, showing her as a middle aged woman whose looks and elegance haven't left her.
Trivia
- Though a British national, she holds multiple citizenship, such as Swiss, British, and American passports.
- Her Agent Number is: ICA-PF-54718/BURNWOOD
- She is the one of two of Agent 47’s targets to survive their hit (with Mark Faba being the other). She's also the only target that 47 purposely botched his assassination, shooting her non-fatally in the breast to miss her heart and lungs, knowing she would easily be able to survive once she got medical assistance.
- HITMAN III is the only game in the series in which she appears as a prevalent NPC in any missions (excluding her brief appearance during the first mission of Absolution). The player can actually kill Diana in many ways, but will always result in instant failure of the mission "The Farewell".
