- "He filled this place with evil, unrepentant evil. These freaks. And the good doctor no longer had time for me. All I had was memory and time."
- ―Anchoress
The Anchoress is a metahuman supercriminal introduced in the New 52.
History
Anchoress is the oldest living inmate of Arkham Asylum, having been born in Gotham around the year 1898. As a young woman she was intrigued by experimental physics in relation to the human body and as such studied quantum mechanics against her parents' wishes who wished for her to go through with a marriage that they had her arranged in. One night an argument between the woman and her parents broke out resulting in a lab accident which caused both her parents to die and for the woman herself to have her physiology altered on a quantum level. Full of guilt over the incident, the woman had herself committed to Arkham where she was treated by four generations of doctors before the rise of criminals like the Joker or Riddler who were so disturbed that the doctors became focussed on the more violent inmates, leaving Anchoress nearly forgotten. Now calling herself the Anchoress as a reference to the Anchorite people who were largely penitents as she was, Anchoress blamed the Batman for her neglect as he was the one who created and incarcerated so many of the insane super criminals of Gotham City. One night Anchoress used her powers to unleash the inmates of the Asylum in order to lure the Batman there, where she used her powers to capture, mock and torture the vigilante, forcing him to experience his most painful memories and nightmares. Batman however managed to break free with the help of two employees. They try to calm her and get a hold of her but she phases through the floor. After being recaptured, the Anchoress is moved into a higher security cell capable of holding her, and only now as a murderous super-criminal is she granted attention from the doctors of Arkham again.