Elizabeth

"Booker, are you afraid of God?" "No. But I'm afraid of you."

- Elizabeth and Booker DeWitt

Elizabeth is a twenty-year-old woman who has been imprisoned in Columbia since she was an infant, and the female lead of BioShock Infinite. Booker DeWitt is sent to retrieve her from the city, and bring her back to New York. She is guarded by Songbird, a monstrous, winged creature who was both her guard and only friend during childhood; she began to hate him as she grew up, seeing him as a warden prohibiting her freedom. She has the power to manipulate Tears that exist in the fabric of time.

When Booker frees her from her tower on Monument Island, The Founders, Zachary Comstock, and Songbird are all determined to recapture her at any cost.

Escape from Monument Island


After arriving in Columbia, Booker finds Elizabeth in the large angel-shaped tower on Monument Island, where she has been kept her entire life. Her apartment in the tower is surrounded by a vast observation deck, preceded by a large laboratory where experiments are conducted on samples obtained from her, including hair, fingernails, and menstrual blood. The lab contains the main Siphon, which Booker finds pulsating with the sound of her singing when he first enters the tower. The lab also contains a chart noting power levels against "subject age," showing them increasing to dangerous heights as she aged.

Elizabeth seems unaware that she is being observed, but is still tired of her prison and wishes to escape&mdash;she is unable to do so through the tears because of the Siphon, though she is not aware of that at the time.



Entering the observation deck, Booker views Elizabeth in her apartment from a series of one-way mirrors, and even witnesses her open a tear to 1980s Paris. Booker accidentally crashes into Elizabeth's library, and while she at first pummels him with several books, she quickly realizes the significance of another human presence, and reacts with awe.

Unfortunately, Booker's intrusion alerts Songbird, and Elizabeth frantically instructs him to leave. However, when he offers her a key out of the apartment, she readily accepts it, fleeing the tower with her liberator and escaping via the Sky-Lines. Songbird's attempts to recapture Elizabeth end up destroying Monument Island, sending Booker and Elizabeth plummeting from the structure.

Battleship Bay and the Hall of Heroes
The two land in the artificial ocean on Battleship Bay, where Elizabeth gleefully observes her new setting, joining in a dance and interacting with others on the beach. She agrees to follow Booker outright when he promises to take her to Paris upon escape.

As Elizabeth and Booker travel to the aerodrome, Esther Mailer (an agent of Comstock) calls Elizabeth "Annabelle," which Elizabeth corrects&mdash;this interaction allows Mailer to identify her. At the ticket booth, Booker and Elizabeth are then ambushed by police agents, whom Booker fights and kills. Elizabeth, horrified by his act, tries to run away, calling him a "monster." Booker justifies himself by saying that Elizabeth is a target, and that he has no choice but to draw first if they want to survive. Reluctantly capitulating to his logic, Elizabeth agrees to continue her journey with Booker.

The two set their sights on The First Lady, an airship dedicated to the late Lady Comstock, to help them escape the city. However, the path to it in the Soldier's Field amusement park requires the use of an electric rail line which has been shut down. Elizabeth and Booker venture to the Hall of Heroes to retrieve the Shock Jockey vigor and power up the rail line themselves.

Along the way, Elizabeth tries to acquaint herself more with Booker, telling him about her life in the tower (for instance, reacting with glee to the Duke & Dimwit show playing at the park, and telling him she loved their stories as a child), and asking about his own. She notes that when she was trying to resuscitate him after nearly drowning at Battleship Bay, he kept repeating the name Anna; Booker claims that it was his wife's name, and that she died during childbirth. When Elizabeth happily remarks that Booker has children, he says he does not, implying that the child died as well.

While trying to access the Hall of Heroes via an elevator, Elizabeth opens a tear to get rid of a bee in the compartment. When Booker reacts with terror and awe, Elizabeth explains that she is able to see small breaks in the fabric of the universe which she can widen, opening up a path to new realities. While she says most aren't very interesting, some have much more dramatic changes present. She also claims that when she was young, she was able to "create" tears between universes rather than simply open them, but that ability was lost to her as she grew up.

After Elizabeth and Booker confront Booker's old war comrade Cornelius Slate in the Hall of Heroes (during which Elizabeth learns about Booker's involvement with the Wounded Knee Massacre), the two enter the memorial to Lady Comstock. There Elizabeth finds an inscription about the "Seed of the Prophet;" Booker informs her that the Comstocks are her parents, and Zachary Comstock wishes to turn her into a new prophet. Having no knowledge of this information previously, Elizabeth reacts with anger, saying she wants nothing to do with the man who trapped her in a tower for twenty years.

After dealing with Slate and obtaining the Shock Jockey, Elizabeth and Booker travel to the aerodrome to retrieve The First Lady. Boarding the aircraft, Booker sets a course, but Elizabeth immediately recognizes the coordinates as being for New York rather than Paris. Not willing to be Booker's prisoner, Elizabeth knocks him out with a wrench and tries to fly the airship herself. However, while Booker is unconscious the ship is surrounded by Vox Populi vessels near Finkton. Landing The First Lady on the Finkton docks, Elizabeth runs away, leaving Booker to his own devices.

Finkton


Booker later finds Elizabeth at Finkton, but the girl flees, using her ability to open tears to hamper his pursuit. During her effort to escape him, she is captured by Founder agents, but quickly gets away as Booker arrives and opens fire on them. In the ensuing chaos, Booker is thrown from a building deck by a Handyman and nearly falls from Columbia; despite her feelings of anger and betrayal, Elizabeth opens a tear beneath Booker, bringing a small blimp into existence to catch him. After a quick and unfriendly discussion, Elizabeth begrudgingly agrees to accompany Booker in an effort to reclaim The First Lady, on the condition that he take her to Paris.

To get the ship back from Daisy Fitzroy, leader of the Vox Populi, Booker and Elizabeth must retrieve munitions for the resistance from a gunsmith named Chen Lin. While Booker takes on the task out of necessity, Elizabeth comes to admire the Vox Populi, believing them to be freedom fighters akin to those who ignited the French Revolution. She also becomes more trusting toward Booker as the mission progresses, noting that he protected her from the Founders at his own peril.

While sneaking into the depths of Fink's Factory, Elizabeth finds a locker with Slate's name on it, and searches through its contents. Inside, she finds Lady Comstock's diary, and in reading it discovers that Lady Comstock is not actually her mother&mdash;Lady Comstock writes that she will not allow her husband's "bastard" to live under their roof, and Elizabeth realizes with astonishment and rage that it was Lady Comstock that had her locked in the tower.



After fighting their way through Fink's Factory, the two find Chen Lin dead, but also discover a tear near his body. Understanding that Elizabeth's powers are not strong enough to allow them reverse passage, they enter a reality where Chen Lin is still alive and married to the sister of Fink's Head of Security, which saved him from the fate he experienced in the other reality. They find this Chen Lin to be disoriented, a side effect of his death in the opposite reality, and decide that retrieving his tools might help.

Booker and Elizabeth travel to a Shantytown beneath the factory, where the tools have been taken. While there, Elizabeth notes the suffering Fink's greed has caused his workers (many of whom cannot eat, and are sleeping on the streets), and begins to more vocally support the Vox Populi, believing they can change things for the better.

After fighting their way to the police station and finding the tools, the two realize that there are too many supplies to carry them back to Lin's shop. Elizabeth finds another tear nearby and opens it, taking them to a world where the Vox Populi's revolution is fully underway and the revolutionaries are laying siege to Fink's factories.

Returning to the gun shop, Elizabeth and Booker find Chen Lin and his wife dead, which deeply upsets Elizabeth. She blames herself for their deaths, due to her initial faith in the Vox Populi and her opening of the tear into this new reality. She also suggests she may have accidentally "created" this new reality out of her desire to see their mission accomplished, leveling more responsibility on herself. Although Booker comforts her, her regret still lingers as they leave the shop.

As the Vox Populi already have the weapons they were instructed to supply, Booker and Elizabeth go to retrieve The First Lady. However, their initial deal is complicated by events unique to this new reality: in it, Booker is a martyr of the Vox cause, and seeing him alive causes Daisy Fitzroy to send her forces after him, as he "complicate[s] the narrative." After battling through squadrons of both Founder and Vox forces, Booker and Elizabeth arrive at the docks in time to see Fitzroy murder Jeremiah Fink.

When Fitzroy turns her weapon on a nearby upper class child, Elizabeth frantically instructs Booker to boost her into the vents and then distract Fitzroy. As the Vox Populi leader explains to Booker that the Founders must be "pulled up from the root" and their children murdered, Elizabeth stabs Fitzroy in the back with a pair of scissors, getting covered in her blood in the process. Elizabeth reacts with horror as Fitzroy dies in front of her, saying that killing must "run in the family" before she flees for the airship.

Though Booker tries to console her, Elizabeth locks herself in a room on the ship until after take-off; when she emerges, she is in a new, clean outfit and has cut her hair. She asks Booker how one can forget the things they have done, to which Booker responds that it isn't possible.

Just as they are about to leave Columbia, Songbird appears and forces their ship to crash.

Emporia and Confrontation with Lady Comstock
"If you won't listen to me, maybe you'll listen to your mother!"

- Zachary Comstock, resurrecting Lady Comstock as the Siren



Realizing that they will not be able to leave the city as long as Songbird is pursuing them, Elizabeth and Booker travel to Comstock House to uncover the secret of how he is controlled. However, the gate to Comstock House is locked and requires visual recognition and a fingerprint match to access. While the lock initially recognizes Elizabeth as Lady Comstock, it rejects her fingerprints; Elizabeth then realizes that Lady Comstock's remains are preserved in the nearby Memorial Gardens, and she leads Booker there to procure Lady Comstock's hand.

Though Booker tries to talk Elizabeth out of it, her determination to leave the city and loathing for Lady Comstock drive her forward. When Booker goes to unlock the casket, Zachary Comstock springs a booby-trap, unveiling a series of minor siphons around the tomb. Castigating Elizabeth for her actions as he drains away her power, he uses the energy to bring Lady Comstock back as the Siren&mdash;a mixture of her late self and a living version of her created through Elizabeth's hatred toward her.

Though the Siren does fight the duo, resurrecting the dead to send after them, she also reveals critical information to them. Following her ghostly footprints through Emporia's Financial District, the Market District, and Victory Square, Elizabeth and Booker uncover several tears which reveal critical past events&mdash;Lady Comstock confronting Rosalind Lutece about Elizabeth's origins, Zachary Comstock making an arrangement with Fink to murder the Luteces, and the Luteces visiting the photo studio where their own funeral photos were taken. This information, along with several voxophones left in the tears' wake, reveal that Elizabeth is not Comstock's daughter, and he had Lady Comstock and the Luteces murdered to keep the secret.

Now truly understanding Lady Comstock's unfortunate circumstances, Elizabeth confronts her ghostly image in Victory Square, saying that they must both let go of their pain and resentment toward each other—that it is Comstock, who wronged them both, who must be their true target. Soothed by Elizabeth's words, Lady Comstock destroys the Comstock House gate, wishing Elizabeth and Booker well before vanishing. Elizabeth then sincerely thanks Booker for his help before the two head through the gate.

Comstock House
"You frighten them." "Good."

- Booker DeWitt and Elizabeth, the former referring to Comstock and the Founders

As Booker and Elizabeth begin to make their way to Comstock House, Songbird appears from below, grabbing Booker and throwing him through a nearby building. When the creature attempts to kill him, Elizabeth gives up her freedom to save his life, surrendering to Songbird and telling him to take her back to her tower. However, Songbird instead brings her to Comstock House, where Comstock's scientists subject her to torture, experimentation, and mental conditioning. When their efforts were unsuccessful after half a year (as evidenced in the voxophone Pavlov's Bell) they chose to instead fit her with a device to force her to behave.

A complex interaction between time and reality occurs as Booker navigates Comstock House&mdash;when he first arrives, he notes with confusion that there is snow on the building in July, implying that he had passed through a tear. In the short time he is there, Booker finds voxophones from Elizabeth and several tears suggesting that a much greater amount of time has passed.



When Booker does finally encounter Elizabeth, she is significantly older (from a billboard advertising a car in 1984, it can be deduced that she is 92), and claims that in her time at Comstock House, she was eventually molded into the very harbinger of destruction Comstock wished. This alternate version of Elizabeth is the one responsible for the attack on New York featured in Booker's dreams. However, she expresses great regret over what she has become, and gives Booker a coded note to deliver to her younger self before sending him through a tear to rescue her.

Booker arrives just as Elizabeth is being operated on to fit her with her "leash," a collar meant to release an intense shock when she is disobedient. As Booker moves about the facility to shut down the siphons restraining her powers, the scientists note that the process is taking place without anesthesia or sedatives, on Comstock's orders.

When the siphons are switched off, Elizabeth opens a tear into an American Midwest beset by a tornado, killing the scientists before closing it. After Booker unhooks her from the restraints and spinal tap holding her in place, Elizabeth calmly resolves that she is going to kill Comstock. When Booker refuses to let her, she reopens the tear to the tornado-ravaged landscape to show the extent of her will and power; she relents, however, when Booker claims that he will kill Comstock himself.

The Hand of the Prophet and Songbird
Elizabeth and Booker confront Comstock on his airship The Hand of the Prophet. While there, Comstock attempts to bring Elizabeth to his side by suggesting that Booker knows more than he is telling, and demanding that Booker say what happened to Elizabeth's finger which has been deformed since she was a child. A struggle ensues between Comstock and Elizabeth and Booker intervenes, ranting as he grabs Comstock and drowns him in a baptismal font. In doing so, Booker reveals some innate knowledge of what happened to Elizabeth's finger, information he immediately claims not to understand.



As they navigate The Hand of the Prophet, Elizabeth pieces together that the tower on Monument Island is itself the Siphon, and has harnessed and limited her powers for years. To escape Columbia, the two direct the airship toward Monument Island, but are cut off by Vox Populi ships. At that moment, Elizabeth cracks the code left to her by her alternate self&mdash;a drawing of a cage is meant to represent the musical notes C, A, G, and E, the tone used to control Songbird. Destroying a nearby musical statue, she retrieves the whistler inside and gives it to Booker, who uses it to send Songbird after the Vox Populi ships. Upon reaching Monument Island, the two give Songbird one final order: destroy the tower, and the Siphon.

Revelation
"[They are] all different, yet similar. [&hellip;] Constants, and variables."

- Elizabeth, explaining the differences in each reality to Booker.

Following the destruction of the Siphon, a tremendous power surge unlocks the full extent of Elizabeth's powers&mdash;she is able to create, open, and see into an infinite number of tears. In the process, the instrument used to control Songbird is dropped, and the creature comes after them; Elizabeth opens a tear into 1960's Rapture, placing herself and Booker inside the Bathysphere Station and causing Songbird to be crushed by ocean pressure.

Elizabeth, now able to see every reality and possibility, has become virtually omniscient. She leads Booker to a realm between realities, each displayed as one of many lighthouses that all represent the "beginning" of Booker's journey. Elizabeth explains that the worlds behind each door are the same and different in specific ways, all somehow connected.

During this traversing of realities, Elizabeth reveals that Booker's memory of events is flawed&mdash;he never agreed to retrieve her from Columbia in exchange for eliminating his debts. Rather, Booker gave his infant daughter, Anna DeWitt, to Robert Lutece (sent to purchase her on behalf of Zachary Comstock) for that same purpose. Booker immediately regretted the decision and pursued Lutece to an alley to retrieve her&mdash;however, in the ensuing struggle, Comstock and the Luteces shut the tear, and Anna lost part of her right pinkie finger when the portal between realities closed on it. Booker then realizes that Elizabeth is really Anna DeWitt, his daughter, and losing her finger is what gave her the power to create tears in dimensional time and space when her body became a part of two separate dimensions.

Shaken by this revelation, Booker blames Comstock for everything, and says they can go on with their lives now that he is dead. Elizabeth angrily states that Comstock is alive in "a million, million worlds," and Booker responds that they need to "smother the bastard in his crib."

Elizabeth asks if that is truly what he wishes to do before transporting Booker to one final location: the site of the baptism from which he fled. Here, Elizabeths from several different realities (but without "your" Elizabeth) emerge to reveal that Booker and Comstock are the same man from different realities, one in which he was baptized after the Battle at Wounded Knee, and one in which he was not. In the reality where he accepts the baptism, that event acts as Zachary Hale Comstock's "birth." The parallel universe Elizabeths then drown Booker, preventing his choice from ever being made and stopping Comstock from ever existing. One by one, the alternate versions of Elizabeth begin to disappear, until only one remains, and the screen cuts to black. Players are left to decide Elizabeth's fate for themselves.

Epilogue
After the credits roll, Booker is shown waking up in his room on October 8th, 1893, the day he lost Anna. He calls her name before opening her door and looking in at her crib as the screen cuts to black. This moment could suggest that in an alternate universe, Anna has finally been given the opportunity to be raised by her actual father. Since Comstock never existed at all, he could never have taken her away from Booker.

Personality


Despite years of isolation, Elizabeth has a free-willed, almost child-like spirit, demonstrated by her dancing on the beach in Battleship Bay and in her interaction with her surroundings. She is also somewhat mischievous, helping Booker to pick locks and liberate goods if the proper resources are available. She has a biting wit and sarcastic humor, calling Booker out of his missteps without hesitation. At the same time, she possesses an immense amount of reserve and determination, as she is able to focus on her goals and move past stressful situations relatively quickly, though they are still shown to affect her deeply.

Because the only thing to keep her company in her prison was books, Elizabeth is a fountain of information, ranging from lock-picking to medical treatment. She quotes the King James Bible in Soldier's Field, in reference to the area's true purpose ("Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it") and references the works of Victor Hugo.

Despite her immense intellect, her determination and lack of life experience have made her somewhat reckless, and she does not always think her plans through. For instance, she opens up a tear to avoid a bee, which nearly results in her and Booker being attacked by Songbird. Furthermore, her frantic and obvious flight from Booker's company in Finkton causes her to be captured by Founder forces, which a more stealthy escape could have avoided. She is also very naive, likening the Vox Populi's struggle to that of the protagonists in Les Misérables. Once she sees the consequences of her actions, however, she matures and regrets her intervention in the Vox's revolution.

Elizabeth greatly dislikes killing, running away from Booker and calling him a monster when he kills the Founder agents that assault them in Battleship Bay. Such is also obvious when she kills Daisy Fitzroy, as she reacts with horror at what she has done before fleeing and and locking herself in a room on The First Lady. Throughout the narrative, if Booker executes an enemy near Elizabeth she may groan or exclaim, "Oh my God," at the sight of Booker's gruesome Sky-Hook kills. She may also voice similar revulsion if Booker happens to shoot or melee an enemy in the head (although only if it is a critical hit and their head explodes). However, when released from torture in Comstock House, Elizabeth summons a tornado to kill her tormentors and experiences no guilt or regret at their death. She subsequently decides that she will kill Comstock for what he has done to her, suggesting the harm visited upon her has drastically changed this predisposition.

Once Elizabeth gains full access of her powers she fully matures, as she finally knows the truth behind her origins and Booker's actions. Though deeply saddened by these events, she is driven by the necessity to show Booker the truth for the greater good. Once the latter realizes the extent of his actions, she and other versions of her muster the courage to drown him, ending the existence of Zachary Comstock across time.

In an alternate timeline, one in which Elizabeth succumbed to torture, she is in almost every way identical in personality to Comstock: ruthless, fanatical and jingoistic, she has no qualms with brainwashing children into servitude and using her powers to turn them into weapons. True to Comstock's prophecy, she leads the Founders' attack on New York, bringing down upon it the entirety of Columbia's massive firepower. However, during this time she also repents of her actions, regretting her obedience to Comstock when she realizes it is too late to stop the destruction of the world below.

Powers and Abilities
Elizabeth is gifted with the ability to manipulate Tears. Tears are contingencies within the space-time continuum that show possible scenarios which, if tampered with, can enact themselves within Columbia's universe. Elizabeth is the only person known to be capable of controlling these tears without the use of complex machinery, and can exploit them to summon objects such as weapons, ammunition or parts of the scenery, as well as living beings. She can also use these tears to modify time and space, and is able to transport herself and Booker to other timelines and realities. However, her control over her powers is limited by a long distance restraining device called the Siphon, preventing her from transporting herself out of Columbia. Upon the destruction of the Siphon, however, her immense powers reveal themselves: she can view every event across all of the infinite timelines simultaneously, and effortlessly open doorways to them. Effectively, she becomes omniscient and virtually omnipotent.

For the majority of the game, the source of Elizabeth's powers are a mystery, though Rosalind Lutece speculates in a Voxophone that it may be tied to the loss of her little finger. When Booker relives his memories, it is revealed that when pulling Anna Dewitt through to Comstock's world, the tear the Luteces engineered closed on her pinkie finger, severing it. With her physical form split across multiple timelines, Anna gained the ability to manipulate the tears between realities.

Alongside her tear-manipulating powers, Elizabeth is able to pick almost any lock Booker directs her to, provided she has enough lock picks to do so. Additionally, she is a talented codebreaker, artist, and singer. She also has a keen eye, and can supply Booker with critical resources in the middle of combat.

Voxophones

 * Comstock House
 * A Leash
 * The Value of Choice
 * Debts
 * A Last Chance
 * Smothered in the Crib
 * Ending It

Behind the Scenes

 * Wanted posters, which name her only as "Miss Elizabeth," list some of her specific features.
 * Although Elizabeth's right little finger is currently missing a phalanx bone, in the original Trailers and gameplay videos, her little finger is seen intact.
 * In the VGA 2012 trailer, one of the books Elizabeth had was the Odyssey by Homer.
 * She was modeled with Autodesk SoftImage (Softimage|XSI) and Zbrush. Her texture was made in Adobe Photoshop.
 * Russian cosplayer Anna Moleva was announced in late 2012 to be hired by Irrational Games for her spot-on portrayal of Elizabeth.
 * After Elizabeth's shirt is damaged enough, one can see that she's already wearing the corset from her late-game dress, which fits with a corset's period use as underwear.  It also explains how she was able to change so quickly as she just had to replace her blouse, skirt, and boots. It would have taken her far longer to lace a corset.
 * When Booker and Elizabeth first board The First Lady airship, Elizabeth knocks Booker out with a red wrench at the controls of the airship. This is a reference to the melee weapon used by Jack in the first Bioshock.
 * The original incarnation of Elizabeth from the first gameplay footage (Beta model) makes an appearance at the end, standing to the far left among the multiple Elizabeths/Annas.