Diana Bishop is the central character in the All Souls Trilogy and the A Discovery of Witches (TV series). She is a witch who is initially untrained in her powers. She is the wife of Matthew de Clermont and the daughter of Stephen Proctor and Rebecca Bishop. Her parents were murdered for being witches when she was a child and she subsequently stayed away from magic as a result.
Background[]
Diana Bishop was born in 1976 to Rebecca Bishop and Stephen Proctor, both extremely powerful witches, Rebecca having mastered the higher magics and Stephen being a weaver. From a very early age, she displayed signs of extraordinary power and ability, notably time-walking at the age of three. When she was seven, her parents were killed by other witches. Subsequently, she was raised by her aunt Sarah Bishop and Emily Mather, Sarah's partner. Losing her parents caused Diana to reject her magic altogether. Diana went on to obtain a bachelor's degree from a college in Maine and a graduate degree from Oxford. After she obtained her PhD, she became a professor of history at Yale.
History[]
A Discovery of Witches[]
While Diana Bishop is doing research in the Bodleian Library at the University of Oxford, her life is changed by a single manuscript, Ashmole 782 . Almost immediately, Diana sees that Ashmole 782 is a palimpsest, a manuscript within a manuscript, and not only that, the writing underneath has been hidden with a spell. After making some notes regarding the text, Diana decides to send the enchanted document back into the stacks of the library.
In the climax of this book, Juliette Durand, a vampire from Matthew's past, arrived near Sarah's home to assassinate Matthew on orders from Gerbert, her maker. She managed to bring Matthew to the brink of death but Diana called upon witchfire to destroy Juliette once and for all. In an attempt to save Matthew's life, she made a bargain with the goddess, putting anything on the line to save her beloved. Diana managed to save Matthew, but he almost drained her of her blood. Luckily, she was saved with the quick intervention of their friends who stayed with them in Sarah and Em's home.
Shadow of Night[]
Diana Bishop and Matthew Clairmont have just timewalked to Elizabethan London and the Old Lodge. Their first encounter is with Christopher Marlowe, an old friend of Matthew's. Diana is thrilled to meet the famous member of the School of Night but can see that Kit is in love with Matthew. Kit is ecstatic to see his friend and is cruel and dismissive to Diana, thinking she is a prostitute. When Matthew introduces Diana as his wife, Marlowe is confused and extremely jealous. Diana encounters the entire School of Night, and others, such as Gallowglass, Hancock, Jack Blackfriars, Annie Undercroft, and Goody Alsop. Diana learns that she is a weaver, and learns about her growing powers. She becomes pregnant but miscarries. Mathew's subsequent withdrawal makes Diana feel alone. They travel to Prague in search of Ashmole 782, more commonly known as The Book of Life. The Holy Roman Emperor hits on her, and lets her see the Book of life, but they don't have enough time to study it before Edward Kelley, a daemon, tears out the 3 pages that were missing in the present. Matthew and Diana make up, and their relationship is stronger than ever. Diana becomes pregnant again, and they travel back to their present.
The Book of Life[]
Diana and Matthew arrive at Sept-Tours from having timewalked in the past. Diana is pregnant by Matthew with twins. Diana finds out that her Aunt Emily has died and grieves for her profusely. Thinking of how Emily died while Diana was away, Diana asks Matthew to never leave her without saying good-bye. He promises to never leave her.
She is the saviour Philippe's former squire, vampire Alain Le Merle, brings Diana her possessions kept safe since the 1590s: her spell box, other special valuables, and a golden arrowhead on a long chain. He also gives her Philippe's letter that contains evidence that Philippe freely chose to make Diana his adopted daughter. The letter contains a coin, to be returned by Diana in person to the ferryman of the dead in the afterlife, and says to tell Matthew that Philippe would see Diana safe on the other side. The letter also reveals that somehow, Diana was able to keep Philippe company and be of comfort to him after Philippe was rescued from Nazi torture that severely injured him.
Diana remembers that Philippe had told her to "think and stay alive," which the author has said also means that when people think instead of acting violently, they increase the chances of people staying alive.
Diana announces that she is going to the Bishop house in Madison, New York, to try to find information Emily or Diana's mother may have earlier discovered, possibly about The Book of Life. Diana starts using her magical weaver skills to create new spells while at the Bishop house. She enjoys a feeling of belonging to the witch community for the first time.
Diana and Matthew go to Chris Roberts' Yale lab. Lucy Merriweather at the Beinecke Library helps Diana research the location of the missing pages from Ashmole 782, The Book of Life. Diana realizes her purpose as a historian is to rediscover forgotten truths. Diana urges Matthew to form a scion, a separate branch of the de Clermont family to protect Jack, and their other close relatives from other vampires and the Congregation.
While Matthew is in New Orleans working on forming the scion, Diana, Sarah and Diana's close friends and family members go to stay at the London house that Matthew gave Diana. Ysabeau starts to teach Diana how to help lead a scion. Diana also works on discovering the pages missing from Ashmole 782, finding the book, and putting it back together. The information in Ashmole 782, also known as The Book of Life, transfers out of the book and into Diana, and she becomes a walking palimpsest. Matthew returns to her side when he hears that there may be complications with the pregnancy. It turns out everything is OK, and they revel in the wonder of their children.
Matthew goes to Poland seeking Benjamin and is captured. Diana goes to Venice to persuade the Congregation to help the de Clermonts and their allies rescue Matthew. Along the way, she once again encountered Satu, Domenico, and Gerbert while gaining a reliable ally in Janet Gowdie. Diana even resorted to binding Satu's powers to get her former captor to comply with her demands.
After Diana's vampire kin eliminated Benjamin's children, she faced Peter Knox, the man who killed her parents. She used a considerable amount of her own power and that of the Book of Life to drain Peter's life force, killing him and avenging her parents (even her father's spirit visited her for a brief moment). Despite the strain, she also used the goddess's arrow to destroy Benjamin once and for all, this time with no hesitation.
Diana helps rescue Matthew and takes care of him as he recovers. She leads a Congregation meeting in which she is able to obtain revocation of the covenant that outlawed mixing between vampires, witches, daemons and humans.
Philippe appears to Diana as a ghost, telling her that the goddess wants Diana to continue her work seeing that justice is done, taking over the task that had been Philippe's while he lived. Diana and Matthew discuss the birthday party coming up to celebrate the date of Matthew's rebirth as a vampire. Diana realizes that a willingness to change is the secret of survival, and that the combination of their opposite characteristics makes them both stronger. Diana and Matthew were the tenth knot, unbreakable, without beginning or end.
TV series[]
Described as smart, independent and contrarian, American Diana Bishop is a brilliant young historian and a descendant of the famous Bishop witches. The brutal murder of her parents when she was a child led her to renounce the world of magic and focus on what she was good at: academic study and rational thought. Determined to be ‘normal’, Diana forged a starry career in the history of alchemy and science. But the moment she opens a hidden magical manuscript in the Bodleian Library and meets Matthew, the vampire who’s been searching for it for centuries, Diana is catapulted into a dramatic journey of discovery of her family’s hidden past, her emerging powers, and her newly awakened heart.[1]
Powers and Abilities[]
At first, Diana refused to use her powers because doing so would have reminded her of the deaths of her parents. However, she wasn't above using her gifts for small tasks when she needed to do so, like retrieving a book in the Bodleian archives and dealing with minor troubles in housework. In a letter to Diana from her parents Rebecca Bishop and Stephen Proctor it was revealed Diana was a Caul Bearer, someone born with the amniotic sac covering their face like a veil. For millennia being a Caul Bearer was seen as a sign of great power and fortune in the baby's future.
As the events in the first book progressed, Diana's powers grew at an increasing rate and Miriam and Marcus discovered that Diana's potential is practically limitless, as she possesses genetic markers for numerous witch powers. As time went on, it has been discovered that Diana is not simply a witch, but a weaver, meaning that she is capable of making new spells and that the powers she has exhibited were simply instances of her borrowing them when the need arose.
After embracing her heritage and training with Goody Alsop's coven in the past, Diana's access to her power grew immensely. She gained access to a familiar, a firedrake named Corra, and even after Corra left Diana, the power of her familiar remained with Diana. She mastered the art of weaving spells to the point where the cords themselves became incorporated into her hands, allowing her easy access to her powers. Her strength reached a new high when the information in the Book of Life was absorbed into her, granting her the power to kill Peter Knox, a man who killed her parents, both of whom were powerful witches themselves. Diana was born to a weaver father and a witch mother who mastered the higher magics. Being a weaver gave Diana the ability to access the power of the tenth knot, the knot of creation and destruction. Her pact with the goddess in exchange for saving Matthew's life gave her access to the goddess' arrow. This arrow does not miss its target and, when used in conjunction with the tenth knot, killed Benjamin Fuchs, ripping him open in an explosion of power.
- Witchcraft: Though undisciplined, Diana has shown to possess great power when it comes to witchcraft. As demonstrated with Matthew Clairmont, her magic is instinctual. Though it was initially believed that Diana was just disinterested in magic, it was later revealed that she was spellbound. This essentially inhibited her powers, making it seem like she isn’t a competent witch. Moreover, her parents altered the spell slightly, enabling Diana to access her powers when she desperately required them, such as in a life-or-death situation. This was later broken.[2][3]
- Spellcasting: As most of her power is instinctual, Diana doesn’t know many spells due to them being temperamental thanks to her being spellbound. Once this was broken however, Diana was free to use spells when ever she wanted. Though even now the spell binding her powers is broken, she is still untrained, meaning that despite her power level, she has the skill of a beginner.[3]
- Weaver: Diana is a Weaver. She can work with the threads that bind the world to do magic and create new spells, unlike other witches who uses spells already created by weavers long past. Diana is also unique among the Weavers, being the only known weaver to stand between worlds and able to tie the tenth knot of creation and destruction. She's seen using the tenth knot once, to kill Benjamin Fuchs.
- Magic: Diana has access to the most primal forces of nature in the form of elemental magic. These abilities allow Diana to Summon and control Special elemental powers very few witches possess. Furthermore, Diana has access to all four forms of elemental magics something never before seen in a witch with only weavers being able to wield such power. Unlike most weavers Diana does not just borrow the elemental abilities like other weavers do but has full control with the powers resting within her skin rather than borrowed from the goddess.
- Witch Wind: Diana has the ability to use wind magic drawing in the powers of air to preform great feats of pure strength. At its most powerful, Diana is able to summon Witch Wind a pure expression of a wind witches power over the element. At her weakest Diana had the ability to summon witch wind instinctively due to a feeling of being trapped, this was powerful enough to cause Matthew to freeze in his place to prevent Diana from possibly killing him by accident. At her strongest Diana had the ability to throw Verin de Clermont across a room and into a wall with no effort while seated. Diana was the first to summon a pure witch wind in centuries with the purest powers of air being the rarest elemental ability in the modern day despite air being the most common elemental affinity.
- Witch Water: Diana has the ability to control water and use the magic associated with its power to a high degree. Water is Diana’s most powerful affinity causing her water magic to be the strongest and most skilled form of magic she can wield. Diana can also summon Witch water, a pure expression of a water witches power allowing her to create glistening water from her body. At its most basic Diana was shown filling a water bucket with water from her hands. At its strongest Diana physically became water at sept tours, after Matthew left her. This power threatened the lives of all people in the town below the chateau as water was produced from every place on her body consuming her being into a swirling torrent of shimmering water. Such power has not been seen in centuries with only the most powerful ancient water witches physically becoming water.
- Witch Fire: Diana has the ability to use fire magic and its accompanying abilities to great effect. Diana also has the ability to use witch fire, the most powerful and by far the most deadly magic at Diana’s disposal. Witch fire is the purest form of a fire witches burning intensity, it unlike Pure Witch wind and witch water which can only be used by particular wind or water witches, pure witch fire can be used by all fire witches and its power is only based off of the relative strength of the user. Due to Diana’s indescribable power her witch fire is second to none in her day. At her weakest, Diana’s almost use of witch fire was enough to scare Sarah Bishop and Emily Mather, two very competent witches, half to death practically begging Diana to “please put the fire down.” At her strongest, Diana used several bolts of witch fire to light fire works from several hundred feet away and even brought her fire to life in a display of her power making it strong enough to burn while underwater. According to Sarah witch fire is the most deadly magic in existence with no protective magic strong enough to repel or deflect it and no healing magic powerful enough to heal the enchanted burns.
- Witch Earth: Most witches have one element in their blood and they only see the threads of those elements. But Diana saw them all. Diana: "Wind, Water, Earth, Fire." Goody Alsop: "All within you." (2x03).
- Flight: Diana has the innate ability to fly, being the best in the world as of Times Convert. Diana has been flying since a young age with her earliest use of the skill at the age of 5 scaring her parents. Her ability to fly was the first thing Stephen and Rebecca spellbound. During Times Convert, the last threats of Diana’s spell binding came loose during a panicked episode, releasing her ability to fly to her fullest potential. Before this Diana has only shown the ability to fly slowly and very short distances or to hover in the air. After her binding came loose Diana immediately began to float releasing all her pent up power in such a concentrated wave that Sarah could smell it before even seeing Diana, she then flew up the stairs and out of the roof at high speed, flying for several hours through the French country side.
- Timewalking: just like her father, Diana has the ability to move throughout time. The first time she used this ability, it was an accident,[3] however, with practice, Diana learned to control the power and gained the ability to use it at will.[4]
- Teleportation: Can also appear in any location she desires to be in just by wanting to be there, such as the time when she wanted to get out of the house.[3] She also teleported from the woods back to her Aunt's house in a matter of seconds. Though she technically is still timewalking being as she doesn’t arrive instantaneously.[4]
- Visions: Diana has the ability to see visions of the past, present and even the future. This gift was most likely inherited from her mother. Diana does not always have control over these visions, sometimes becoming consumed by them, not being able to know what is reality and what is an illusion. Diana has shown the ability to have several visions at once such as the time she saw the past event of Ysabeau telling Matthew about Philips capture while also seeing the present day Sarah crying in the Bishop home.
- Second Sight: Diana has a powerful second sight or sixth sense. Diana, like most witches, has the ability to open a psychic third eye, a power which allows Diana to see minute details, see magic and spells, sense other creatures and even see far away distances in all directs at once. This allows for Diana to walk, row, run and even ride with her eyes closed. Diana is able to see with her hands and finger, brushing or placing them atop words, surfaces or books in order to gather information about those who have come into contact with the object, being able to see the faces of previous owners.
- Telepathy: Diana has the ability to reach into and speak directly into the mind of a creature or animal. She is able to sense emotions and pain while also having the ability to communicate with both people and animals such as telling Recassa, Diana's horse, when to run and stop as well as telling a Stag to stop resisting and to let Matthew feed off of it without a struggle. She is also able to feel the eyes of creatures and humans when they look at her with Vampire having an icy gaze, Daemons having a sensual touch like a kiss, Witches having a digging stare and Humans causing general feeling of being watched.
- Telekinesis: Diana has the powerful ability of telekinesis an ability not many posses. This allows Diana to control objects or even people with her mind. This ability is usually used in combination with or could be derived from Witch Wind, with whipping winds being present when telekinesis is used.
- Supernatural Knowledge: After absorbing the Book of Life, Diana has the innate knowledge of Creature history. She is able to see complex family trees through the words that float to the top of her skin like tattoos detailing familial lines of powerful creatures.
- Power Boost: After absorbing the Book of Life, Diana gained access to all the power contained within due to the souls of the creatures trapped within the books pages being released. The book had been bewitched, cursed and enchanted thousands of times and all the power of those spells is now available to Diana allowing for her to perform feats of power far beyond what any mortal should be capable of.
- Necromancy: Diana has the ability to not just speak with the dead but to see them too. Ghosts only become perceivable after someones need for that person has faded away such as Philipe not being perceivable due to Ysabeau's yearning and need to be with Philipe again. Diana on the other hand does not need these qualifications met and can interact with the dead regardless of her personal need shown by her ability to see her father and Philipe regardless of still loving them both deeply, however, they were not as visible as other ghosts with no connection to Diana.
- Transmogrification/Transmutation: Diana has shown the ability to transform, anything into everything she wishes or wanted to. The only canon example of this is the formation of Corra, Diana's familiar. Diana created Corra's physical body as a reflection of her own power, therefore changing her abstract power into a tangible substance in the form of flesh and blood.
- The Tenth Knot: Diana is a Weaver who stands at the crossroads between life and death, this is the rarest and most powerful form of Weaver. This unique placement in the universe allows Diana to access the purest form of power, Creation and Destruction. These abilities can manifest in countless ways as Creation and Destruction are highly malleable and versatile. Put into its simplest terms, The Tenth Knot is a universal Copy, Paste and Delete button, reality warping at its highest degree. The use of this ability had been shown several times throughout the books such as Diana bringing animals from Mary Sidney's shoes to life and when Diana used the goddess's arrow in combination with The Tenth Knot to essentially delete Benjamin Fuchs's chest, killing him instantly.
Appearances[]
A Discovery of Witches Season 1[]
- Episode 1 (Season 1)
- Episode 2 (Season 1)
- Episode 3 (Season 1)
- Episode 4 (Season 1)
- Episode 5 (Season 1)
- Episode 6 (Season 1)
- Episode 7 (Season 1)
- Episode 8 (Season 1)
A Discovery of Witches Season 2[]
- Episode 1 (Season 2)
- Episode 2 (Season 2)
- Episode 3 (Season 2)
- Episode 4 (Season 2)
- Episode 5 (Season 2)
- Episode 6 (Season 2)
- Episode 7 (Season 2)
- Episode 8 (Season 2)
- Episode 9 (Season 2)
- Episode 10 (Season 2)
A Discovery of Witches Season 3[]
- Episode 1 (Season 3)
- Episode 2 (Season 3)
- Episode 3 (Season 3)
- Episode 4 (Season 3)
- Episode 5 (Season 3)
- Episode 6 (Season 3)
- Episode 7 (Season 3)