From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Opal Koboi is a fictional character from the Artemis Fowl series - a set of six fantasy novels written by Irish author Eoin Colfer. After the character's May 2002 introduction in the second book in the series as a supporting antagonist,^[1] Colfer again used Koboi as the main antagonist in the fourth and sixth book of the series, giving her the status of arch-enemy to the main protagonist, Artemis Fowl II.

Introduction

Colfer first brought the Opal Koboi character into the Artemis Fowl series through the May 2002 publication of Artemis Fowl: The Arctic Incident. Koboi was written in this second book of the series as an evil genius responsible for the highest level of planning and execution of a war by goblins purchasing weapons from rogue human gun traders against the Lower Elements Police Reconnaissance (LEPrecon) police squad.^[2] She employs Lieutenant Briar Cudgeon, a disgraced-in-the-first-book LEPrecon officer, as a partner in her attempt to stage a coup deep in the bowels of the Earth.^[2][3] However, at the climax of the book, Artemis reveals that Cudgeon plans to betray Koboi. Koboi flies into a rage and attacks Cudgeon. In the ensuing struggle, Cudgeon is killed and Koboi is incapacitated. She then falls into a self-induced coma as part of a plan to escape imprisonment.^[4]

With statements such as "before her second birthday she had dismantled her first hard drive," the Opal Koboi character comes off as precocious,^[2] but not in a positive way. Described as an "insane, power-mad pixie"^[5] and an outrageous character that is confident of her own intelligence in a way that annoys other people,^[1] this beauteous^[3] "pixie with the golden touch"^[2] contributes to the Colfer idea that fairies are basically as bad as us -and fight even dirtier.^[1] The name Koboi sounds both as "cowboy" and "kobold", a temperamental sprite of German folklore who becomes outraged when not fed properly, and who sometimes is referred to as a spirit of caves and mines.^[6] In this way, the name Koboi suits the gold-digger Opal Koboi.^[6]. It is also known that Koboi bankrupted her father's business after he tried to dissaude her from studying engineering (as he expected his daughter to follow the normal path in life for female pixies: namely, getting married to a suitable husband) and that she has a long, bitter rivalry with Foaly since their days at university, and that one of Opal's main goals is to prove she is intellectually superior to the centaur.

Subsequent appearances

Colfer brought back the Opal Koboi character in Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception, which was published in April 2005 as the fourth book of the fictional series.^[7] In this installment, Colfer describes Opal Koboi's coma situation from the perspective of Doctor Jerbal Argon, a fictional fairy gnome psychiatrist taking care of his incarcerated, "celebrity" patient:

"If only every fairy in the facility was as docile as Opal Koboi. All she needed was a few intravenous tubes and a monitor, which had been more than paid for by her first six months' medical fees. Doctor Argon fervently hoped that little Opal never woke up. Because once she did, the LEP would haul her off to court. And when she had been convicted of treason her assets would be frozen, including the Clinic's fund. No, the longer Opal's nap lasted, the better for everyone, especially her. Because of their thin skulls and large brain volume, Pixies were susceptible to various maladies such as catatonia, amnesia and narcolepsy."^[8]

Rather than being in an actual coma, Colfer has Koboi in a coma-like state of meditation known as a cleansing coma to elude punishment for her own criminal activities.^[9] Koboi awakens herself from the faked coma, leaves a clone of herself under guard in a coma and disguises herself as a human child,^[10][11][12] and breaks out of prison to take revenge and dominate the world both of fairies and humans.^{[9][13][7][14][15]} Koboi's plan is to bring the Fairy People in contact with humans, "who until now have been completely ignorant of their existence below the surface of the earth, but by their nature manage to ruin everything they touch."^[16][17] Koboi, who plans to install herself as supreme world ruler,^[18] is opposed by both Captain Holly Short, a talkative elf in the LEP, and Artemis Fowl, a 14-year-old^[19] criminal mastermind from a super-criminal family dynasty and the main character of the series.^{[7][20][21][22][23]} Colfer makes their opposition to Opal Koboi more difficult by erasing Fowl's memory of the wicked Opal Koboi and the other fairy people through a Foaly mindwipe and by having Koboi frame Captain Holly Short's for a murder that in fact was committed by Koboi.^{[20][24][8][25][22][26]} Even though Opal has laid out death traps for Artemis and Holly in a troll-infested amusement park,^[27] Holly eventually is able to restore Artemis' memory and the two of them stop Opal.^[28][29][30] At the end of Artemis Fowl: The Opal Deception, Colfer has the reader assuming that Koboi is safely locked up in an LEP prison.

She also appears in Artemis Fowl: The Time Paradox, as the main antagonist again. Artemis and Holly tangle with a past version of Koboi. She had realized that absorbing parts of different (usually rare) animals, she can modify her magic. By now she can levitate, shoot lightning and has a more advanced mesmer. She plans to use the Silky Sifaka Lemur to channel her magic into Time Travel which she will use to become leader. This Opal was not found after the incidents of the book and is still at large, an event which could unfortunately alter the events of the first two books, since Opal's encounter with the two times would probably lead her to explore the theme again, something which she wasn't aiming for in The Arctic Incident, possibly inferring that later books might focus on fixing this paradox since if Opal messes with time travel again she could alter the events of the first two books, which could lead to a completely new sequence of events.

Colfer used the fourth novel to describe Opal Koboi's hysterical megalomania in significant detail.^[13] Coming across as embittered,^[24] slightly loony,^[24] deranged and dangerous,^[31] ultra-evil,^[32] and world domination-obsessed,^[33] Colfer has the criminal mastermind Koboi go "mind-to-mind" against a similarly intelligent and criminal mastermind Fowl.^[24][34][35] Strangely, in The Time Paradox, she seemed insane on a level which was not evident in The Arctic Incident (which is strange since if The Time Paradox explores events before The Arctic Incident, she should still be just as crazy), even deciding to think about choosing to shoot down the moon after using the term in a thought.

Interestingly, Opal has been the main antagonist of every second book in the series.

References