Libby: Character Biography
User Name/Nick: Amanda
Character Name: Elizabeth "Libby" Ann Widmore
Series: Lost
Age: 37
From When?: Shortly after her death on season 2 of the show
Inmate/Warden: Warden. Despite making some poor choices that impacted others badly, she is a good person who didn't intend to harm anyone. She spent years as a clinical psychologist, and loved to help people--her last great act before her death was helping a man confront his eating disorder, and then saving him from a potential suicide when he broke down. She feels as if she has to make up for her errors, and that the best way to redeem herself is to try rehabilitating people who have a chance to redeem themselves as well.
Item: A passport under the name "Libby Franklin."
Abilities/Powers: Although Libby is by no means a "normal" person, she is a standard human being, and possesses no supernatural abilities. Her raw strengths lie in her insight into the workings of the mind, her cleverness, and her mastery of lying; while she does not lie maliciously, she has repeatedly concocted false stories about her past and motives when need be. Her sympathy and honest care allow her to get along well with people and gain their trust.
Personality:
Libby is incredibly easy-going when unprovoked, and always has a smile ready. She is sweet and kindhearted, but that doesn't mean she lacks a sassy side. She jokes around with friends often, and sometimes tries using sarcasm or humor to lighten bad situations before responding seriously. She can be downright snarky at times. She also tends to be fiercely protective of those close to her.
She is helpful, willing to give her time to assist someone in need,She is a shoulder to cry on and someone to help others through pain and hard times. She can blend in when she needs to, or stand out if the situation calls for it, but for the most part she chooses to function as a middle-ground contributor: a helper and confidant, but not a big hero. She seems to be a rather open and casual person overall, with a remarkable level of patience when she's at her best.
She can handle large-scale disasters with a cool head (she served as EMT on the island for nearly fifty days without ever losing it), and functions much the same when helping others, but her own small, personal traumas can twist her up until they culminate in a nervous breakdown. An example of this is her enormous capacity for deep love; she can fall in true love quickly and without warning, and can become emotionally and mentally broken if anything bad were to occur.
Rather unexpected is her propensity for lying. She often tells half-truths to cover up her shames and mistakes, sometimes going so far as to reinvent herself from situation to situation. She lies about herself mostly because she feels her true self is somehow deficient or defective, and fears rejection. The lies about her family and past are left over from the self-preservation reflexes her behind-the-scenes job required--a necessity that partially bled through the lines of caution and into paranoia at least once in her life. She carries herself confidently but actually longs to be validated by others.
Libby suffers from mental illness and several emotional problems, none of which she likes to discuss in detail enough to name them. These usually manifest in mood swings, depression, anxiety, paranoia and insomnia, all of which she attempts to keep under control through medication. This treatment is usually successful.
History:
Libby was born "Elizabeth Ann" to her parents, Roger Widmore and Brianna Franklin-Widmore, in the United States. Her father's line, the Widmores, was split into two main branches: the main branch was in the United Kingdom, controlled by Libby's (a fair number of times removed) uncle, Charles Widmore. A smaller branch, to which she and her family belonged, existed as several small factions throughout the USA; this was also presided over by Charles, although not nearly as directly.
The Widmore family had, at some point, discretely bought out the Hanso Foundation from another prominent family, and aquired all of the Foundation's projects. Among these was the DHARMA Initiative (Department of Heuristics And Research on Material Applications), the entire reason for the secret purchase. The original purpose of the Initiative was to create an environment of scientists and free thinkers, for research on meteorology, psychology, parapsychology, zoology, electromagnetism, and utopian social engineering. The headquarters had been located on an island in the south Pacific, until a hostile takeover by "native" inhabitants. Their current objective was the rebuilding of DHARMA, followed by a whispered-of reclaiming of the island.
Her mother, Brianna, who had married into the family, was a brilliant neurosurgeon who worked for the Initiative, and sweet, warm person; her father was so preoccupied with his classified work that he might as well have not existed to his wife and daughter. A divorce occurred when Libby was 16, and a short while later, her mother died of a brain anyeurism. Devastated by the loss, Libby vowed to become a doctor and follow in her mother's footsteps, devoting herself to her studies; however, she realized only a year into med school that she wasn't cut out for it. She dropped out, switched goals, and received her degree in clinical psychology instead, going on to work in DHARMA's Mental Health Appeal branch. While her cover story was family and marriage counseling, she instead worked in the field of parapsychology.
Something about her--possibly the fact that she realized she was unable to fulfill her dream and withdrew rather than keeping at it, maybe even that her mother had kept her maiden name and never really fit in--caused the rest of her family to subtly keep her out of the family loop. Sensing their disapproval of her, she hoped to eventually prove herself as she entered the Initiative to work in the Mental Health Apppeal department, which involved psychological manipulation . At 24, she married a minor chemist from DHARMA; this marriage lasted a little over nine months before it was annulled, due to "personality differences" (she actually had an affair, which she regrets to this day). Her second marriage, to "Dr." Thomas Mittelverk (also in DHARMA) at the age of 27, lasted two years until she annulled it as well, after discovering some of his bloodier scientific intentions.
At 31, she married a DHARMA physicist named David Smith, and the third time appeared to be the charm. The two tried for a child at first, an effort that stopped when she was diagnosed with unexplained infertility. The two were deeply in love until an accident at work several years later resulted in tragic consequences. David, while working his job in the Electromagnetic Research Initiative, was using a classified piece of equipment which malfunctioned. He spent the better part of a day going between a catatonic state to waking lunacy, convinced that he was somewhere he had been years ago, until his brain shut down and he died while Libby held his hand.
As a result of her loss, she broke down not only emotionally but mentally. Her family sent her away to wither quietly in the Santa Rosa Mental Health Institute. It was there that she saw the ghost of her late husband tormenting another patient, a man named Hugo "Hurley" Reyes; Hurley thought "Dave" was his friend, and everyone else thought Dave was a schizophrenic delusion.
She contacted her family and told them this, and they signed a release form, realizing that this "crazy," minimum-wage underachiever could make contact with the dead without realizing it. This find resulted in Libby's release only one month after being institutionalized. After Hurley was able to go home, she spent the next several years following him and tracking his every move, per order of her family.
She was assigned an unusual job only a month or so later: she was to meet a man who was looking to win the heart of her British cousin, Penny Widmore, by winning a sailing race around the world. The man was not expecting her, and she was not to tell him of her relation to Penny; she was only to chat with him, earn his trust, and offer her late husband's yacht to give him a chance in the race. She followed through, thinking she had been set up to play matchmaker, until the news of the man's disappearance in the middle of the ocean reached her a month or so later. Realizing that she had been used to get rid of him discreetly, she experienced another, more minor breakdown. The only thing that kept her from needing another stay at Santa Rosa was her observance of Hurley. In an odd way, it kept her sane.
Over time, she fell in love with him from afar; after following him on a flight to Australia, she decided that upon their returning flight's arrival back in Los Angeles, she would approach him, tell him everything, and give him the help he would need to escape the observance of her family. Instead, the returning flight tore into pieces in the sky and crashed on a certain island in the south Pacific (making her the only Widmore to successfully find it, ironically). Of course, Libby knew where they were right away; since the island was almost entirely undetectable by the outside world, she assumed they would never be rescued, and because her section of the plane landed on the opposite side of the island from Hurley's, she assumed him dead and mourned him. She the other tail-section survivors struggled to survive for forty-eight days, during which people from their number were kidnapped and killed by the hostile "natives," before coming upon the camp of midsection survivors, Hurley included. Assuming they'd never return home, Libby began getting closer to Hurley; she helped him through a dark period in his binge eating disorder, during which he was haunted by Dave yet again. He was ready to jump off a cliff after Dave told him the whole island was a delusion he had dreamed up, and Libby saved him by admitting her feelings and kissing him.
The two were falling in love (well, he was falling in love with her; she'd been at that point for quite some time), and Hurley took her on a surprise picnic. When he realized he had forgotten blankets, she volunteered to go grab some for him while he tracked down a bottle of wine. In doing so she stumbled upon the murder of one of her friends and was shot twice in the stomach. After a long period of physical anguish, she died of septic shock as Hurley held her hand and apologized for forgetting the blankets. Her last word was the name of her killer, which was misinterpreted as concern rather than a warning.
Character Name: Elizabeth "Libby" Ann Widmore
Series: Lost
Age: 37
From When?: Shortly after her death on season 2 of the show
Inmate/Warden: Warden. Despite making some poor choices that impacted others badly, she is a good person who didn't intend to harm anyone. She spent years as a clinical psychologist, and loved to help people--her last great act before her death was helping a man confront his eating disorder, and then saving him from a potential suicide when he broke down. She feels as if she has to make up for her errors, and that the best way to redeem herself is to try rehabilitating people who have a chance to redeem themselves as well.
Item: A passport under the name "Libby Franklin."
Abilities/Powers: Although Libby is by no means a "normal" person, she is a standard human being, and possesses no supernatural abilities. Her raw strengths lie in her insight into the workings of the mind, her cleverness, and her mastery of lying; while she does not lie maliciously, she has repeatedly concocted false stories about her past and motives when need be. Her sympathy and honest care allow her to get along well with people and gain their trust.
Personality:
Libby is incredibly easy-going when unprovoked, and always has a smile ready. She is sweet and kindhearted, but that doesn't mean she lacks a sassy side. She jokes around with friends often, and sometimes tries using sarcasm or humor to lighten bad situations before responding seriously. She can be downright snarky at times. She also tends to be fiercely protective of those close to her.
She is helpful, willing to give her time to assist someone in need,She is a shoulder to cry on and someone to help others through pain and hard times. She can blend in when she needs to, or stand out if the situation calls for it, but for the most part she chooses to function as a middle-ground contributor: a helper and confidant, but not a big hero. She seems to be a rather open and casual person overall, with a remarkable level of patience when she's at her best.
She can handle large-scale disasters with a cool head (she served as EMT on the island for nearly fifty days without ever losing it), and functions much the same when helping others, but her own small, personal traumas can twist her up until they culminate in a nervous breakdown. An example of this is her enormous capacity for deep love; she can fall in true love quickly and without warning, and can become emotionally and mentally broken if anything bad were to occur.
Rather unexpected is her propensity for lying. She often tells half-truths to cover up her shames and mistakes, sometimes going so far as to reinvent herself from situation to situation. She lies about herself mostly because she feels her true self is somehow deficient or defective, and fears rejection. The lies about her family and past are left over from the self-preservation reflexes her behind-the-scenes job required--a necessity that partially bled through the lines of caution and into paranoia at least once in her life. She carries herself confidently but actually longs to be validated by others.
Libby suffers from mental illness and several emotional problems, none of which she likes to discuss in detail enough to name them. These usually manifest in mood swings, depression, anxiety, paranoia and insomnia, all of which she attempts to keep under control through medication. This treatment is usually successful.
History:
Libby was born "Elizabeth Ann" to her parents, Roger Widmore and Brianna Franklin-Widmore, in the United States. Her father's line, the Widmores, was split into two main branches: the main branch was in the United Kingdom, controlled by Libby's (a fair number of times removed) uncle, Charles Widmore. A smaller branch, to which she and her family belonged, existed as several small factions throughout the USA; this was also presided over by Charles, although not nearly as directly.
The Widmore family had, at some point, discretely bought out the Hanso Foundation from another prominent family, and aquired all of the Foundation's projects. Among these was the DHARMA Initiative (Department of Heuristics And Research on Material Applications), the entire reason for the secret purchase. The original purpose of the Initiative was to create an environment of scientists and free thinkers, for research on meteorology, psychology, parapsychology, zoology, electromagnetism, and utopian social engineering. The headquarters had been located on an island in the south Pacific, until a hostile takeover by "native" inhabitants. Their current objective was the rebuilding of DHARMA, followed by a whispered-of reclaiming of the island.
Her mother, Brianna, who had married into the family, was a brilliant neurosurgeon who worked for the Initiative, and sweet, warm person; her father was so preoccupied with his classified work that he might as well have not existed to his wife and daughter. A divorce occurred when Libby was 16, and a short while later, her mother died of a brain anyeurism. Devastated by the loss, Libby vowed to become a doctor and follow in her mother's footsteps, devoting herself to her studies; however, she realized only a year into med school that she wasn't cut out for it. She dropped out, switched goals, and received her degree in clinical psychology instead, going on to work in DHARMA's Mental Health Appeal branch. While her cover story was family and marriage counseling, she instead worked in the field of parapsychology.
Something about her--possibly the fact that she realized she was unable to fulfill her dream and withdrew rather than keeping at it, maybe even that her mother had kept her maiden name and never really fit in--caused the rest of her family to subtly keep her out of the family loop. Sensing their disapproval of her, she hoped to eventually prove herself as she entered the Initiative to work in the Mental Health Apppeal department, which involved psychological manipulation . At 24, she married a minor chemist from DHARMA; this marriage lasted a little over nine months before it was annulled, due to "personality differences" (she actually had an affair, which she regrets to this day). Her second marriage, to "Dr." Thomas Mittelverk (also in DHARMA) at the age of 27, lasted two years until she annulled it as well, after discovering some of his bloodier scientific intentions.
At 31, she married a DHARMA physicist named David Smith, and the third time appeared to be the charm. The two tried for a child at first, an effort that stopped when she was diagnosed with unexplained infertility. The two were deeply in love until an accident at work several years later resulted in tragic consequences. David, while working his job in the Electromagnetic Research Initiative, was using a classified piece of equipment which malfunctioned. He spent the better part of a day going between a catatonic state to waking lunacy, convinced that he was somewhere he had been years ago, until his brain shut down and he died while Libby held his hand.
As a result of her loss, she broke down not only emotionally but mentally. Her family sent her away to wither quietly in the Santa Rosa Mental Health Institute. It was there that she saw the ghost of her late husband tormenting another patient, a man named Hugo "Hurley" Reyes; Hurley thought "Dave" was his friend, and everyone else thought Dave was a schizophrenic delusion.
She contacted her family and told them this, and they signed a release form, realizing that this "crazy," minimum-wage underachiever could make contact with the dead without realizing it. This find resulted in Libby's release only one month after being institutionalized. After Hurley was able to go home, she spent the next several years following him and tracking his every move, per order of her family.
She was assigned an unusual job only a month or so later: she was to meet a man who was looking to win the heart of her British cousin, Penny Widmore, by winning a sailing race around the world. The man was not expecting her, and she was not to tell him of her relation to Penny; she was only to chat with him, earn his trust, and offer her late husband's yacht to give him a chance in the race. She followed through, thinking she had been set up to play matchmaker, until the news of the man's disappearance in the middle of the ocean reached her a month or so later. Realizing that she had been used to get rid of him discreetly, she experienced another, more minor breakdown. The only thing that kept her from needing another stay at Santa Rosa was her observance of Hurley. In an odd way, it kept her sane.
Over time, she fell in love with him from afar; after following him on a flight to Australia, she decided that upon their returning flight's arrival back in Los Angeles, she would approach him, tell him everything, and give him the help he would need to escape the observance of her family. Instead, the returning flight tore into pieces in the sky and crashed on a certain island in the south Pacific (making her the only Widmore to successfully find it, ironically). Of course, Libby knew where they were right away; since the island was almost entirely undetectable by the outside world, she assumed they would never be rescued, and because her section of the plane landed on the opposite side of the island from Hurley's, she assumed him dead and mourned him. She the other tail-section survivors struggled to survive for forty-eight days, during which people from their number were kidnapped and killed by the hostile "natives," before coming upon the camp of midsection survivors, Hurley included. Assuming they'd never return home, Libby began getting closer to Hurley; she helped him through a dark period in his binge eating disorder, during which he was haunted by Dave yet again. He was ready to jump off a cliff after Dave told him the whole island was a delusion he had dreamed up, and Libby saved him by admitting her feelings and kissing him.
The two were falling in love (well, he was falling in love with her; she'd been at that point for quite some time), and Hurley took her on a surprise picnic. When he realized he had forgotten blankets, she volunteered to go grab some for him while he tracked down a bottle of wine. In doing so she stumbled upon the murder of one of her friends and was shot twice in the stomach. After a long period of physical anguish, she died of septic shock as Hurley held her hand and apologized for forgetting the blankets. Her last word was the name of her killer, which was misinterpreted as concern rather than a warning.