Sandro Botticelli
Sienna Brooks is the second most important character in Dan Brown’s Inferno, the fourth book in the Robert Langdon series.
Biography
Sienna was a child theater prodigy, starring as Puck in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Thanks to her excellent memory, she memorized every character’s lines in a single night.
By the time she was seven, Sienna had displayed an IQ of 208. She was then a virtuoso violinist, could master a new language in a month, and was teaching herself anatomy and physiology. With all these medical texts, she had read enough to diagnose herself with deep depression.
Throughout her childhood, she had tried to attend regular schools, but was frequently teased by the other kids.
She felt isolated given that her intellect was too advanced for her social skills; thus, she was ostracized by the other students.
Her parents took her to a psychiatrist, who convinced her that instead of worrying about herself, she should start worrying about other people and help those in need. She traveled with a humanitarian group to the Philippines where she experienced the overpopulation of Manilla, the most densely populated city in the world.
She witnessed poverty, traffic jams, pollution, the sex trafficking of children, and many other things that made her realize that people become animals when desperate. She was almost raped by 3 men, but was saved by a deaf, elderly woman who had a knife.
She then moved to America and attended medical school, hoping that it would make her feel as though she was doing something to help the world.
For a few years, Sienna worked for the Consortium, a company providing services for people wanted to hide for a while.
After discovering articles by Bertrand Zobrist, a genetic engineer with progressive theories about overcrowding and world population, she became obsessed with him.
Sienna had the opportunity of meeting Zobrist during a convention and later became his lover and disciple. For five years, they were both active in the Transhumanist circle, a group made up of great minds with the ability to change the world. At that time she adopted the code name of FS-2080 in honor of Fereidoun M. Esfandiary‘s naming technique, which was comprised of the initials of first and middle names along with the year one would turn a hundred years old.
Dr. Elizabeth Sinskey, the director-general of the World Health Organization(WHO), considered Zobrist a dangerous man due to his line of thought and therefore started following him. Sienna introduced Zobrist to the provost, the manager of the Consortium, who could help him get rid of everyone from the WHO so he could work in peace on his masterpiece.
When Sienna discovered what Zobrist had created (a viral vector that could change human DNA), she was shocked and decided to get a hold of his new technology before it could fall into the wrong hands. She went to Florence to find him so that she could beg him to destroy it before the authorities had access to it. However, Sienna was too late and only found Zobrist when he was about to jump to his death from the Badia Tower.
She believed that the WHO would cooperate with other government agencies to use Zobrist’s new virus as a weapon. She used the Consortium and Robert Langdon, who had been summoned from America to help solve the clues that the cylindrical object held, to follow the Map of Hell and get to ground zero before everyone else. However, she realized that Zobrist had already released his virus well beforehand.
Physical Appearance and Personality
Sienna is described in the novel as tall and lissome, and several times throughout the novel, it is said that she is attractive and has a slender body in general.
Her hair is blonde and shoulder-length, and always tied in a thick ponytail. Later on, it is revealed that she actually wore a wig. Her baldness is related to her childhood trauma and the stress of never finding a place where she truly belonged.
Sienna is quick-witted, seldom allowing herself to indulge in self-pity, can be playful, is sometimes jovial, but can also be completely focused on the task ahead. Her childhood passion for theater, and later on her job as a part-time actress, gave her the ability to feign emotion incredibly well.
Although she is playful, due to her depression, Sienna is always trying not to relapse. Consequently, a general positive attitude is almost a necessity to her.
Picture by www.enricobaccarini.com
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