Alexa Christine Carlisle, also known as Madam Carlisle, was the matriarch of the Carlisle Family, and one of the Partners of Providence.
She is one of the three secondary antagonists of the World of Assassination trilogy, being one of the three main antagonists in HITMAN™ 2 and one of the four secondary antagonists in HITMAN™ III. She is the target in Death in the Family, the second mission of HITMAN™ III.
Background[]
Their earliest known ancestor was knighted during the War of the Roses, and for centuries, the Carlisles lived a comfortable but quiet existence among the rural nobility, far removed from the hall of power.
They maintained strong ties to the Crown, securing lucrative contracts throughout the yet powerful British empire. During the 20th century, the Carlisles invested heavily in transportation and broadcasting and to this day, the Carlisle Group manages a diverse portfolio of shipping and logistics companies, airlines, newspapers and cable networks such as GNN.
In the aftermath of WW2, Thomas Alexander Carlisle saw an opportunity to take unprecedented of the flailing global markets. Approaching the heirs to the Stuyvesant and Ingram empires, both college fraternity brothers, Thomas proposed pooling their already vast assets and resources and establishing the corporate superstructure that would henceforth known as Providence. Ever since, the Carlisles have retreated from public view and few outside the English aristocracy recognized the name. The family is immensely wealthy but their true currency is influence.
In recent decades, the Carlisles have been investing heavily in technological companies, playing a large but unseen role in the rise of social media and the post-truth era. Thus crucial Providence assets such as Ether Corp (biotech), Kronstadt Industries (robotic), Dynasty Global (online retail) and Quantum Leap (consumer tech) are all largely controlled by the Carlisle family.
ALEXA CARLISLE (75), the current head of the family, is the most senior Providence Partner and the power cabal's unofficial leader. Cold as ice and sharp as a razor, Alexa is regal, proud, and dignified and displays the kind of blunt rudeness that only people of nobility get away with.
In her youth, Alexa was married to aristocratic naval officer Lyndon James Wittingworth, with whom she has three adult childrens: Gregory, Edward and Rebecca. Lyndon, by then an accomplished alcoholic, died in an automobile accident in 1978 and Alexa never remarried.
A secondborn child, Alexa never expected to become head of family. That respectfully would befall the firstborn son, Alexa's older brother, Montgomery. Instead, graduating first in class from Cambridge, Alexa made an meteoric rise within the male-dominated shipping industry in the 1970s - determined to succeed by merit alone.
But soon tragedy befell the Carlisle family, changing Alexa's trajectory forever.
Her brother Montgomery took a fatal tumble from a balcony at the Carlisle's ancestral estate and his death hit the youngest sibling, Zachary, hard. Following a mental breakdown and institutionalization, Zachary abandoned his own promising career and shielded himself at Thornbridge Manor, where he has lived quietly as a recluse ever since.
Fresh out of capable male heirs. Thomas Carlisle has no choice but to fast-track Alexa to become the new head of the family and - by extension - a future Partner of Providence.
Alexa took her apprenticeship with ruthless ambition and an uncanny knack for geo-political manipulations, quickly becoming the key architect behind Providence's expansion into non-western territories. She played a hand in orchestrating the War of the Falklands in a ploy to dethrone the military junta and along with the first Constant, Janus, she shrewdly played both sides of the Cold War to Providence's advantage. In the 1960s, her father had backed an obscure Romanian research facility, the "Institute for Human Betterment" which operated a cutting-edge human enhancement program and Alexa was instrumental in turning the Institute into a proper assassination service - not to mention the eventual "wipe" of its subjects. A decision which would one day cost her dearly.
As Thomas grew older and slowly succumbed to alzheimers. Alexa gained more and more responsibility. She finally assumed the position as full Providence Partner in 1988.
For more than three decades, she was secretly the most powerful woman on Earth. But now, the tectonic plates of power are shifting. Of the three Partners, only Alexa sees the writing on the wall, realizing with a trademark lack of sentimentality that Providence is lost to the machinations of their top controller, Arthur Edwards.
All that is left now, is to preserve the Carlisle family legacy. And perhaps to die with dignity.HITMAN™ 2[]
Around 2020, she and the other Partners conferred with Arthur Edwards regarding a recent string of public acts of terror against Providence operatives and assets at the hands of mercenary Lucas Grey.
Later, after the revelation that Edwards' predecessor, Janus--then falsely implicated to be the real leader of the Private Militia--could have exposed them all, Carlisle personally forced Edwards to implant himself with a poison chip to prove his loyalty.
Following Edwards' kidnapping from the Isle of Sgàil, The City Times reported in a fake obituary that on May 24, she had died of lung cancer at her Berkshire Estate in England. In reality, Carlisle and the other Partners had all faked their deaths to avoid the same fate as their operatives now that their Constant had been compromised. She would eventually use Haven's services to "wipe" her identity.
HITMAN™ III[]
Having been relocated to Dubai thanks to Haven, Carlisle and her cohorts would lay low in the city's Burj Al-Ghazali skyscraper. Some time after November 13, however, Carlisle would leave the building after sensing something afoul, narrowly escaping the fates of her colleagues by Agent 47 and Grey. She, too, would eventually be assassinated after retreating to Thornbridge Manor in Dartmoor. Her canon death is unknown.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- Alexa Carlisle may have been inspired by the late British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
- Carlisle physically resembles Thatcher, including having a similar bouffant hairstyle.
- Carlisle's cold and staunch demeanor are reminiscent of common depictions of Thatcher.
- Carlisle's obituary seen in the briefing for Golden Handshake refers to her as 'The Iron Magnate'. Thatcher was famously nicknamed 'The Iron Lady'.
- Carlisle is stated to have orchestrated the Falklands War, which happened during Thatcher's time as prime minister.
- Despite being one of the secondary antagonists of Hitman 3, she only appears for the first half of the game.
- Solving the Zachary case as the private investigator for Alexa will give 47 an option to ask for money or Arthur Edwards' case file as a reward. Regardless of 47's conclusion, choosing the latter will cause Alexa to immediately recognize 47, but she will nevertheless hand over the case file, telling him to go make Arthur Edwards "suffer". Further, if 47 correctly solves the case by revealing Emma as the murderer, Alexa will attempt to hire 47 to kill her.
- Alexa and her brother Zachary conspired to kill their older brother Montgomery, and had their butler Mr. Fernsby help make it look like an accident. However, a letter hidden in a secret room of their family estate reveals that Montgomery was ready to willingly let Alexa become the head of the family, meaning that his murder was unnecessary. Revealing this to Alexa, and falsely convincing her that Zachary indeed killed himself after knowing this, is enough to drive her to suicide.
- Her middle name was originally "Alice", but this was retconned between HITMAN™ 2 and HITMAN™ III.
- It's also possible this was simply part of her fake obituary.
- A Sanguine bag can be found in Alexa's closet in her bedroom on the top floor of the manor, along with Himmapan products in the bathroom.
- Her kitchen staff remark how 'thankful' they are that Madam Carlisle is still alive, preferring her to her daughter-in-law and niece Emma Carlisle, who has made it quite clear that she is ready to move in and begin making drastic changes to the manor.
- Unlike her fellow Partners, not only will Alexa not assume 47 was sent by Edwards to kill her if held at gunpoint, but will remain defiant and insulting towards him even in the face of death.
- Her son, Edward, who is writing her eulogy in the dining room, can be overheard reading off stories of his youth about his mother. One remarks about how she saw him stuck in a tree at age five, climbed up it, and proceeded to climb back down and tell him that if she could do it, he could too. This further shows how unempathetic she was as a mother. He also remarks how she never showed affection with affirmations or hugs.
- During Death in the Family, Carlisle will repeatedly try to contact Arthur Edwards to no avail. She will curse his name in the privacy of her padded "comfort room", where the player has the opportunity to smother her with a pillow.
- Carlisle will call her attorney, Don Archibald Yates of Morgan, Yates & Kohn and future target in the campaign, to complain that sending their junior partner to sort out the legal mess in Edwards' wake instead of himself is a gross negligence of his duties.
- The lawyer's work reveals that Carlisle did, in fact, lose everything, including all holdings in Tokyo, and Thornbridge Manor itself.
- According to Rebecca, Carlisle has an estate in Cyprus, though it's unknown if this is one of her three grand houses mentioned in the obituary.
- Alexa Carlisle is the only member of the Partners that knew all about Agent 47's origins. She was the one that demanded Dr Ort Meyer to erase all of his clones' (even Agent 47) memories, making her the one responsible for 47's future life as an assassin.
- Judging by various photographs around the mansion, Alexa is a recreational hunter. This is backed up by the fact there is a display containing hunting rifles on the ground floor of the mansion.
- Despite her being said to be 75 years old she dies in 2021 and was born in 1947, which creates a discrepancy with her age.
- Alexa's grave can be found in The Dartmoor Garden Show, decorated in flowers.
- Oddly, her gravestone misspells her middle name as "Cristine", despite being spelled correctly in Death in the Family.