History Main / MotherOfAThousandYoung

* An example from ''TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}}'' is [[http://pathfinder.wikia.com/wiki/Lamashtu Lamashtu]], a demon queen and goddess who is supposedly mother of many monstrous races, including gnolls, harpies, goblins and minotaurs.

* ''LightNovel/{{Overlord}}'' invokes the trope namer when [[VillainProtagonist Ainz]] offers up a sacrifice of enemy soldiers to bring about five of her children, who then proceed to terrorize the rest of the enemy army in a display of his power.

* The Website/SCPFoundation has ''at least'' two variations: a [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-597 "wet nurse of a thousand young"]] and a [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-354 bloody pool that spawns random creatures]].

* The Wiki/SCPFoundation has ''at least'' two variations: a [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-597 "wet nurse of a thousand young"]] and a [[http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-354 bloody pool that spawns random creatures]].

* ''TabletopGame/{{Numenera}}'': Nibovian Wives are the setting's analogue to [[HornyDevils succubi]]; Ultraterrestrial constructs in the shape of beautiful human women, whose sole driving goal is to mate with human men, which allows them to spawn various kinds of Ultraterrestrials, which the Nibovian Wife will defend with her life even as it seeks to kill the man whose seed allowed it to be born in the first place.

* ''ComicBook/TheSandman'': Implied with the Merkin, Mother of Spiders, a minor demonic character. She is a lumpen, hideous, vaguely feminine figure, whose womb produces spiders.

* Technically almost all male animals are fathers of a thousand young as they produce millions or even billions of sperm, and while only one sperm gets to the egg (assuming a successful conception) in theory if all their sperm fertilized eggs they could populate entire planets.

* ''LightNovel/{{Overlord}}'' invokes the trope namer when [[VillainProtagonist Ainz]] offers up a sacrifice of enemy soldiers to bring about four of her children to wipe out the rest of the enemy army in a display of his power.

* In ''Fanfic/QueenOfShadows'', the Shadowkhan reproduce by a regular (at least monthly) ritual in which the reigning [[GodEmperor Queen]] merges her chi with that of the [[CoDragons Generals]], causing dozens of members of each tribe to [[BornAsAnAdult instantly be born]]. On top of this, each Queen naturally gives birth to a daughter, who will grow to take their place and continue the cycle.

[[folder:FanWorks]]

** Gaia, Mother Earth herself. Though mainly remembered for giving birth to the Titans, most of her children are actually monster-like: the Gigantes (some of which have hundreds of serpent tails in place of legs); the Cyclopes; the hundred-handed, fifty-headed Hecatonchires; the above-mentioned Echidna and Phorcys; the snake Python; and Typhon, himself something of an example (see below).

[[folder:Film --- Live Action]]

* ''Literature/{{Nightside}}'': In ''Paths Not Taken'', John and Suzie time-travel to the beginning of the Nightside, and do battle with a vast horde of Lilith's half-demonic children. [[spoiler: ''Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth'' later reveals that, by John's time, only one of Lilith's original brood is still alive, and it's hopelessly insane. She still has thousands of monstrous ''grandchildren'' to fight the Nightside's defenders, though...]]
* ''Literature/{{Domina}}'': Metaphorical example. Lilith was the first human to be modified by the [[BioAugmentation toy maker]], and was given a copy of the device as thanks for her part. A woman named Striga came to her and claimed Lilith was the mother to all who wished to use the toy maker, and asked to borrow it. Once Striga got the device, she created the first [[OurVampiresAreDifferent vampires]] and slaughtered hundreds of people. Lilith was more careful after that, but the idea stuck. By the time the story starts fifteen years later, she is revered throughout the city as the Mother Monster. When negotiations need to be made with America, she is sent to lead the ambassadors, and they follow her orders without a word of dissent. She does privately admit a few times that the burden is a bit beyond her. "Parenting is hard enough with a handful of kids, or even just one. I have over four hundred million. I can't possibly look after them all."
* ''Literature/MalazanBookOfTheFallen'':
** The Elder Goddess T'iam is known as the Mother of All Dragons; as her title implies, she was the progenitor of every dragon in existence, and the creator of the Eleint Soletaken via her blood.
** Matron Gunth'an Acyl of the K'Chain Che'Malle rebirthed the Che'Malle race all by herself. Where one matron would be expected to birth several hundred of their kind in a lifetime, Acyl birthed an army twenty-thousand strong within a period of months, driving herself insane in the process and saving her kind from extinction.

* ''Literature/TheElderEmpire'': Nakothi, the Dead Mother, is known for her "children," twisted undead monstrosities made from random parts of dead humans and animals.
-->'''The Emperor:''' She had little use for living humans, so we scraped out our lives as best we could. What she did need were human corpses. By the thousands. She reforged them, you see. Stitched them together, brain and body, remade them into monsters. Her Handmaidens called it rebirth.
* Twice in the ''Literature/MerkabahRider'' stories. The first example is Lilith and her whore-demons, who birth swarms of demons literally every time they have intercourse. The second example is the TropeNamer Shub-Niggurath her/his/itself.

[[folder:Live Action Television]]
* ''Series/{{Supernatural}}'' has the Mother of All Monsters (the creator of [[MonsterProgenitor The Alphas]]), the BigBad of the second half of season six. Funnily enough she calls herself "Eve", rather than [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echidna_(mythology) Echidna]], the mythological Mother of All Monsters (perhaps because the audience might confuse her with a [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echidna spiny anteater from Australia]]). It's later confirmed that the biblical Eve also exists as a separate character (we are introduced to her son Cain, and husband Adam) within this universe, and the Mother Of All Monsters is implied to maybe be a [[EldritchAbomination Leviathan]].

* ''Series/{{Angel}}'': One episode had a demon hire men to help him impregnate dozens of human women.

* An example from TabletopGame/{{Pathfinder}} is [[http://pathfinder.wikia.com/wiki/Lamashtu Lamashtu]], a demon queen and goddess who is supposedly mother of many monstrous races, including gnolls, harpies, goblins and minotaurs.
** Shub-Niggurath herself is in the setting, and the Carrion Crown adventure path features a few of her spawn.
** The only Mother of Monsters that has been explicitly statted out is the Drakania, a huge Mythical Aberration from Bestiary 4, who can either spawn horrible mutated Spawn herself, or implant her rapidly gestating spawn into a hapless adventurer with ease, and considering "she" accelerates the effects of all poisons and diseases, can sacrifice her spawn to teleport within a range of a mile, and releases life energy like a 20th level cleric, without suitably experienced adventurers "she" could wipe out a major metropolis in days.

* ''TabletopGame/WerewolfTheForsaken'' has Aharnuz, from its "Predators" sourcebook. A ghastly creature that spawns an apparently infinite variety of twisted "children", the only mercy is that none of these creatures can breed - something it/she is struggling to overcome. The two sample possible origins given for this thing is that she is an almost complete Host that has become even more twisted than it was originally, and that she used to be one of Luna's Handmaidens that remained overlong in the world and was stranded there by the Gauntlet. Its name even means "The Mother" when translated from First Tongue.
** Then there's Gagh-Azur from the 2e corebook, a creature of the ocean depths that seeks the creation of perfect life, and produces spawn that are generally some combination of land and sea dwelling creatures.
* In ''TabletopGame/WerewolfTheApocalypse'', the Urge Wyrm G'louogh spontaneously spawns [[OurDemonsAreDifferent banes]] and is believed to be the progenitor of [[RealityWarper Nexus Crawlers]].

* In ''TabletopGame/MagicTheGathering'', the three Eldrazi titans spawn legions of twisted critters in the image of themselves. Each of the three brood lineages has traits that make them similar to the particular titan that spawned them, from writhing masses of tentacles to abnormal numbers of limbs to EyesDoNotBelongThere.
** Later material, however, indicates that the Eldrazi are a subversion. These legions of critters are ''not'' offspring. They're [[EldritchAbomination parts of the greater Eldrazi entity]] that's sitting in [[VoidBetweenTheWorlds the Blind Eternities]]. They just ''look'' like separate entities from a perspective that focuses within a plane, such as most of the viewpoint characters.
* ''TabletopGame/{{Exalted}}'' gives us Kimbery, one of the [[DemonLordsAndArchdevils Yozis]]. She's a creator goddess with serious {{Yandere}} tendencies, alternatively either smothering those she loves or utterly destroying those she hates, and you're never really sure which side of that divide you're on (until she dissolves your face off, anyway). She can't give birth (given that her current form is an acidic sea), but she does have Charms that allow her to infect others with parasitic offspring that come in a delightful assortment of configurations.
* ''TabletopGame/BeastThePrimordial'': Beasts trace their origin back to a figure known as the Dark Mother, also called [[IHaveManyNames Lilith, Hekate, Tiamat, and the Queen Mother of the West]], among other names, who is believed to still be alive somewhere in the present day. To the Beasts, the Dark Mother is not just the first Beast, but the first ''monster'', mother to all the monsters of the [[TabletopGame/NewWorldOfDarkness World of Darkness]].
* ''TabletopGame/{{Numenera}}'': Nibovian Wives are the setting's analogue to [[HornyDevils succubi]]; Ultraterrestrial constructs in the shape of beautiful human women, whose sole driving goal is to mate with human men, which allows them to spawn various kinds of Ultraterrestrials, which the Nibovian Wife will defend with her life even as it seeks to kill the man whose seed allowed it to be born in the first place.

* The FinalBoss of ''VideoGame/QuakeI'' is even called Shub-Niggurath. She's a tentacled abomination, responsible for giving birth to all the other monsters. She is also referred to as the Hell-Mother and the Witch-Goddess.

* ''Franchise/DragonAge'' has the Brood Mothers, creatures created from females of different species, which give birth to legions of Darkspawn. You fight one created from a Dwarf. In ''VideoGame/DragonAgeOriginsAwakening'', [[spoiler:the FinalBoss is The Mother, an insane "freed" Broodmother (and boy is she pissed about that) who ''might'' have been human judging by her appearance, but spawns The Children instead of Hurlocks.]]
* ''VideoGame/{{Darkspore}}'''s Arakna fits this trope perfectly.
* Mem Aleph from ''VideoGame/ShinMegamiTenseiStrangeJourney'', creator of all earthly life. Her name is derived from the Phoenician and Semitic characters that would become "MA", the root for "mother".
** Tiamat also counts- she's the mother of [[spoiler:the first four Sector bosses]] and her plan is to give birth to demons faster than mankind can kill them.
* ''VideoGame/{{Prototype}}'' has Elizabeth Greene (codenamed, naturally, MOTHER); since her first baby was taken away, she's decided to make up for that with more babies. Mostly in the form of giant man-eating fleshy shaved-bear things. Rather than giving birth directly, she packs water towers with human bodies and deposits some genetic code in among them to give the creature something to feed on before it hatches. She also considers [[spoiler:Alex Mercer, or rather, his viral doppelganger]] one of her children, despite them being quite different in abilities and motivations. Finally, the viral strains ravaging New York were all originally extracted from her body, so in a sense all the shambling zombies are her children as well.
* Isaac's mother from ''VideoGame/TheBindingOfIsaac''. Most -- if not all -- of the various enemies are implied to be other children of hers. [[spoiler:Subverted with the revelation that Isaac is an only child, and that he made the entire story up.]]
* ''VideoGame/BrutalLegend''[='=]s Emperor Doviculus is a highly rare male example of this trope. He fathered all of his soldiers. Yes, this includes the cars, the ChickenWalker and the various other [[OurMonstersAreWeird weird monsters]] of the Tainted Coil.
* Shial the Mother of Spiders from ''VideoGame/{{Blood}}'' is the local Ungoliant expy. When you fight her, she [[MookMaker spawns loads and loads of spiders]] at you.
* ''VideoGame/BaldursGate'' has a sorceress named Centeol who is found looking very swollen and pregnant. She explains to you that she has been cursed by her sorcerer lover shortly before [[ChestBurster exploding into a mass of spiders]].

* The Bed of Chaos from ''VideoGame/DarkSouls'' is the "Source of all demons".
* The ''VideoGame/GoldBox'' game Pools of Darkness has an enemy, Kalistes the Marilith, who has a number of 'children', standard D&D monsters, who she naturally wishes to spread all over the Realms. As it happens, neither her rulership over the drow (in the usual Forgotten Realms setting this is Lolth) nor her production of many of the standard monsters are standard for the D&D setting.
* ''VideoGame/TheSecretWorld'' features one of these in the form of [[spoiler: [[BigBad Lilith]].]] Popularly known as the Mother of Monsters, she's responsible for the creation of some of the world's most nightmarish races, including vampires, werewolves, the Deathless, and many others - some of which were actually born from coupling with a FallenAngel. It's interesting to note that the game's lore observes the nightmarish blend of [[EvilSorcerer magic]], [[MadScientist science]] and [[HumanoidAbomination eldritch biology]] inherent to the character: she might have created her children through alchemical magic, or through LostTechnology, or through literal birth "via a bloated, termite-queen abdomen" - ''nobody's quite sure how.''
* ''VideoGame/LaMulana'': The Mother is a goddess that fell to Earth aeons ago. Remaining trapped and immobile underground, she gave birth to several generations of children so they could help her to return to the sky where she belongs. Sadly, all the children either misinterpreted what she wanted, were only interested in her powers or just simply ignored her pleas and went their own way. Every time this happened, the mother unleashed a cataclysm what wiped out her children to make room for the next batch. As it turns out, her 8th children are humankind and since we've remained unaware of The Mother's existence, she is planning to destroy us all and then gave birth to the 9th children.
** Tiamat from Sumerian Mythology appear as the boss of the Dimensional Corridor. She is described as the strongest Guardian whose ability to create life is only second to Mother. The Children of Tiamat act like a mini boss rush inside her area and must be killed before facing her. [[spoiler:''VideoGame/LaMulana2'' indicates she was a failed attempt of the Olympians, the 3rd Children, at created a clone of The Mother.]]
** ''VideoGame/LaMulana2'': Echidna from Greek Mythology is pretty much an {{Expy}} of Tiamat, with her gimmick being the same, i.e her children acting like mini bosses of her area that must be killed before fighting her. [[spoiler:Like Tiamat, Echidna was also a failed attempt of the Olympians to replicate The Mother and use her power to conquer Eg-Lana.]]
* ''VideoGame/MonsterHunterRise'' gives a downplayed version in [[spoiler:Narwa the Allmother]], an Elder Dragon whose tremors [[spoiler:spook smaller monsters into violent panic (the Rampages seen in the games) as a call signal to Ibushi to mate with him; the entire purpose being to propagate and spread their children around to eat everything, crushing the smaller monsters through sheer power or numbers.]] That being said, part of said mating may or may not include [[spoiler:killing Ibushi and draining his power for her own use while pregnant with his young]]...

[[folder:Web Comics]]
* ''Webcomic/OwMySanity'' has Shubby herself as the CoolBigSis character, who looks more than a little pregnant in her humanoid guise. She gives relationship advice to the protagonist, on the theory that given her, erm, ''experience'', she is more than qualified.

* A rare Male example is Leviathan, a Fallen Seraphim from TabletopGame/NewVindicators. While he has made normal human Nephilim like his brothers, he has also partaken in a lot of bestiality, and since the Fallen can change their shapes, he is the father of a lot of monsters: Ogopogo, the Jersey Devil, the Tarrasque, and more. His children are as varied as they are monstrous.

* WebOriginal/{{Mortasheen}} has a few, but its most notable one is [[http://www.bogleech.com/mortasheen/genetisaur.htm Genetisaur]], an expy of the Alien Queen with a strong phallic motif, who produces [[http://www.bogleech.com/mortasheen/genetimorph.htm offspring]] via ChestBurster.
* ''WebAnimation/HanazukiFullOfTreasures'' has a [[{{Planimal}} Chicken Plant]] who has had a number of children, but doesn't care for them at all, and each has ravaged the moon before flying away after growing up.
* In the era of dial-up internet of [[TheNineties the 1990s]], there was the parody of "Shub-Internet". The harsh personification of the Internet, Beast of a Thousand Processes, Eater of Characters, Avatar of Line Noise, Personification of Lag, and Imp of Call Waiting; the hideous multi-tendriled entity formed of all the manifold connections of the net. Its purpose is malign and evil, and is the cause of all network slowdowns.

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

* ''Anime/ImGonnaBeAnAngel'': It might be a bit unusual example, but [[spoiler:the BigBad, Mikael, is this for Noelle and Silky. Originally, they were one angel soul, which, due to accident, fell to the ground and split into three imperfect souls. It is lampshaded heavily that Mikael was the original source from which other two were created, particularly in episode 13 when Baba was foretelling him his future and her crystal ball showed one string from which other two sprouted out. Mikael even wanted to kind of absorb Noelle and Silky into himself or fuse with them, so it fits with the devouring mother image]].
* ''Anime/DigimonTamers'': The D-Reaper. It's already an EldritchAbomination on its own right, and the {{Mooks}} it generates come in a variety of forms. The form of the D-Reaper with the Freaky Mask and Jeri's Head is titled the Mother Reaper. Combined with the most powerful D-Reaper in the Digital World, they'll cause the End of the World.
* ''Manga/DragonBall'': Piccolo Daimao, the so-called "demon king". While all [[PlantAliens Namekians]] reproduce asexually, their offspring are generally homogenous (if not exact clones with [[ImmortalityThroughLegacy a]] [[{{Twinmaker}} one-time-use-per-body]] [[BrainUploading identical spirit]]), and King Piccolo instead birthed matured warrior children of vastly different apparent species and biology.
* ''Manga/AngelSanctuary'': God, who is the Father of all angels. [[spoiler: But not really. Yes, He created the angels, but they're all derived from the flesh of Adam Kadamon, who is a much more straightforward example. Counted as the "mother" of Alexiel and Rosiel, but they only got the lions' share of his/her dismembered body -- most other angels were only born from small cellular clusters taken from the leftovers.]]

* ''Anime/SevenMortalSins'': Mammon, the Demon Lord of Greed. A widow, she has to provide for her ''500,000'' demonic children on her own. She runs numerous business schemes to amass wealth, and is first encountered running a scam where her human followers are hypnotized into babysitting her children.
* ''LightNovel/{{Overlord}}'' invokes the trope namer when [[VillainProtagonist Ainz]] offers up a sacrifice of enemy soldiers to bring about four of her children to wipe out the rest of the enemy army in a display of his power.
* ''Manga/TheElderSisterLikeOne'' is two different takes on The Sister of the Woods with a Thousand Young. It originally began as a series of {{hentai}} doujins by Iida Pochi. In this version, Shub-Niggurath is an inhumanly beautiful female who bargains with a young boy for his wish that she become his older sister. Their relationship was so intriguing that it was then made into an all-ages story in a monthly serial. The serial details the beginning of their relationship while the hentai version explores their later sexual relationship. Despite being as LovecraftLite as you can get, Chiyo's moniker is still well deserved; [[CreatingLifeIsUnforeseen even her drawings can come to life without her intending it.]]

* ''ComicBook/{{Lucifer}}'': Lilith appears as Adam's discarded first wife, who [[ReallyGetsAround takes on]] [[DoubleEntendre all comers]] and bears an entire race of HalfHumanHybrids, the Lilim.

* Creator/DCComics: The Mother of Champions, a member of the Chinese superteam the Great Ten, who experiences greatly accelerated pregnancies (''three days'') and births short-lived superhumans, ''twenty-five'' at a time.
%%* ''ComicBook/TheSandman'': Implied with the Merkin, Mother of Spiders, a minor demonic character.%%Implied how?
* ''ComicBook/AmericanVampire'': The Beast spawned countless demons upon the world during the Sumerian times and is capable of converting anybody into demons with her milk.
* ''ComicBook/{{Hellboy}}'': The Ogdru Jahad are seven eldritch monsters that spawned the 369 Ogdru Hem before being sealed away. The Ogdru Hem in turn make other smaller monsters, usually out of humans.

* Queen Chrysalis gets this characterization in the ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic'' fandom all the time due to her insectoid nature. [[http://csimadmax.deviantart.com/art/married-again-325751862 This]] comic has Chrysalis urging Shining Armor not to commit suicide for the sake of his ''173 newly hatched changelings'', while [[https://www.derpibooru.org/778360 this image]] has Shining Armor finding his illegitimate child at the door accompanied by a note from Chrysalis telling him her lawyer says he gets to keep ''one'' of them.
** ''Fanfic/EquestriaGirlsFriendshipSouls'': All of Chrysalis' Arrancar are her own children, though "how" she conceives them is how she ranks them. First are her "blood drones", which she creates from her own spilled blood as disposable shock troops with barely any personality and only serving as extensions of her will (though she could invest more personality in them if she wants to). Next are her simple "drones" who have more personality and willpower naturally, but are still subservient to her. Then there are her "true born," the most powerful of all and are fully independent of her will, like Thorax, Pharynx, and Ocelus. [[spoiler:It's implied that this ability is tied to her possession of a piece of the Soul Queen, which is hinted to be her womb.]]

[[folder:Film]]

* In ''WesternAnimation/{{Nine}}'', the main villain is a robot that makes other robots.

%%* ''Literature/TheFaerieQueene'': Error (who is directly based on Echidna) in Book I.
* Franchise/CthulhuMythos:
** Shub-Niggurath, our TropeNamer. The primordial AnthropomorphicPersonification of the event or act of creation, in particular the reproduction of biological life.
** Nyarlathotep (nicknamed the "Father of the Million Favoured Ones") might also count if that title is to be taken literally.

* Creator/CliveBarker:
** ''Literature/{{Weaveworld}}'': The Magdalene makes a habit of raping men and, mere hours later, subsequently spawning new members of her innumerable brood, the hideous 'by-blows'. Just so we're clear, the Magdalene (along with the Hag) is one of the BigBad's triplet sisters who she ''killed'' in the womb. Ghost rape.
** "The Madonna" features a parthenogenetic mass of flesh and writhing light-ribbons that births MixAndMatchCritter offspring, and is attended by naked young wet nurses who can [[GenderBender convert men into women]] by having sex with them.
* ''Literature/{{Palimpsest}}'': Casimira is the "mother" of all the vermin. They see everything and report back to her.
* ''Literature/{{Animorphs}}'': {{Downplayed}} -- [[SufficientlyAdvancedAliens the Ellimist]] at one point came across a species called the Jallians, whose leader, the Life-Giver of the Jain Sea, was a giant slug giving birth to multiple other Jallians even as she talked to him. She was unpleasantly demanding, but not particularly terrifying.

* In ''Literature/TheGolgothaSeries'', one of the Black Madonna's titles is "Mother of a Thousand Young". She is the mother of countless worm-like parasites that transform people into Tainted.

* ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'': The Horta of "The Devil In The Dark" are an ultimately benign example. Every 50,000 years, the entire race dies off save for thousands of eggs and one single adult Horta, left behind to care for the eggs and then to be the mother of the hatchlings. Originally thought to be a vicious monster, Spock determines that the mother Horta was [[MonsterIsAMommy only attacking]] [[MamaBear because her eggs were threatened]]; the Horta are actually a passive race by nature. Once Spock is able to open the lines of communication, the human miners and the Horta are able to form a more symbiotic relationship.

* ''Manga/TheElderSisterLikeOne'' is two different takes on The Sister of the Woods with a Thousand Young. It originally began as a series of {{hentai}} doujins by Iida Pochi. In this version, Shub-Niggurath is an inhumanly beautiful female who bargains with a young boy for his wish that she become his older sister. Their relationship was so intriguing that it was then made into an all-ages story in a monthly serial. The serial details the beginning of their relationship while the hentai version explores their later sexual relationship. Despite being as LovecraftLite as you can get, her moniker is still well deserved; [[CreatingLifeIsUnforeseen even her drawings can come to life without her intending it.]]

** ''ComicBook/XMen'': The villain Master Mold, which originally churned out the Sentinel robots. ''WesternAnimation/WolverineAndTheXMen'' even gave it a female voice.%%The Brood, being expies if the Aliens mentioned below in the live action movies section.%%But how are they examples?

** Shub-Niggurath, the TropeNamer, the primordial [[AnthropomorphicPersonification avatar]] of the event or act of creation, in particular the reproduction of biological life.

The children of the mother are always different from her, and may even be different from their siblings. Some look like smaller, lesser versions of her. For the monster who is the first of a line of identical monsters, see MonsterProgenitor. Not to be confused with HiveQueen. An InsectQueen will usually fit the trope. Can easily overlap with MookMaker and WeaponizedOffspring.

* Isaac's mother from ''VideoGame/TheBindingOfIsaac''. Most -- if not all -- of the various enemies are implied to be other children of hers.