Marisa Coulter

Mrs. Coulter takes Lyra to live with her in London as her assistant, promises to teach her all about the North and showers her with dresses and attention. Behind the parties and the dresses, she runs the General Oblation Board, the Magisterium program that kidnaps children to study Dust. Lyra finds out and runs, then learns from the Gyptians that the woman is her mother. Without her daughter, Coulter sends spy-flies after Lyra.

The golden monkey carries out the cruelty she never shows in public, and Lyra picks up on it early. Coulter also has a dangerous ally in Lord Boreal, who moves between the Magisterium and another world.

To her, cutting the bond with a daemon protects children from Dust, which the Magisterium treats as sin. At Bolvangar, the Arctic station where children are cut from their daemons, she finds her daughter again, who escapes once more and wrecks the machine. Coulter follows the trail to Svalbard and arrives as Lord Asriel, her former lover and Lyra's father, opens the bridge to another world. He asks her to cross with him, and she refuses. She stays behind, watching the light of the bridge as her daughter disappears after her father.

Coulter crosses into Cittàgazze with Lord Boreal and learns to command the Spectres, the creatures that feed on adults' souls. There her cruelty comes out in the open: she tortures a witch to get Lyra's secret. She learns that her daughter is at the heart of a prophecy and that the subtle knife is the weapon Asriel needs. She poisons Boreal once he's no longer useful and, in the end, catches up with her daughter and takes her.

To keep Lyra from fulfilling the prophecy, Coulter keeps her drugged and hidden until Will takes her away. Taken to Asriel's camp, she manages to escape and goes to the angel Metatron, who rules in the Authority's name, pretending to betray everyone so she can get close. It's a trap. Side by side with Asriel, she pulls Metatron into the abyss to save her daughter. It proves that, in her own twisted way, Marisa truly loved Lyra.

In the books she's almost always just Mrs. Coulter, and her daemon is a nameless golden monkey. Nicole Kidman played her in the 2007 film, and Ruth Wilson in the series. She also appears in La Belle Sauvage.