Biography

[tablewithoutpity]

Name:
Hannibal Lecter

Canon:
Hannibal (TV)

Visible Age:
Mid forties

Gender:
Male

Height:
6 foot

Physique:
While he is a little soft from two years of inaction, he is still muscularly built.

Complexion:
Pale. One might suspect he has not seen the sun in quite some time.

Hygiene:
Impeccable

Hair:
Light brown and sandy blonde, tinged with grey

Eyes:
Dark brown

Defining Marks:
Hannibal has a brand between his shoulder blades.

Accent/Speech:
His voice is thickly accented, although the origin of the accent is hard to pinpoint.

Bearing/Demeanor:
Confident, polite, and friendly.

Gait:
The way his body moves is a thing of beauty, like a tiger gliding through the jungle.

Habits:
Hannibal's habits are rooted in his sense of aesthetics. He is meticulously groomed and dressed. He is particular about what he eats. He pays close attention to people, observing their behaviors, seeking to understand them.

Skills:
-Perfect recall. He remembers everything, in detail.
- Psychological analysis. He can get into your head with little effort, uncovering your motivations and blind spots, and use it to manipulate you.
- Almost preternaturally sharp senses. If you have been in a room in the past few hours with someone he knows, he can tell merely by detecting the lingering scent of their perfume or aftershave. He is also capable of diagnosing illness by scent, including certain types of cancer.
- Incredible strength. He is capable of carrying a full grown man and killing a person by snapping their neck with his bare hands.
- Culinary skills. With and without human ingredients.
- Medical expertise. He has been both a psychiatrist and a surgeon, so he has extensive medical knowledge, including drugs and their effects, surgery techniques, and human anatomy.

History:
So much blood...

Personality:
When Hannibal's psychiatrist noted that he wore a "man suit," she was correct, in that what he shows to others is carefully cultivated to make a certain refined impression. However, it would be untrue to say that this facade is entirely false. What those who meet and observe Hannibal see is someone who is suave, sophisticated, trustworthy, and warm. What few understand is that, while he is all of these things, he uses them to suit the design of his “man suit”, and what they mean to him is wholly different than other people understand these traits to signify. Hannibal almost never lies directly. The words he speaks are truth, even though he knows and expects that they will be misinterpreted by those who hear them. In the same way, what people observe is true, but the meaning they assume is not.

Hannibal is suave because he has no fear. He faces all situations, including those that would to others be deeply unsettling or even terrifying, with an equanimity that stems from his curiosity, his ability to analyze every factor, and his enjoyment of identifying patterns, devising solutions, and encorporating each factor into his long game. When Mason Verger (a man who hated Hannibal for having drugged him and influenced him to cut off his own face, piece by piece, and feed it to Will's dogs) captured Hannibal and Will in Florence and brought them back to Verger's farm, Hannibal had no fear, not when Mason was explaining how he would prepare him and consume him, not when one of Verger's men branded him like a pig, not when they trussed him up to await his fate. Indeed, there was a deep curiosity and amusement in witnessing Verger's demented plans unfold, as well as no small amount of pride in witnessing how Will, Hannibal's de facto protegee, himself reacted to their circumstances with ferocity instead of fear.

Hannibal is sophisticated because he is a man of great knowledge, the result of an intense, intellectual curiosity and a lifetime of pursuing that curiosity. Hannibal himself explains that it is the prospect of death that drives us to greatness, and he lives these words. Where society places a taboo on the idea of death, violence, and cannibalism, Hannibal instead sees these things as the very heart of civilization and he has a certain disdain for those who eschew them. Because of this, the traits that make him monstrous in the eyes of "normal" society, lend him a natural grace, elegance, and no little arrogance, that he weaves into the proper expression for his “man suit”.

Hannibal comes across as trustworthy because he exudes competence and confidence, and is skilled at calming people, setting them at ease (more on that in a minute). He is trustworthy in that when he makes a promise, he keeps it. However, he is willing to use trust ruthlessly as a weapon. Before it was revealed that Hannibal was the Chesapeake Ripper, Jack Crawford, an FBI Special Agent hunting the Ripper, trusted Hannibal deeply, a relationship Hannibal cultivated, becoming close to both the FBI agent and his wife. He delighted in being trusted by the man while sabotaging his investigation and torturing his protegees.

Hannibal is warm; however in truth what gentleness he shows people is little different from the kindness, and even genuine affection, a farmer will show to his animals, those who pull the plow and those that eventually will grace his table. He hides his true intentions as the rancher hides the shears from the sheep, or the butcher hides the knife from the yearling, soothing the victim, keeping them calm, until the moment he strikes. Alanna Bloom, his colleague and friend who became, briefly, his lover, experienced this side of him in a particular way. He courted her, leveraged her already extant fondness into a romantic relationship. But what she believed were true romantic feelings were in fact an illusion. He was fond of her, but his purpose in taking her to his bed was pure manipulation. It was a masterful stroke, to strike against Will, turn her against Will, draw her further into the façade of the “man suit” to believe him (Hannibal) genuine, and to use her as an alibi. We even see Hannibal later express a genuine sense of affection for her, by Hannibal’s standards, when he offers her the opportunity to escape, with the promise he won’t pursue her. But when she refuses his offer, she becomes just one more lamb for the slaughter.

Hannibal has been able to escape capture for so long, because he has fashioned his “man suit” from pieces of his genuine personality. Jack Crawford and Will Graham both recognize that the Ripper is difficult to catch because he is unlike any known psychopath. Hannibal is capable of sincerity in his emotions and his genteel presentation, because he is a gentleman, a good friend, an attentive lover, a skilled psychiatrist and capable doctor. The thing is, he is also capable of leaving all that aside in an instance when he needs to feed the dark predator within. He is capable of this, because he sees and believes in the beauty of what he is doing. These acts are not horrific in his eyes, they are art.