Marquis De Singe
From Monkey Island wiki
| Marquis De Singe
The deranged yet brilliant scientist, The Marquis De Singe
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|---|---|
| Home Island | Flotsam Island |
| Species | Human |
| Gender | Male |
| Eye Color | Brown |
| Hair Color | White |
Marquis De Singe is the second primary villain in Tales of Monkey Island. He is an aristocratic doctor/scientist with wild ambitions and conducts experiments on living creatures, including humans. When he first meets Guybrush Threepwood and the pox coursing through his hand and body, he develops plans to extract the pox and create an elixir to prolong his life. As the game continues, De Singe's plans become much more violent and soon pose a threat to every pirate in the seven seas.
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Back Story
Former Court Physician to King Louis, he was the best scientist in all of France until he was accused of conducting in-humane cross-breading experiments with the Queen's poodles and was sent by the King to be exiled on Flotsam Island. After wandering the island, he discovered the ancient technology of the Vaycaylians and a large device used to create massive winds. By using this, ships would crash on Flotsam with nobody able to leave while the winds were directed towards the island. With the many people on the island, De Singe was able to further his scientific research by using the people as test subjects and amputating assorted body parts. De Singe soon constructed his own lab from the debris of various ships and other flotsam that washed ashore. As he ventured deeper into his experiments, he lost his grip on reality and his sanity as the years went by.
Interestingly, De Singe reveals towards the end of the fourth chapter that he is not French. It is eventually confirmed by his voice actor that his French accent was a product of his insanity caused by spending so many years away from civilization and never being seen as a genius as he once was when he served on King Louis's court.
Role in games
Tales of Monkey Island
After Guybrush came to his doorstep with his infected hand containing the Pox of LeChuck, De Singe suspected that the hand may contain the secret of life. Needing the hand for his experiments, he strapped Guybrush down, injected the hand with grog anaesthetic and went to sharpen his miniature guillotine. With the help of one of De Singe's simian test subjects Jacques, Guybrush was able to free himself and escape the mad doctor.
Determined to get the hand off Guybrush, De Singe found Morgan LeFlay's flyer advertising her bounty hunting services and decides to hire her to hunt Guybrush down. In the meantime De Singe continued his plans to strand people on the island with his control of the winds. Guybrush succeeds in deactivating the wind machine and foiling De Singe's immediate plans, although De Single swears vengeance, sending Morgan LeFlay after him. Morgan does eventually succeed in cutting Guybrush's hand off and brings it back to the mad scientist, but he later reveals that he must have Guybrush himself in order to continue his experiments. He then agrees to pay Morgan more money in exchange for her continued services.
Weeks of waiting for Guybrush's capture, De Singe extracts portions of the pox from Guybrush's severed hand and uses it to create an elixir. The doctor uses it on himself and the side effects not only include prolonged life, but rapid healing of any type of physical injury. At the same time, De Singe finds the means to revert the winds back to blowing inward, furthering his plans for experimentation on poxed pirates. None of them however yield the same results as Guybrush's pox and De Singe has no choice but to wait for Guybrush's capture. When Morgan finally brings Guybrush back to Flotsam, De Singe begins to finally put the rest of his plans in order until an angry mob of Flotsam citizens take Guybrush away to be held on trial for crimes they believe he has committed against them. De Singe orders Morgan to bring back his test subject, but Morgan, already filled with enough guilt over betraying Guybrush after the pair became close associates, refuses to aid De Singe anymore. The mad scientist eventually learns that Guybrush has already cured his pox, making him useless as a test subject.
With Guybrush no use to him anymore, De Singe sets his sights on Elaine, knowing that she has the perfect amount of the pox needed for his plans. De Singe then begins to manufacture machines in conjunction with unbreakable vacuum tubes to remotely manipulate the Wind Control Device on Flotsam Island to engineer it to use the wind to pulverize people into powder and spread them across the seas. After he had finished applying his machinery to all the ancient relics that control the Wind Machine, De Singe returns to his lab to find Morgan dead and blood all over the floor. Running away from the mess, Guybrush spots the doctor leaving his lab in a panic and later assumes that he was the one who murdered Morgan upon discovering her mutilated body.
Recovering from his shock, De Singe attempts to abduct Elaine, but she proves to be too much for him, her nature becoming incredibly brutal due to the pox completely overtaking her. Nonetheless, De Singe is able to cleverly trap her right near the Wind Control Device and, shortly thereafter, Guybrush. De Singe reveals the full extent of his plans, explaining that even though he has created an elixir to prolong life he does not have enough to have complete immortality. Even if he were to drain Elaine dry of her pox, it would only lead to a few portions of the elixir. He then plans to use the Wind Control Device to pulverize Elaine to powder and spread her pox all over the seas in order to infect every pirate in the world with the pox. Elaine is the only person, before Guybrush cured his pox, who has enough of the pox to infect every pirate once she is spread across the seas. When this happens, De Singe will have more than enough poxed pirates to experiment on and create an infinite amount of elixir to not only give himself immortality, but also make a fortune selling it to others.
In the meantime, De Singe has strapped Guybrush's poxed hand to a turban placed on his head, which is sucking the pox out of the hand, transferring it into the elixir, and giving De Singe immortality until he can spread Elaine's pox across the seas. As De Singe attempts to sedate Elaine, Guybrush is able to cleverly attract fireflies to De Singe's turban, which in turn attracts moths that eat away at the turban. De Singe goes into a state of panic as the moths completely devour the turban and cut off De Sing's supply of elixir, causing all the wounds he suffered to catch up to him. The poxed hand, now free, then begins to move with De Singe trying to catch it. The hand leads De Singe in front of the Wind Control Device, with De Singe mere seconds away from death. As the doctor reaches for the hand, it pushes him into the Wind Device and turns it on, pulverizing De Singe to powder, ending his inhuman experiments once and for all.
The producers of the game state that after this event, two things could have essentially happened to De Singe. Either he ended up in the afterlife or the amounts of elixir still in his body kept him alive even as he is nothing but powder and dust in the wind. It is ultimately left up to each individual player to decide which fate is more preferable.
Personality
De Singe's only love in life is science, having built his life and reputation around it, and despises those who would practice other arts such as voodoo, believing it to be a childish game for those who deny how the world works. Ironically, De Singe fails to realize that the elixir he yearns to create is based off a pox comprised completely of pure voodoo energy. Like many villains in the Monkey Island Series, the doctor holds himself in extremely high regard and believes that he never gets the recognition he deserves. Ever since he was ordered to be exiled on Flotsam Island for performing inhuman crossbreeding experiments, an accusation he claims to be false, The Marquis became more determined than ever to break scientific achievements and show his worth and intellect to the world.
While having a love for science, De Singe will never back down from an opportunity of using that same science to further his own desires to acquire wealth and power. One of the major plot points in Tales of Monkey Island revolved around De Singe's undying persistence to create an elixir based off LeChuck's voodoo powers to not only grant himself immortality, but to also sell it to others to acquire massive amounts of treasure and fame. De Singe's hunger for fame and lust for power is what sealed his fate, getting himself killed by the very same power he had hoped to obtain in order to sustain his life and pave the way for a glorious future.
Etymology
De Singe is named after the Marquis de Sade, a French aristocrat, revolutionary, and writer, most famous for his bizarre novels that combined extreme licentiousness with criminality, violence and blasphemy. He spent 32 years of his life in insane asylums.
'Singe' is also French for 'monkey'.
Appearances
Tales of Monkey Island - "Launch of the Screaming Narwhal" (First appearance)
- Tales of Monkey Island - "The Siege of Spinner Cay"
- Tales of Monkey Island - "Lair of the Leviathan"
- Tales of Monkey Island - "The Trial and Execution of Guybrush Threepwood"
