than any wife he had, and he wishes to take her as his consort. This is her final deception as by this point she intends to betray Metatron to safeguard her daughter. She describes her self-perception to Asriel just prior to their joint sacrifice: "I told him I was going to betray you, and betray Lyra, and he believed me because I was corrupt and full of wickedness. I wanted him to find no good in me and he didn't. There is none. But I love Lyra. Where did this love come from? I don't know; it came to me like a thief in the night, and now I love her so much my heart is bursting with it. All I could hope was that my crimes were so monstrous that the love was no bigger than a mustard seed in the shadow of them, and I wished I'd committed even greater ones to hide it more deeply still". Mrs Coulter's dæmon takes the form of a golden monkey with long fur, who is not named in the books, but was given the name "Ozymandias" in the radio adaptation. The golden monkey is shown to be capable of going much further from Mrs Coulter than other dæmons are able to separate from their humans. How the golden monkey can go so far from Mrs Coulter is not explained, Mrs Coulter has not undergone any of the processes which enable other humans to achieve such separation. Her final act in the trilogy occurs when she is reconciled with Asriel, and they together drag Metatron into an endless abyss, the three thus ceasing to exist. Relationship with Lyra Belacqua At the beginning of the book The Northern Lights Marisa Coulter seems to have a keen interest in Lyra. It is later revealed that Coulter is in fact Lyra's mother by her love affair with Lord Asriel (her title of "Mrs" comes from her marriage to Edward Coulter, who died before the events in the books.) In Northern Lights John Faa says that she fell in love with Asriel as soon as they met. Although throughout most of the series Lyra hates and fears her mother, Mrs Coulter repeatedly saves Lyra. Early in The Northern Lights, Mrs Coulter saves Lyra from a group of child-snatchers known as the "Gobblers" by taking her out of Oxford, and nearing the end of The Northern Lights,