Arkady Duvall is the son of Ra's al Ghul.
History[]
As Ra's al Ghul's son, Duvall studied in Heidelberg, and participated in the university's fencing club. Despite gaining a visible smite on his right cheek, he was the best of his class. However, he was also mentally unbalanced and arrogant. Because of this, his father knew he couldn't be his successor.
After he finished his studies, he made the crossing to the Americas, and while on the East coast, he did something to a girl he shouldn't have. It was heavily implied he murdered or raped her. Sometime after this, he left for Devil's Hole to join his father, Ra's al Ghul, in the completion of the Phoenix. But because of his activities on the east coast, authorities placed a $200 bounty on his head. The bounty hunter and former soldier Jonah Hex accepted the assignment.
Duvall's brawling and behavior towards women made him unpopular in the local saloon, and it didn't take Hex long to get the locals to supply him with information. The barmaid of saloon, in particular wanted to help Hex. Duvall was nearby in an underground hangar where the Phoenix was built. He had the same attitude towards the work force as he had to everyone else in his life, much to the annoyance of Ra's.
Hex was captured shortly after infiltrating the base, and Duvall in his arrogance failed to understand his purposes. He thought Hex was a government spy, bent on sabotaging Ra's' plans to destroy the railroad, rather than arrest him for his own crimes. After Jonah revealed his reason for being there, Arkady laughed at his effort to detain him. Arkady wanted to dip him in molten lead, but Ra's intervened, again voicing disgust in his son's cruelty. He had Hex imprisoned, to be questioned later. Duvall got an angry speech from his father, and any power he had in the operation was revoked.
Arkady captured by Jonah Hex.
Upon completion of the airship, Arkady joined his father at the bridge. After firing an initial volley at Devil's Hole, the ship was rocked by an explosion. Arkady went to investigate, and found Hex. The bounty hunter had already crippled the ship, but he also set off the hydrogen cells. Duvall engaged him with a sword, boasting superior fencing skills. Hex shrugged it off, and met him with a bowie knife he had picked up earlier. The two sparred in an unforgiving duel, until Duvall was hit by boiling steam from a cut-off pipe. Hex used the opportunity to disarm his opponent and throw him off the airship. They both landed on a small hill, while the ship crashed behind them.
Defeated, Arkady failed to buy off Hex with five thousand dollars in gold. Hex did answer Duvall's plea to letting him live, but only because it would be too much trouble dragging a corpse back twelve states. Back East, Duvall was sentenced to fifty years of hard labor. Being exposed to the Lazarus Pit, when he was a young man allowed him to actually live out those years and go through the harsh treatment.
An elderly Arkady reunited with his father after half a century.
After being released from prison, he wandered away, and was placed in the Gotham Retirement Villas sometime later. He spoke and moved little, as the hardships he had faced shattered his mind. It took Ra's several years to track him down. After his location was confirmed, Ra's ordered the Society of Shadows to retrieve him. As his mind and body were beyond the Lazarus Pit's power to mend, Batman let the pleading Ra's take his son with him.
- This article uses material from the Arkady Duvall article at the DCAU Wiki and is licensed under the CC BY-SA License.