Brona Croft
Brona Croft, later known as Lily Frankenstein, is a character on Showtime's Penny Dreadful. Created by writer John Logan and portrayed by Billie Piper, Brona begins the series as an Irish immigrant living in London. An original take on the Bride of Frankenstein story, Piper's character and acting have been acclaimed by critics, calling her "alternately elegant, bewitching, coarse, and frightening."
Storyline
Before the series
Through conversations with Ethan Chandler and Victor Frankenstein, Brona recounts tales from her past. Living in Belfast, Ireland, she was to be married to an abusive man. Despite his violent treatment of her, Brona's mother demanded she marry him. Instead, Brona threw herself into prostitution to support herself without him.At some point after coming to London, Brona gave birth to a daughter, Sarah. She was still unable to provide for the child without whoring, so she left Sarah at home by the fire while she went out. She encountered a customer who refused to pay her, and knocked her unconscious. When Brona came to, she hurried home and found her daughter, frozen to death.
Season One
Brona Croft lives at the Mariner's Inn in London, and works as a prostitute while trying to find another job. She is slowly dying of consumption, but is unable to pay for medicine. She meets Ethan Chandler, and the two quickly bond. Brona goes to the home of Dorian Gray, and models for photographs for him. Dorian is attracted to her illness, and the two have sex.Despite her sickness, Brona and Ethan quickly fall in love and pursue a relationship. She briefly grows resentful of his wealthy friends, and rejects him. However, she quickly gets over it, and the two resume their relationship.
She eventually becomes bedridden, and coughs up blood constantly. She gives Ethan her pendant of St. Jude, which he will later use during his exorcism of Vanessa Ives. Her sickness gets to the point that she can barely talk, and Ethan begs Dr. Victor Frankenstein to help her.
Victor inspects Brona, and claims there is nothing to do but wait. However, when Ethan steps out, Victor holds a pillow over her face and smothers Brona to death. Ethan is distraught, but Victor assures him that he will take care of her body. Secretly, he intends to resurrect Brona as his Creature's undead mate.
Season Two
Victor resurrects Brona, under the name of Lily Frankenstein. Though the Creature is eager to have Lily to himself, Victor insists on having time with Lily to re-acclimate her to life. Lily claims to have no memory of her life before the "accident," and is informed that she is Victor's cousin, and was engaged to marry the Creature, calling himself John Clare.Though the creature grows impatient, Victor spends a lot of time with Lily, and the two appear to fall in love. Victor takes Lily to a ball, where she is re-introduced to Dorian Gray. The two develop a mutual fascination with each other, much to both the Creature and Victor's chagrin. One evening, during a thunderstorm, Lily climbs into Victor's bed and takes his virginity.
Despite claiming to be in love with Victor, Lily begins a friendship with Dorian Gray. After an evening out with Dorian, Lily strays from her neighborhood and goes to a pub. A man attempts to seduce her, and she goes back to his house with him. During sex, she strangles him to death and lays with his corpse till morning, claiming to a livid Victor that she fell asleep on a park bench.
Eventually, the Creature grows impatient with Victor's possessiveness of Lily, and confronts her while Victor is away. After Lily rejects him, he attempts to attack her, but she shoves him to the ground and berates him, mocking his ugliness and naivety. She reveals that she knows exactly what she is, and that she knows her resurrection made her immortal. Lily promises that she will never serve another man again, and instead swears that they will kneel to her. She offers the Creature to overthrow mankind with her, but he is terrified and refuses.
Instead, she seeks out fellow immortal Dorian Gray, and the two plot "mastery" over the human race. Victor learns of her recent actions, and comes to confront her. With a gun pointed at her, Lily reveals that she knew what was going on all along and who she was before, and claims that she was only pretending to be in love with Victor, waiting for the right time to strike. After mocking his sexual prowess, Victor shoots her, but she is unfazed. Victor shoots Dorian, too, to no avail, and the two debate killing him. Lily decides to spare her creator, claiming he may be useful to her in the future.
Season Three
Lily, traumatized by her abuse by men in her past life, organizes a violent crusade against men with the aide of Dorian. The two rescue a young prostitute named Justine from her murderous owners, slaughtering the men who had gathered to watch her death. They take her in, and she quickly becomes devoted to Lily's revolution.Meanwhile, Victor has become obsessed with getting Lily back, genuinely believing that the two of them could be happy together again, despite Lily's insistence that she was never happy. With the aide of his friend Dr. Jekyll, Victor devises a serum that will cure Lily of her anger and pain, and turn her demure and passive. With this, he believes, he can make her love him again.
Lily assembles an army of downtrodden women and prostitutes, indoctrinating them into her misandrist crusade and teaching them how to kill. Victor attempts to kidnap her, but he is stopped by her women. At Dorian's urging, Lily decides to free Victor. Dorian, who has been growing disillusioned with Lily's revolution, claims Victor owes him his life, and intends to collect his debt eventually.
Lily and Dorian grow apart, as she is more committed to her crusade than to him. She passionately orders her women to out and take revenge against their abusers, and are later seen dining with a platter of severed hands on the table. She goes out with Dorian, who has secretly coordinated her kidnapping with Victor and Dr. Jekyll. During their walk around London, she is chloroformed and taken to Bedlam Hospital, the site of Dr. Jekyll's laboratory.
She is incensed at Dorian's betrayal of her, and at Victor's chaining her to a chair. Victor intends to inject her with the serum, but pleads with him not to. Her violence turns to despair, and she begs Victor not to take her memories away. Tearfully, she recounts the death of her daughter years before, and implores Victor not to take away her memories of her daughter, and her grief. Victor reluctantly unchains her, and she kisses him before fleeing.
Lily returns to her and Dorian's house, to find her army disbanded and Justine dead. Dorian laments his boredom with her cause, and explains to her the drawbacks of immortality. He claims her passion will expire eventually, but Lily refuses to live a life without it. She leaves him, with Dorian claiming she'll be back eventually.
Production
The concept of a female creation by Victor Frankenstein as a mate for his first was originally presented in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. In that story, however, this second creature is destroyed before she is ever brought to life. The story is then explored in Universal Picture's 1935 film Bride of Frankenstein. In that film, Victor goes through with the reanimation of his Creature's mate, but she rejects her intended, and the two die in an explosion minutes after her rebirth.Actress Billie Piper plays a dual role in the series, first as Brona Croft, then the resurrected Lily Frankenstein. Creator John Logan has said that the character's third season arc was influenced by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's 1871 erotic vampire novella Carmilla. "But Carmilla is wildly erotic and romantic, and that's part of the vampire story, too. This season I go deeper into that idea in Lily's story because Lily has an acolyte named Justine. It's a very dark, romantic relationship between them."
Brona is Gaelic for "sadness," which is referenced on the show and the characters current state of life when the audience meets her as she battles consumption.