Alexander Ashford

Alexander Ashford was a European aristocrat and part of the legendary Ashford dynasty. His father was the great Edward Ashford, one of the co-founders of Umbrella.

Alexander came to maturity in the years leading up to Umbrella's formation and he watched his father from afar with pride as his work brought the Ashford familiy into a golden age of prosperity.
 
Alexander graduated from university majoring in bio-genetics and was quickly picked up by Umbrella in 1968. With the recent discovery of the Progenitor Virus, this was an exciting time to be joining the company. The other two company founders; James Marcus and Ozwell E. Spencer began their own independant research into the virus at the Management Training Facility and Arklay Labs respectively. Edward Ashford invited Alexander to assist him on his own secret project involving Progenitor.

However, just a few short months into the project their research entered a difficult phase and the strain proved very difficult for the ageing Edward and the rookie Alexander. An experiment went wrong and Edward was accidentally exposed to the Progenitor Virus, killing him. Alexander was devastated and the rest of the Ashford family blamed him for causing Edward's death. Ozwell E. Spencer shunned Alexander and he became a recluse, his scientific skills not advanced enough to continue Progenitor research on his own. Over time, even Alexander himself began to believe he had disgraced the honorable name of the Ashford family. He knew that with the potential the Progenitor Virus had, Spencer could use it to take total control of Umbrella and Alexander knew that his late father would not have wanted that.

With this in mind, Alexander began to plan a new secret project in which he aimed to revive his great ancestor Veronica for he believed her legendary intelligence would be enough to make the Ashford family great once more. However, he first needed to avoid the prying eyes of Spencer who, luckily for him, seemed busy focusing all his attention on keeping Marcus in check at the training facility. Just to be certain though, Alexander began to contruct a large-scale researc facility at the Ashford owned abandoned mine in the Antarctic.
By November 1969, the facility was ready and so Alexander could continue his work in complete privacy. The project he was working on was coded simply, Veronica.

The following year Alexander had his first breakthrough when he finally identified and catagorized the genetic element that determines the intelligence of man. He then took tissue samples from the mummified corpse of Veronica, recomposed the base alignment of the element and implanted it into the unfertilised egg of a surrogate mother. Alexander then added his own sperm and waited for the results.

What he didn't expect, was that nine months later twins were born. A boy and a girl. The boy had higher intelligence than normal, but not high enough for him to be considered a genius. The girl however, was an almost perfect clone of his great ancestor, Veronica. The boy was named Alfred and the girl, Alexia. Alexander was certain that Alexia would restore the great name of the Ashford lineage and his own faults as a researcher would be long forgotten.

By the age of 10, Alexia had been accepted as Chief Researcher of the Antarctic base and Alexander was able to take a back seat to proceedings and watch as his daughter continued work on the T-Virus as well as working towards a completly new type of virus strain.
As the months went by, Alexia's vision of the T-Veronica virus took shape and Alexander watched from the background with facination. The power of the T-Veronica was even greater than that of the T-Virus. As Alexander learned more about it, he secretly feared for his daughter for if the T-Veronica virus ever got out, it potentially had the power to change the face of the world. He hastily began working on a special type of weapon designed to destroy the T-Veronica cells. The end product was the Linear Launcher and it was installed in the Antarctic base. He recorded a video message offering instructions and timed it to activate if ever the self-destruct mechanism for the facility was activated.

In 1983, Alexia's brother, Alfred, discovered a secret room in the mansion which led to the inner lab facilities. It was there that he learned the secret of the Code: Veronica project and the circumstances regarding the orgins of Alexia and himself. Enraged, the twins captured Alexander and injected him with the T-Veronica virus. But his body could not cope with the virus and he mutated into a horrible monster. To prolong his suffering, the twins kept him alive and locked him away in the basement of the transport terminal. There Alexander remained for 15 long years until in 1998 he was let loose and attacked Claire Redfield and Steve Burnside. Claire managed to kill him by shooting his heart with a sniper rifle.