14. Samara

The Asari Justicar Samara is one of the most tragic figures in Mass Effect. She spends hundreds of years searching the galaxy for her daughter Morinth, who was born with a genetic condition that would kill anyone she mated with. As she hunts down her daughter, believing her to be an irredeemable killer drawn to the ecstasy she gets from manipulating and then discarding her prey, she also finds respect and pride for how her daughter fought for her freedom. It’s a multifaceted issue, of course, but Samara is bound by a Justicar code that demands she go to the ends of the galaxy to find and kill her own daughter.

It’s only natural that she would still feel all the nuance in between her code. There’s something compelling about a character who is more or less “trapped” within the boundaries of a code they’ve sworn an oath to, but what was most compelling to me was how, in Mass Effect 3, she decided she would choose death over following it if it meant she must kill the last of her daughters afflicted by the same condition. Though there are ways to stop it, I am still enamored by how even after two games of expressing her devotion to the Justicar code, the woman underneath it still shines through.