Walter C. Dornez

Walter C. Dornez (ウォルター・C（クム）・ドルネーズ, Worutā C. (Kumu) Dorunēzu) is a character in the Hellsing series. Walter is a former active duty member of the Hellsing Organization, and is employed as the Hellsing family's retainer. In the TV and OVA series, his voice actor is Motomu Kiyokawa, and the English dub is by Ralph Lister. Young Walter is voiced by Paku Romi.

Appearance
Walter is a tall, thin man who typically wears grey slacks, a white dress shirt with a purple tie, and a purple vest. He also wears gloves of various colors (usually black, brown or white), and tends to keep his hair in a ponytail. His eyes are grey (blue in the TV series), and he wears a monocle over his left eye. After his transformation, he dons an all black version of his usual attire with chains around the waist and pockets, and black fingerless gloves. His eyes become violet, and his pupils change in shape from round to ovular. He wears a prominent thin red hair tie, which falls when he begins regressing in age after his hastily performed vampiric surgery. His hair is also notably messier in his transformation, even when tied back. His monocle falls off when he regresses in age as well.

Personality
In his youth he appeared to be belligerent, short tempered, foul mouthed, arrogant, and almost sadistic in his love of battle, as seen when insulting and mocking The Major and gleefully slicing up the Millennium soldiers.

As an elderly man, Walter serves primarily as Integra's butler and also makes special weapons for use by Hellsing's vampires, Alucard and Seras Victoria. In his old age, he has become the perfect model of an English butler; polite, diligent, dutiful, and intelligent with a dry, ironic sense of humor and a merciless disposition toward the enemies of his master. He appears to have mellowed out a great deal externally, cutting apart his enemies with a cold precision rather than with the glee of his younger self, and delivering only ironic and dignified insults instead of simply swearing up a storm.

During his earlier years working under Arthur Hellsing it seems as though he formed an alliance with Millenium, despite saying in Hellsing The Dawn, that he would never join with them.

He appears to take great pride in being human, to the point of saying in response to Alucard's depreciation of old age that "If we cannot have our prosperity with pride, we should reject such prosperity.", but this too would be revealed to be just a part of his act. After the doctor rejuvenates him, he even states how beautiful his new body was at the same time he steps on the remains of Alexander Anderson, saying that people become trash once they are dead, and that trash should not be mourned for, showing that he views humanity and mortality to be weak and all his sentiment to the contrary were likely part of his ploy to remain above suspicion.

History
Walter has lived with the Hellsing family for perhaps his entire life. He was educated at Balliol College, Oxford (where Arthur Hellsing and Sir Hugh Irons were educated) after World War II, and studied philosophy and politics.

Hellsing: The Dawn records Walter and Alucard (in female form) storming Millennium's base during World War II in Warsaw, Poland and putting an end to their first attempt at creating an army of artificial vampires.

As a Hellsing operative
In 1999, Walter serves primarily as Integra's butler and also makes special weapons for use by Hellsing's vampires, Alucard and Seras Victoria. However, he is still one of the organization's most capable operatives, wielding high-velocity monomolecular wires with incredible skill and precision. Walter's efficiency and power was so great that he earned the nickname the "Angel of Death," and even at the age of 69, Walter can still rip his way through hordes of the undead. In the manga, he also helps Integra make numerous difficult choices that Alucard occasionally poses, such as whether or not to kill innocent humans in order to achieve mission objectives.

As Millennium's secret weapon
Walter is captured by The Captain during their invasion of England. He has gone through a similar process to The Major and the Doc's troops (although hastily conducted, according to the Doctor), and now appears thirty or so years younger, serving as Millennium's new, secret weapon. After Alucard dispatches Anderson, Walter confronts his former comrades. Leaping from one of Alucard's stakes and slicing apart two skyscrapers, he lands on what was left of Alexander Andersons head and crushes it underfoot, saying that people become trash once they are dead and as such should not be mourned for. When questioned by a distraught Seras on what has happened to him, he explains that he has turned against Hellsing of his own free will for his own purposes. When Integra demands an explanation for Walter's betrayal, he does not provide one, and simply demands that she no longer address him as Walter. In the midst of this conversation, Yumie, enraged by Walter's desecration of Father Anderson's remains, attacks him. However, Walter slices her apart without even moving.



As the British military finally begins to get a handle on Millennium's attacks on their bases, Sir Hugh Irons, the acting leader of the Convention of Twelve, comes to the conclusion that Walter had in fact been betraying his superiors for quite some time, even before the second coming of Millennium and possibly even since World War II. He mentions that he foresaw Richard Hellsing's attempted coup of the Hellsing Organization and also Richard's assassination attempt on Integra. In light of his suspicious about Richard, he specifically warned Walter to keep a close eye on both him and Integra. Yet despite his warning, Walter was nowhere to be found on the day of the coup. Therefore it is suggested that Alucard's awakening was also orchestrated by Walter; his convenient absence left Integra with no other choice but to release Alucard, whom Arthur Hellsing (Integra's father) had purposefully sealed away, thinking him to be too dangerous to use as a weapon. Other bits of evidence suggesting that Walter is a traitor may include the Valentine brothers' mysterious knowledge of the location and layout of the Hellsing mansion, and the omission of the fight scene between Walter and his apparent rival, the Captain. Alucard then states his belief that Walter's new body is nowhere near as beautiful as his old one, addressing him as Shinigami. He then asks him if this transformation of his was undergone with the desire to become "a Shinigami (angel of death) in body, mind, and soul", and Walter confirms this. Integra then reluctantly but resolutely orders Alucard to kill him. Integra and Seras then leave to go after the Major, but Seras hesitates for a moment and addresses Walter. She sadly thanks Walter for everything he has done for her and tells him to take care. Though initially taken aback by Seras's unexpected goodwill, Walter dons a small smile and tells her to take care as well. As Integra and Seras leave, Alucard teases Walter about being the only servant to his mistress Integra and having a servant of his own Seras, and that the love of neither can be Walter's again. Alucard and Walter then charge at each other amidst a flurry of bats. Alucard reaches out to grab Walter's face, but Walter easily catches Alucard's arm before it can reach him and severs it with his wires. As Alucard begins to regenerate his arm, Walter snakes his wires around one of Alucard's legs, and then tosses him through a building, remarking that as per Alucard's own words, a truly immortal being does not exist, and that includes Alucard himself. Alucard then attempts to shoot Walter with the Casull (the Jackel in the OVAs), but Walter deflects the bullets with square, mesh-like barriers formed from his wires. Alucard then summons his hell hound, which Walter calls the hound of Baskerville, before he slices it in two. Finally, Alucard aims the Jackal at Walter, but it explodes and maims his remaining hand. Walter then mocks him about the destruction of the weapon, reminding him that he was the one who created the gun. Doc is shown holding his remote control, which has a button marked "JACKAL". This confirms that Walter's betrayal occurred before the beginning of the manga storyline, since Walter gave the Jackal to Alucard in volume 2.

In the midst of this, Luke Valentine somehow emerges from the remains of Alucard's hound. Walter, using his wires like puppet strings, gains control of both Alucard's dispatched dog and Luke Valentine and uses them to attack Alucard. As Alucard deals with this new problem, Walter begins to tremble, and it is revealed that his body is beginning to weaken. As the dog continues to attack, Walter coughs up a bit of blood and collapses to the ground. The scene then cuts to the major and Doc, who reveals that Walter's problems are the result of the fact that his vampirization surgery was rushed. Walter, desperate to finish his fight with Alucard, composes himself as Alcuard finally dispatches Luke and the dog. Walter then summons up the last vestiges of his strength and uses his wires to sever Alucard's arms and legs, to cut his torso in half, and suspend the upper half helplessly in the air. Walter is left shaking and panting from the exertion of slicing Alucard apart in his deteriorating condition, which appears to have caused him to regress in age from his early thirties to his early twenties. He collapses to the ground after his hair tie and monocle fall off, but remains determined to finish off his opponent. Muttering about how Alucard will not die until his heart is destroyed, Walter breaks a piece of rebar piping off of a concrete slab and staggers over to Alucard. Plunging it into the heart of the suspended torso, Walter quickly discovers that what he had thought was Alucard's body was in fact the disguised remains of Luke Valentine. As he backs away in shock, Alucard appears behind Walter, commenting on how, though he had thought he was out of tricks, Luke had proven useful for something after all. Alucard then punches Walter, who collapses a short distance away. Walter's rushed surgery, combined with the damage from Alucard's punch, causes his flawed regenerative abilities to regress his age even further, until he appears as a fourteen year old child. Alucard, seeing Walter's regression, appears in the form of the same young girl that he used in 1944 for the sake of irony. Alucard goes on to present what he believes is the reason for Walter's betrayal; his fear of becoming old and useless. To prove his abilities to himself, Walter desired to destroy Alucard, and allowed this obsession to consume him.

Alucard then begins absorbing the blood of all of London's deceased civilians and combatants, mocking Walter all the while. Off in the distance, Schrödinger commits suicide and falls into the river of blood traveling to Alucard. Walter, determined to at least see the fight through to the end, begs the Major for more time to defeat Alucard before the Major enacts his final plan. However, the Major states that it's too late for even him to stop his plan as Walter launches one final attack on Alucard, slicing him in half from head to groin. However Alucard, with the blood of the millions of dead in London replacing the souls that Anderson had destroyed, simply flows back together. The Major then explains to Walter that, despite his skill, his window of opportunity to kill Alucard had come and gone. With the millions of souls he has absorbed from London, Alucard has regained his ability to regenerate virtually without end, and Walter can no longer harm him in any meaningful way. The Major goes on to say that, because Walter gambled everything he had on this one attempt to kill Alucard, his failure to do so has drained his existence of both value and meaning. Walter seems to take this to heart, as he stops his attack on Alucard. Alucard then grabs Walter's shirt collar and mocks both him and Anderson for their respective failures as Walter simply stands there with a blank expression. However, shortly thereafter, Alucard unwittingly absorbs Schrödinger's essence, and is phased out of reality.

After witnessing Alucard's defeat and disappearance, Walter is left alone on the battlefield, with his transformation eating away at his body. As he stands there, he grabs Alucard's necktie as a gust of wind carries it by, and laughs in artificial triumph over Alucard's defeat. As he laughs, he coughs up a bit more blood, and despairingly realizes that killing Alucard was not worth everything that he had sacrificed. Shortly after, he's sniped through the abdomen by Heinkel Wolfe from the rubble a few hundred feet away in retaliation for the death of Yumie. Walter does not seem to care however, and tells Heinkel to keep shooting him. She gladly obliges and shoots him multiple times, including a hit through his left eye and out the back of his head. She quickly runs out of ammunition for her rifle and charges at Walter head on with a pistol. At this point, Walter seems to have a change of heart, as he tells her that he can shoot him, but she will not be the one to kill him. After casually depriving her of an arm and a leg, Walter walks a short distance, bleeding profusely, and sends two strands of his wires into the grounded Millennium zeppelin, stating that he must reach "him". Walter is later seen in Doc's lab sitting on the floor with his left eye regenerated. Doc, who has come to his lab in order to gather his research materials and escape, is revealed to have been the person that Walter was so desperate to reach. Walter tells Doc he doesn't know when to give up and that he, and everything he's created, is good-for-nothing; he includes himself in that statement.

He goes on to categorize all of Millennium's actions as part of the cheap comedy that the evening has become, mentioning that he had simply hoped to do something with his proverbial time on the stage that was worth applauding. He tries to stand, but his right arm dissolves as he uses it to push himself up. He mentions that it appears that Alucard was right about his new body, and says in a tired and mildly amused way that he appears to be coming to a horrible end. Doc then rants on about how his research will some day lead him to surpass even Alucard, but Walter simply tells him that, since he is about to die, none of what he has said will come to pass. Doc then tries to kill Walter with his remote, but Walter simply slices off the arm with the remote, and one of Doc's legs for a good measure. Doc falls, but in mid-fall he tears off the curtain covering the SHI and it unveils the skeleton of Mina Harker. Walter then reasons out that those remains have been the basis for all of Doc's work, explaining that because Alucard (Dracula), was not killed, Mina was not cured of Alucard's curse, and a part of Alucard existed inside her. Mina was exhumed by the Doc, and researched until her remains were nothing but a ruin. Walter then tells Doc that all he has ever done was to bootleg copies of Alucard's imitation (Mina), reinforcing his position that Doc and all of his work are but a cheap comedy. The flames of the burning zeppelin engulf Mina's corpse, and Walter then slices apart a steel support beam situated over Doc's head, which falls and fatally crushes his head and torso. Walter then reflects good spiritedly on how much he wanted to defeat Alucard and lights a cigarette. He closes his eyes and bids farewell to Integra as an image of his aged human body is depicted, smiling and relaxed. He drops his cigarette and is engulfed by the fires of the zeppelin. His passing is sensed by Integra and Seras, the former shouting out for him as he dies. He is momentarily grieved for by both, and then they leave the zeppelin as it finally burns down to it's framework. Thirty years later, Integra comments to Seras about how her aging reflection reminded her rather humorously of Walter, and neither of them appeared to hold any animosity towards him for his actions.

Powers and Abilities
Despite being a human, Walter possesses exceptional combat prowess, on par with or exceeding many supernatural beings. During the initial Millennium assault on Hellsing, he dispatched a large force of ghouls with almost inoculate ease and confidently engaged an artificial vampire. He also appears to be very physically durable, as can be seen when he engages The Captain in The Dawn. As a fourteen year old boy, he was able to withstand multiple punches from The Captain despite the fact that the Captain was under orders to kill him. He was also able to endure a short amount of time with the Captain attempting to strangle him with both hands before Alucard intervened. Additionally, he somehow managed to survive a fall from an Allied bomber without a parachute, a fall that he was evidently completely confident of enduring with no physical detriments, as his lack of a parachute was intentional. As such, it is possible that Walter had some sort of artificial physical enhancement as a human, as the Captain was known to have sufficient strength to easily rip through metal, and no ordinary human could have survived a fall from multiple thousands of feet in the air. Given the skill that Walter demonstrated as a human, he could have simply been born (hinted by Arthur Hellsing) with such durability or trained himself to gain it. It is also possible that The Captain was more powerful during the London incident due to having aged, however, as a human Walter's wires had the same effect on him in 1944 as in 1999; this appears unlikely. It's also possible that Walter was a manufactured super-soldier that the Hellsing Organization was allowed to make use of. However, none of these theories have been confirmed, and the origin of Walter's abilities remains unknown. His speed and agility were great enough as a human that, even at nearly seventy years of age, he was able to dodge a barrage of bullets from multiple assault rifles at close range and in the tight quarters of a manor hallway. He was also able to easily outmatch the reflexes of an entire squad of vampirized soldiers, as he cut an entire group of them apart during a betrayal by one of Penwood's subordinates during the beginning of the Zeppelin incident. His strength was also remarkable; as a fourteen year old boy, he was capable of briefly flooring the Captain with a headbut to the face during their confrontation in Warsaw in 1944, a blow that was also strong enough to draw blood. His accuracy and dexterity were also highly developed, as he could control his wires with pinpoint accuracy, and at one during the WWII assault on Millennium he casually kicked a butter knife off of a table and at the Major's head, which would have struck him blade-first and presumably fatally had the Captain not caught it.

Walter's primary weapons are a set of very long razor wires, which he controls as if they where extensions of his own body. The wires are sharp enough to slice through steel and concrete with no trouble, he can use them to bind and restrain targets without damaging them. He can also use the wires to impale subjects and control them like marionettes. The wires themselves can be used to attack from virtually any angle, and seem to hover around Walter himself in an omnidirectional manner during combat. He is able to cause drastic shifts in their positions with extremely small movements, and in a few cases has been seen to manipulate them without any movement at all. The wires move much more quickly than even Walter himself does, and are extremely hard to see. The upper limit of the wires's lengths was never demonstrated during the series, but, at their longest, the wires were shown to span at least the width of a typical skyscraper and reach at an angle from the ground to the middle of the Deus Ex Machina zeppelin. The limit to the number of wires Walter can summon is also not known. Walter was shown at one point to create mesh screens out of the wires to block bullets from Alucard, and each screen appeared to contain hundreds of individual threads. However, it is not clear whether or not these threads were individual strands of wire, or simply a few long wires that had been woven around each other a multitude of times. As a human, Walter appeared to draw the wires either from or through the material of the gloves he constantly wore, and the wires appeared to originate from both his fingertips and from the bases of his fingers. As Dark Walter, he traded in his fingered gloves for a pair of fingerless ones with what appeared to be metal bands encompassing the bases of his fingers. The wires were seen to protrude from these metal bands, but the wires also appeared in many instances to protrude from the skin of Walter's bare fingertips. The only time Walter was ever seen to directly generate the wires, he very clearly pulled a set of them out of several ungloved portions of his hands including the fingertips, and out of both the metal rings around the bases of his fingers and the palms of his hands. As such, neither the exact nature nor the source of the wires is entirely clear, nor is their method of control.

When turned into an artificial vampire by Millennium, his body was restored to it's physical prime, and he gained vast augmentations to all of his physical capabilities. His abilities were such that he completely outmatched Alucard's black, jump-suited form during their brief confrontation in London, forcing Alucard to resort to trickery in order to gain the upper hand. It should also be noted that Walter managed all this despite the fact that his vampiric body was deteriorating throughout his entire fight with Alucard. His vampiric body also appears to have had an unusual amount of resistance to typical vampiric weaknesses, even despite the fact that his body was in a state of advanced deterioration during the time these abilities were demonstrated. He was seen standing in direct sunlight as the dawn rose on Millennium's night of carnage, and was also seen taking several bullets from an Iscariot sniper rifle, including one to the head. It is not known for certain if these bullets were either silver or blessed. However, considering the fact that Iscariot had come to London with the expressed intention of killing vampirized Nazis, and the fact that the bullets from their handguns were seen to kill these vampires while ordinary bullets did them virtually no harm, it is extremely likely that the bullets that struck Walter had anti-vamipre properties of one kind or another.

Name
Walter's middle initial, C., is pronounced in full in the OVA series as "クム" (kumu). "クム" also accompanies the "C" as furigana in chapter 74, Relics. This is the Japanese translation of the Latin word cum, meaning "with". There is some dispute over the correct romanization of his surname, with the most common variants being Dorne, Dornez, Dornes, Dolnez, and Dollneaz. The back cover of the original Japanese version of Volume 4 in which Walter's name is written with an added "D" and "Z" as "Walter Cum Ddollneazz." The American release of manga Volume 2 by Dark Horse finally reveals the correct spelling of his name as "Walter C. Dornez". In the ending credits of Hellsing: Ultimate X, his name is written as "Walter C. Dollneaz".

Trivia

 * Walter's prototype is in Daidoujin Monogatari along with Heinkel Wolfe.
 * He is among the few major characters to appear in all three the Anime, Manga, and OVA series. The others include Alucard, Integra, Seras, Luke Valentine, Jan Valentine, Alexander Anderson, and Enrico Maxwell.
 * His nickname in the English dub "The Angel of Death" may be a reference to the the Nazi Doctor Josef Mengele who was also known as the "Angel of Death".

Quotes sources from wikiquotes {Hellsing Ultimate}

 * "Oh dear, I missed...I guess I'm not as spry as I used to be. My name is Walter Dornez, butler to the Hellsing family and former master vampire hunter."
 * "Miss Integra, back the car up and find another way around."