Irene Adler
The King describes her as "a well-known adventuress" (a term widely used at the time in ambiguous association with "courtesan"[5][6]) who has "the face of the most beautiful of women and the mind of the most resolute of men."
The events of the story unfolds when the King seeks out Holmes' skills to retrieve the photograph from Adler after multiple attempts have proved fruitless.
[16][1] Several authors have argued that Adler’s nonconformity is what leads to her victory over Holmes, as he makes deductions based on societal norms that she does not adhere to.
In two novels by John Lescroart published in 1986 and 1987, it is stated that Adler and Holmes had a son, Auguste Lupa, and it is implied that he later changes his name to Nero Wolfe.
In the 2009 novel The Language of Bees by Laurie R. King, it is stated Adler is deceased when the book takes place and once had an affair with Sherlock Holmes.
Destiny's connection to Sherlock Holmes stories had long being teased through her lover Mystique's past as a consulting detective, as both women were active in the late 19th century.
[20] In the 2016 manga series Moriarty the Patriot, Irene Adler (アイリーンアドラー, Airīn'adorā) is featured as an expert cross-dresser and spy who impersonates the King of Bohemia to trick Sherlock Holmes and John Watson into taking her on as a roommate without pay.
Later, the Moriarty brothers help her to fake her death to escape being assassinated, and she begins working for Mycroft Holmes and the British government under the guise of James Bonde (ジェームズ・ボンド, Jēmuzu Bondo).
[24] Sarah Badel portrayed Adler in the 7 November 1990 BBC Radio 4 broadcast of "A Scandal in Bohemia" opposite Clive Merrison's Holmes.
The show's book was by Jerome Coopersmith and the music and lyrics were by Marian Grudeff and Raymond Jessel; the production was directed by Harold Prince.
In the 1984 Granada Television series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes starring Jeremy Brett, the first episode is "A Scandal in Bohemia", in which Adler is played by Gayle Hunnicutt.
In "A Scandal in Belgravia", the first episode of the 2012 second series of the BBC Sherlock, Adler was portrayed by Lara Pulver opposite Benedict Cumberbatch as Holmes.
In the CBS series, Elementary, Adler is initially an unseen character in the first season, mentioned first in "Flight Risk" (2012) as a former love interest of Holmes.
It is later explained that she apparently died at the hands of a serial killer Holmes was investigating known as "M", an event that fuelled Sherlock's descent into heroin addiction.
[27] In the anime television series Moriarty the Patriot, Adler is voiced by Yōko Hikasa, taking on the male guise of James Bonde to work as a spy.
Adler is featured in Soviet director Igor Maslennikov's made-for-TV 5-part film series The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson.
She appears in the fourth part, The Treasures of Agra (1983), based upon The Sign of the Four (main storyline) and A Scandal in Bohemia (flashback), in which Holmes and Watson, while waiting for the new information on his current case, remember their encounter with Adler (played by Larisa Solovyova).
In the 1984 made-for-TV film The Masks of Death, a widowed Adler, played by Anne Baxter, is a guest at Graf Udo Von Felseck (Anton Diffring)'s country house where Holmes (Peter Cushing) and Watson (John Mills) are investigating the supposed disappearance of a visiting prince.
Liliana Komorowska portrayed Adler as a Polish opera singer in The Hallmark Channel's 2001 made-for-TV film The Royal Scandal opposite Matt Frewer's Holmes.
In an episode of the PBS Kids show Wishbone, actress Sally Nystuen Vahle portrays Adler for the adaptation of "A Scandal in Bohemia" entitled "A Dogged Espose" (1995).
In the season five episode of The Flash entitled "Goldfaced" (2019), detective Sherloque Wells meets Renee Adler (portrayed by Kimberly Williams-Paisley), the Earth-1 doppelgänger of his five ex-wives.
Although Alder is uncharacteristically independent, at the end of “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Holmes still comes to “acquire” her in the form of a photo, following the anti-feminist view of women as objects.
One notable proponent of this idea is Steven Moffat, creator of A Scandal in Belgravia who claims "In the original, Irene Adler's victory over Sherlock Holmes was to move house and run away with her husband.
"[33]As such, modern reinventions of Adler almost always attempt a "post-feminist metamorphosis" by providing her autonomy over her body where she can maneuver her sexuality to exert control over the male-centered narrative.
[31] Through a liberal feminist lens, Adler's sexualized role names and confronts the power of men to the male audience in order to defy the patriarchal structure.
By "sex-ing" up her character, postmodern adaptations "failed to re-appropriate [Adler] from its Victorian original by falling back on dominant masculine discourses.
As opposed to the autonomous agency of Doyle's version, Adler is an agent of Professor Moriarty and obeys his instructions without any independent arc of her own, functioning as a pawn and an intellectual inferior compared to her male counterparts.
Her phone, the sensitive information stored within it, both protects and endangers Irene's body... its loss exposing her to physical harm"[36] and that between Sherlock, Moriarty or Mycroft Holmes, all three men have more power and resources to force Adler to be compliant in order to survive.
In the essay "Postfeminism and Screen Adaptations of Sherlock Holmes Stories: The Case of Irene Adler", Antonija Primorac observes, By the end of the episode, the dangerously sexual female nude body of the metropolitan center is displaced into a Pakistani desert and transformed into a kneeling powerless bundle of indigo-blue wraps that set off her tear-sodden face.
In a stereotypically Victorian fashion that does not feature in Doyle's text, Adler's use of her own body as a means of power turns her into a fallen woman who has to be punished, banished to the former colonial space and saved by the hero.
