Lord Asriel

Asriel is giving a Lecture to the Fellows of Jordan College hoping to raise money for an expedition.

He travels to Svalbard but is imprisoned and guarded by the bear warriors known as the panserbjørne, led by Iofur Raknison.

He is hoping to open a window in the aurora using the energy generated by the intercision in order to travel into a different universe.

Later, he has his allies, King Ogunwe and Lord Roke, find and rescue Lyra from Mrs Coulter.

Lord Asriel then attends to Mrs Coulter and tries to influence Lyra and Will, as they hold the key to renewing the Dust flow.

They learn that the Church has made a bomb to kill Lyra, and Lord Asriel rescues Mrs Coulter just in time.

When Lord Asriel finds that the bomb has blown a hole under all the worlds into the abyss, he devises a plan to defeat the Authority's powerful Regent, Metatron.

As his forces fight the armies of the Authority and the Church, Mrs Coulter tricks Metatron into trying to kill Lord Asriel and to take Lyra's dæmon.

Lyra agrees, but escapes when she discovers Mrs Coulter's intentions for the stolen children, as the head of the Oblation Board.

She and Asriel join forces to defeat Metatron, the powerful regent of the Authority, simply to give Lyra, their child, a chance to live.

From December 2003 to March 2004, London's Royal National Theatre staged an adaptation of His Dark Materials in which Lord Asriel was played by Timothy Dalton.

Daniel Craig as Lord Asriel in the film The Golden Compass .