Brought up in the cloistered world of Jordan College, Oxford, she finds herself embroiled in a cosmic war between Lord Asriel on one side, and a deity figure known as The Authority and his Regent, Metatron, on the other.
Lyra Belacqua, aged around eleven at the beginning of the trilogy, is the daughter of Lord Asriel and Marisa Coulter in a fictional Oxford, similar to our own.
She has been raised believing that her parents died in an airship crash, and that Lord Asriel is her uncle; she later learns the truth from John Faa, leader of the Gyptians.
Her closest friend among the other children is a Jordan kitchen boy named Roger Parslow, who disappears early in Northern Lights.
[1] Lyra's surname, Belacqua, is the name of a character in Dante's Divine Comedy, a soul in the ante-purgatory, representing those who wait until the last opportunity before turning to God.
At the end of the trilogy, as Lyra is entering adulthood, Pantalaimon finds his final form when Will Parry touches him, and is later described as a beautiful pine marten, red-gold in colour with a "patch of cream-white fur"[4] on his throat.
In the first novel of His Dark Materials, Northern Lights (known in US and some other countries as The Golden Compass), Serafina Pekkala tells of the prophecy of a girl who is "destined to bring about the end of destiny".
Despite this, they decide to sit on the same bench each year for an hour at noon on Midsummer's Day, in the Botanic Gardens in their separate Oxfords – so that they might feel themselves to be in each other's presence.
In the most recent edition of The Amber Spyglass released in the UK, the post-script "Lantern Slides" section shows Lyra studying the alethiometer (a rare truth-telling device) with Pantalaimon at age 18.
[8] British singer/songwriter Kate Bush wrote and recorded a song, "Lyra", for the film which features choristers from Magdalen College School in Oxford.