Fah Lo Suee

Fah Lo Suee
	;
Real Name	Fah Lo Suee
Aliases	Lady of the Si-Fan, Madame Ingomar
First Appearance	The Hand of Fu Manchu (1917)
Original Publisher	Cassell & Co.
Created by	Sax Rohmer

Origin[]

Fah Lo Suee is the daughter of Dr. Fu Manchu and an unnamed Russian woman. As part of the Si-Fan organization, she embodies a duality that makes her an intriguing figure: at times, she serves as a loyal ally to her father's goals, showcasing her loyalty and capability within the intricate world of espionage and subterfuge.

After Fu Manchu fell from grace within the Sublime Order, becoming an enemy of his rival Ki-Ming, the latter attempted to seize control of the Si-Fan. However, Fu Manchu regained his position with the help of his daughter. Fu Manchu and his daughter attended a Si-Fan meeting attended by the Council of Seven in England, where the daughter was officially introduced to the Si-Fan. The meeting was witnessed by Dr. Petrie. When the building was stormed, Fu Manchu and his daughter managed to skillfully escape. Like her father, she takes on aliases, among them Lady of the Si-Fan and Madame Ingomar.

In The Insidious Dr. Fu-Manchu, Dr. Petrie describes her:

The dark eyes of Kâramaneh were wonderful and beautiful, the eyes of Dr. Fu-Manchu sinister and wholly unforgettable; but the eyes of this woman were incredible. Their glance was all but insupportable; the were the eyes of a Medusa!

Since I had met; in the not distant past, the soft gaze of Ki-Ming, the mandarin whose phenomenal hypnotic powers rendered him capable of transcending the achievements of the celebrated Cagliostro, I knew much of the power of the human eye. But these were unlike any human eyes I had ever known.

Long, almond-shaped, bordered by heavy jet-black lashes, arched over by finely penciled brows, their strange brilliancy, as of a fire within, was utterly uncanny. They were the eyes of some beautiful wild creature rather than those of a woman.

Their possessor had now thrown back her motor-veil, revealing a face Orientally dark and perfectly oval, with a clustering mass of dull gold hair, small, aquiline nose and full, red lips. Her weird eyes met mine for an instant, and then the long lashes drooped quickly, as she leant back against the cushions, with a graceful languor suggestive of the East rather than of the West.

Her long coat had fallen partly open, and I saw, with surprise, that it was lined with leopard-skin. One hand was ungloved, and lay on the arm-rest—a slim hand of the hue of old ivory, with a strange, ancient ring upon the index finger.

Public Domain Appearances[]

All published appearances of Fah Lo Suee from before January 1, 1931 are public domain in the US.

Public Domain Literary Appearances[]

The Hand of Fu Manchu (1917) (also known as The Si-Fan Mysteries)
Daughter of Fu Manchu (1930) (original title: Fu Manchu's Daughter)
- Serialized in twelve parts, in the March 8 and May 24, 1930 issues of Collier's.

Public Domain Comic Appearances[]

Gallery[]

Notes[]

Only in Daughter of Fu Manchu (1930), originally serialized as Fu Manchu's Daughter in Collier’s magazine between March 8 and May 24, 1930, and later published as a book in 1931, she is called Fah Lo Suee (Sweet Perfume), probably an invention to evoke exoticism and does not correspond to any authentic construction of the official Chinese language.
- However, a possible adaptation would be 芬芳露雪 (Fēn Fāng Lù Xuě), which can be translated as "sweet fragance like snow at dawn". Fāng, which means "fragrance", is usually transliterated as Fa in old or Cantonese-based romanizations, as seen in Fa Mulan (花木蘭), an elegant and plausible in-universe explanation would be to say that Fah Lo Suee is, in fact, the result of an imprecise or Westernized transliteration of the character's real Chinese name.
- On Wikipedia, the character's name is 花露水 (Huālùshuǐ), literally meaning "flower and dew water," which also refers to a type of light perfume or cologne, a definition found on Wiktionary, additionally, in the same entry on Wiktionary, the name is transliterated in Cantonese (Jyutping) as faa1 lou6 seoi2, which is phonetically closer to "Fah Lo Suee."
The character featured in cinema and comic strips and comic books alongside her father, sometimes using other names, and she has also become an archetype of the Dragon Lady.
Interestingly, her name was changed for a film, she was called Princess Ling Moy in Daughter of the Dragon (1931) and Lin Tang in five films between 1966 and 1969. Some sources suggest that Paramount sought to capitalize on the Fu Manchu franchise in the 1931 film but did not obtain the rights to Daughter of Fu Manchu, which explains the use of a different character name.
In 1932, in the MGM film The Mask of Fu Manchu, Myrna Loy portrayed Fah Lo See, a name that differs slightly from the original spelling of Fu Manchu’s daughter.