NAME: Adrian Veidt
AGE: 47
ORIGIN: New York, 1986
ALIAS: Ozymandias, Smartest Man in the World
OCCUPATION: superhero, Veidt Enterprises a.k.a everything ever
ASPIRE: to be greater than Alexander the Great

CANON POINT: The end, as he rebuilds New York.

ABILITIES: Veidt has superior mental capabilities. He can divide his attention among various inputs while still keeping alert for people sneaking up behind him. He has trained himself to reach the pinnacle of what is humanly possible. He is fast enough to catch a bullet, but not always, and strong enough to throw The Comedian through plate glass. He is a highly-skilled martial artist and has performed excellent acrobatics for charity.

LOSS: His "boys" folder His ability to keep pets. Adrian prefers keeping the company of animals and nature, perhaps because he finds it more bearable to be unable to relate to them than to humans, who are too similar and also too different from him. He could impute on Bubastis such marvelous intelligence for a beast, whether or not it is true, and so she made the perfect companion. In the castle, he will be unable to keep pets, which include non-humanoid creatures who are unable to speak, because talking ponies are people too, yes. His potential pets will either flee or mysteriously die in less than a day, sob. This will be good to get more CR out of him and allow him to show his more humane side.

PERSONALITY: Adrian Veidt is the American Dream personified. Picture Warren Buffett in his heyday with David Bowie's good looks, Stephen Hawking's brain and Bono's penchant for social service, then make him a superhero credited with exposing a number of organized crimes. Also remember that he is an immigrant, who gave away all his inheritance to charity and then built his empire from nothing. He is the one who made it in America. Envy dictates that he should be despised for his success, but Veidt is a gentleman in person, a pacifist and a vegetarian prone to doling out coke jokes and self-deprecating remarks as if to brush aside the halo of perfection that surrounds him.

"I never claimed to be anything. I just have overenthusiastic P.R. men."
He is Rorschach's opposite, where the vigilante refuses to compromise, Veidt's persona is made of compromises. He conformed to the other students when his intelligence set him apart, he hides his German heritage to please the public and, foreseeing the public's growing discontent over the masked vigilantes, accordingly revealed his identity to win their trust two years before it would be required of him by the Keene Act. He sold out on the superhero genre and made himself rich and comfortable, a solution that Rorschach would never consider. But they are similar on one point: their dedication to saving the world. Veidt aims to please only if it benefits the final outcome.

He places great worth on personal liberty and effort, that people choose whoever they want to be and everyone is destined for greatness. He even entertained the idea that he was the one who chose to be intelligent, instead of being granted extraordinary genes. He takes great pride in his wealth, reputation, physical prowess and power because he earned them with his own effort. Even his looks are due to impeccable grooming. The world is a meritocracy and he has earned the right to be a narcissist. Still he thirsts for greater conquests, having vowed to measure his achievements against that of Alexander the Great, and as such it is the impossible that challenge him, like creating his genetically-altered lynx Bubastis, supplying the whole world with free energy and saving the world from itself.

"The ancient world's greatest puzzle was [in Gordium], a knot that couldn't be untied. Alexander cut it in two with his sword. Lateral thinking, you see. Centuries ahead of his time."
The media dubs him the smartest man in the world (though he would prefer being named the world's best-groomed man) but he admits to feeling stupid for his inability to relate to the people around him. Despite all his charms and his extensive network of powerful people, Adrian has always been alone. His only friend was his silent companion, the great cat Bubastis, after which came civil acquaintances like Dan Dreiberg and Jon Osterman, but no more. He keeps himself so tightly packed inside and views the world a step removed from it. This has allowed him to see things in the bigger picture, a perspective he touts, and find overarching solutions to the world's problems, to solve the Gordian knot. In one of their earlier meetings, Dr. Manhattan described him as "sad and knowing." Adrian is among the few acutely aware of the real danger of human extinction due to nuclear holocaust.

"The Soviets have 51,000 warheads stockpiled. Even if Jon stops 99 percent of them, the 1 percent that get through could still kill every living thing on Earth. Even Dr. Manhattan can't be everywhere at once."
But the ultimate epiphany came during the meeting with the other Watchmen. The Comedian's grand exit made him realize the futility of battling crime syndicates when a greater enemy threatens all peoples, good and evil. He also realized he was the only one who could, would, do anything to stop it. The Comedian is content with laughing at the rest of the world, Nite Owl II too busy with his heroics while Dr. Manhattan continues to drift away from humanity. Rorschach is insane. The knowledge and the responsibility weighed on his morality, but the worst he could do at that point was to drag his feet and feign ignorance. So he set to work, planning the greatest practical joke in all of human history. Such work takes a toll on one's soul and Adrian has grown all the more bitter from it.

"The world will survive. And it deserves more than you've been able to provide."
Still, his ruthlessness is unflagging and his altruism isn't only for show. He of all people understands best the value of human life, its history and its future. He earnestly believes in the endless potential contained in each person, and so, the destruction of all human race, all traces of civilization is an unbearably terrifying thought for him. If he could save but a handful of people from nuclear apocalypse by sacrificing the rest of them, he still might, even if that handful doesn't include him (although, for the sake of the world, it should).

Adrian is extremely rational, weighing decisions by measuring gains and losses, though he holds the betterment of society as the ultimate goal. Practical and utilitarian, he is not so sentimental as to resort to Dreiberg's "schoolboy heroics" and he is too practical to commit to a non-compromising worldview like Rorschach, but he would give all he has and more if he is convinced it could save the world from itself. Yes, he did not sacrifice his life like one-fifth of the world's population, but he has dedicated most of his adult life to attaining peace on Earth. And now he will let the guilt haunt him for the rest of it, bearing burdens that most could not and would not carry.

"I've made myself feel every death, see every innocent face I've murdered to save humanity. You understand, don't you?"
He could have been the perfect hero, with all his talents and his heart in exactly the right place. But he lives in an imperfect world made of a great big joke, so he must deal accordingly. Still he admits, "I don't mind being the smartest man in the world. I just wish it wasn't this one."

TIDBITS:
» Became a world chess champion in 1982 by breaking José Raúl Capablanca's record by playing 197 opponents and winning all of them. He also played and won against Garry Kasparov.
» Veidt Enterprises dabbles in arcade games, perfumes, music networks, hairspray, airlines, self-help books and action figures, electricity, scientific research, sporting goods, properties and developments, among others.
» Auctioned one of his Ozymandias costumes for the benefit of Impoverished Inner City Children. He is known for his charity galas, such as the one for African Famine Relief.
» Has made the cover of The New Yorker, TIME, Forbes, The Economist and Nova Express, which he owns.
» Said he can buy and sell Lee Iacocca and friends three times over. In 1999, Forbes said Iacocca is worth $7 billion or $4.6 billion in 1986 due to inflation, which means Veidt is privately worth at least $14 billion in 1986 or $27 billion in today's terms. (I'm a dork)
» He uses a black Macintosh SE/30, more specifically a Tempest SE/30 model CSI-1891T, running the original Macintosh Operating System in inverted video mode.

NOTES: Adrian is 95 percent movie-verse because of reasons I'm happy to discuss over AIM or Plurk. The other 5 percent is some backstory that isn't mentioned in the movie but hinted at, e.g. the African Famine Fund he runs, etc.