Early Life[]

Lorelei is the younger sister of the sorceress Amora the Enchantress. The two sisters share an interest in using their beauty and wiles to dominate any male that either desires. However, unlike Amora, Lorelei has had no interest in mastering sorcery, apart from learning certain skills to aid her in her amatory pursuits. Both sisters are natives of Asgard.^[5]

Thor[]

Loki witnessed a group of Asgardian warriors engaged in a forbidden Troll hunt. The Troll is hiding when it sees Lorelei offering to help hide it but when she gets close, she grabs it and hoists it up winning the hunt. Loki invites her back to his castle and she agrees.^[6] Loki chose Lorelei to seduce his longtime enemy, his stepbrother Thor, god of thunder. Lorelei, who was strongly physically attracted to Thor, needed no persuasion to agree to Loki's scheme. Lady Sif was strolling through the garden when she witnessed Thor and Lorelei lying together kissing. Sif stormed up and strikes them both to the ground, then storms off telling them they deserve each other. Lorelei tells him that if she knew it was that dangerous, she might not have taken part in the jest. Thor morphs into Loki and tells her that Sif will leave and that she will succeed where her sister, the Enchantress, has always failed.^[7] When Beta Ray Bill was brought to Asgard, she found the alien repulsive.^[8] Lorelei asked Loki what he is getting out of their game, to which Loki replies that it will amuse him.^[9]

Lorelei prepared a love potion which, if Thor drank it, would cause him to fall madly in love with the first woman he saw. Loki hoped that Thor's passion for Lorelei would distract him from interfering in Loki's schemes for gaining power. Thor had not seen Lorelei since she was a child, and so would not recognize the adult Lorelei. She went to New York City on Earth, where she claimed to be a mortal human being named Melodi. There she confronted Thor's old enemy, the dragon Fafnir, who used his hypnotic abilities to overpower her. Fafnir took her captive and used her as bait to lure Thor into a trap, at the construction site where he worked in his secret identity of Sigurd Jarlson. As Jarlson Thor saved Lorelei from death, and then fought the dragon in his godly identity. Hence Thor and Lorelei first met in their false identities as the humans Jarlson and Melodi.^[10] Jarlson and Melodi became friends, and Melodi was clearly attempting to deepen the relationship into a romance. Circumstances, however, prevented her from getting Jarlson to drink the golden mead she had prepared using the love potion. Lorelei was then kidnapped by Thor's foe Malekith the Accursed, leader of the Dark Elves.^[11] Malekith used sorcery to cause a stock of wood to take on the appearance of Melodi, and this magically animated false Melodi gave Jarlson the mead to drink. Under the mead's spell, Thor fell uncontrollably in love with Melodi (since the first "woman" he saw bore her appearance).^[12] Malekith then revealed to Thor that the real Melodi was his prisoner. Thor, enraged, rescued Melodi from the Dark Elves.^[13] Soon afterward the demonic Surtur began his war against Asgard. Amora was infuriated by Lorelei's refusal to join in fighting Surtur's demonic hordes, and decided to take vengeance on her. Odin, monarch of Asgard, vanished along with Surtur at the war's end.^[14]

Loki then planned to use Lorelei to influence Thor to throw his support behind Loki's bid to become Asgard's new ruler.^[15] Loki gave Lorelei the elixir of Lofn, which, when Thor inhaled its vapors, would make Thor fall so deeply in love with her that he would do whatever she asked. In effect, Thor would become Lorelei's slave. Loki instructed Lorelei to then persuade Thor to support Loki's bid for the throne. Lorelei was tiring of Thor, but agreed to Loki's scheme since she planned to have Thor become monarch himself, and to make her his queen.^[16][17] She subjected Thor to the vapors of the Elixir of Lofn, and he fell under her control. To take revenge on Lorelei, the Enchantress cast a spell on Odin's scepter of power, knowing that Loki would pick it up, as indeed he did. Due to the spell, when Lorelei next saw Loki, she fell madly in love with him.^[18]

The Enchantress believed that loving the heartless Loki would eventually destroy Lorelei emotionally. Loki naturally responded to Lorelei's new interest in him. Thor's friend Heimdall realized that Thor was under Lorelei's control, and devised a plan to save him. He had the Enchantress urge Thor to visit Loki when she knew that Loki and Lorelei were in each other's arms. Thor's rage at seeing them together made him realize he himself was under a spell. He forced Loki to release him from the spell on pain of death, and left the two of them together. As the Enchantress predicted, Loki has since grown tired of Lorelei.^[19] Lorelei, still in love with Loki, enrages him. But she is comforted by Malekith, who has a plan himself.^[20]

Daillus stormed a castle to see for himself if Lorelei is as beautiful as the legends say. For his trouble she turns him to stone. Amora arrives, and tells her a story of her time on Battleworld, where she had the chance to win the love of Thor, but she failed because she was too afraid.^[21]

Seth[]

In a battle between Seth and Balder, Lorelei interposed among them and the servants of Seth to save Balder, shortly after, she died from the injuries she suffered in battle.^[22] Further on, Lorelei was returned to life by the power of Seth to face the Asgardians that had lost their godly status and their powers. Amora killed Lorelei to free her from Seth's control.^[23]

The Defenders[]

Lorelei returned back to life. Using the alias Ice Queen and allied with Pluto, she created a new Valkyrie, but she and Pluto were defeated by the Defenders.^[24]

When the rogue god Pluto sought a Valkyrie pawn, he had Amora's sister Lorelei transform Samantha Parrington into the Valkyrie again. However, Pluto tricked Lorelei by erasing her memory, draining her powers, and turning her into a duplicate of Valkyrie. While Samantha was used by Pluto to turn Earth into a realm of the dead, Lorelei was found by the Defender Nighthawk, who believed she was the real Valkyrie and made her a Defender, though she never spoke. A mind-controlled Samantha served Pluto until they ran afoul of the reunited Defenders and Brunnhilde, who routed Pluto and Lorelei but only after Samantha battled Lorelei, was she restored to her former self and shook off the mind control. Happy to have a worthy successor on Earth, Brunnhilde returned to Asgard and Samantha joined the Defenders as their new Valkyrie.^[25]

Loki: Agent of Asgard[]

She was found by Loki in the Monte Carlo casino in a heist where he infiltrated it on behalf of the All-Mother to bring her home. However, in order to get involved in a future heist, he let her go.^[26] She later helped him to infiltrate Asgard's cells themselves in order to extract Sigurd, who was being held there on the charge of being free on Midgard at all. When Loki admitted that the actual goal of the infiltration was to delve even deeper into the actual most well-kept vault in the prisons, she left with Sigurd, wanting no further part in the scheme.^[27][28]

• Asgardian Physiology: Lorelei possesses the conventional physical attributes of an Asgardian woman. Like all Asgardians, she is extremely long-lived, aging at an extremely slow rate upon reaching adulthood, superhumanly strong, immune to all Earth diseases, resistant to conventional injury and recuperates faster than a normal human being. Asgardian flesh and bone is about three times denser than similar human tissue, contributing to the gods' superhuman strength and weight. Lorelei's Asgardian metabolism gives her superhuman endurance at all physical activities.^[4]
• Mysticism: Lorelei may have the potential for having mystical powers like her sister, but she has chosen not develop it to the same extent. Lorelei has some knowledge of sorcery, mostly pertaining to love charms and potions. Lorelei also possesses a petrifying kiss, transforming victims into a granite statue.^[21] She also used a kiss not to control Roger Willis, but to prevent him from speaking out against her.^[29] In battle against Seth and his minions, she was depicted as firing mystical force bolts, similar to her sister's.^[30]
  • Will Domination: Lorelei's natural seductive abilities can be enhanced by sorcery so that they reach hypnotic levels. With eye contact and a few choice words, she convinced two men to beat each other senseless over the possibility of winning her.^[10] She also casually hypnotized a man at Speed-Dating into giving over his wallet.^[26] More significant levels of mind control, however, typically require her to use outside aids, such as enchanted drink^[31] or vapors.^[32]

• Lorelei's great beauty and seductive manner enable her to persuade virtually any male god or mortal to do whatever she wants.^[4]
• Allspeak: Thanks to the Allspeak she can communicate in all of the languages of the Nine Realms, Earth's dialects, and various alien languages.^[4]

• In German Mythology, Lorelei was a siren, daughter of the Rhine, who summoned her lovers by song.