Aneka

A respected captain of the Dora Milaje, Aneka takes her leadership role seriously. Though when her king lets her down, she leaves the formidable group of Wakandan protectors to become a vigilante and forms the Midnight Angels, defenders of the oppressed.

Follow the Leader

Rising through the ranks of the Dora Milaje, Aneka becomes captain of the guard intended to protect King T’Challa, AKA Black Panther. Under the guidance of Mistress Zola, she trains new recruits, all young women, in the art of serving the royal family and their African nation of Wakanda. Going against protocol, she falls in love with one of her Dora initiates, Ayo, and they eventually form their own Dora Milaje, known as the Midnight Angels.

Highly-Trained Trainer

Aneka is a warrior of Wakanda, a skilled member and captain of the Dora Milaje. She is highly trained in various forms of fighting styles, with and without traditional Wakandan weaponry such as spears. Prepared to be fierce and fearless, she uses her skills to serve her nation by training future Dora elite.

She typically wears traditional Dora Milaje armor but obtains prototype Midnight Angel armor equipped with wings that not only allow her to fly, but also deflect bullets. She also wears Kimoyo Beads, a highly-advanced piece of technology in the form of a bracelet and wields a vibranium-empowered trident.

Enemies of Wakanda

When Namor McKenzie, AKA Namor the Sub-Mariner, the king of Atlantis, attacked Wakanda, Aneka, and the Dora Milaje cleaned up the city. After clearing the rubble, Aneka and the Dora Milaje discovered King T’Challa fraternizing with the enemy and refused to follow him.

When Aneka killed Folami’s father, an abusive village chieftain, Folami took her rage out on Aneka by attacking her lover Ayo. But Ayo defended herself successfully.

The revolutionary Zenzi leds The People, a group that tried to topple the Wakandan monarchy. Zenzi possesses the ability to control and amplify people’s emotions, which she used to stir up the citizens of Wakanda. Aneka allied with her for a time until Zenzi and The People proved to be more violent than her liking.

Nakia, a member of the Dora Milaje, grew dangerously obsessed with King T’Challa and attacked his friends and family. Banished for her wrongdoing, T’Challa exiled her, but Nakia developed an arsenal of weapons, including a drug that gave her power over men, which accidentally made her ill. She tried to lure the Black Panther to her before she stole a doomsday weapon while wreaking havoc across New York City. Aneka and her fellow Dora Milaje battled her with the help of Peter Parker, AKA Spider-Man, Ororo Munroe, AKA Storm, the X-Men, and the Avengers.

Wakandan Allies and Romantic Ties

As a young woman, Aneka joined the Dora Milaje (which means “Adored Ones”)—a group of personal bodyguards of the Black Panther and the royal family, recruited from every tribe of the African nation of Wakanda. An ancient tradition originally designed to help keep the peace among rival tribes, the Dora Milaje used to be potential wives-in-training for the king, but that aspect fell by the wayside. As the Dora’s captain, Aneka trains the Dora to serve, to fight, to be fierce and fearless, and to be excellent for the nation and as the king’s protectors. She trains them at the headquarters of the Dora Milaje, Upanga.

When training a new batch of recruits, she once came up against an insolent initiate named Ayo. While she called her beautiful, she humbled the young woman’s ego...or at least she thought she did. It took months for them to finally admit their feelings for one another, and they embarked on a romantic relationship. They left the Dora together to liberate the oppressed and form a Dora Milaje separate from those servicing the royal family, though they eventually returned to the king’s service when Queen Shuri asked them to do so in a time of need.

Aneka’s Historical Account

After weeks training Dora Milaje initiates, Aneka struggled with Ayo, who showed little respect for Aneka’s authority. But one day, Ayo made a bold move suggesting she wanted to be closer to Aneka. Later that night, Ayo arrived at her door, but Aneka refused to be broken by an initiate still wet behind the ears, and her leadership role took precedence over her feelings.

Before they did, Namor attacked Wakanda forcing them to serve the Golden City as the clean-up crew, clearing rubble and dead bodies. Ayo adamantly encouraged Aneka that the Dora Milaje should hunt the assailant down, but Aneka reminded her fiery friend to be patient. Her counsel and Dora Milaje leader Mistress Zola questioned whether Ayo resisted Aneka’s authority or something else, implying something more between them, but still, Aneka refused to admit her feelings. Mistress Zola then assigned both Ayo and Aneka to serve Queen Shuri instead of King T’Challa. Not long afterward, Aneka and Ayo confessed their feelings for each other and consummated their relationship.

They then went to the Necropolis in Wakanda with T’Challa who planned a meeting with Namor, and while Ayo questioned T’Challa’s authority and Aneka reminded her of her place. Though they disagreed, Aneka eventually came around to Ayo’s side, and they informed Queen Shuri of T’Challa’s collusion with the enemy. Ayo and Aneka broke their spears in front of the royal siblings as a sign that T’Challa lost his way. Disturbed by this revelation, the two took solace in each other and left for a time, growing ever closer.

While vacationing from Wakanda, Thanos attacked, and Queen Shuri perished. In memoriam of Shuri, the king’s mother Ramonda asked the Dora Milaje to make peace with T’Challa. Aneka regretted leaving the city, though that night, a desperate woman, Lesedi, arrived at the Dora Milaje’s door and begged for help. She described how her village’s Chieftain Diya brutalized the women while the men in her village did nothing to stop him. With Mistress Zola’s consent, Aneka investigated and uncovered Diya with a group of caged women, and in releasing them, she killed the man. In doing so, she created an enemy, the daughter of the Chieftain, Folami, and a fellow Dora Milaje member. Arrested for killing a chieftain, Aneka waited in custody for her trial. While imprisoned, Folami visited Aneka in her cell and threatened to take Ayo away from her.

The next day, Ayo begged the Queen-Mother Ramonda to spare Aneka. But Ramonda sentenced Aneka to death. With the Midnight Angel armor prototypes, Ayo then broke Aneka out of prison, and they formed the Midnight Angels, a Dora Milaje offshoot that defends the people of Wakanda overlooked by the royal family.

Taking on their familiar roles of protectors, Aneka and Ayo leapt into their new roles as the Midnight Angels, fighting back oppressors such as the White Gorilla Army and defending women ignored by the crown. They proclaimed themselves and their recruits the Dora Milaje. When the group killed White Gorilla, Lord Mandla, they created a more democratic society on Jabari-lands. In an attempt to restore order, however, T’Challa attacked their land, but Zenzi, a revolutionary with empathic powers that could control others’ emotions, stopped the attack. Zenzi led The People whom the new Dora allied with against the monarchy, though the alliance it amounted to nothing as The People acted violently towards the liberated women.

When T’Challa resurrected Queen Shuri, Shuri confronted Aneka and Ayo, asking them to defend the Golden City against The People’s upcoming attack. They agreed, and after the defeat of The People, hearings for the Dora Milaje resulted in T’Challa forming a more democratic government.

When their former warrior-in-arms Nakia, AKA Malice, attacked New York City, Aneka joined with Ayo and Okoye to capture her and take her back to Wakanda. The Dora fought her alongside Spider-Man, but she escaped. On their journey to track her down, they faced off with Morris Bench, AKA Hydro-Man, and defeated him. Meanwhile, Malice plotted to take out T’Challa’s ex-wife, Storm of the X-Men, using a world-ending weapon called Mimic-27. Aneka and the Dora joined Storm and the X-Men to defeat Nakia, and soon, the Black Panther and even the Avengers joined the fray. It wasn't not until T’Challa appealed to Nakia for her help that she came around and worked with the Dora to stop Mimic-27. Nakia followed through, though it led to her death. Ultimately, Aneka respected Nakia’s sacrifice.