Matriarch Benezia

Matriarch Benezia was a powerful asari biotic and a revered spiritual leader among her people, renowned as a teacher of religion and philosophy. She was the mother of the Prothean archaeologist Liara T'Soni, though the two had not spoken in years. When the evidence implicating Saren Arterius in the Eden Prime attack also revealed Benezia at his side, it shocked those who knew her, for her conduct seemed wholly out of character. The truth was that she had fallen under the indoctrinating influence of the Reaper Sovereign.

A revered matriarch#

As a matriarch, Benezia had lived for almost a thousand years, and in that time she became renowned and revered as a teacher of religion and philosophy. During the matron phase of her long life she bore a daughter, Liara T'Soni, choosing another asari as her partner, an unusual decision regarded as a faux pas in asari society. Liara never learned the identity of her second parent, as Benezia would not discuss it, and Liara suspected her mother was ashamed of the choice. Benezia raised her daughter alone and was amused when Liara took up Prothean archaeology, a small rebellion against her forward-thinking mother. By Liara's account, Benezia believed the asari should take a greater hand in shaping galactic events, and she served as Saren Arterius' executor.

Drawn into Saren's plan#

When Benezia learned of Saren's intent to aid the Reapers, she resolved to guide him toward a less destructive path, offering her followers the choice of whether to accompany her; many refused as too dangerous, but others, including Shiala, believed in her. Her effort failed. The influence of Sovereign proved too strong, and Benezia became enslaved to Saren's will along with her retinue of guards and commandos, her position settling somewhere between his advisor and his second-in-command. Saren valued her enough that, even when she enraged him with bad news, he restrained himself from striking her.

Through the company Binary Helix, Benezia funded a secret project on the ice world of Noveria to breed rachni from a newly discovered egg, intended to swell Saren's forces. When the brood was removed from the Rachni Queen's presence, the creatures turned rogue, and Benezia traveled to the laboratory at Peak 15 both to address the crisis and to extract from the Queen's genetic memory the location of the Mu Relay. Arriving as Saren's representative, she set guards, geth, and her asari commandos to keep Commander Shepard from reaching her.

The confrontation at Peak 15#

After cutting through geth, rogue rachni, and Benezia's commandos, Shepard's squad found the matriarch waiting in the labs beside the Rachni Queen. Even the presence of Liara, if Shepard had brought her, did not stay Benezia's hand; she unleashed her biotics and her commandos against the team. Yet Benezia had used her extraordinary mental discipline to keep a fragment of her mind free of the conditioning, and for a brief moment she broke through Sovereign's control. She described the horror of indoctrination, the helplessness of being trapped within one's own body, and gave Shepard the coordinates for the Mu Relay along with a warning of Sovereign's terrible power.

Benezia managed to tell Liara that her daughter had always made her proud before the indoctrination overwhelmed her once more and she turned on the squad, leaving them no choice but to kill her. As she lay dying she remarked that she could not see the light promised by asari faith. Afterward Liara chose to remember her mother not as Saren's servant but as the kind and beautiful woman who had loved her, and in later years it emerged that Benezia's secret bondmate had been the matriarch Aethyta, and that some of Benezia's apparent betrayals may have been driven by a wish to shield her daughter from harm.