Edgar Montero
Edgar Montero
lawyer.jpg
Portrayed By Ed Quinn
Gender Male
Species Human
Date of Birth February 16, 1963
Age 38
Place of Birth Cherry Hill, NJ, USA
Current Location Los Angeles, CA, USA
Occupation Wolfram & Hart Associate
Known Relatives Isaac Montero (father), Marie Montero (mother)
Significant Other Caroline Burdine (wife; deceased)
Special Powers Language Upgrades
First Appearance Service With a Smile

Edgar is a senior associate in good standing at the Wolfram & Hart law firm. His formally-taught legal specialties are in commercial and immigration law, though he has found great success with civil and criminal cases. In other words, he imports demons (and artifacts!) from interesting parts of the world and then lets them loose on L.A., subsequently representing them when they screw up. Unless they're dead. Or inanimate.

History

Edgar Montero was born to a small and happy family in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. He was a surprise to his parents, who only expected to have to care for their golden retriever for the next few years, but was considered a welcome one. When Edgar was three, his family moved from their home in Cherry Hill to a townhouse across the river in nearby Philadelphia's Society Hill neighborhood. When Edgar entered the school system he was put into the private sector, but after completing the fourth grade transferred into the public Masterman school, a magnet institution, and stayed there until college. He was a constant victim of bullying in his earlier years and it was not uncommon for him to return home bleeding - until he hit puberty and shot up like a weed, quickly gaining an enormous height advantage over most of his peers. Though the physical bullying stopped the verbal bullying continued, giving the softspoken young man feelings of injustice and rage that soon translated into nearly demonic ambition. That in turn gave him the drive to be accepted at several high-grade universities around the country.

He chose Princeton, wanting to stay relatively near his family while avoiding the state of Pennsylvania. His years there were spent in quiet study without any real partying or the usual juvenile idiocy that university students tend to get up to. After graduating with a double-major in Economics and Politics Edgar proceeded to apply to Yale Law School and was accepted. He finished his education at the age of twenty six and passed the Bar shortly after moving back to Philadelphia to help care for his mother, who had developed a fast-progressing case of Parkinson's disease. Edgar was recruited by a prestigious local law firm when his presence became known by the legal community. He had a successful - if part-time - career in Philadelphia until he was handed a murder case due to an overload in his firm. As luck and circumstance would have it, Edgar got his client acquitted while simultaneously framing one one of the individuals who had so tormented him in his youth. The client was a demon, Edgar's motive was revenge, and Wolfram & Hart took notice. Edgar's mother was promised and given the best of care, and Edgar moved to Los Angeles.

It took some convincing, but after witnessing his first summoning ritual Edgar came around to the idea that demons existed and that the supernatural was anything but superstition. He eased his way into the community of L.A., establishing himself as a minor political force and a socialite. While attending a charity dinner he met the person that would become his closest friend, a woman named Caroline Burdine who worked in the city's police department as an administrator. She provided him with several key bits of information during the time that they knew each other, and helped him get a leg-up in his career. They were constantly seen together in public and rumors began circulating that they were a romantic item, which they were not.

Several years later Caroline was diagnosed with brain cancer. Edgar married her a week later in order to extend his health benefits to her, and supported her financially and emotionally until she died seven months later; she was twenty nine and he was thirty two. He moved on, rising in the ranks of the law firm, and began specializing in arranging legal immigrations for foreign clients of Wolfram & Hart. He started to dabble once again in criminal law at the behest of the senior partners whenever asked, and is often called in when the firm decides to make a show of force at the bargaining or trial tables. Edgar has been personally involved in several long-term plans engineered by the firm, and has even spun a few of his own in recent years. Most have been successful. One in particular was not, and was his first real experience with failure.

In short, things went wrong. Supposedly reliable agents hired by Edgar were not quite as reliable as they were supposed to be, and a valuable item of power was lost to the firm. Rather than face the discipline of the firm Edgar pinned the incident on a subordinate, laying all the blame on the unfortunate man. The item hasn't turned up since and neither has the scapegoat. The entire experience was both stressful and irritating, and has done well to teach Edgar the true dangers of working for a demonic legal entity. He took his failure personally and has since doubled his efforts for the firm, becoming even more of a cheerful, stress-riddled, over-achieving nuisance to his fellow employees than usual.

Personality

Edgar is known to many as being just an all-round Nice Guy, one of the few left in the world. And he is! He's unflappably cheerful, courteous, gentle, and considerate, loves to travel, and is fluent in several languages - most of which are the results of purchased intellectual 'upgrades' from Wolfram & Hart. He is dedicated to his friends and comrades and is, unlike many employees of the firm, actually willing to take a personal fall to protect those he cares about. For most purposes Edgar is what would be called a people person. The quiet boy he was in his younger years has been rebuilt into a talkative and often exuberant man as a result of assertiveness training and public speaking courses. He is polite to a fault and is a believer in male chivalry, and remains relatively softspoken when not in trial or litigation. It's a rare situation when Edgar isn't sure what to say, and he's a relatively modest and humble man.

And then there's the other Edgar, the side of him that doesn't get publicly shown all that often. The Edgar that's clawed his way through the hierarchy of Wolfram & Hart to become a senior associate, beholden to very few others in the firm and a wielder of considerable pull. Beneath his pleasant exterior the man is cunning, vicious, often cruel towards those in his power who have fallen out of his favor, and ruthlessly ambitious. He has very little in the way of moral scruples and is concerned mainly with carving out a stable seat of power for himself and is therefore very much a yes-man for the firm. Intimidation, blackmail, and various other unsavory activities are Edgar's primary tools when things don't go as planned, and he takes on each challenge with relish. Edgar is very much a proactive go-getter when it comes to things he wants, and he's willing to be very patient in order to get them. He considers the use of physical force an often necessary measure but personally abhors it, believing that more beneficial outcomes can be reached through negotiation or emotional pressure.

Timeline

  • December 5, 2001. Service With a Smile. Just a typical day at the office for Madison and Edgar.
  • December 6, 2001. Fresh Meat. Business as (un)usual. Samuel gets steps closer to being a real fake American.
  • December 11, 2001. Being Creative. Wolfram & Hart gets together for a board meeting. Madison and Edgar get snippy.
  • December 13, 2001. Down on Skid Row. The florist shop on Skid Row has a grand re-opening, but it only winds up with an employee shot, a random homeless man turned into a large, stinky flower, and several people who may not be the same way again for a while…
  • December 14, 2001. Out Of The Curse Closet. Samuel has a sudden problem, but so does the man he goes to see about it.
  • December 24, 2001. Deck the Halls. Guests attend the Wolfram And Hart Christmas Eve Gala!
  • January 19, 2002. Friendly Faces. Lane gives the board members a few pointers on their new guest as well as doles out assignments. A party is planned.
  • February 10, 2002. Death By Humming. Edgar and Simone make jackasses out of themselves in an elevator.

People

Samuel_icon.gif Sam is an import from India that Edgar got into the States. He's currently working on getting Sam official documentation as a full and naturalized citizen, and has in the meantime become fond of the naga. The involvement of a kissing curse may have had something to do with this, and some people close to Edgar have begun muttering about a demon fetish. Who knows? Regardless, Edgar's shenanigans seem to cause Sam a certain measure of anxiety, which is just adorable.

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