Edward Nashton²

^ _ ^ ) - ! ★ _ . Edward Nashton - The Riddle ❓️.ᐟ.ᐟ

Edward Nashton, commonly known as The Riddler, is a notorious criminal mastermind, vigilante, and domestic terrorist who operated in Gotham City during the events leading up to the 2022 mayoral election. A self-proclaimed crusader against systemic corruption, Nashton gained infamy for his elaborate puzzles, cryptic riddles, and meticulously orchestrated assassinations, which targeted high-ranking city officials and influential figures complicit in institutional decay. His vendetta against Gotham also brought him into conflict with Bruce Wayne, due to his ties to the Wayne Family, and Gotham's violent vigilante The Batman, whom he admired and sought to recruit. Through a live broadcast, the Riddler revealed hidden secrets of the corruption of the Gotham Police and other mayoral officials, murdering corrupt people such as Mayor Don Mitchell, Jr., Pete Savage, Gil Colson, and Carmine Falcone, while leaving Batman with riddles so that he could ally himself with him through his crimes. After killing Falcone, the Riddler was quickly arrested and placed in Arkham State Hospital, where he became disillusioned with Batman when he berated him for his actions in exposing Gotham's corruption, but Nashton confessed that his followers flooded Gotham. With the flood done and the people hopeful that Batman would seek to improve Gotham, Nashton befriended the Joker from separate cells.

˙ .💢꒷ CHiLDH꩜꩜D 'n' M꩜RE. 𖦹˙

Edward Nashton grew up in the Gotham City Orphanage, abandoned and shunned by his peers for his love of riddles and puzzles. Combined with a bitter interaction with Bruce Wayne at a young age, in which Wayne smirked at Nashton, which he took as his way of saying he was better than them because of his money, Nashton grew up quiet and bitter towards those around him, especially Gotham's elite, arrogantly feeling superior to everyone else who believed him invisible due to his abnormally high intellect. Following the death of Thomas Wayne along with his wife, Martha, at the hands of an unidentified assailant, the city's corrupt police and city officials, along with Carmine Falcone, took over the Gotham Renewal Fund and turned it into a front for money laundering, thus cutting off funding for the orphanage and forcing its orphans, Edward among them, to live in poverty for the remainder of their childhood. At seventeen, Nashton got a job as a delivery boy at an Italian restaurant known as Fumento's, which he got so he could pay for his education. One day, Nashton noticed that an illegal race was being organized with a group of rich teenagers in Gotham. Still angry at the city's socialites, Nashton decided to finally get revenge on them by planting an explosive in Dex Starling's car. A few days later, he put his plan into action, hoping to cause a crash and seriously injure the racers, but another racer helped Starling and a crash was avoided.

˙ .💢꒷ BiRTH ꩜F THE RiDDLE. 𖦹˙

Eleven years later, Nashton got a job in accounting, and after driving by it, he decided to destroy his former home, the Gotham Orphanage, because of all the bitter memories he had there. A few nights later, he snuck in and pulled the fire alarm, alerting everyone in the place to get out, allowing him to douse the building in gasoline and burn it to the ground. Realizing how strangely unsatisfying crime was, Nashton decided to leave clues and riddles in his crimes so that the people of Gotham would know who had wronged them, thus earning himself notoriety. Thus, he reinvented himself as the psychopathic serial killer and terrorist known as "The Riddler", donning a baggy green suit and mask in his murders and other crimes, and continued to commit crimes unhindered for two years straight.