Played by: Laura Donnelly

First Appearance: Touched

Amalia True begins as a woman who was never meant to exist. On August 3rd, 1896, as the Galanthi flew over London and released its bright‑coloured exhaust, one of its spores touched a drowning baker named Amalia — and placed Stripe, a soldier from a distant future, inside her body. She was dragged from the docks and taken to Strohman’s Asylum, where Stripe’s disorientation made her lash out, speak of simulations, and struggle against the reality of inhabiting another woman’s flesh. Sarah, another patient, comforted her as Stripe sobbed, unable to reconcile her memories with her new identity. Over the following days, Stripe slowly accepted the name Amalia True, even as she hid her knowledge of the Galanthi and her future‑born mission from those around her.

Life in the asylum forged Amalia’s earliest alliances and enemies. She discovered Horatio Cousens’s healing turn when he mended a knife wound on her wrist, his hands glowing as the gash closed. She learned that the spores had granted abilities across London, though not in the controlled way she remembered from her own time. She trained herself physically, took etiquette lessons to pass as a proper Englishwoman, and fought to avoid being taken by Dr. Hague, feigning ignorance and pushing Sarah toward him instead. When the asylum board rejected her release, Lavinia Bidlow visited her in a padded room and offered her a place at a new orphanage for the Touched — a refuge that would become Amalia’s battlefield.

By 1899, Amalia had become the Orphanage’s protector, recruiter, and reluctant leader. She and Penance Adair rescued Myrtle Haplisch from masked abductors, confronted the Beggar King for information, and witnessed Mary Brighton’s song — a message Amalia recognized as the voice of the Galanthi. She fought Maladie to save Mary and Penance, ultimately shooting herself to break Maladie’s ultimatum. She uncovered the false Orphanage address, discovered a mutilated jawless attacker, and found a logbook detailing abducted Touched. Mary’s murder drove her into grief and fury, leading her to confront Lord Massen, expose Lucy Best as a mole, and survive Odium’s attack on the bridge. Through every crisis, Amalia carried the weight of a mission she was never properly given — a future she remembered but could not explain.

Her confrontation with the Galanthi beneath the Royal Military base is the turning point of her story. After falling into a sinkhole, Amalia reached the creature’s chamber and demanded answers: why it hid, what went wrong, and whether she had failed. The Galanthi responded by shaking the tunnels and showing her visions of past and future, appearing to her in Myrtle’s form to say, “This is a long time from this little cave. This, I will need you to forget.” Amalia escaped with the help of Elisabetta Cassini and returned to the Orphanage, where she finally chose to reveal everything — the future, the war, the truth of the Galanthi, and her sacred name, Zephyr Alexis Navine. In that moment, she stopped being a soldier stranded in time and became the leader the Touched needed: wounded, resolute, and ready to fight for a future she refuses to lose.

APPEARANCES