La Regina del Mare Adriatico

La Regina del Mare Adriatico or The Queen of the Adriatic Sea (アドリア海の女王) is the name of two magic related objects in the Toaru Majutsu no Index universe. Most notably it is the name of a 9th century large-scale weapon and flagship created by the Roman Catholic Church for use against Venice, to destroy it, it's influences and culture. It is one of the Ten Holy Artifacts of the Roman Catholic Church. It is also the name of the ship that carries the weapon.

Though a powerful weapon itself, the flagship requires several other ships made of ice as a convoy. These ships are called the Queen's Fleet (女王艦隊) as reference to it being the fleet of the flagship.

Appearance
All ships including the flagship itself is made out of ice that has been taken from the seawater, giving it a translucent crystalline look, and has a haunting light-bulb glow when light is reflected on its surface from the water, moonlight or even any surrounding street light. This light is even visible from a considerable distance. The water used for creating the ice ship had it's freezing point and melting point altered with magic, as such the the ice will not melt under regular conditions and is not cold to the touch, though it still retains some qualities such as human skin touching the surface would slightly stick with it upon contact.

Queen's Fleet Ships
On the outside the ship is extremely large, with the length of over 100 meters, with the distance between the deck and the bottom about 20 meters. The ship has 3 levels up and 5 to 7 levels down, and comparing to Touma's apartment building, it is significantly much larger overall. The ship has 4 masts and at least 1 gun deck, with 10 cannons positioned on each side.

As with the outside, the inside of the ship along with all its contents (such as the door and even the door knob) are made out of magically modified ice as well, which also makes of the walls inside of the ship seem to glow due in part to the reflection of light. As expected from a such a large vessel, the ship contains several rooms, such as the usual cabins for personnel, guns and cannons, and a clinic.

The anime adaptation depicts the ship as a barq-type sailing vessel, with four masts, with the last one the aftermost mast the only fore-and-aft rigged. One special thing to note about the ice ships is that it has only 1 sail for each of its masts. All-in-all, the size of the entire fleet is equivalent to that of a city.

La Regina del Mare Adriatico
The La Regina del Mare Adriatico is twice the size of the other ships of the Queen's Fleet in comparison. The main difference between the flagship and the fleet-ships is that the flagship is more focused on aesthetics rather than militaristic purpose.With glamorous carvings on it's walls, artistic modifications to even the most trivial objects such as doorknobs, and it was seemingly designed to look like a palace. One notable aspect it has is that it has a figurehead of the Virgin Mary. It is said to be imitating the ancient state galleys of Venice, used by the Doges of Venice for the annual Marriage to the Adriatic, performed out in the sea using the ships. Entrance to the ship is a large door, although which are guarded by ice golems who will attack those who are not permitted to enter.

The inside of the ship is similar to the other ships as it is also made of ice, having cabins on its own and the like, though much more finely decorated. The flagship also houses a large meeting area, that resembles a large opera house or auditorium, though it functions more similarly to that of a Parliament building.

The most notable and important aspect of the flagship is the room that houses the weapon itself. To access the room, people must enter a large, intricately designed double door. The room is shaped as a perfectly square pyramid about 20 meters in length. Using magic, the tallness of the pyramid (about 100 meters high) can be fitted into the small size of the ship, furthermore the floors and walls use equilateral triangles with no other shapes to fill the gaps. In the middle of the room contains a spherical structure 7 meters in diameter made out of ice, which is used to synchronize a sacrifice's magic to it and that of the La Regina del Mare Adriatic to change its targeting system. Destroying the room and it's functions would essentially destroy the spell and render it no longer usable.

It is said that the ship was created by building it around the room that houses the weapon.

The anime adaptation depicts the ship as baroque-type sailing vessel, though much larger than the ice ships, also having two gun decks as well as the aforementioned figurehead.

Background
During the 9th century, Venice was one of the most powerful city-states in Northern Italy, defeating several nearby powers and was a constant antagonist to both the Roman Catholic Church and the Byzantine Empire as they did not come under it's dominion, becoming a powerful threat to them as Venice controlled economic trade in the region.

However, the catalyst that would brought about the creation of the weapon would when merchants brought what said to be the remains of St. Mark the Evangelist into Venice St. Mark's Basillica was later built to house his body. With the intention of creating Venice similar to that of the Vatican and St. Peter, a place of pilgrimage for believers where it houses the body of Saints to protect their rest. As a result of this, the Roman Catholic Church built La Regina del Mare Adriatico to deal with Venice, and created the Queen's Fleet along with it to defend the weapon against opposing fleets that would attack it.

Although the weapon was created to utterly destroy Venice and it's influences, it was not used by the Roman Catholic Church under the fear of economic disaster brought about by Venices destruction. However, Venice later gained information regarding the weapon, because of this, Venice conquered places that they suspected had the weapon, such as Padova, Vicenza and Chioggia. However, the fear brought about the existence of La Regina del Mare Adriatico, caused a financial distress onto Venice after financing the invasions, and the country later crumbled shortly afterwards.

Naming
The name La Regina del Mare Adriatico, is one of the epithets given to the city of Venice. The name is one of the rather appropriate accolades given to the city among other things, since Venice was originally a military state that had control over the Adriatic Sea. This would indicate that the name refers to Venice's rule over the Adriatic as is a duty of the queen, however, this also applies to the similarly named weapon of the Roman Catholic Church, indicating that it is superior to Venice or is the one that truly rules over the Adriatic sea.

La Regina del Mare Adriatico Arc


The weapon is featured during this arc, after a series of unfortunate of events occurring to the Roman Catholic Church with Academy City being at fault, the Church finally allowed the mobilization of the weapon and its fleet with the intention of destroying Academy City and all of it's influences. Using the Rosary of the Appointed Time to change the target of the weapon from Venice to that of Academy City.

Coincidentally, Kamijou Touma was in Chioggia during its mobilization, and under the fear that he would sabotage the mission (since he was present in several cases that ruined the Church's plans) they attacked him, though to no avail. Later, with the help of the Amakusa Church, who engages the Queen's Fleet in battle. Touma defeats the commander of the fleet, Biagio Busoni, and helps rescue the sacrifice for the Rosary of the Appointed Time, Agnese Sanctis, as well as her forces.

The Queen's Fleet and La Regina del Mare Adriatico is later destroyed by Touma and would be the final catalyst for the Roman Catholic Church into branding him as an enemy of God, and getting the attention of God's Right Seat.

World War III Arc
Vento of the Front rebuilt the 'Queen's Fleet' of the La Regina del Mare Adriatico, and used it to fight against Fiamma of the Right. The new 'core' is an ice-like cross shaped like an anchor, and pierced into her tongue where her old 'Divine Punishment' cross used to be.

The power and range of the Ships' bombardment attack increased exponentially, shoots giant icicles and was enough to bury Fiamma into a mountain of ice. Ultimately the power of the ships was insufficient to fight against Fiamma and the core was destroyed, and Vento was defeated.

La Regina del Mare Adriatico
The primary ability of the La Regina del Mare Adriatico is to be used to primarily destroy Venice, which is the main phase of the spell. The effect in destroying anything that has value is likened to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah by divine punishment, as La Regina del Mare Adriatico's way of destroying Venice is to launch a rain of fire upon it.

Its second phase is to destroy anyone or anything connected to the city, such as technology, art pieces, culture, knowledge, etc., regardless of distance. Utterly destroying any trace and existence of Venice. Because of the fear of the Roman Catholic Church that the weapon would fall into the wrong hands and can be used at them, the Church made sure that the weapon could only be used on Venice, however, if such an event did occur, then the La Regina del Mare Adriatico can be used to self-destruct as a last resort. The power of the self-destruction covers at least 10 kilometers, and is likened to a tactical nuclear weapon that can incinerate anything within the range.

The spell for activating the weapon resides in a pyramidal room in the flagship, here, it also houses a spherical structure meant for the Rosary of the Appointed Time. Once activated, the room changes, with the lights surrounding the room shutting off, and the equilateral triangles that form the room slowly emerge from it's bases. Finally a light from the ceiling appears, which with coupled with the equilateral triangular shaped pillars, would reflect, inflect, and reform the light to create a large patterned path in the air, surrounding the room making it appear as a dome with a planetarium.

The spell is reinforced by alchemy as well as the prisoners of its fleet, which makes any attempt at stopping the spell difficult. However, destroying the core cross that activates the spell would not only stop the spell but destroy the core of the weapon, it would then essentially destroy the flag ship as well as the other fleet ships.

Rosary of the Appointed Time
The Rosary of the Appointed Time or the Rosary of the Limit (刻限のロザリオ) is the name for the spherical structure that resides in the room of the La Regina del Mare Adriatico and a spell that uses a sacrifice to synchronize their power with it and that of La Regina del Mare Adriatico. Its main function is to change the target of La Regina del Mare Adriatico to something else.

A sacrifice is required to change the target, though little is known regarding the requirements other than when the sacrifice's mind is crushed by the spell, the way the brain looked after being crushed would be an indication that the person is a suitable sacrifice for the spell. The sacrifice that would be used for the spell, would feel excruciating pain once the spell is activated, and would later render the person brain damaged and severely crippled after use. The mind is crushed due to the fact that the minds create magical energy within their bodies using their life forces. The Rosary of the Appointed Time creates the magical energy required to change the target of La Regina del Mare Adriatico by crushing the mind of the sacrifice. There are several yet unknown requirements for changing the target as the Roman Catholic Church has put several locks on it in order to prevent enemies from using, though once a compatible sacrifice is chosen and used, the person would still feel the effects of La Regina del Mare Adriatico even if the preparations are still incomplete. However, one of the most important part of the synchronization is for the sacrifice to enter the spherical structure found in the middle of the core of La Regina del Mare Adriatico, where in the sphere would fill with ice when the Rosary of the Appointed Time is activated. The point is for the sacrifice to freeze inside the sphere and be destroyed magically.

Because the sacrifice holds such an important position, the person can enjoy several privileges such as being excused from labor even if the person is a prisoner in the Queen's Fleet. However the most notable feature of a sacrifice is for the person to wear a modified robe that would cause a counterspell to prevent the user from dying regardless of any damage done on the person. For Agnese Sanctis, the only known sacrifice of the Rosary of the Appointed Time, she is forced to wear a tattered habit that exposes the skin as a form of punishment used to shame her, as she is a sinner in the eyes of the Roman Catholic Church. According to Haimura Kiyotaka, her Rosary of the Appointed time clothes was made to give off a feeling of a crow that has been plucked of its feathers, and is used as a complement to Lucia and Angelene's Forbidden colored robe.

Supplementary abilities
Because the flagship is vulnerable to the Venetian navy, the Roman Catholic Church made it so that a convoy of ships would protect it at all times, which is named the Queen' Fleet.

These ships are formed by La Regina del Mare Adriatico from the seawater and turned into ice, with its freezing and melting point changed. Using the seawater the ship reforms itself every time it is damaged. This is due to La Regina del Mare Adriatico controlling all the functions of the Queen's Fleet, as well as control and deploy ships.

Defenses
One of the main defenses of the ship is to have magic all around its structure to provide a block structure defense on it, which means that every time the ship is damaged the block structure removes the bare minimum required to minimize damage. As such if a part of the ship is damaged, the block structure would prevent other blocks from incurring damage. Because of this, even if Kamijou Touma used the Imagine Breaker on the ship, only a part of it would be negated.

Important doorways also have magic locks to prevent any intruders from entering, the most notable is the double doors that contain the core of La Regina del Mare Adriatico. The door has a defensive spell placed on it, base on the legend of St. Blaise. The ships summons ice golems if the door detects an intruder close to it.

Queen's Fleet
The most important aspect La Regina del Mare Adriatico is its fleet, made up of several ice ships that the flagship made itself using the seawater, it is used by the flagship to protect itself from the Venetian navy. The ice ships are so numerous, the entire fleet is equivalent of the city. Because of this, the ship can reform when damaged or even completely destroyed even from friendly fire, making it ideal for the protection of the flagship.

Under the guise of monitoring the Adriatic Sea, the Queen's Fleet is a labor facility for sinners, such as the Agnese Forces. In the ships the prisoners are under the banned form of punishment called futility, here, prisoners are tasked to perform various menial task such as surveillance of the surrounding areas for magic or the like, this is a form of psychological torture used to wear down the laborers. However, those who try to escape are not killed and are simply given additional menial tasks to perform. It is revealed that the large-scale spell La Regina del Mare Adriatico is reinforced by the prisoners of its fleet.

Some ships such as ship 47, where Agata is stationed, have specialized magic to gather intelligence and detect enemies. Ships like ship 37, the ship where Touma and Orsola have come upon, has magicians who are part of the management comittee of the Fleet, and are referred to as researchers, but are implied to use torture to prisoners, based on the sharp and mystifying they were found with,

Divine Cannon of St. Barbara
All Queen's Fleet ships are armed with a cannons made out of ice, once again with magic applied to it as to mimic an actual cannon. The cannons are based off the legend of St. Barbara, and can be negated by Touma's Imagine Breaker, with a maximum range of 5 kilometers.

The ice ships not only have regular cannons, but have anti-air cannons. In the Toaru Majutsu no Index anime adaptation, the ships also feature depth charges.

Ice golem
All ships have can summon ice golems for use as protection. The golems are made out of the ships they are in, and can move independently after being given orders, however, because of this magic is embedded on the construct and is seperate from the ship, as such it cannot reform after being damaged, as such it can also be destroyed by Touma's Imagine Breaker.

At least 3 meters tall, the golems are designed to look like they are equipped with medieval armor, and to complement this, the golems also wield medieval weaponry such as pole-arms and swords. One noteworthy feature of the ice golems is that it can glide on the floors of the ship.

Similar to Sherry Cromwell's golem, the ice golems have poor intelligence and will try to follow orders without regard for its state, because of this, Index's Spell Intercept can hijack their orders.

Ice bridges
All ships are capable of creating bridges made of ice for people to cross to other ships.