Trisha Elric is a key figure in the anime/manga franchise Fullmetal Alchemist. She is the mother of the series' protagonists, Edward and Alphonse Elric. She is already deceased when the series begins, but her sons had attempted to restore her to life using alchemy. This attempt failed and the brothers suffered greatly for it, their bodies serving as constant reminders of their mistake.
Japanese Voice: Yoshino Takamori
English Voice: Lydia Mackay
History[]
In both the 2003 and 2009 Fullmetal series, Trisha was married to Van Hohenheim with whom she had her children Edward and Alphonse. Hohenheim suddenly left during the boys' infancy, leaving Trisha to bring them up alone. Though she loved her sons dearly, her heartbreak over her husband's departure caused her to become ill. She eventually succumbed to this sickness and died.
Edward and Alphonse were devastated by the loss of their mother, but the boys believed it was possible to bring her back to life. Despite their youth, the brothers were intellectually gifted and had studied the art of alchemy since they had learned to read. After spending several years training under the alchemist Izumi Curtis, the Elric brothers believed that they had learned enough to successfully pull off the forbidden act of human transmutation.
Ed and Al's failed human transmutation
After digging up Trisha's remains and acquiring the materials necessary for the transmutation, Ed and Al put their plan into action. The transmutation failed with dire consequences: Edward lost his leg during the process while Alphonse lost his entire body. In the end, the boys had only succeeded in turning their mother's remains into a grotesquely disfigured homunculus that possessed no intelligence and could not sustain itself.
While his plan to revive his mother had failed, at the same time Edward had also found himself brought before the Gate of Truth, an extra-dimensional gateway through which the whole of human knowledge existed. Encountering the metaphysical being known as Truth, Edward realised that he and Alphonse hadn't made an equal exchange in accordance with alchemy's first law, and that there was no equivalent exchange for the restoration of a human life. However, he still had an opportunity to save his brother: sacrificing his arm to the Gate, Edward gained the knowledge of how to anchor his brother's soul to the physical realm. He used his own blood to draw a binding seal upon a suit of armour in the cellar of his home, bonding Alphonse's soul to the armour and saving his life.
Following this disaster, Edward had his arm and leg replaced with automail prosthetics. Both he and Alphonse had been horribly scarred by their attempt to defy nature and from then onward embarked on a quest to learn all they could about alchemy in order to restore their own bodies without using human transmutation.
2003 and 2009 anime[]
In the manga and the 2009 Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood series, Trisha does not return to life and the deformed homunculus that resulted from Ed and Al's human transmutation dies shortly after it is "born". In the 2003 series, however, the abomination crawls away shortly after Alphonse (now a soul bonded to armour) takes his grievously wounded brother to the Rockbell house for help.The sinister alchemist Dante discovers the creature and feeds it Red Stones, allowing it to grow and take on a true human form that resembles Trisha. This homunculus becomes known as Sloth.