Taydeus is vanquished
Vanquishing is a term describing the destruction of a magical being, most commonly the forces of evil such as demons and monsters. The death of a mortal or a force of good, such as witches, is generally referred to as killing instead.
During a vanquish, beings are often destroyed in a violent, painful manner. Most vanquishes leave no trace behind and do not damage the surroundings or objects near the destroyed being. This is presumably in order to cover up any existence of magic from the mortal world.
Methods for Vanquishing[]
Vanquishing Spear of Trantor, a magical weapon
Vanquishing can be achieved by various means. The most common method of vanquishing is shown to be through the usage of spells and potions. However, some demons and monsters can be vanquished merely by offensive powers, such as pyrokinesis, and ordinary or magical weapons. The weapons used could be anything from a dagger/knife to seemingly ordinary substances, such as baking soda or rat poison.
Weapons lined with salt helps vanquish demons when impaling them with such weapons since salt makes them desiccate at an accelerated rate and ultimately die.
Some evil beings require a specific spell, sometimes requiring the Power of Three, while others may require a specific object or weapon, such as Viralis only being vanquished by his own dagger at the hands of a Charmed One[1]. While most vanquishes are usually instantaneous, there are cases in which the entire process can take time if the being is upper-level (such as when Taydeus took a few seconds to explode after he died[2] or when the spell to vanquish Lainey, the queen of the Cicada Demons, was slow causing Macy Vaughn to have to crush her with a control panel).[3]
Trivia[]
- Vanquish is a word from Middle English venquysshen, vaynquisshen, borrowed from a conjugated form of Old French veincre, from Latin vincō. To "vanquish" means "to defeat (someone); to overcome."
- While, in a real life context, vanquish can mean any method of overcoming or subduing an opponent, within the universe of Charmed, vanquishing typically means the complete destruction and violent death of an opponent. However, there are a few exceptions to this. For example, in "Other Women", Macy attempted to vanquish Summer with the Succubus Vanquishing Spell after mistaking her as a succubus. However, the incantation of the spell included the word "banish," which carries a slightly different connotation. In "Kappa Spirit", the ghost Brenda Mancini was described as being vanquished but she was not destroyed and simply lost her connection (Lucy) to the physical world. Thus, one could say that she was vanquished as in "defeated" or "banished", but she was not vanquished in the typical Charmed sense. Also, in "Out of Scythe", the satyr Leon described Tartarus as "… a hellish prison for magical creatures. Gods, demons, the vanquished. It's where the bad guys send their bad guys." It could also be presumed that vanquished is used in the sense of "defeated" or "banished" in this statement, as beings that are sent to Tartarus are not destroyed but simply imprisoned there.
- In the original series, the terms "Vanquishing" and "Banishing" existed separately. Whereas the first term meant the death of enemies, the second term meant precisely the expulsion of beings from some place or plane.
- For some unknown reason, Elder Devorah Silver's death also looked like vanquishing, as her body withered away, which should not have been, since she was a human witch.
- One theory suggests that her body withered away, because she was in a pocket dimension which she had created at the moment of her death, and when she died, as the dimension ceased to exist, her body also did. However, one could still argue that the pocket dimension should have just ceased to exist and her body returned to the Haunt in the real world with the others.
- Despite the fact that Fiona Callahan was also a human being, her death was also like vanquishing and there was not a trace of her body left. Though, this was likely a side effect of her body being struck by the energy of the Sacred Flame Igniting Spell.
- Vivienne Laurent is the only mortal on screen to be vanquished.
- Lainey, Hunter Caine, Callum, Jimmy, Omon and Earl are the only beings that were vanquished without a death scream.
- It could be presumed that Hunter's vanquish in "Ambush" was intentionally left ambiguous, as he simply disappeared in a swirl of smoke akin to his smoke form. Many viewers were not even aware that Hunter had been successfully vanquished, and his vanquishing was not directly confirmed until the subsequent episode, thus making him the only evil being whose death was unconfirmed for a while.
- Lainey, Callum, and Omon are the only evil beings to be vanquished without showing any sign of pain at all, as a control panel was dropped on top of Lainey in "Bug a Boo" which crushed and killed her instantly without time for her to realize her own demise, Callum desiccated and crumbled apart immediately after he was stabbed in "Careful What You Witch For", and Omon was too captivated by his own reflection in his vanquishing potion in "Yew Do You". On the other hand, Jimmy gasped out before he withered away into nothing in "Triage", and Earl made a pained face after being shanked in the back by Ruby Malone in "Unveiled".
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