Clarissa "Clary" Adele Fairchild, also known as Clary Fray, is the Shadowhunter daughter of Jocelyn Fray and the notorious Valentine Morgenstern. For years, Clary lived a mundane life with Jocelyn, until the return of her father and her brother, Jonathan, exposed her to a new world, throwing their lives out of balance as Clary found herself on a journey with her fellow Shadowhunters to stop them.
Clarissa Adele Morgenstern was born to Valentine and Jocelyn Morgenstern on August 23, 1991, over a year after her older brother, Jonathan. Jocelyn gave her the middle name "Adele" to honor her own mother.[3]
Jocelyn had turned against Valentine's ideals months before her conception. During the time after Jonathan's birth, Jocelyn suffered depression because of her strange feelings of rejection towards him. Hoping to help Jocelyn, Valentine secretly gave her doses of the angel Ithuriel's blood, hoping to "cure" her depression, unaware that she was pregnant with Clary, therefore making her an "accidental" experiment.
Eventually, Jocelyn and her best friend Lucian Graymark began to plot to thwart Valentine's planned Uprising. Jocelyn, upon finding out that she was pregnant with Clary, had wanted to leave Valentine but feared that he would come after them and knew that he had to die to guarantee their safety. When the Uprising came and Jocelyn was able to steal the Cup from Valentine, they ran, but without Clary's older brother as Valentine had made it look like the child died in a fire with him. Jocelyn wasn't confident about Valentine's death, however suspecting that he was only in hiding, and fled to Paris, and later New York City; ran from the Shadowhunter world and culture, away from her past, and raised Clary as a mundane.[4][5]
Jocelyn hoped that Clary would have a blind Inner Eye, meaning she'd need to be trained like some Shadowhunters to see the Shadow World. When she was around two years old, however, Jocelyn found her playing with a faerie in the park, and she promptly took her to the warlock, Magnus Bane.[4] There, she first also met Tessa Gray.[6] Jocelyn asked Magnus to remove her Inner Eye, but this would have put her at risk, so they compromised with a spell that placed a block on her mind that would make her forget what she saw of the Shadow World even as she saw it, but the spell was complicated and needed to be recast every two years.[4]
When she was around five years old,[4][5] Jocelyn's best friend Luke eventually found them in New York, and Jocelyn allowed him to be a staple part of their lives. Clary grew up with Luke as a father figure to her, led to believe that her real father was a deceased soldier named Jonathan Clark, and that the box in her mother's room with the initials J.C. were his.[4]
Clary attended the mundane school St. Xavier's, close to their home in Park Slope, Brooklyn.[7] When Clary was six years old and in kindergarten,[7][8] she met Simon Lewis and the two grew to be inseparable. Almost every summer of her childhood, she, Jocelyn, Luke, and Simon went to Luke's farmhouse upstate. Simon slept over at their house, with Simon even sleeping on the same bed as Clary, often,[9] and though things were purely platonic for Clary, Simon fell in love with her. Though most people around them knew, Clary remained oblivious to his feelings for her and only saw him as a best friend.
Clary was unknowingly supposed to have another session with Magnus in 2007, two years after the last. Magnus had gone to Tanzania, however, so Clary went without her block for at least three weeks, and thus her Sight began to return.
One evening, she dragged Simon to the Pandemonium Club, where she encountered a group of Shadowhunters and saw them kill a boy, who turned out to be an Eidolon demon. When Clary had Simon call security, no one else, not even Simon, saw the Shadowhunters, until they slipped out undetected.
With Jocelyn worried about Clary's Sight and potentially running into elements of the Shadow World, she informed Clary the following morning that they were going to spend the summer at Luke's farmhouse, infuriating Clary who had her own plans, including her ongoing Tisch classes. Clary left with Simon without hearing Jocelyn's reasons. They went to Eric's poetry reading at the Java Jones, where Clary once again saw and immediately confronted Jace Wayland, one of the Shadowhunters from the night before. Jace told her of Shadowhunters and Downworlders, but before they could continue Clary finally answered Jocelyn's call. Jocelyn told her not to come home and instead to stay at Simon's and to call Luke to tell him that a particular someone had found her.
Against her mother's wishes, Clary frantically rushed over to their brownstone, nervous about the panic in her mother's voice and the strange noises she heard while on the phone with Jocelyn, to find their home trashed and her mom gone. Clary was then attacked by a Ravener demon. With the Sensor she mistook for a phone and took from Jace, Clary killed it but was poisoned in the process. To protect her from demons lurking outside their house, Jace Marked her and brought her to the New York Institute to heal, as Jace, still uncertain about what Clary was, feared what the rune might do to Clary.
At the Institute, Clary was introduced to its inhabitants: the other Shadowhunters that were with Jace at the Pandemonium Club, Isabelle and Alec Lightwood, and their tutor, Hodge Starkweather. Clary was told that she and one of her parents were likely Shadowhunters like them. Hodge told her a bit about Shadowhunters and informed her that she might be sent to the Silent Brothers.
Clary called Luke, and after multiple failed attempts, Luke took the call and coldly turned her away. She then returned to their apartment to get her things or at least see what's left of her home, accompanied by Jace. While there, they were attacked by a Forsaken which Jace fought and killed. After the encounter, Clary then went to their downstairs neighbor Madame Dorothea to ask about the night of Jocelyn's disappearance. Dorothea, a self-proclaimed psychic, tried to 'read' Clary's mind but informed her that she likely had a block on her mind. Instead, she let Clary pick a card from her tarot deck, drawn by her mother. Clary picked out the Ace of Cups card.
Jace convinced Clary to snoop around, and they found Simon lurking outside Luke's house as well. While inside, they saw Luke arrive and be interrogated by two men, which Jace later told her were the men who killed his father. Clary was stunned to hear Luke say, seemingly firmly, that he didn't care what happened to Clary and Jocelyn and wouldn't get involved with Valentine's plans for them.
When they returned to the Institute, Hodge told Clary that her mother had been a member of the Circle and was the wife of its leader, Valentine, who plotted against the Clave and was believed to have been dead for years. Hodge told her bits about her mother's past. It was decided that Clary would need to be assessed by the Silent Brothers to help her retrieve her blocked memories. At the Silent City, they learned Clary's memories of the Shadow World were being filtered and blocked from her mind. She saw the name of Magnus Bane, as a form of a signature on the spell on her mind left by the High Warlock of Brooklyn.
The Shadowhunters, along with Simon, proceeded to Magnus's home to ask him about the block on Clary's mind. Though he initially denied responsibility, Magnus was forced to acknowledge it because of his signature. He then told them the true nature of the spell and that it was upon the request of Jocelyn. He told her that he would be unable to remove the block but that its effects were already fading and would be gone completely soon enough, but that her memories may gradually or may not come back to her.
On her birthday, Jace gave Clary her first witchlight, and the pair shared their first kiss in the Institute's greenhouse. They were unable to pursue a relationship due to their other friendships, particularly with Simon recently admitting his feelings for her, as well as Jace's parabatai Alec's disapproval of them.
Eventually, they discovered that Valentine was after the Mortal Cup, which Jocelyn hid when she ran away from the Shadow World. When Clary discovered that she could hide physical objects in drawings, she realized that her mother may have done the same with the cup. Remembering the Ace of Cups card in the tarot deck Jocelyn made for Madame Dorothea, the group paid the charlatan a visit. Although they retrieved the Cup, Dorothea was possessed by Abbadon and battled the group, gravely injuring Alec, who was later saved by the warlock they met earlier, Magnus Bane.
Luke revealed himself to be a werewolf, and former Shadowhunter Lucian Graymark. He had been turning her away to protect her from the Circle members tailing him. Luke took leadership of the local lycanthrope pack to help look after Clary and search for her mother. With his pack, head over to Renwick's to rescue Jace and Jocelyn. During the confrontation, Valentine revealed that Jace was in fact his and Jocelyn's first child, Jonathan. Jace confirmed this as it was actually Valentine that raised him and made him believe that they were the Waylands. In the confusion, Valentine escaped through the ruin's Portal, taking the Cup with him. Clary managed to convince Jace, who wanted to go after Valentine, to turn his back on their father.
Now led to believe that they were siblings, Clary and Jace distanced themselves from one another. Clary began seeing Simon, who finally managed to tell her how he felt. However, Clary and Jace evidently still harbored feelings for each other, despite the recent revelation.
Clary, Jace, Isabelle, and Simon were invited to the Seelie Court by the Queen where the woman played a trick on them. Clary unknowingly ate faerie food, rendering her trapped in the court unless released by the queen. The Queen demanded that Clary have the kiss she most desired: with Jace. Though she didn't want to hurt Simon, she had no choice but to kiss Jace, which turned passionate very quickly. After getting out, Simon stormed off.
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