Kitana

"You will learn respect!"

- Kitana's Battle Cry in Mortal Kombat (2011)

Kitana is a character and a secondary heroine in the Mortal Kombat series. She is the princess of Edenia.

In video games
Kitana is over 10,000 years old, although she appears to be a young woman. Throughout the years, she has risen to great importance, first as the loyal stepdaughter of the evil Outworld emperor Shao Kahn; then his enemy, tearing herself away from his grasp and freeing her home realm of Edenia; and then leading an army into Outworld to combat any chance of Kahn rising to power again. Kitana shared a subtle love interest with Earthrealm champion Liu Kang until he was killed by the Deadly Alliance, though they were briefly reunited prior to his resurrection. She has aligned herself on the good side, despite her loyalty to Kahn for most of her life until learning the truth about her past and real family. A disfigured clone of Kitana, given the name Mileena, was introduced as Kitana's twin sister, but is later considered her arch-rival (at least in the original game series' timeline).

Kitana first appears in Mortal Kombat II (1993) as Shao Kahn's personal assassin, working alongside her supposed twin sister Mileena. After centuries of loyally serving Kahn, Kitana uncovers the truth about her past, discovering that she is actually the daughter of Edenia's former rulers King Jerrod and Queen Sindel, and was taken as Kahn's own when he conquered their realm. She also learns that Mileena was never her real sister, but a grotesque clone of her created at her adopted father's behest by his sorcerer Shang Tsung. Originally intended to replace Kitana should she ever learn of her true birthright, Mileena emerged flawed and Kahn instead decided to make her monitor Kitana's loyalty to him. According to the semi canonical spin-off game Mortal Kombat: Shaolin Monks (2005), after Kitana (voiced by Lita Lopez) was found no longer loyal to Kahn, she is put into a spell-induced trance and forced to fight the Earthrealm heroes anyway (along with Mileena and Jade), before being freed from this state by the Shaolin warrior monks, Liu Kang and Kung Lao. Eventually, the sisters clash and Kitana emerges victorious, killing Mileena.

During the events of Mortal Kombat 3 (1995), Kitana is put on trial for treason and the murder of Mileena. Before a verdict and sentence could be reached, however, she escapes from Shao Kahn's dungeons and joins the warriors of Earthrealm to free her mother Sindel, who has been resurrected and used by Kahn to invade Earth. After convincing her close friend Jade to join her, Kitana locates and frees Sindel from Kahn's mental control, leading to his defeat at the hands of Liu Kang. Kitana, Sindel, and Jade then liberate Edenia from Outworld. Their jubilance is short-lived, as during Mortal Kombat Gold (1999), Shinnok and his grand vizier Quan Chi escapes imprisonment in the Netherrealm and invades Edenia. Betrayed by the traitorous Edenian Tanya, Kitana, Sindel, and Jade are taken prisoner, but Kitana manages to escape and rejoin her Earthrealm allies. Shinnok's forces are eventually defeated by the joint efforts of Kitana and her allies. With Edenia freed once again, Kitana finally proposes to Kang, offering him the chance to rule Edenia at her side as king and queen, but he reluctantly rejects her offer, seeing his true duty as champion of Earth. After Shinnok's defeat, Kitana captures Mileena but learns that Kahn has survived his defeat in Earthrealm and is regaining power. Knowing that her stepfather would attempt to reclaim Edenia once he was strong enough, she forges an alliance with Goro, prince of the Outworld race Shokan. The combined armies of the Edenians and Shokans defeat much of Kahn's forces, but are eventually locked in stalemate.

In Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance (2002), Kitana, leading a preemptive strike against Shao Kahn's forces, learns that he has been slain by unknown assassins. Thinking that her fight is at an end, she begins the journey back to Edenia, hoping to finally live in peace. However, on the way back, she encounters Kung Lao, who tells her of the plans of the Deadly Alliance, Quan Chi and Shang Tsung, who are responsible for both Liu Kang and Kahn's demise and are attempting to revive the undead army of the legendary Onaga the Dragon King. Despite Kitana's grief of Kang's death, she once again rejoins the Earthrealm warriors against the new threat. Eventually, Kitana and her allies assault Shang Tsung's palace, where she faces Quan Chi one-on-one. Despite her improved fighting skills gained from training with Bo' Rai Cho, she is outmatched by the powerful necromancer and killed alongside her allies. Shortly after, they are resurrected and magically enslaved by Onaga, who then sends Mileena to impersonate Kitana as the princess of Edenia.

In Mortal Kombat: Deception (2004), Onaga uses Kitana to defeat and imprison her mother, Sindel, knowing that the queen would not fight her daughter. Sindel is freed from her own dungeon by Jade, and together they flee to Outworld where they attempt to find a way to defeat Onaga and free Kitana from his influence. Unknown to anyone at the time, Liu Kang's spirit was able to remain amongst the living due to the bond he shared with Kitana. He found himself a new ally and friend in Ermac, as the two embark on a mission to save their allies as well. Ermac and Kang are successful in freeing Kitana and the other Earthrealm heroes. Afterwards, as Kitana travels back to Edenia, she encounters Blaze, who warns her of a coming new danger that will threaten all the realms and advices her to assemble the forces of light into battle. Weary of constant battle, Kitana is disheartened, but Blaze assures her that the wars will soon be over. Following this warning, Kitana returns in Mortal Kombat: Armageddon (2006), accompanied by Kang's spirit in order to keep him whole until there was a way to reunite him with his body. They later meet with Nightwolf, who offers to relieve Kitana of her burden to take Kang's soul into himself, allowing her to fight against the coming evil. Kitana ultimately perishes with the rest of her allies during the battle.

In the uncanonical crossover game Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe (2008), Kitana is transported to Metropolis, where she encounters her counterpart from the DC Universe, Wonder Woman. Due to the "kombat rage," Kitana hallucinates, believing Wonder Woman to be an assassin sent from Outworld and challenged her. After being defeated, Kitana flees to elsewhere in Metropolis, where she is found and defeated by Scorpion and brought to Raiden's temple, where she tells about seeing the fusion of Shao Kahn and Darkseid: Dark Kahn. Kitana then joins the rest of the Kombatants in traveling to the fused realms of Outworld and Apokolips. She fights alongside them against the DC heroes and villains, and is one of the many knocked unconscious while Raiden and Superman battle and destroy Dark Kahn.

Kitana re-appears in Mortal Kombat, the 2011 re-imagining of the earliest three Mortal Kombat games, voiced by Karen Strassman and motion-captured by Brenda Barrie. In the game's story mode, she and Jade are sent by Shao Kahn to compete in Mortal Kombat. Kitana battles Liu Kang in an attempt to insure that he will not reach the final stages of the first tournament, but is defeated. Expecting to die, she is surprised by his decision to spare her. Later, during the second tournament, Kitana is approached by Raiden, who informs her that her supposed past as Kahn's daughter is a lie. In Shang Tsung's Flesh Pits, she comes upon a newly-created Mileena. Before Kahn, she accuses Shang of attempting to replace her, and is shocked to learn that the emperor himself ordered Mileena's creation, as he imprisons Kitana in the palace and commands his "true daughter" to be brought to him. However, Kitana is soon freed by Jade and the two escape to Earthrealm to join their new allies against the forces of Outworld. They assist in the battle for Earthrealm, but are killed alongside several others by Kitana's corrupted mother Sindel. Kitana being the last one fights sindel only to be horribly outmatched by her power she brutally beats her daughter with her new found strength. In the end, she is shown to be one of the warriors that are resurrected by Quan Chi in the Netherrealm to battle Raiden.

Combat/abilities
Kitana being as skilled as she is, she can use her fan blades against enemies or throw them. She can also use her fan blades to levitate her enemies into the air. Without her fans kitana is skilled in hand to hand combat capable of defeating enemies with her bare hands.

In other media
Kitana appears as a secondary character in Malibu's 1994-1995 Mortal Kombat comic books. She was the subject of the special issue Kitana and Mileena: Sister Act, in which her backstory was revealed as slightly altered in comparison to the MKII canon story. In the comic books, Kitana is the princess of Edenia and daughter of Jerrod and Sindel, but she was already an adult when Shao Kahn killed Jerrod and seized the realm, putting her under a spell that made her forget her past life and believe she is Kahn's daughter. Kitana first appeared during theGoro: Prince of Pain story arc, joining Mileena, Baraka and Reptile in search for Goro in Outworld. During the Battlewave miniseries, she attempted to rebel against Kahn with the assistance of Kung Lao, Baraka and Sub-Zero. Unlike in the game series' continuity, in the comic series Kitana has no interactions with neither Liu Kang nor Jade. Instead, she has a closer relation with Lao (and Shang Tsung even attempts to exploit this while taking Kitana's form). She also appears in Midway's stand-alone MK4 prologue comic book published in 1997, in which she is arranges peace between the races of Shokan and Centaurians while being secretly watched over by Goro, and in the game tie-in title Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe: Beginnings, drawn by Tobias and published by DC Comics in 2008.

Kitana was one of the characters featured in the 1995 stage show Mortal Kombat: Live Tour, played by Lexi Alexander (credited as "Lexi Mirai") and Jennifer DeCosta.

In the 1995 novel Mortal Kombat by Martin Delrio, an expanded novelization of the first film, Kitana is introduced in a new new scene, in which she is described as dressed in "scarlet-red silk ... stitched all around with a golden thread". Shang Tsung also tells Goro that Kitana "alone keeps alive the memory" of Edenia before Kahn's conquest and "uses her age and her position as a shield to cover her rebellion".

Despite being a major character in the video games' storyline, Princess Kitana was only a supporting character in both Mortal Kombat live-action films. In the movies, Kitana was portrayed by the 28-year-old Talisa Soto, appearing unmasked and wearing less revealing, all-black costumes (including a long formal dress). In the first film, released in 1995, Kitana was introduced as a companion of Shang Tsung, but eventually joined Liu Kang and the Earthrealm warriors to help them defeat the sorcerer. Kitana spent most of the 1997 sequel film Mortal Kombat: Annihilation in Shao Kahn's capivity, captured by Scorpion, before facing Sindel during the final battle. Kitana's steel folding fans (for the first time redesigned into several blades on each one, instead of solid all-metal fans) briefly appeared as her weapon in the second film. In the films, Kitana does engage in a romantic relationship with Liu Kang, but her Edenian background, prior loyalty to Kahn, and relations with Mileena and Jade were ignored in both pictures in which she was instead described simply as being the rightful heir to the Outworld's throne.

Kitana is one of the lead characters in the 1996 television animated series Mortal Kombat: Defenders of the Realm, set roughly in the movies' version of the MK universe, in which she did again appear unmasked even if clad in a black-blue leotard-type outfit more reminiscent of the one she wore in MKII, and was voiced by Cree Summer. Similar to the films, she is never shown to have ever been loyal to Kahn in the cartoon. In the episode "Skin Deep," a male ninja character Rain is introduced as her former love interest turned enemy. The series' finale involved Kitana leading a rebellion from Outworld against Shao Kahn.

Kitana made several appearances in the non-canonical prequel live-action television series Mortal Kombat: Konquest (1998–1999), her role shared by the 27-year-old Audie England (the episodes "Vengeance" and "Shadow of a Doubt") and by Dara Tomanovich (in "The Essence"), with Christine Rodriguez being their stunt double. In this series, she is fully aware of her Edenian past and the deaths of her parents at Shao Kahn's hands, clandestinely working with the Great Kung Lao to prevent the Emperor from conquering realms while at the same time feigning her allegiance to him. Her outfit and weapon are similar to these she has in the films, but she uses her native fighting style called the Special Edenian Arts, which she had mastered already before Kahn's invasion and which was suplemented with various moves that she learnt from prisoners of her stepfather. The Konquest version of Mileena is neither her clone nor a sister, and Rain appears as her former best friend. In the series' abrupt finale (due to the show's cancellation, as it was supposed to continue further for a next season after a cliffhanger ending), Kitana appears to die, after she was reluctantly ordered by Shao Kahn to be killled for her plots of treason against him. She is attacked by three Shadow Priests, and after a struggle, one manages to strangle her, lifts her of the ground, passes her to the other two Shadow Priests who keep strangling her. The first Shadow Priest then uses Kitana's own fan against her.

Kitana appears in the 2011 prequel live-action webisode series Mortal Kombat: Legacy, played in her first acting role by a 20-year-old martial artist and stuntwoman Samantha Jo (credited as Sam Tjhia), a self-professed Kitana fan who said she did research "to get on the same page" with other fans to see how they perceive the character while preparing for the role. Kitana's origin story is told in part-live and part-animated episode "Kitana & Mileena," which is a fable-like, altered adaptation of their backstory from the original game series' canon (one big difference is that her mother Sindel used a ritual so her soul fused with Kitana's in hopes to avoid Shao Khan's corruption before committing suicide). In it, Kitana appears both masked (only in the animated scenes) and unmasked, and bests Mileena in a fierce sparring match. When the young sisters are sent by Kahn to assassinate the man who is really King Jerrod, Kitana's biological father who is then killed by Mileena, Kitana eventually learns the truth after her past and decided to turn against Kahn in the upcoming Mortal Kombat tournament.