Ra's al Ghul (Earth-5180)

"I know the rage that drives you. That impossible anger strangling the grief, until the memory of your loved one is just... poison in your veins. And one day, you catch yourself wishing the person you loved had never existed, so you would be spared your pain."

- - Ra's al Ghul to Batman

Ra's al Ghul (Arabic رأس الغول, meaning Head of the Demon) was the leader of the League of Shadows. Inheriting the title from the previous Ra's al Ghul, he discovered the secret of immortality through the rejuvenating waters of the Lazarus Pit, which allowed him to lead the League for 400 years, a quest in which, among numerous objectives, he sought to destroy Gotham City and rebuild it through Wonder City. He is the father of the late Elektra Natchios and Nyssa Raatko. Training Bruce Wayne into becoming the ultimate warrior, Ra's al Ghul almost succeed into turning Wayne his permanent disciple, until he rejected the possibility of killing a criminal, eventually escaping from the Shadow Temple and returning to Gotham. Ra's then plotted alongside Scarecrow to release Fear Toxin in the city to reduce it to ash, until he was stopped by Batman, none other than Bruce himself.

Early Life
The man who would be known as Ra's al Ghul was born in the 1400s to a nomadic tribe somewhere in the deserts of the Arab world, near an ancient city where the inhabitants traveled through the Arabian Peninsula to China. Ever since he was a child, the boy showed interest in science, as well as fairy tales, theorizing magic and science were one and the same. He met a young woman whom he fell in love, and the two started a relationship.

As a young adult, he was the responsible for discovering about the mythical Lazarus Pit, a vat of chemical proportions capable of healing, rejuvenating and resurrection individuals, although at the cost of neural deterioration over time, which he did after saving a dying prince. However, the ungrateful prince killed Ra's beloved, as she was a former woman whom had left him. Unwilling to admit being an assassin, the prince's family sentenced the young man to life in a small and rotten prison cell alongside the body of his late loved one.

The Founding of the League
"Once I had a wife, my great love. She was taken from me. Like you, I was forced to learn that there are those without decency that must be fought without hesitation, without pity. Your anger gives you great power, but if you let it, it will destroy you, as it almost did me."

- - Henri Ducard to Batman

In the prison, he met an old blind woman who desired her own death because of her suffering, so the young man conceived her wishes. However, in the next weeks, he was freed by the woman's son, who believed he had a life debt for him because he ended the suffering of his mother. The two of them escaped with horses they stole from the guards and went to search for the man's old tribe, which they eventually found after wandering in the desert for three days.

There, the young man found his uncle, leader of the tribe, and convinced him and the others to follow his lead in a quest for revenge to destroy the prince and his royal family, all whom he saw as criminals, that he declared the 'worst scorn on Earth'. With his knowledge of science, the man infected the prince and the rest of the family with a deadly disease after sending them contaminated pieces of fabric. When the prince and his family came to the tribe and begged for their help, the young man slaughtered them all and declared the city was free from their tyranny. He then proclaimed himself Ra's al Ghul (Head of the Demon), and made his tribe, and those who followed them, the League of Shadows, bent on eradicating injustice and corruption from the world.