Unity Kincaid (illustrated by Ibrahim Moustafa)

On June 10th, 1916, in London, Unity Kincaid sleeps and dreams of a tall dark man with eyes that feel like burning stars in her head.

That night, Roderick Burgess attempts to capture Death, but instead accidentally captures Morpheus, the King of Dreams.

After that night, Unity finds it difficult to stay awake and often sleeps 20 hours a day without dreaming…until she does not wake at all. She is one of the victims of the Sleeping Sickness that spread across the world affecting countless people.

In 1932, Unity was raped. Nine months later she gave birth to a little girl, who was adopted. She slept through both the rape and the birth of her daughter.

In 1955, Unity’s parents died and she was put into a nursing home. She would sometimes wake briefly and would never remember where she was.

In 1988, Morpheus escapes from his glass prison.

Unity, now 89 years old, awakes. She recalls having a dream that she had a baby. A year later, Unity manages to track down her daughter and asks for her to come to England.

Miranda Walker and her daughter Rose visit England and meet Unity, who explains the situation about being ill and tells Miranda that she is her real mother and Rose’s grandmother.

Rose returns to the United States to look for her lost brother Jed and Miranda stays in England with Unity.

Not long afterwards, Rose has a very strange night where she enters The Dreaming and is told, by Morpheus, that she is a Dream Vortex that threatens The Dreaming and she must be killed to prevent the destruction of the barriers between dreaming minds and causes all dreamers to be caught into one huge dream until the vortex collapses into itself destroying the minds of the dreamers and damages The Dreaming beyond repair. Rose accepts her fate and agrees to sacrifice herself.

Unity, who is very ill and dying, falls asleep and enters The Dreaming. Unity tells Morpheus that she will accept the role of the Vortex from Rose to save Rose’s life, because she should have originally been the Vortex if it hadn’t been for Dream’s imprisonment and her Sleeping Sickness. Unity then asks Rose to give her her heart, which she does. Once Unity accepts Rose’s heart, in the waking world, Unity’s body dies and the Dream Vortex is eliminated.

This may seem very confusing and really the best thing to do is, if you haven’t, go read The Doll’s House storyline. It’s a fantastic book.

This portrait was drawn by Ibrahim Moustafa and it’s one of my favorites he’s done so far. He makes her seem really elegant and self-assured, which I like. This is a very strong portrait for such a strong and important character in the Sandman universe.