Irene Adler is a retired American opera singer and actress. She is one of the most notable female characters in the series, despite appearing in only one story. Five years prior to the events of the plot of the story, while
serving as prima donna in the Imperial Opera of Warsaw, Adler had had a
brief liaison with Wilhelm von Ormstein, the then Crown Prince of Bohemia.
Having recently become engaged to the daughter of the King of
Scandinavia and fearful that, should the strictly principled family of
his fiancée learn of this impropriety, the marriage would be called off,
von Ormstein had sought to regain letters and a photograph of Adler and
himself together. Von Ormstein retains Holmes to help in locating and
obtaining the photograph, but Adler slips away, leaving only a
photograph of herself alone for the King and a note addressed to Holmes
assuring him that the King had nothing to fear from her and that she was
keeping the photograph of them together only as a protection against
any action he might take. The beginning of "A Scandal in Bohemia" describes the high regard in which Holmes held Adler:
To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex. It was not that he felt any emotion akin to love for Irene Adler...yet there was but one woman to him, and that woman was the late Irene Adler, of dubious and questionable memory.
This "memory" is kept alive by a photograph of Irene Adler, which had been left for the King and which Holmes had asked for and received as a reward for his part in the case.
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