Edmund Duke

Edmund Duke is a character from the StarCraft franchise. He was considered as a replacement for Warfield as the game's siege tank hero. However, his role was taken by Sgt. Hammer.

Background
Edmund Duke was a scion of the wealthy Duke family of the, who slowly rose through the military to command the elite shock troopers of. He saw action in the and against the revolutionary  of Arcturus Mengsk, fighting to suppress his revolution. Duke and his forces took part in the suppression of the alien on the planet of  before their knowledge was made public, as the Confederacy was manipulating the zerg to use as a weapon. When the colony was purified by the, Duke locked down the nearby planet of , taking command of the colony and arresting all local militia, including Marshal Jim Raynor. However, Mengsk and his forces were able to evacuate much of the colony as Duke and his forces fled the colony, and stole the plans for the device the Confederacy was using to guide the zerg, the.

When Mengsk struck the planet with his revolution, Duke and Alpha Squadron were sent in to quell the uprising, but was repelled by the Sons of Korhal. However, soon the zerg attacked the planet, and Duke's,  was caught in a zerg strike, crashing on the planet. Seeing an opportunity, Mengsk and his forces moved in to rescue Duke, and gave him an offer: he could return to the falling Confederacy, and lose, or join in Mengsk's revolution against the Confederacy and earn a position in Mengsk's cabinet. Duke reluctantly agreed. Though tense with his fellow high ranking officers, Raynor, the psionic warrior and reporter, Duke remained loyal to Mengsk. Duke led the assault on the Confederate capital of, where he carried out Mengsk's orders to utilize psi emitters on the planet, unleashing billions of zerg on the world and slaughtering the planet's population.

The brutal slaughter of billions of civilians and the abandoning of Kerrigan on Tarsonis's surface led Raynor and Liberty to abandon the Sons of Korhal, and Duke moved in to try to stop Raynor, but he was able to escape from Duke and his forces. Yet with Mengsk victorious in dismantling the Confederacy, he reformed the scattered terran nations into the, with Duke becoming a high ranking officer in the new regime. After an unsuccessful attempt to stop Raynor from stealing Mengsk's flasghip, the , Duke and his forces were sent to the planet to investigate a psionic call there, only to find a massive number of zerg on the world, who had infested Sarah Kerrigan into a new psionic agent. Duke's forces were pushed back by the zerg, and forced to contend with forces under Tassadar, eventually leaving the planet in defeat.

Duke and his Alpha Squadron forces took part in small domestic actions as the conflict wound down, fighting in the three way battle of. However, on the way to a diplomatic summit with the neighboring nation of the, Mengsk was beset by ex-Confederate assassins, and Duke was forced to violate Umojan airspace to help rescue him. The assassination was orchestrated by the invading, who had recently launched an assault on the sector. Duke attempted to defend the Dominion shipyards on, but forces under Vice Admiral Alexei Stukov repelled his fleet and stole a number of Dominion flagships. Soon the UED took the Dominion capital of, forcing Duke and Mengsk to flee with Raynor and the protoss warrior Fenix. Together, the group formed a shaky alliance with the infested Sarah Kerrigan to strike back against the UED.

The alliance was successful in invading Korhal and driving the UED off world, but at the eve of their victory, Kerrigan had other designs. She turned on her allies, assaulting Mengsk's forces out of revenge for abandoning her to the zerg, and smashed into Duke's flagship. The general was killed in the blitz, crippling Mengsk's forces.