Lara Croft was born in Surrey’s Parkside hospital to Lady Amelia Croft and the notorious archaeologist Lord Richard Croft, the late Earl of Abbingdon. Between the ages of three and six, she attended the Abbingdon Girls School, where it quickly became clear that she was an exceptionally gifted child.
At the age of nine, Lara and her mother were in Croft’s private jet over the Himalayas when lightning struck the engines and caused the plane to crash land. Her mother and Lara were the only survivors at the time. When exploring a nearby temple, Lara inadvertently triggered a mysterious portal, too – as we later find out – the future, by touching a sword. Lara’s mother, misunderstanding the person on the other side – Amanda Evert, who was, in the future, talking to Lara – pulled out the sword and vanished to supposedly Avalon. Lara, then alone, walked to Katmandu, to escape the horrors of the plane crash. When she arrived in Katmandu she went to the nearest bar and made a polite telephone call to her father asking if it would be convenient for him to come and pick her up.
After the loss of her mother, Lara received private tutoring, part of it from her father, who took her on some of his expeditions.
Lara suffered another tragic loss at the age of 17, her father went missing in Cambodia. Extensive searches by the authorities and Lara herself turned up human remains that could not definitively be identified. Since Lord Croft’s body was not officially recovered, Lara could not directly inherit the Croft title and was thrust into a bitter family feud over control of the Abbingdon estates with her uncle Lord Errol Croft. Lara eventually won the legal battle and took possession of her inheritance, including the title of Countess of Abbingdon which she inherited from her father and became 11th Countess of Abbingdon, but at the cost of a deep rift in the Croft family that left her estranged from her living relatives.
Lara is searching for Avalon, hoping it will lead her to an explanation for the disappearance of her long lost mother. Underneath the Mediterranean Sea, Lara discovers an ancient temple designating itself as “Niflheim”, one of the many Norse underworlds. Deep within, she recovers one of Thor’s gauntlets, after a lengthy battle with Amanda Evert’s mercenaries and an encounter with an imprisoned Jacqueline Natla, on Amanda’s ship. Natla tells Lara that the Norse underworld, Helheim and Avalon are one and the same and that she will need to find Thor’s Hammer to open the Underworld and find her mother. Lara soon discovers that she will have to find Thor’s other gauntlet and his belt if she wants to find and wield the hammer. Natla provides Lara with a starting point for her search in this quest – coastal Thailand.
