Jeannie Napier

Jeannie Napier was born Jeannie Núñez in Corto Maltese during one of the later revolutions. In timelines such as J-510, J-512, and J-513, her parents are able to smuggle Jeannie and her two older siblings out of the country to Gotham City. They grow up in the Narrows District with limited means, but Jeannie is still able to save up enough allowance to attend weekly showings of classic comedies at Gotham's old movie theater. These shape Jeannie's sense of humor. Thanks to the fact her mother speaks both English and Spanish (because of her own Scottish mother, Jeannie's namesake), Jeannie grows up bilingual and lands a job translating instructions on the back of cards at the Monarch Playing Card Company when she graduates high school. Dimension J-510 (Batman: The Killing Joke)

About six months into her employment at Monarch, she meets Jack Napier on her walk to work. He is a lab assistant at the Ace Chemical Processing Plant, which is next door to Monarch. They are immediately attracted to each other and discover they share the same love of classic comedy and seafood. They date and marry a year later. Jeannie encourages Jack to try stand-up comedy, as it's always been a dream of his. Although his delivery is awkward, Jeannie's laughter infects the rest of the audience and Jack experiences early success on the nightclub circuit. Because of this success, after an argument with his boss Rick Sanchez about some strange notes of his Jack found, Jack quits Ace to focus on comedy. A few weeks later Jeannie tells him she's pregnant. Thanks to his early success at stand-up and Jeannie's job at Monarch, they are not too worried about money.

However, their luck turns when Jeannie faints at work early on in the pregnancy. She is anemic and the doctor prescribes bedrest. However, bedrest is not covered by Monarch, and Jeannie is unceremoniously fired. She is also restricted by the doctor from going to Jack's shows, and without her encouragement in the audience his jokes stop landing. Their savings dwindle, and this combined with Jeannie's medical costs force the couple to leave their nice apartment and move in to delapidated tenement housing in the Narrows. Although Jeannie ingratiates herself with their landlady Mrs. Burkiss and is usually able to get extensions on their rent, Jack grows increasingly desperate about their circumstances. Unbeknownst to Jeannie, he agrees to help two criminals break into Ace to get to Monarch.

On the morning of the heist, Jack tells her he has an act that night, and that he's heading out for an early sound check. She wishes him luck, although she suspects he's hiding something -- probably planning some sort of impractical surprise for her, as he often does, whether it's scalped tickets to a hockey game or a baseball glove for the baby. She takes this time to try out a discount baby bottle heater that just arrived. Tragically, the poor quality of the device and the faulty wiring in the apartment causes an electrical short, killing her and the baby almost instantly. This news crushes a shocked Jack, who is strong-armed any way into going on with the heist under the guise of Red Hood. There he meets Batman and falls into a vat of Sanchez's interdimensional chemicals, turning him into the Joker. Because of the interdimensional compound in the acid, he's experienced every memory from every timeline that led him to Batman and the chemicals. Jeannie is now one of many multiple choice memories rotating through his mind, and he doesn't know if she is real or not. Either way, her memory causes him the most pain across every timeline.

Dimension J-512 (Batman: Hush Returns)

Jeannie's life in this timeline is very similar to Jeannie's in Dimension J-510, save for the fact that her husband is a poorer liar here and lets her in on his plans with the criminals. This horrifies Jeannie, and she talks him out of the heist. He gives in, but the next day Jeannie is kidnapped by his prospective partners in order to make Jack play ball. When the heist goes awry with the partners getting killed and Jack falling into the chemicals, the corrupt cop Oliver Hammett kills Jeannie and makes it look like an accident by blowing up the boiler in the Napiers' apartment. It is this event more than his transformation that turns Jack into the Joker in this timeline.

Dimension J-513 (Batman: Three Jokers) Jeannie's life in this timeline is again identical to her life in Dimension J-510 and J-512, up until Jack is exposed to the chemicals far earlier than in either timeline. After Rick catches Jack reading his boss's notes about his recent discoveries, Rick decides to test the interdimensional compound on him by leaking an odorless gas through the vents of Jack's office and sneaking droplets in his coffee. This exposure causes Jack to experience disorienting visions from all the timelines where he was exposed to these chemicals. These include timelines where he's a violent criminal and others where he's a sadistic clown. He eventually attacks Rick but is thrown out before he can cause too much damage. Sanchez says he won't press charges as long as Jack doesn't come back. Jack tries to make it as a comedian, but his unsteady grip on reality makes him bomb each time he gets onstage.

Jeannie tries to help him, discovering the source of his outbursts when she finds a journal Jack has been keeping about the incidents. However, Jack refuses to get help, sure that his story would be taken as evidence he's insane. He doesn't want to be locked up and leave Jeannie alone, especially now that she's pregnant and lost her job when put on bedrest. His violent episodes only increase as he juggles the multiple timelines in his mind, and after an aborted attempt to strangle Jeannie when he momentarily mistakes her for a girlfriend of the gangster version of Jack, Jeannie realizes she has to get away from him for her and the baby's sake.

She takes the journal to the police, begging them to interrogate Rick Sanchez and get treatment for her husband. Batman listens in, and arranges with up-and-coming lawyer Harvey Dent to move Jeannie to some Dent family property in Badger, Alaska. She goes by Evelyn Dent, pretending to be a distant cousin of Harvey's. Unbeknownst to her, the police fake her death, telling Jack on the morning of the heist that she died testing the baby bottle heater that really did kill her in Dimension J-510. Unlike in Dimension J-510, they don't tell Jack to go to the hospital to identify her body, but in shock he believes them anyway and goes through with the heist, once more becoming the Joker.

Jeannie's baby is assigned male at birth and is called Jackie in honor of Jeannie's lost husband. Jeannie gets a job as a clerk at a grocery store, and tells her child that Jack is in hiding, and will reunite with them when he can. Her benefactor Bruce Wayne told her not long after the accident at the chemical processing plant that Jack is missing, presumed dead, but Jeannie refuses to believe this. She remains hopeful he will one day return to his family, cured.

When their child is twelve, they ask Jeannie to start referring to them by they/their pronouns. At age fourteen they come out as a transgendered genderfluid girl with she/her pronouns. Although Jeannie is at first uncertain what to do, she educates herself and agrees to have their name legally changed to Duela. Sharing her parents' sense of humor and her father's theatrical flair, Duela at fifteen decides she wants to become a clown with a steampunk goth aesthetic. Jeannie is supportive and is very close to Duela. However, Jeannie is unaware that Duela has secret plans to go to Gotham to try to find out what happened to her father.