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| Edmund Dorrance went from the London slums to a captaincy in the Royal Artillery of the British army by the time he was 24. His rise through the ranks was suspect, and charges of blackmail were rumoured but never formally made. It was as a soldier of the Queen that he came to Hong Kong, where he used his rank as a means of smuggling illegal goods from Asia to the ports of Europe. He took up residence in Kowloon upon leaving the army and began a ruthless campaign to make himself a major player in the Asian crime world. |
| From this home base, Edmund Dorrance sought to learn from the greatest of the martial arts masters. He proved to be an eager student and travelled from school to school until he had mastered every form of combat but one. It was while learning this final ancient fighting style that Dorrance was blinded, but not before crippling his tutor, Koroshi. Returning to Hong Kong, Dorrance, with the aid of a street gang known as the Ghost Dragons, carved himself a niche in the hugely lucrative heroin trade. Murder and extortion were the tools he used, earning him the nickname King Snake. |
| Always with an eye toward making his riches legitimate, Edmund became one of Hong Kong's wealthiest landowners and built a business empire on money made in the sale of drugs. Dorrance was awarded the Order of the British Empire at age forty for his generous work in the area of children's charities, a generosity made possible by the millions he'd made in narcotics. With the impending return of Hong Kong to the possession of Mainland China in the year 1997, Sir Edmund attempted to move his crime empire to Gotham City. |
