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Desire is one of the Endless, a fictional character from Neil Gaiman's comic book series, The Sandman.
Desire is the third youngest of the Endless. Desire is a beautiful, perfectly androgynous figure who is not so much genderless as multiple-gendered. Desire blends in effortlessly with whatever environment she/he finds her/himself in. She/he lives in the heart of a massive statue of her/himself, known as the Threshold. Indeed, further strengthening the connection to hearts, Desire's sigil in the galleries of the other Endless is a heart of cut glass.
Desire is easily the cruelest of the Endless. Desire seems obsessed with interfering with the affairs of her/his elder siblings, particularly Morpheus. The motivation behind this is not clear, but seems to be simply a variation on childish teasing. Desire is not exactly unaware of the consequences of her/his actions, but considers those consequences ultimately unimportant, a position which angers Morpheus and Death in particular. Desire is the twin sibling of Despair, and the two sometimes act in concert; the relationship is not clear, however, and Desire is much more distant from its siblings than Despair.
A more forgiving interpretation is that Desire reflects, simply, desire, and is as fickle as the emotion. As desire is easily the most inflaming of emotions, Desire takes special delight in egging those who think they are beyond emotions altogether.
A story in Endless Nights, set long before any other Sandman story, explains the origins of the Desire/Dream enmity, and reveals that before this Desire was Dream's favourite sibling. Desire had made Dream and a mortal fall in love, then caused the mortal to fall in love with the essance of a sun. Dream was deeply hurt by this experience and deeply resented this intrusion, and may have become a colder personality at least in part because of it.
The enmity between Dream and Desire continued through the millenia, eventually culminating in Desire raping and fathering a child on Unity Kinkaid, then attempting to have Dream kill Unity's grandchild, which would have caused the ruthless and relentless Furies to hound Dream unti he died for the crime of shedding family blood. When Dream discovered this at the end of The Doll's House, he openly threatened Desire with what would happen should Desire interfere in Dream's life again, and there was an uneasy truce between the two afterwards.
Being androgynous, Desire makes the Endless line-up come out perfectly. They total seven members, the perfect number, but by virtue of Desire's gender, they contain four males and four females.
Desire's general physical appearance has been likened to the characters depicted by artist Patrick Nagel.
See also
"Desire (DC Comics)"