Illyria - boy or girl??

[eunsoma]

I know that Illyria is perceived as female, and this only just occured to me now.. but was she female or male or did she even have a sex?
Yes, she did take over Fred's body and wore the body or a woman around, but if you remember back to 'Shells' Wesley sees a picture of Illyria in "it's" true form, and that form don't look to feminime to me..

So just wondering, if Illryia took over a males body, say Wesley's for example, would it be male? Would it eventually develope feelings for Fred? I always thought it just took on a female persona because it had all of Fred's memories and it wore her body..

 

[Clem Rocks]

I'm pretty sure "she" was an it. Neither girl or boy and just was girl because she had taken over a girl's body

 

[TabulaRasa]

I was pretty sure that she took over womens forms to be honest but hey I could have just mistaken the info.

 

[Lyri]

didn't someone once refer to her as 'The God-King'? seems pretty masculine to me. i think it was just Knox's decision to use Fred that forced 'It' to become feminine. if he had picked a man, then we wouldn't really be having this conversation! lol

 

[eponinethen]

Well, I don't believe in a biological gender, so I don't see the problem here 🙂
Did Illyria define itself as female?

 

[white avenger]

The answer might be similar to the same question asked about the demon that inhabits a human body and makes it a vampire. The demon assumes the personality and assimilates the human host's memories, but is the demon itself male, female, neither, or both?

I don't propose that Illyria is in any way similar to vampires other than in the fact that she (he it) inhabits the body or shell of a human being and as the series progressed we saw traits of Fred's personality begin to reassert themselves, if only on a limited basis. How that reassertion would manifest itself on a long term basis was only conjecture up until this point, but with the rebirth of the Angel series in comic book form, we may at last find out. (Maybe some of Fred's old crush on Angel will begin to emerge, and we'll see a cat fight between werewolf Nina and hell god Fred/Illyria)