My Life Story....well, some of it anyways.

I, Lady Lara Croft, am an 11th generation Countess. My family was granted the title and rights to Abbingdon, Surrey by King Edward VI in 1547. The Croft Estates are comprised of three separate manor houses, two of which are maintained by the National Trust, and the third is home to me.

I have suffered several personal tragedies, including the deaths of both my parents on separate occasions before I came of age. Reputably an accredited genius and Olympic-standard gymnast, I am the focus of wild speculation and intense debate in both the scientific and political communities in addition to the popular press. Idealized and vilified in equal measure, I'm perhaps one of the most fascinating and enigmatic figures of our time. Or, so they say.

I was born in Surrey's Parkside hospital to Lady Amelia Croft and the notorious archeologist Lord Richard Croft, the late Earl of Abbingdon. Between the ages of three and six, I attended the Abbingdon Girls School, where it quickly became clear that I was an exceptionally gifted child.

At the age of nine I survived a plane crash in the Himalayas that took the life of my mother. In perhaps the first story of my prodigious indomitability, I somehow survived a solo ten-day trek across the Himalayan mountains, one of the most hostile environments on the planet. The story goes that when I arrived in Kathmandu, I went to the nearest bar and made a polite telephone call to my father asking if it would be convenient for him to come and pick me up.

For six years following the plane crash, I rarely left my father's side, traveling around the world from one archeological dig site to another. During this period I was ostensibly given a standard education from private tutors, but it would probably be more accurate to say I was my father's full time apprentice.

When I was fifteen, my father went missing in Cambodia. Extensive searches by the authorities and me myself turned up human remains that could not definitively be identified. Since my father's body was not officially recovered, I could not directly inherit the Croft title and I was thrust into a bitter family feud over control of the Abbingdon estates with my uncle Lord Errol Croft. I eventually won the legal battle, and took possession of my inheritance, but at the cost of a deep rift in the Croft family that left me estranged from my living relatives.

I have already eclipsed my father's career; as of this writing I am credited with the discovery of some fifteen archeological sites of international significance. These sites are still yielding new and exciting insights to the past on an ongoing basis. No one can deny my incredible contribution to the field of archeology, however I am not without my detractors.

My methods have been frequently called into question by government officials and other practicing archeologists. I have been described variously as anything from cavalier to downright irresponsible. Some scholars have suggested that my notorious lack of documentation and brute force methodology have contaminated countless sites and done more harm than good. There have even been (unsubstantiated) allegations that I actually take items from these sites before informing the international community of their locations, and that I am nothing more than a glorified treasure hunter.

Despite the tabloid press's infatuation with me, I guard my privacy with complete determination. I have never granted an interview nor made any personal comment to any of the rumors associated with me, preferring to express myself through brief formal statements given by my family solicitors, Hardgraves and Moore.

Predictably there have been a number of unofficial biographies printed about me, that attribute wild and fantastic feats to my exploits, ranging from the discovery of living dinosaurs in the Congo to infiltrating the infamous Area 51 in Nevada. The official line from the Croft Estate to these works is simply that "...these books are utter rot: disgraceful, trashy works of total fiction."

Nevertheless if you even make a cursory search on the Internet for the Unexplained, the Mysterious and the Downright Unbelievable, time and again you will find my name appearing. I appear to be a hero to conspiracy theorists and alternate history aficionados alike.

It seems the further you dig into my life, the more bewildering and mysterious I become. Perhaps like the archeological sites I discovered, they have only scratched the surface of me and the complex and inscrutable secrets buried deep within me.