Shining Knight

Shining Knight (Ystina) is a fictional character from DC Comics. He is the third character named Shining Knight and appears as a major character from Seven Soldiers. In The New 52 reboot, the character is reimagined as transgender. Publication history Ystin was originally created by Grant Morrison and Simone Bianchi as a modern female version of the original Sir Justin within the Seven Soldiers miniseries. When writing about The New 52 version of the character in Demon Knights, Paul Cornell admitted to Newsarama, that "he wants the reader to make up their own mind on Ystin" but also noting that "in the case of something as fundamental as identity, I think some level of clarity is essential, especially if it's a marginalized identity where the average reader might not know what conclusion they're jumping to, or any attendant misconceptions about sex and gender they may have". Demon Knights writer Paul Cornell was deliberately ambiguous about the character's gender until the fourteenth issue, where Ystin says: "I'm both [genders]... I was born this way". Cornell later called Ystin transgender on social media and asked for more detail by Newsarama, Cornell said: "I think that's down to what each individual reader wants from that exchange, or most identifies with. Why shut down any of the possibilities?" Ystin's torture in Hell was to be forced to publicly display his gender. Fictional character biographies