Reginald J. Priest

Priest (played by Rolf Kanies) is a character in the sci-fi TV show "Lexx".

Priest's first appearance was in season 3, as chief underling to Prince, the ruler of the planet Fire. Like all people on the planet Fire, Priest was the reincarnation of someone who lived once before, and he wasn't born, but rather "woke up" as an adult. Priest served Prince faithfully until the arrival of the Lexx crew, when he seized an opportunity to kill Prince and gain control of the planet Fire. This idea backfired when Prince, while falling to his death, shot and killed Priest with a crossbow. (It wasn't a particularly clever plan at any rate, since Prince would simply be resurrected soon after with all his memories intact.)

In season 4, Priest "wakes up" for a second time on the planet Earth with the name Reginald J. Priest. He is allegedly a Vietnam veteran who was held captive for 30 years by the Viet Cong, and is swiftly elected President of the United States with some help from Prince (in his new incarnation as head of the ATF). Following an abortive attempt on Prince's life, Prince has Priest's first wife murdered in a parody of the John F. Kennedy assassination. Shortly afterwards, Priest marries the more attractive Bunny.

Priest's "Presidency" is a disaster for Earth, marred by his own incompetence, cowardice, laziness, and gross lack of ethics. One of his first actions as President was to attempt the assassination of Prince (again), which failed and resulted in the complete destruction of the city of Orlando, Florida. Priest, with Prince's help, managed to blame the city's destruction on Cuba, which they then nuked off the face of the Earth. Because of Priest's tendency to play sexual games with Bunny instead of working, America, and the world at large, soon falls apart. Priest refuses to take calls from the UN or other international bodies, provokes several Middle Eastern nations to declare a Jihad against the United States, fails to help South Carolina after a major disaster, ignores the threats of the South to secede from the Union, launches unprovoked nuclear attacks on Newfoundland and Vietnam, and does nothing to counter a massive alien invasion. It is possible that President Priest was partly designed as a parody of both Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush.

Despite his all around ineptitude, stupidity, and lack of enthusiasm, when properly motivated Priest can display a certain low cunning. He displays rare intellect while conning Stanley Tweedle to use the Lexx to kill Prince, promising to make Stanley King of Newfoundland, “a tropical paradise of wine, women, and constant song,” by his “supreme Executive authority,” if he assisted in the assassination. He further shows cunning through his later successful attempt to convince France to drop its objections to America dumping its out of date nuclear submarines in the Indian Ocean by pretending to have a French ancestor and an appreciation for French culture.

In the final episode ("Yo Way Yo"), Priest admits that he has no memory of being imprisoned in Vietnam, and is aware of the fact that he came from the planet Fire, which would make him unique on Earth as the only person to retain his memories from a previous life (with the exception of Prince). He escapes the destruction of Earth with Prince and Bunny on a spacecraft