An Irish half-demon, ("Human on me Mother's side") Francis Doyle has so far lived an unremearkable life (for a demon anyhoo). For some time he was married to a beautiful ethni-demonologist called Harry, but the love didn't last and they went through a painful divorce.
Doyle, like Angel, has a curse on him. Put on him by the Mysterious 'Powers that Be' Doyle has visions. Coupled with a nasty migrane Doyle can see people in trouble, people who need help. "They don't come to me direct. I get visions. Which is to say great splitting migranes with pictures. A Name. A face. I don't know who sends them. I just know whoever send them is more powerful than me or you, and they're just trying to make things right."
When Angel moved to Los Angeles, Doyle sought him out and struck up a friendship with him. Angel was initally wary of him, but they soon became friends. Doyle isn't the bravest person in the world, and he readily admits this but, there is a little bit of hero in him, it's just buried really really deep.
He didn't take being half-demon well when he found out at the age of twenty-one. At the time he was married to Harry, teaching third grade, everything seemed to be going really well for him. Then he found out exactly what his father was and the happy world he knew crumbled. He pushed Harry away, afraid to tell her that he was a monster and cut himself off from his past life, turning to gambling and drinking.
So coming to LA and teaming up with Angel is a new beginning for him, one he hopes he can make work. He is finding life at Angel Investigations very pleasing, mainly due to the presence of Cordelia. He's certainly in lust with her, but is too shy to do anything about it, especially as Cordy doesn't even seem to notice him. He even goes as far as asking Angel to tell Cordelia all these heroic things about him just to impress her. He begins to realise that it might never be though after she make comments about how all the demons she knows are horrible. Then to make matters worse, Harry turns up on the doorstep one day asking for a divorce, it brings back a lot of painful memories for Doyle, but leads to Cordelia finding a new-found respect (of sorts) for 'The Little Irish Man'.
Doyle shows off his deeply hidden heroic streak when Cordelia is attacked by a demon outside the offices. He gets himself badly knocked around for his troubles, but it has a postitive outcome because Cordy starts to realise that she likes him, a lot.
The arrival of the Scourge, a pure-breed demon cult whose mission is to destroy all half-breed demons (like Angel and Doyle) in LA dredges up one of Doyle's most painful memories.
Not too long after he walked out on Harry, he was visited in his home by another of his kind, a Brakken demon. This Brakken told him that the Scourge were trying to track down his family and friends and asked Doyle for help. Doyle refused, not wanting to know and threw the Brakken demon out of his apartment. Not too long afterward he had his first vision: A deserted warehouse where the Brakken were hiding out, every single Brakken hiding within, men, women and children dead. In his vision he could see them screaming out for help. After he recovered from the vision he went to the warehouse, and true enough he found every demon dead. And he could have helped.
Now the Scourge are back and it's up to Doyle, Angel and Cordelia to save the demons they are out to get. While Cordelia sorts out passage on a boat for the demons, Angel integrates himself into the Scourge by bringing them Doyle and snapping his neck, leaving him lying dead on the floor. Doyle in his demon form is much stronger than your average demon and a snapped neck is easy enough to fix without any lasting damage.
While Angel is discovering exactly what the Scourge is up to, Cordelia finds out from the demons she is helping save that Doyle is a demon. To say she is surprised is a bit of an understatement and when Doyle returns to the ship he gets a slap off Cordelia before being told that he should ask her out for dinner. He is about to when Angel shows up, the Scourge close on his tail. They get the demons safely into the hold of the ship where the Scourge trap them and lower in their secret weapon. A bomb of pure light that can burn the humanity out of a demon, leaving nothign but cinders behind. As the bomb starts powering up, Doyle and Angel get into a fight about who will sacrifice themselves to shut it off. Doyle punches Angel off the landing and turns to Cordelia, kissing her and saying that they'll never know whether this (his demon face) was one she could have grown to love. Cordelia watches, tears rolling down her face, as Doyle leaps onto the bomb and reaches to shut it off. He is too late to save himself though and in a scene (that will surely be cut from any terrestrial showings of the epsiode) Doyle sacrifices himself so those he was charged to help protect will live.
Doyle might be gone but his legacy lives on. The kiss he shared with Cordelia was more than just a goodbye, he gave her a parting gift too, his visions.
Francis Allan Doyle, gone but never forgotten.