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Bundry Rothwild
Bundry Rothwild
Voiced by: Chris Fields
The owner of the Rothwild Slaughterhouse, one of the largest sources of whale oil in Dunwall.
- Bad Boss: Most of his workers endure horrible conditions. When they attempted to form a union, Rothwild called in a favor from the Lord Regent, who made unionizing a capital offense for people involved in the whaling industry. Rothwild also uses the number of accidents that happen in his slaughterhouse as his safe code.
- Cold-Blooded Torture: Builds a makeshift electric chair to fry complaining workers, and brags about how his days working on a whaling ship have taught him to be an expert torturer. In addition, he likes to keep the whales he catches alive as long as possible, even while they're being eviscerated, since he apparently can extract more oil from them that way.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Of the "Robber Baron" variety.
- Cutting Off the Branches: Canonically, Daud blew up the Slaughterhouse, which means Rothwild either perished in the explosion or Daud or Ames killed him beforehand.
- Dark and Troubled Past: His father died when he was little, forcing his family into (further) destitution. His mother was then killed at the bottling factory she worked at, leaving him and his younger brother orphans. His brother (who he had gone to great lengths to care for) was then taken by the overseers for the "Trial of Aptitude
", and "mysteriously" vanished. With no family or money, Bundry had to claw his way up from rock bottom. - Evil Virtues: Rothwild has a surprising amount of positive traits, despite his horrific actions.
- He is ambitious, seeking to be a wealthy businessman and not giving up until he became one.
- He's incredibly dilligent, working hard for many years to achieve his goals.
- He also shows gratitude to those who have helped him, as he offered employment to many of the sailors who took him in as a child. They have become his butchers and the only employees he doesn't treat like garbage.
- Evil vs. Evil: While his actions are worse than Abigail Ames, they're both incredibly amoral individuals willing to sink to rather appauling depths to get their way.
- Foil: To Ames. He rules by fear and intimidation while she uses charisma and promises of a better alternative to bring people to her side. Rothwild's end goal is control while Ames seeks to create chaos.
- "Get Back Here!" Boss: He'll run away and call for backup if Daud chooses to confront him instead of immediately kill or incapacitate him. Unfortunately for the butcher boss, he's against an assassin with a slew of ranged weapons and the power of teleportation.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Daud can interrogate Rothwild with the device he was using to torture his workers into not striking.
- Human Mail: The nonlethal option for eliminating him involves locking him in a crate bound for the most remote corner of the Empire, where it is described as very icy and cold.
- Laser-Guided Karma: He can potentially be interrogated using his own torture chair, and even killed with it. Safe to say, he finds out the hard way exactly how effective his torture methods really were.
- Loves the Sound of Screaming: According to his audio logs, he enjoys the moans of the whales as they die in his slaughterhouse.
- No Celebrities Were Harmed: His last name is a reference to the Rothschilds, an incredibly wealthy family known for owning buisnesses similar to the one owned by Rothwild.
- Rags to Riches: From an orphan left from parents of modest means, to the owner of a slaughterhouse in the most profitable industry in Dunwall who has the ear of the Lord Regent.
- Sadist: He enjoys hurting people, and is implied to have been eager to torture his employees. While keeping the whales alive increases the profits he makes, he also enjoys watching and listening to the whale's agony.
- Even when he was a whaler, he lived for inflicting pain on the whales, spending long months at sea solely for the purpose of hunting them down and killing them.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: If confronted in his office and not immediately attacked, he'll run away and yell for his guards, knowing Daud has the upper hand.
- Self-Made Man: He grew up on the streets. Sadly, he's one of those Nouveau Riche who wants to pull the ladder up behind them so no one else can climb it.
Arnold Timsh
Arnold Timsh
Voiced by: John Mariano
The City Barrister. Timsh has been abusing his position to kick other nobles out of their homes with false accusations of plague so he can seize their assets for himself.
- Adaptational Badass: Light example. During the Debut Trailer he is a Dirty Coward hiding behind mooks and when they are dealt with is left pitifully (and unsuccessfully) pleading with Corvo for his life. In contrast, during the actual game he is armed and willing to go down fighting Daud.
- Amoral Attorney: The most powerful lawyer in the city and also the most morally bankrupt.
- Demoted to Extra: In The Brigmore Witches DLC, if you let him live.
- Dirty Old Man: Daud can stumble upon him trying to pressure one of his maids into sleeping with him.
- Evil Old Folks: He's much older than most characters in Dunwall and is a ruthless bastard who ruins lives for a quick profit.
- Fainting: He passes out when he realises he's going to be arrested by his former allies.
- Hate Sink: He's a rude and arrogant Jerkass who believes he's above the law. He's not as evil as most characters, but he's one of the most unpleasant.
- Hoist by His Own Petard:
- Daud can trick a general into believing that Timsh's house is plague-ridden, which gets Timsh evicted and all his property seized.
- He gets thrown into Coldridge later, where Daud finds him while springing Lizzy.
- Laser-Guided Karma: He can be forcibly and unfairly evicted from his own home and left to rot in prison, a fate he's subjected many other people to. When encountered in jail, his wealth and status have been destroyed, and he can be gunned down without a second thought, just like any other pauper in Dunwall.
- Light Is Not Good: He has white hair to match his white suit, and is a ruthless and unscrupulous individual driven by his unquenchable greed.
- Love Martyr: Although Timsh is obsessed with Delilah, she considers him useless to her and tells Daud she doesn't care what he does to Timsh.
- Meta Twist: He first appeared in a pre-release trailer where he was one of Corvo's targets.
- Oh, Crap!: He freaks out when he realises his immunity papers have been switched.
- Perilous Old Fool: He's a somewhat downplayed version of this trope. The Assassins' file on Timsh notes that he's in surprisingly good shape for a man his age, carrying both sword and pistol and being a decent shot. If Daud tries taking him head on, Timsh will fight back, though even without Daud's supernatural powers it's a Curbstomp Battle as Timsh's actual combat skill is only on par with a weak Lower Guard.
- White Hair, Black Heart: In order to go with his Light Is Not Good image, his hair is the same color as his suit. He's also utterly devoid of compassion and morality.
Overseer Leonard Hume
Overseer Leonard Hume
A high ranking Overseer and the final assassination target of The Knife of Dunwall, part 1 of the 2-part Daud DLCs.
- All Your Base Are Belong to Us: He takes over the Assassin's headquarters and even sets himself up right in Daud's office.
- Anti-Villain: He's an overseer, but he's rightfully trying to put an end to Daud's reign of terror, even if he belongs to a group that isn't much better.
- Black-and-Gray Morality: He's a high ranking member of a ruthless organisation, hunting down an organisation of assassins. Becomes Gray-and-Gray Morality if Daud is playing on low chaos.
- Final Boss: On a Low Chaos run he ends up being this for The Knife of Dunwall, since you only fight the final duel against Billie Lurk on High Chaos.
- Hero Antagonist: He's not exactly in the wrong for hunting down Daud, a known assassin and murderer. While the overseers are unambiguously evil, he's suffering from Black-and-Gray Morality at worst.
- Ironic Name: A devout zealot who shares a surname with a famous atheistic philosopher.
- Leeroy Jenkins: He launched the attack on Daud's base prematurely while Daud himself wasn't present and carelessly left the original plan around for Daud to find (which is most likely why Corvo found a squad of dead Overseers at the entrance to the district when he was there). Several characters comment on this rush to action and how he failed as well as doomed the entire plan because of it.
- Off with His Head!: His death scene reuses Martin's close combat death animation, which means this.
- Smug Snake: He's very impressed with himself for his take-over of the district and boasts about it at length - unless the player feels like cutting him short.
- Stupid Evil: Preemptively starting an attack against a powerful organisation without waiting for proper support is an extremely stupid act that he pays for dearly.
- Wolfpack Boss: In a fight, Hume's just a regular Overseer with marginally more health, but he has an abnormally large number of guards who will immediately join in if he's attacked (including two Music Box Overseers). If the player rescues all 4 captured assassins before facing Hume, they can use Summon Assassin to call in multiple assassins plus Billie Lurk to help fight Hume, turning the fight into a massive battle royale.
Edgar Wakefield
Edgar Wakefield
The former second-in-command of the Dead Eels. He managed to get his boss, Lizzy Stride, sent to Coldridge Prion and took over the gang.
- Dragon Ascendant: He was trying to pass himself off as one. Not only was he more incompetent, he'd actually been the one responsible for her getting thrown in prison. Then Lizzy is broken out and comes back...
- Eye Scream: If confronted directly, Daud kills Edgar Wakefield by plunging a sword through his right eye.
- Sanity Slippage: He loses it when he learns that Lizzy has escaped from Coldridge and plans on coming for him.
- The Starscream: He was one to Lizzy, up until he actually succeeded. Then it occurred to him it may not have been the best idea.
- Throw 'Em to the Wolves: Disposing of him non-lethally just means knocking him out and letting Lizzy deal with him.
Delilah Copperspoon
Delilah Copperspoon
She dreams of all the world bowing, but more than that. Loving her. Breathing her name.
Click here to see Deililah's portrait.
Voiced by: Erin Cottrell
A mysterious witch who has history with the Kaldwin family, she first appeared as the antagonist of Daud's DLC. She returns in the second game to once again take over the Empire from Emily.
- The Ace: From a purely artistic point of view, especially in the second game, she is very often considered a genius like her old master Sokolov as well as one of the most skilled painters and sculptors of her time. Not to mention that despite not having passed so many years since she was marked by the Outsider compared to Daud and Vera Moray, not only did she immediately learn to unlock and use a multitude of powers but she deepened her knowledge on her magic and the Void at levels in some ways even superior to that of any other marked individual.
- Ambition Is Evil: Delilah's ambitions are quite grand, far greater than a throne and claiming her birthright; it extends to becoming a God Empress of the Void, reordering reality and supplanting the Outsider himself.
- Arch-Enemy:
- Initially, Daud is just an annoying threat to get rid of. But as he progresses, Delilah realizes he has a very real chance of stopping her, and decides to consider him as such.
- In the second game, she refocuses her efforts on Emily and Corvo. Her rivalry with Emily is especially personal since Emily Kaldwin is also an illegitimate offspring of royal and common blood, and Delilah wanted everything she had.
- The Outsider for his part considers Delilah the most dangerous person he has ever given his Mark, and he goes out of his way to foil her plans, directly intervening and empowering agents to get in her way.
- Art Attacker: She can use her statues to detect intruders. In an emergency, she can turn them into copies of herself. She also has the ability to use paintings to control people. It's implied that this is how she managed to completely enthrall Timsh. She planned on using a more powerful version of this ability to possess Emily.
- In the second game, the statues return as a long-distance communication system she uses to keep tabs on her lieutenants, and her power over paintings has grown to the point where she can use them to alter reality, with her ultimate plan being to completely rewrite the universe into a paradise for herself.
- And I Must Scream:
- Her fate if Daud chooses a non-lethal means of dealing with her. He replaces the painting of Emily she needs for her ritual with one that depicts a tree in The Void. Once she finishes, instead of possessing Emily, she ends up trapped, unable to die or to affect anything.
- Presumably also Emily's fate if she were to succeed with her plan, making the above an Ironic Hell.
- Bad Boss: One of her witches realizes that all of the strongest members of the coven are being sent right into Daud's path. This is savvy of Delilah, but not because she expects them to succeed. Rather, it's to get rid of anyone who could overpower her once she's in Emily's ten-year-old body.
- Bad with the Bone: In the tabletop RPG, her weapon is stated to be a whalebone sword.
- Bastard Bastard: If her story is to be believed, then aside from being a self-centered usurper, she's also the illegitimate daughter of Emperor Euhorn Kaldwin and a kitchen maid.
- Berserk Button: Do not compare her unfavourably to Jessamine (and by extension Emily). Don't even hint that she might not be as classy or graceful or even remotely less admirable than they are. Her temper is mercurial and she hands out death on a whim — especially to aristocracy, whom she despises for their absence of true loyalty.
- Big Bad: For Daud's story arc in Dishonored's DLCs and Dishonored 2.
- Blue-and-Orange Morality: Sokolov, who knew her when they were both younger, points out that she's basically an idealist that wants to make the world better than it is. However, her idea of said better world is one in which everyone and everything bows down to her unquestioningly, and she doesn't care who she has to crush to achieve her goal.
- Call-Back: In the second game, once again the non-lethal way of dealing with her is to trap her in a painting.
- Contractual Boss Immunity: Actually an aversion; unlike Daud, she's not fully resistant to Bend Time, because her Void power set is different enough from Corvo and Daud's that she doesn't have that ability (like the Royal Interrogator, she won't be completely frozen, but is still noticeably slowed).
- Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Unlike both Hiram Burrows and Farley Havelock who are both realistic-themed villains in the first game, Delilah is the polar opposite to both men, being a supernatural entity. Whereas Burrows and Havelock fight Corvo with regular weapons in their respective boss battles, Delilah uses supernatural powers against Corvo or Emily in her own boss battle.
- Create Your Own Villain: A lot of people over the years made Delilah go down a bad path:
- Her father Emperor Euhorn refused to acknowledge Delilah as his offspring, and forced her to play and befriend Jessamine, his "true" heir. Jessamine herself unthinkingly pinned the blame for her own misdeeds on her, leading to Delilah and her housemaid mother to be removed from Dunwall Tower.
- Delilah then got the worst of Dunwall, seeing how class inequality led her mother to an early grave, a life of hardship and prostitution for her, and where her only real advancement, as student to Anton Sokolov, still involved sexual extortion.
- Finally, the Outsider decided to give an obviously damaged and vengeful individual with righteous grievances his Mark (What Could Possibly Go Wrong?), and that made Delilah into a threat to the whole of Dunwall society. After realizing his mistake, the Outsider then got Daud to take care of her, and even that backfired when she crawled out of the Void stronger than ever, coming closer than anyone to toppling the Outsider as the God of the Void.
- Depraved Bisexual: Confirmed by Harvey Smith to be "openly bisexual", being in a romantic relationship with her second, Breanna, a woman, and the Duke of Serkonos, a man. She also openly comments on finding Corvo sexually attractive while inhabiting the Heart, much to Emily's discomfort.
- Dream Weaver: From the second game, as a consequence of her absorbing some of the Outsider's powers in order to take his place as a divinity, Delilah can invade dreams and transport people to the Void and she used it with Emily in order to show her her version of the story.
- Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Delilah's pitch black hair and very white skin, combined with her sinister clothing style, do a good job of emphasizing her antagonistic nature.
- Entitled Bastard: Her end goal really says it all. She seeks to use Void magic to overwrite reality and replace it with a painting she's made, creating a world where she's the beloved rightful empress and everyone worships her. The painting's name? The World As It Should Be.
- Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: Despite her It's All About Me tendencies, a part of Delilah's bitterness came from the way her mother suffered and died due to Jessamine's lie. She mentioned how her mother died after suffering weeks from a broken jaw and was buried unceremoniously in a coffin too small for her. This was after being forced into extreme poverty and sentenced to Debtor's Prison, even though Euhorn could have at least provided for them when her mother lost her job.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: As manipulative and self-centred as she is, Delilah is shown to care about a few people:
- Her feelings about her sister Jessamine are... complicated... But at the very least when Jessamine is released from the heart, Delilah states without a trace of sarcasm that she's glad that the latter is finally at peace and can truly die. Might be because she can sympathise with what it's like to be half alive in an inanimate object.
- While one might expect that Delilah views the boorish Duke Luca Abele simply as a means to an end, information gleaned from the Heart and her diary shows that she does care about him on some level. Less as a lover and more as a "pet" or a little brother, but she nevertheless does. In particular, Delilah seems to appreciate that the Duke is completely unfettered with morality and is pleased to see that he turned Karnaca into his personal playground.
- Similarly, she seemed to have genuine feelings for Breanna Ashworth. The two have, after all, found the coven in Dunwall together and are implied to have been lovers at one point. Delilah does cast Breanna aside if she loses her powers in the non-lethal playthrough but she claims it is because seeing Breanna in that state is too painful.
- Evil Aunt: She is the older half-sister to Jessamine, making her Emily's aunt.
- Evil Counterpart: Especially in the 2nd game, she's this to Emily, much like Daud was to Corvo. Their Outsider-given power sets are also quite similar, much like Corvo's and Daud's are.
- She is also one for Billie Lurk as both have gone through a childhood full of abuses and injustices and have held prominent positions in supernatural terrorist groups. However, while Billie deep inside has kept her empathy and conscience intact and over the years there she has come to a deep remorse for the crimes she committed after separating from Daud, Delilah instead continued until the end to see herself as the victim and hold a grudge for old frictions to the point that she is more than willing to inflict death and suffering wherever she goes and reap a lot of innocent victims.
- Evil Is Petty: At the last mission, you can find that she graffiti'd Jessamine Kaldwin's memorial with a self-serving rant, and tossed Emily's doll, Miss Pilsen, into a toilet. Delilah is also bitter that Jessamine 'cheated' at parlour games when they were kids.
- Final Boss: Of The Brigmore Witches, as well as Dishonored 2.
- Fisher King: Delilah manages to run the city of Dunwall into the ground in the few months she sits on the throne in 2, and when Emily or Corvo return to the city in the final mission, it certainly looks the part. The buildings have fallen into disrepair, dead bodies can be found all over the place, and the sky seems to be permanently overcast, giving everything a sickly, decrepit look.
- Flash Step: She can use "Blink".
- Flower Motifs: Roses.
- Freudian Excuse: Delilah Kaldwin had a terrible, unhappy childhood and a traumatic adolescence as an orphan on the run, forced into prostitution and other means limited by class and gender discrimination from harnessing her true potential. As much as it fails to justify her actions, one cannot blame anyone with her upbringing for finding some way to create 'The World As It Should Be', as even Anton Sokolov admits. She has never been happy.
- From Nobody to Nightmare:
- In a Motive Rant in the second game, she states that she basically had to claw her way up from the bottom after she and her mother were booted from Dunwall Tower. After her mother's death, she worked in a brothel as a maid before eventually becoming Sokolov's "apprentice".
- More literally, after Daud trapped her in the Void in the DLC, she was essentially nothing, without a body and no real chance to escape. With sheer will and cunning she clawed her way out, becoming one with the Void, communicating to her followers in dreams and starting a conspiracy that results not only in her return but opens the possibility that she could topple the Outsider and remake the world to worship her.
- Garden Garment: A snappy pair of leggings, heeled boots and a coat with a flared waist and a high collar. All of them are covered in thorny vines, leaves and roses true to her motif and powers.
- God-Emperor: What Delilah hopes to become, and what she comes very close to achieving in Dishonored 2. It was perhaps her overall goal all along, even in the DLC. This makes her such a threat that the Outsider actively opposes her, first tasking Daud with the job in the DLC (despite disliking and disapproving of how the latter used his mark) and then turning to Corvo and Emily, even explaining his personal origins to them, to make them understand how serious a threat she is to existence. Her grand plan involves reordering reality to "The World as it Should Be", an eternally static world where everyone adores her and follows her rule without question.
- Godhood Seeker: At the time of Dishonored 2 Delilah was no longer satisfied with becoming the Empress of the Islands and decided to aim directly to rule the world by supplanting the Outsider himself as a divinity.
- God Save Us from the Queen!: Her opening play in the actual coup in the beginning of the second game is to start massacring Emily loyalists present in the throne room. It goes downhill from there in Dunwall.
- Grand Theft Me: Her poem (found by her statue) reveals a plan to possess Emily and rule in her stead.
- Green Thumb: She appears to have plant-based powers, most notably with the Blood Briar, a vine that is used to hold enemies in place.
- Hoist by Their Own Petard: In both The Brigmore Witches and the second game, neutralizing her non-lethally involves tampering with a ritual she's setting up so that it somehow traps her in another world.
- Hot Witch: Timsh certainly thought so, and if her Grand Theft Me plans succeeded considering what Emily looks like now and her parent(s)' appearances as adults she still would have been one.
- Humanoid Abomination: As of the second game. Coming back from the Void made her a part of it, and she is starting to merge with the Outsider, to the latter's absolute dismay.
- I Coulda Been a Contender!:
- Delilah was one of the most intelligent persons of her age, and any age, and Sokolov laments the waste of her potential in her march towards tyranny and revenge. Delilah for her part feels she could have been better and achieved more had her childhood and her life been different and she is obsessed with rewriting the past to achieve her perfect world rather than making best of what she had.
- The mere fact that Delilah had the Outsider's mark proves that she had all the chances to do good, as the Outsider only gives the mark to people who interest him, and whose use of his powers he can't fully predict. Delilah could have used her abilities to create less chaos, and done good, but instead she chose to take her resentment and bitterness out on the world.
- In Their Own Image: Her ultimate plan in Dishonored 2 is to use an amplified version of her painting-based witchcraft to re-write reality into an egocentric paradise, where she's adored by everyone and rules the world without question. The huge painting she crafts for this purpose is even titled "The World As It Should Be"
- It's All About Me: Delilah's opinion of a world where her name and face are shown everywhere?Delilah: This is the world as it should be.
- Also, as opposed to Sokolov's convoluted mathematical references, all her paintings' names relate to her.
- When Breanna gets De Powered? She can't bring herself to see Breanna in such a state, never mind how crushed Breanna must be.
- Karma Houdini: In Dishonored 2's non-lethal elimination she's trapped in her painting of a perfect world without knowing that she didn't actually transform the real world. She doesn't get any real punishment for her actions. Nevertheless, she's no longer a problem in the real world and she'll never be able to resurrect herself.
- Lean and Mean: She's also unusually tall.
- Living Statue: She uses these to spy on people in the City and taunt Daud, as well as act as sentries for her base in Brigmore Manor. They return in Dishonored 2 as a magical communication system that Emily/Corvo can use to trade banter with her on a few occasions.
- Lotus-Eater Machine: Her fate in Dishonored 2 if she's dealt with non-lethally. Because of Corvo/Emily messing with her magic, she gets trapped inside her painting of her perfect world, believing it to be the real world, allowing her to harmlessly live out her fantasy (starting at her childhood) of being the world's beloved savior and eternal god-empress, while the real world takes its true course.
- Mad Artist: Her artistic talents are present in everything she does; her paintings even often look mad and unsettling to others, and if she wasn't like this before the Outsider gave her his mark she has certainly gone mad with the powers she now has access to.
- Meaningful Name: She's Jessamine's bastard sister, without any of the privileges of the Kaldwin name. In other words, instead of being born with a silver spoon in her mouth, she was born with a copper one.
- Me's a Crowd: She turns her statues into perfect copies of herself if you try to take her on directly and retains the move in the sequel.
- Misplaced Retribution: Delilah holds Jessamine wholly responsible for losing her claim to the throne. The truly guilty one is Emperor Euhorn, who strung his illegitimate daughter along with empty promises before taking his first chance to toss her out. This is because, in Delilah's stunted mindset, her father was an infallible god rather than a man.
- No-Sell: At the beginning of Dishonored 2, Corvo immediately stabs her through the chest once she starts trying to cause trouble. She shrugs it off completely and takes away his Mark of the Outsider, de-powering him. It turns out she's immortal due to having transferred her spirit into a Soul Jar. In the final battle, you can impale her with finishing moves all day and it'll just annoy her, unless you return her spirit to her body first.
- Not Quite Dead: She returns in Dishonored 2, having somehow escaped her fate at the hands of Daud. It's strongly suggested that Daud sealed her in the Void instead of killing her outright; this turns out to be a case of Nice Job Breaking It, Hero, as it allowed Delilah to locate the place where the Outsider was created and assimilate a portion of his power.
- Oh, Crap!: If Daud sabotages her ritual, by the time she finds out it's too late for her to fix it.
- Power Echoes: She speaks with a bit of an echo to her voice.
- Psychopathic Manchild: After a rather crappy childhood, Delilah decides to have her revenge on the world, first by forcibly taking back her throne. Much of her personality and actions can be traced to her having never truly grown up, with her clinging to things like the 'promise' her father made to her that was obviously Euhorn trying to placate an unwanted child and she's still sour about Jessamine cheating in games when they were kids. And it's interesting to note that her plan to possess Emily specifically was in the works before Jessamine was killed, implying that instead of trying to become Empress, Delilah wanted to relive her childhood under much better circumstances.
- Reality Warper: Her highest form of magic is capable of achieving this with her paintings. She can impose the painted world onto the real world.
- Returning Big Bad: After serving as the Arc Villain in Daud’s DLC of the original game, Delilah Copperspoon returns in the second game as its Big Bad.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Delilah sees her life's ambition as getting revenge on Dunwall, the Empire, the World and even The Outsider, all of whom at various moments have made her life a living hell, and she pushed back against them all intending to "take back what's hers".
- Shrouded in Myth: Up until Dishonored 2 no one knew anything about her. She tells you a little; she was friends with the Empress Jessamine when they were girls, for instance. Aside from that, almost nothing. There are hints that she's Jessamine's illegitimate half-sister which is more or less confirmed in the sequel. We also learn about most of her life before she was marked, and it's not a happy story.
- Spooky Painting: She's a gifted painter who seems to have a preference for portraits from life-like Sokolov, to whom she was actually an apprentice - but unlike his meticulous and realistic style, her paintings are garishly colorful, borderline-abstract, and unsettling to look at. It turns out this is how she uses her powers; whoever or whatever she paints, she can control to some extent. In the second game, she discovers she can even warp reality using her paintings.
- Super-Empowering: Like Daud, she can grant her followers lesser versions of her own powers.
- Taken for Granite: In the second game, one of her new powers consists in slamming the heel on the ground in order to create a linear fracture which, if it hits the target, transforms it into a statue, using it already at the beginning of the game against the character who is not chosen as playable. In the final battle, it's a one-hit kill attack against the player.
- Teacher/Student Romance: Delilah implies that she and Sokolov had one when she was under his "tutelage", though the way she says it suggests that Sokolov extorted sexual favors from her.
- She herself has one with one of her apprentices, Breanna Ashworth, the director of the conservatory.
- Took a Level in Badass: Goes from being a villain in a 2-Part DLC campaign to being the headline villain in the sequel, a fairly rare occurrence. You later learn that she went so far as to merge herself with the Outsider's essence at the place where he was created, gaining the beginnings of the power to usurp him. This is also why the Outsider interferes and helps you more than he did the last time — he has a personal stake in the outcome.
- Tragic Villain: Delilah's life is one of pain, misery and sadness, and she pushed back with her fierce intelligence and ambition. Born a bastard princess, Delilah could have inherited the throne the same way Emily did. Unfortunately, the legitimate daughter of the Emperor framed her for destroying a valuable object and her father cared nothing for her, causing Delilah to be thrown into the streets, which caused her Start of Darkness. Sokolov laments the great waste of her incredible potential in the sequel, noting that she could truly have made the world better had she not been so fixated on revenge.
- Touched by Vorlons: She has the Outsider's mark, as well as the ability to spread her powers to her minions like Daud.
- Tyrant Takes the Helm: Her rule of Dunwall in Dishonored 2 is disastrous, to say the least. Delilah sets her coven of maniac witches loose to turn the district surrounding the palace into their personal playground, trashing the place and killing everyone who doesn't have the good sense to flee, leaving only desperate scavengers and criminals. The rest of Dunwall's citizenry puts together a blockade around the district in an effort to contain the chaos. Within the palace, the nobles who sided with Delilah are dead, found either poisoned or treated as gruesome sport for the coven, with Delilah's throne room filled with the inert statues of petitioners who upset her paranoid vanity.
- The Unfavorite:
- According to her, her childhood was spent being disregarded by her father the Emperor in favor of Jessamine due to the latter's legitimacy.
- Also to the Outsider, which is quite the feat considering his nature. Among those marked by the Outsider, her mark is the only one he regrets enough to directly empower people to try to stop her, twice.
- The Usurper: In the second game, she takes a much more direct approach to taking the throne by instigating a coup against Emily backed by the Duke of Karnaca. Despite her backstory, however, she seems to have no intention to fix inequity in the empire and instead merely wanted the power and adoration of the people.
- The Vamp: Uses her feminine charms on Timsh to get him to work for her, and according to
Word of God, she did the same with Billie. - Villainous Cheekbones: To go with the general angular and slim theme of her appearance.
- Villainous Crush: Appears to find Corvo attractive.
- Villainous Valor: Unlike Hiram Burrows and Farley Havelock, Delilah Copperspoon is a woman of conviction and fierce courage. She is intelligent, charismatic and determined. She crawled out of an extra-dimensional prison more powerful than ever. The Outsider admits that anyone else in her situation would have floated endlessly in the Void, but not Delilah, and even he was surprised at what she achieved.
