This is the character page for How to Treat a Lady Knight Right.
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Houli Dent
The main protagonist, a mage who falls in love with Leo and is absolutely obsessed with abs.
- 11th-Hour Superpower: When Houli is fading from overusing his healing magic during the fight with the demon lord, he is approached by Asmodeus with the promise to continue on with power greater than the Demon Lord. Houli is supremely confused.Houli: What the hell is happening right now?
- Above the Influence: In a bonus chapter of volume 1, Houli discovers that Leo Can't Hold Her Liquor and is a giggly, playful drunk. When Leo strips off the bottom half of her armor and plops herself onto Houli's lap, Houli is perverted enough to want to feel up her rear, but just chivalrous enough to resist the urge. At least initially. He does start to think maybe it's okay since she won't find out. Fortunately at that moment Leo unwittingly punches him into the sky.
- The Ace: After winning the tournament, Houli becomes popular with the ladies and is regarded as one of the kingdom's best fighters.
- Amazon Chaser: Houli openly declares that Leo's abs are one of the many things he loves about her and that he has no interest in sheltered girls raised just to be pretty. Anri confirms this is his type when she notes that, if you ignore how often he looks at muscular women, he's a great big brother. Even when he gets aged down to his pre-teen years, it's shown that he's been a lover of abs for most of his life.
- Ambiguously Bi: Houli seemed pretty into the idea of kissing male-Leo while he was a woman, though he cools after changing back.
- Cast From Hitpoints: Hiding it from the start of the series, it turns out every time Houli uses recovery magic it isn't simply a heal, but transferring his life force from his body into the target. Fleur had to dig into researching it the hard way to solve this, and considers that if he helps Leo and the others fight the Demon King, he'll die in short time from draining his body too much.
- Chick Magnet: Houli has Sariela thinking he's absolutely adorable, his, uh, sister seems a bit suspect, Fleur Baranova basically wanted him to be her Dom, Randa tried to make him go on a date with her if she won the duel with him, even his cat familiar seems jealous of Leo. After the tournament, Houli receives love letters on a daily basis and even has girls approach him to touch and rate their abs.
- Chivalrous Pervert: Houli's definitely a nice guy and always polite to the many ladies in the story, but there's also a few times he's also doing something just to get to gawk at Leo. Touching Leo's abs grants him heightened magical power (because magical power's based on emotions) and Super Saiyan-like hair.
- The Cutie: Houli's a nice, bubbly guy that's as much of this as the trope can be aside from also having a blatant fetish for women's abs. And when he finds himself in a bit of a Gender Bender run, not even Leo can resist the cuteness.
- Fetish: As it was mentioned already, he's blatantly attracted to girls with muscles, especially abs. His fetish is so great that it eventually summons Asmodeus, the devil of lust who begins to awaken immense power within Houli.
- Gag Penis: While it's not actually shown, it's commented that he's rather well endowed when an age regression spell wears off and shreds his clothes.
- Heroic Second Wind: Touching Leo's abs allows Houli to pull off displays of gigantic magical beams in spite of being seriously injured. Magic can be powered by strong emotions, you see...
- Hypocrite: In chapter 50, Houli calls out another adventurer for confessing their love out of the blue in the exact same way that Houli did in chapter 1, showing zero self awareness regarding his own behavior.
- Kindhearted Cat Lover: Houli is quite kindhearted in general, but the cat loving part is Played for Laughs when he tries to experiment with a spell to make himself a werewolf. Due to his love of cats, targets of his attempts become cat people instead.
- Locked into Strangeness: As an after-effect of being saved through Asmodeus possessing him, his hair color gets changed to blonde. He doesn't mind it so much, though, since it's Leo's hair color too.
- Morality Chain: In another world, Leo eventually became a bloodthirsty monster who murdered everyone. The one thing that kept the main Leo from going down that path was Houli confessing to her and acting as her traveling companion.
- Nice Guy: Houli is greatly kind towards most people and tends to see them for who they really are, which is a major reason why he befriends Helga when he sees past her scary exterior. He's got his perverted tendencies, but doesn't think twice about helping someone. However, he doesn't take kindly to offenses aimed at Leo, and he has more than his fair share of Only Sane Man moments towards the ridiculousness of others around him.
- Non-Action Guy:
- Downplayed with Houli, who is quite capable of spectacular displays of magical power if he touches Leo's abs. Usually though, the heavy-lifting in battle's done by most of the other women in his life while he does other magical things (usually healing) and he's completely no match for two hooligans.
- Subverted in the Tournament Arc, where Houli single-handedly defeats all other competitors, to win Leo's hand. Later he is summoned by the King to team up with Leo and fight with representatives from the neighbouring kingdom.
- Oblivious to Love: Ironically enough, despite near-constantly professing his love for her whenever he can, Houli manages to completely miss any of the times Leo shows signs that she likes him back. Whenever he does anything that makes her heart race or gets her to act weirdly, he never connects the dots that it's because she's been falling for him herself.
- The Power of Lust: His love of abs is so great that it allows him to tap into the power of Asmodeus, demon prince of lust, and go Super Saiyan.
- Single-Target Sexuality: Houli is absolutely Leo-sexual, to the point that the only reason the succubus's trick didn't work on him was because he knew everything about Leo, from the structure of her abs down to which foot she walks with first. He doesn't mind if Leo is a man either, as shown in Chapter 80 after she drinks Houli's genderbending potion (although Houli had also turned himself into a girl at the time). He further fails to find anything sexual the entire time when the succubus Lisa magically put Helga into a scanty-succubus' getup and hypnotizes her to try to make her come onto him. Even when he gets aged down to his pre-teen self with none of his present-day memories, he still rejects his master Harriet for Leo the moment he sees her.
- Super Mode: Turns into a Super Saiyan when he touches Leo's abs. He can also go into this state by touching other girls' abs, but it will be weaker, with the level of the boost depending on the quality of their abs.
- Took a Level in Badass: At the start of the series, Houli's fighting skills were nothing worth writing about. Several chapters later, Houli's skills have improved to the point of winning first place in the annual grand tournament, although he is still nowhere near Leo's levelnote . Houli attributes this to adventuring with Leo.
- World's Strongest Man: Is heading towards this. After the tournament, Houli is acknowledged as the strongest magician of the kingdom. In his Super Mode, Houli's power far exceeds that of his master Harriet (who pioneered more than half of the magic taught within the kingdom). Even Leo's father is slightly intimidated by his strength. And during the fight with the demon lord, Houli begins to access the power of the devil Asmodeus.
Leo Cornelia
The titular lady knight, who is so strong that she is considered the greatest knight in the land, but her upbringing causes her to be unable to comprehend how somebody like Houli could love somebody like her.
- Abusive Parents: It's obvious that Leo's upbringing trained her hard and barely even considered the possibility for things in her life outside of battle and training for battle. Her eating a cake with Anri and Houli celebrating her birthday were milestone events for her.
- Ambiguously Bi: When Houli ended up getting turned into a girl, Leo's reactions were a mix of Cuteness Proximity and having an immensely difficult time controlling her sudden awakening urges towards the incredibly-cute female!Houli. However, she never directly acknowledges her sexuality on the subject matter and even tries to deny such things, and such feelings towards female!Houli are amplified when Leo herself ends up gender-bent into a male, which makes it a Single-Target Sexuality that clearly would just appreciate Houli either way.
- Boyish Short Hair: Leo's pretty much the World's Best Warrior, and has more or less has the same hairstyle as Houli's not-terribly-long haircut.
- Can't Hold Her Liquor: A bonus story in volume one has Houli offering Leo an energy potion he made. He notes he used some fruit juice and a smidge of alcohol in it to make it go down easier. That smidge, which Houli claims was as minimal as he could manage, is enough to get Leo plastered. Leo turns out to be a giggly drunk. She plays with Houli's face, strips off the bottom part of her armor, sits on Houli's lap, punches him into the sky just as Houli was starting to lose to the temptation to cop a feel, and remembers none of it afterward.
- Chainmail Bikini: Leo's normal outfit mostly looks like armour, aside from her breastplate conspicuously ending over her bust and exposing her midsection. She covered them up once when she had a cold, it affected Houli's magical ability deeply for the worse.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Leo reacts... poorly to seeing Houli with other women. When she sees Houli with Anri, before learning they're siblings, Leo is angry for reasons she can't articulate, drags Houli to speak in private, and demands to know what's going on in a manner the narration describes like a child throwing a temper tantrum because this is her first time experiencing jealousy. A later chapter shows a similar reaction to learning that Houli and Helga had spent the day questing together, displaying uncharacteristic anger Houli keeps lampshading and demands a high-five like the kind he gave Helga... while using enough strength that it knocks Houli flat on his butt. At the very least, she's liable to pout when Houli does something for another woman that she hasn't gotten yet.
- Covered in Scars: Leo's got a good amount on her, at least nine can be counted on her from a standalone book which has her posing. They tend to be a source of doubt when she considers how un-feminine she is.
- Covert Pervert: Leo has dreamed of Houli basically coming onto her and kissing her, and was a bit disappointed that fem-Houli wore off while the Desireshroom had her actually coming onto Leo (a text box even said Leo had for the first time felt post-orgasm clarity).
- Cuteness Proximity: Leo gets this seeing Houli's cat Kyuu, and his gender-bender form.
- Even the Girls Want Her: Princess Diana Aldritch and the Berserk Blade are her fans.
- Fear of Thunder: Chapter 15 reveals that Leo has a phobia of lightning. She herself is surprised, as the only special memory she has of lightning was training outside on a stormy night and getting struck head on, but the lightning was so weak she was barely hurt, so it couldn't have traumatized her, right? When she can't deny it anymore, she swears Houli to secrecy, and he is happy to comply since it means he gets this side of Leo all to himself.
- Gender-Blender Name: Leo is more of a name you'll probably associate famous male Russian authors than women.
- Handicapped Badass:
- Implied, but never directly brought up in-story. Leo's right eye is always shut and one of the many scars she's covered in is placed vertically across that eye. Because of that, there's some implication that she lost the use of it at some point, which is known in real life to cause issues such as lack of depth perception. This does nothing to affect how much of a near-unstoppable badass Leo is.
- She is shown to have fought so many powerful monsters and demons that she was covered in their death curses, yet only ever noticed an increase in sluggishness before they were removed.
- Heroic Build: Oh, yeah. Her well toned muscles are one of the things that Houli finds most attractive about her.
- Heroic Self-Deprecation: Leo is often the first to comment on how un-womanly she is. When Houli confesses to her, she keeps bringing this up to try and chase him off to no avail. She's also repeatedly shown to be self-conscious of her scars.
- I Am Not Left-Handed: Leo makes it clear the only time she fights with her full strength is when she plans to kill her opponent.
- Innocently Insensitive: Due to Leo having No Social Skills, she will often speak her mind without a filter, and will sometimes insult someone by complete accident.
- Love Confession: It was a long time coming, but in Ch.111 she finally comes around with her feelings towards Houli and tells him she loves him, finally accepting that she can't help but return the feelings of the guy that always loved her.
- Love Epiphany: The entirety of the "Female Knight and a Friendly Match" arc details her fully coming to terms with her growing feelings towards Houli. She starts by amping up her Tsundere attitude out of jealousy, followed by getting depressed over her needless cruelty, before getting all of her flaws and insecurities slapped in her face by Melvie in order to make her realize how genuine Houli's love for her is, with all of this topped off by her finally accepting it and giving Houli a Love Confession.
- Luminescent Blush: A frequent victim of this due to having no idea how to handle Houli's open and sincere affections. Or just interpersonal relationships in general for that matter.
- Navel Window: Leo's primary outfit consists of armor for her upper body and a long armored skirt. Her stomach is completely bare. When Houli confesses to Leo in chapter 1, he makes a special point of describing her perfect abs as one of the things that attracts him to her.
- Not So Above It All: In one chapter Leo is turned into a Cat Girl due to a magical mishap from Houli, complete with feline mannerisms which greatly embarrass her. However, when Houli gets affected by the same spell she has zero compunctions with exploiting his new mannerisms for her own amusement until it wears off.
- Parrying Bullets: Chapter 92 sees Leo cut through a Wave-Motion Gun from a just-touched-Leo's-abs Houli's wand. This stops the attack but, to her surprise, also caused her sword's blade to break and shatter from numerous points.
- Required Secondary Powers: Averted in chapter 41, where Houli gives Leo a strength-enhancing potion. It makes her so strong (and she can't control it) that she's breaking apart the cliff they're on with just a step.
- Rugged Scar: Leo has one over her right eye. Along with how her right-eye is constantly shut, it's likely that eye is blinded.
- She Is Not My Girlfriend: Leo does the less-common "He is not my boyfriend!" frequently, though she manages to stay far more stoic about saying it and explains his usefulness traveling with her than the usual usage of the trope.
- Single-Target Sexuality: As time goes on, it gradually becomes clear that Leo herself is completely Houli-sexual. He's the only guy she feels awkwardly around (which makes a lot of sense since he's repeatedly mentioned how much he loves her for being her, both in terms of her abs and her personality) but beyond that, even when he turned into a girl and a pre-pubescent boy, she continued to find herself adoring him, with her getting a bit smug when he rejects another girl for her.
- Tranquil Fury: After the King dismisses Houli as weak-looking, Leo doesn't get outright angry but does very obviously drop her politeness and decorum to such a degree that the king is shocked. Her mood doesn't improve until the King sees Houli win his tournament match and revises his opinion.
- Tsundere: She's very much this. She's unused to the kind of attention Houli gives to her and usually tries to rebuff it (initially) while blushing all the while and vouching for his character whenever he's not there. This attitude, combined with a major bout of jealousy, causes her to grow cold towards Houli before outright lashing out at him during their fight against Diana, Dolce and Calvin, which absolutely horrifies her because while she was averse to his affections, it wasn't to the point of acting cruelly towards him.
- Undesirable Prize: Since Leo kept wining the exhibition match, the king made her the final event and if someone can beat her they have the chance to win her hand in marriage or just chose the cash prize. Everyone usually picks the cash prize and are shocked to hear Houli actually wants the marriage prize.
- Unskilled, but Strong: Leo possesses an insane amount of magical power, but it's so unstable that when she tries to use it she simply casts explosive magic on herself. Houli tries to help her control it by holding her hand and manually adjusting her magic with his, and is largely successful, but the act of holding hands eventually makes Leo so embarrassed she blasts Houli with power equivalent to an Archmage.
- World's Best Warrior: Victory in battle is pretty much just something Leo needs to think about obtaining before quickly getting it. Granted, her thoughts can get pre-occupied.
- World's Strongest Woman: Leo is easily the strongest character in the series. No one has really put up much of a fight against her when she's making an effort, as Melvie found out when the fight went from even to curb-stomp the moment Leo started actually trying to kill her. She's won the Grand Tournament so many times now that she's no longer a competitor, but a prize. The tournament's winner gets to fight an exhibition match with Leo, and male participants get an opportunity to propose marriage to her. The demon lord that threatens humanity? An alternate form of Leo, thus the only opponent Leo cannot defeat easily.
Anri Dent
Houli's younger sister, who seems to have a "thing" for her older brother.
- Big Brother Attraction: Houli and Anri aren't actually incestuous, but it's humorously obvious Anri's a bit weird about him... even Leo internally thinks that of her.
- Big Eater: Anri is notably a big eater, once admitting to eating 20 cakes before fighting Leo under the context of carbo-loading.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: She kinda acts like this with regards to her brother and Leo. When Anri picks up on Leo's and Houli's relationship, she starts taunting Leo and even stalks her briefly before their relationship settles into a Friendly Rivalry.
- Cute Bruiser: Anri, who just looks like a cutesy voluptuous girl. Before Leo knew who she was, Anri threw a punch at Leo believing she was bothering Houli somehow. Leo caught it, but is internally surprised with Anri's speed.
- Sweet Tooth: She really likes her cake. She bonds with Leo over their love of sweets.
Sariela
A Dark Elf fortune teller who is skilled with magic.
- Ambiguously Bi: She's hit on both Leo and Houli, though either or both may have just been teasing.
- Always Chaotic Evil: She's introduced with the claim that all Dark Elves hate humans and want to see them suffer, only to promptly reveal the next chapter that she does not.
- Beat the Curse Out of Him: Not nearly so violent. She can release curses through massage instead.
- Inept Mage: When it comes to fortune telling. In chapter 27, she claims that she'd never gotten a fortune right. This is right after she read Leo's fortune to see if she and Houli are compatible romantically and claimed the results said they aren't.
- Troll: She absolutely loves teasing people.
Helga
One of the greatest swordswomen in the land, second only to Leo in terms of fame. Despite that, when it comes to anything besides fighting she's incredibly shy and nervous, desperately desiring friends.
- Birds of a Feather: She and Houli become friends over their idolization of Leo.
- Foil: She's one to both Houli and Leo. Helga and Houli are both basically fans of Leo, but Houli's an outgoing and personable mage that confessed his love of her while Helga's a very shy fighter that can't even say hello to her without Houli's help. Helga and Leo are also both famous, fearsome warriors that have self-image issues and opened themselves up after meeting Houli.
- Heroic Self-Deprecation: She suffers from the same fears as Leo, and regularly thinks everything she's doing is making Houli or Leo hate her.
- I Just Want to Have Friends: She desperately craves companionship. When Leo goes questing with her and says he can join her again whenever, it brings her to happy tears.
- Scary Teeth: The oddest thing about the her - she's got a full jaw of sharp, pointy teeth. It's also pretty much the only thing scary about her when you get to know her.
- Shrinking Violet: Played with in regards to her, since she's painfully shy, barely able to talk to other people, and utterly adorable when she isn't appearing to be a stoic asskicker (the latter adjective is always true).
Irmgard
A demon girl Leo defeated in the past, with her declaring herself Leo's rival when they meet again. Despite that, she rarely ever actually fights Leo since she's constantly followed around by a guy that keeps professing his love for her, which causes her to become embarrassed and fly away.
- Clingy Jealous Girl: Irmgard gets in on this a bit, being brought to tears from Leo maintaining she doesn't remember her and suggests that she probably forget her because she was messing around with Houli.
- Cute Monster Girl: Irmgard being a demon is signified by having horns growing out of her head above her pointy-long ears and bat-like wings growing out above her butt. Her cuteness is a different thing entirely.
- Foil: She's one to Leo. Leo's the heroic fighter stopping likes of demons such as her. Irmgard's a demon that has great magical power. Both had some guy profess their love of them out of nowhere and both are rather Tsundere over it and refusing to reciprocate over it in front of him, though Leo openly allows him around and will confide aspects of the relationship to others while Irmgard almost flees at the topic of it and only talks about it if it's totally not about her.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Irmgard does this out of sheer embarrassment (and self-denial) whenever that guy who declared his love for her but she has no interest in comes up, which happens in both of her appearances.
- Shaping Your Attacks: Played for laughs when Irmgard subconsciously reshapes one of her attacks into a heart when she gets confessed to, then promptly flies off in embarrassment when it's pointed out to her.
- Tsundere: Irmgard is basically Leo, except she's a demon and the guy who keeps declaring his love for her isn't lucky enough yet to have her tolerate it. She's oddly embarrassed about the topic of that guy despite how she says she has no interest in him, at least until he manages to turn himself into a demon to be with her.
- Unknown Rival: Leo admits to not remembering her when they meet up a second time.
Fleur Baranova
An Imperial Knight of the kingdom. She admires Leo and resents Houli for being close to her.
- All Amazons Want Hercules: She falls head over heels in love with Houli when the latter displayed overwhelming power.
- Amazonian Beauty: She works hard on her abs to catch Houli's attention. Even Houli is impressed with her dedication.
- Casual Kink: She is into bondage and wants Houli to dominate her.
- Character Development: First comes across as an obsessive stalker. Later, Fleur comes to genuinely love Houli and suggests eloping with him so that he can avoid using Recovery Magic.
- Fake Pregnancy: Tries to entrap Houli with one using a pillow despite the fact that they hadn't known each other nearly long enough for her to be that pregnant even if he had returned her advances. When she's found out, she tries to play it off as a joke. Unfortunately for her, Leo, who'd believed it at the beginning, isn't having any of it.
- Hopeless Suitor: Goes to absurd lengths to court Houli, such as breaking into his house, but he only has eyes for Leo.
- Love at First Punch: She challenges Houli to combat and defeats him with absurd ease. Moments later, Houli taps into his Super Mode and Fleur shudders upon experiencing his power. Afterwards, she asks Houli to take her as his slave.
- Shameless Fanservice Girl: Has no problem being around Houli, wearing only a ribbon and nothing else.
- Stalker with a Crush: Towards Houli. After falling in love with him, she "happened to run into him" while taking a stroll. In his house. At the crack of dawn.
- The Thing That Would Not Leave: Relationship version. Fleur cannot take a hint that Houli just isn't into her. Heck, Fleur can't seem to grasp his explicit rejection of her advances.
Melvie
A former elite Imperial Knight of the kingdom who has a grudge against Leo.
- Clipped-Wing Angel: For all the build up of her becoming stronger through forbidden methods so she can get revenge against Leo, she's taken out in seconds.
- Driven by Envy: Her entire motivation for her grudge against Leo. Melvi was the strongest of the Imperial Knights until the day Leo defeated her in a duel. After that, Melvi went off the deep end, obsessed with gaining strength by any means so she could kill Leo and regain the title of "strongest".
