Ludwig
The titular hero. His father had reached his limit with tolerating Ludwig and his weird hobby of bringing women home, and practically threw him out of the kingdom. He insisted that Ludwig go and find himself a bride or he won't be allowed to return or take over the throne.
- Abhorrent Admirer: Considers Dorothea to be one because of her clingy, masochistic personality.
- Buxom Beauty Standard: Prefers large breasts on women, though they shouldn't be too big.
- Dude Looks Like a Lady: So beautiful that Bluebeard mistook him for Amalie.
- Dude, She's Like in a Coma: He doesn't care that Blanche is dead, he will take her home as his potential bride. His father never said that his bride had to be alive, after all.
- Forced Transformation: Frog King has him appear as nothing but a frog to anyone but Dorothea because he put on the handpuppet of a frog. The curse gets lifted if he gets kissed by the first woman that encountered him as a frog.
- Identical Stranger: Looks very much like Jennifer, who was Bluebeard's first wife.
- I Love the Dead: He was necrophilic, but got sick of the women. The trait seems to have dropped after that chapter.
- Jerkass with a Heart of Gold: Acts rude to strangers, has no problem with hitting or overworking his servant, Wilhelm, and generally looks out for himself. But he still has moments where it's clear that his rough exterior is enclosing a softer side, even helping other people get together.
- Lonely Rich Kid: How Wilhelm first saw him, surrounded by expensive toys and nobody to play with.
- Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Long enough to reach his hips.
- The Lost Lenore: Seems he honestly fell for Idike, but since she died, he cannot have the one he really wants.
- Pretty in Mink: Wears a lovely fur coat or fur-decorated coat at times.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Ludwig takes a lot after his mother.
- Taking the Bullet: Red Riding Hood had him throw himself in front of Wilhelm when Lisette attacked the latter.
Wilhelm
Ludwig's servant for years, is often sent out to do the dirty work, including finding out about potential new brides.
- Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: He tackled his old friend Lisette when she tried to kill Ludwig.
- Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Though his hair isn't as long as Ludwig's.
- Nice Guy: He's a sweet, gentle person who gladly helps people. Unfortunately, people repeatedly abuse his good nature.
Dorothea
A witch who first appeared in the Sleeping Beauty story. She has a fetish for masochism and loves Ludwig.
- Heroic Sacrifice: She casts a spell on Ludwig that makes her take the brunt of a hit, which saves him but kills her. Dorothea is stuck in a reincarnation-cycle, though, so she does resurrect.
- Really 700 Years Old: Considering she was the witch who cursed Idike, she must be at least 120+ years old. A late story reveals that she's likely much, much, much older than that, due to a curse put onto her.
Lisette
Lisette is Wilhelm's old friend and crush from childhood days. She always wanted to own a red hood made of velour, but her family was poor and couldn't afford it, so she always wore a gray one made of linen.
Her mother sent her into the forest with cake and wine, telling her to deliver it to her grandmother's home, but all Lisette encountered was a burnt corpse. The wolf of the forest appeared, stating that she and her grandmother had been given as sacrifices to him by her parents, in exchange for gold.
Lisette returned home and saw her parents with a sack full of gold, believing the story to be true. Enraged and hurt, she kills her parents and tries to kill Wilhelm, but Ludwig took the attack and stopped her.
She left her village and grew up to become an infamous assassin under the codename of Red Riding Hood.
- A-Cup Angst: She isn't flat-chested. The term is 'lean and lank'!
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Always wanted to own a red hood. And when she killed her parents, their blood dyed her gray one red.
- Break the Cutie: She was just a sweet little girl that loved Wilhelm, and then she went down the wrong path in the forest, finding the corpse of an old woman she assumed to be her grandmother. Then she learns that her parents sold her for money and she returned home, seeing it to be true and kills her parents. Lisette later admits that her parents forced her into prostitution sometimes, so she was broken before the prank.
- Childhood Friend Romance: What Wilhelm thought his relationship with Lisette would end in, and it is implied that he still loves her. There are indications that she loves him, too, but given that she admits to seeing Wilhelm as her 'toy', it's debateable.
- Harmful to Minors: Her past involves poverty, being sold into prostitution at a very young age, finding a corpse and then killing her family. Her childhood was not very pleasant.
- Highly Visible Assassin: Her red clothes, which are even lampshaded to be 'inappropriately bright' for her profession.
- Too Much Alike: She and Ludwig butt heads because they are both sadists and think they each 'own' Wilhelm.
Blanche Neige
Blanche had sexual relations with her father for years, leading to her mother's hatred and abuse of her. Around the age of 15, her mother wanted Blanche killed and to eat her intestines, to regain youth and beauty. She managed to get away and fled into the forest, living with a group of dwarven woodcutters and stopping her mother's repeated assassination attempts.
Upon the queen appearing herself, Blanche bites into the apple and supposedly dies. Ludwig picks her up as his bride and, during a fall, she came to again. Enacting revenge onto her mother for her attempted murders, Blanche was going to marry Ludwig, but was killed by him when she tried to get rid of him.
- Ambiguous Situation: It's not really clear whether her father sexually abused her, or if she was the one who seduced him. She tells the first story to gain sympathy, and tells the second to gloat at her mother.
- Beauty Equals Goodness: Subverted, even the first few pages state that Blanche had 'skin as white as snow, lips as red as ruby and a heart as black as the night'.
- Dies Wide Open: How she died after Ludwig kills her.
- Drop Dead Gorgeous: According to Ludwig she’s more beautiful dead than alive.
- Faux Death: She wasn't really dead after biting into the apple. Blanche knew that the apple was poisonous and would lead to death, so she bit at the very bottom of the apple, where less poison was and calculated a state of apparent death.
- I Am a Humanitarian: After killing the assassins her mother has sent after her, she's shown eating their flesh with the dwarves.
- Really Gets Around: Well, aside from sleeping with her father, it's also said she slept with her mother's lover and others were likely not far behind. She even slept with Ludwig's father when she was engaged to the prince!
- Parental Incest: She slept with her father a lot. She initially smiled, meaning she likely enjoyed it, then tells her mother that she hated it. Turns out she lied, she was perfectly okay with sleeping with her father, since it gave her power over him.
- Raven Hair, Ivory Skin: Which is what one expects from Snow White, after all.
- Troubling Unchildlike Behavior: Smirking at your mother, when she sees you in-flagrante with your own father, is definitely not a good sign.
Frederike
Frederike spent her days studying and gaining knowledge like crazy, but was only ever really praised for her beauty and mocked, if she did not achieve perfect grades at times. She runs into her father while he's with one of his lovers, who breaks Frederike's world by telling her of the gifts she was given at her birth and the curse that lays upon her.
Distraught over the news, she buried the watch she got from her mother on a hill and went up into the tower, intent on pricking her finger on a spindle. Begging that the curse was a lie, she fell into a deep sleep that has been going on for 100 years and has kept people away from the castle with thorns. She encounters Ludwig in his dreams, before he comes to rescue her.
- A-Cup Angst: She's pretty lacking in that department, which Ludwig has no issue pointing out.
- Important Haircut: When Idike learns about the curse upon her, as well as the magical gifts she had received at birth, including beauty and intelligence, she hacks off her long hair to chin-length.
- In-Series Nickname: 'Idike', an abbreviation of Frederike.
- Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: The king's lover told Idike that she wasn't the king's daughter, but that she was conceived when the queen was raped by a gangster while she was taking a bath. The queen, however, claims that she was already pregnant with Idike before the rape. Whether she truly was the king's daughter is never revealed.
- Talking in Your Dreams: She meets and communicates with Ludwig in his dreams, if he is holding the watch she buried.
- True Love's Kiss: It certainly awakened her from her 100 year long sleep. She immediately dies, when time catches up to her.
Amalie
Amalie is the latest of brides-to-be for the Count known as Bluebeard. Since she is disgusted by him and his beard, prefering a beautiful young man like Ludwig, she tries to run away from home. There, Ludwig encounters her and offers to take her home as his bride, before taking her place as Bluebeard's fiancée and is taken to his castle.
Following Ludwig to Bluebeard's castle, she runs toward him and ends up shot on accident by Lisette's bullet. Amalie manages to survive the injury, but is dropped by Ludwig like a hot potato, because she was using padded pillows to enhance her bust-size.
- Bed Sheet Ladder: Creates one to get out of her house and run away, but falls and lands directly on Wilhelm.
- The Ditz: She's stupid, to put it simply. But is not a bad girl.
- Dumb Blonde: Definitely fits this.
- Fake Boobs: She uses inserts to pad up her bust to huge sizes. Ludwig is not amused.
- Pocket Protector: Amalie gets shot by Lisette's bullet, intended for Ludwig, but survives because the bullet got lodged in her giant, fluffy boob pad.
Bluebeard
- Ax-Crazy: When Ludwig enters the Forbidden Chapter, Bluebeard goes insane and grabs an axe, intent on killing Ludwig. He's so out of it, he's not listening to anything he's saying, even when Ludwig proves that he's a man.
- Disproportionate Retribution: He killed his first wife because she insulted his 'Beard Person', demanded he stop hiding behind it and show his true colors to the world. It infuriated him so much that he killed her. Any consecutive wife was killed for entering the forbidden chamber and seeing the previous wives' corpses.
- Redemption Equals Death: He redeems himself after being impaled by a decorative item that was shot down from the roof, realizing that Ludwig really was a guy and that his first wife really did love him. Then he dies.
- Split Personality: Helped by an item. Bluebeard himself is a meek coward, but putting on a fake beard, made from the hair of his deceased father, gives him the will to be cross, intimidating and the dignity a count should have.
Rapunzel
Named after the salad her mother ate while pregnant, Rapunzel was given to a fairy as a child, in exchange for letting her mother eat the fairy's personally grown supply of rapunzel salad. Her hair grows at an exaggerated rate, even when it's cut, and she was eventually locked into a tower at the age of 12.
Prince Silvio was the first to climb the ladder up to her tower, aside from the fairy. Wonderful as he was, Rapunzel started shunning him when she learned that he was in an arranged engagement and refused to break it off, to be with her. After escaping from her tower, she wandered around and eventually gave birth to twins, before being reunited with Silvio.
- Big Eater: Rapunzel eats a lot of food and gets hungry easily. Justified, she's pregnant with twins.
- Do Not Call Me Rapze: She hates her name Rapunzel and she hates Silvio's nicknames 'Rapze' and 'Rapu', too!
- Morning Sickness: She throws up one morning and Dorothea immediately knows pregnancy is the cause, saying how much like a cliché soap opera it is.
- Time Skip: Her chapter skips ahead about 6 months, to a time shortly after the twins are born.
- Unto Us a Son and Daughter Are Born: Rapunzel gives birth to fraternal twins.
Silvio
- Armor-Piercing Question: Silvio asking if Rapunzel really is pregnant from him; the question enrages Rapunzel to the point that she destroyed the tower they were in.
- Long-Haired Pretty Boy: After the time skip in the Rapunzel chapter, Silvio has his gorgeous dark hair falling down to his elbows.
- Temporary Blindness: Dorothea cursed Silvio to become blind, until tears of true love wetted his eyelids. She never really cursed him, her words and his guilt over not trusting Rapunzel convinced him that he was blind, until he was reuinted with Rapunzel.
Maleen
Maleen used to be engaged to a prince in a neighboring country, but her father forbade their relationship. Refusing to break things off, the king sentenced Maleen to be imprisoned in a tower with no windows for 7 years, to give her time to change her mind.
Ludwig uses a cannon from an old war and breaks down the walls of Maleen's prison and sets her free. Learning that her country has been eradicated in a war, she focuses on Ludwig and is convinced that he is her fiancé from back then. And she's intent on picking things up where they left off.
- Companion Cube: Every inanimate object talks to her. It's guessed to be a side-effect from having been imprisoned for 7 years, with only Inga to talk to.
- Dead All Along: She realized that her father sentenced her to death, when she realized that the food and drink would never last for 7 years. Maleen eventually succumbed to weakness and died in bed.
- Death by Despair: Her maid, Inga, hung herself after they were imprisoned.
- Stalker with a Crush: She's in love with Ludwig, which is why she follows him. And drugs princess Lana to take her place as the bride at her wedding. And why she goes into Ludwig's room at night and kisses him in his sleep.
- Taking the Bullet: Maleen meant to do this for Ludwig at the altar, but since she's a ghost, she couldn't actually do it. It hit her necklace, which took the brunt of the force and saved him.
Katrein
Katrein is a young princess, whose most treasured possession is a golden ball that her father gave to her as a gift. While playing with it, she dropped it into the lake and Ludwig, who looked like a frog to her, returned it. If she rewarded him with a kiss. Promising it, Katrein gets her ball back and leaves, having never intended to kiss any frog.
Her father forces her to keep her promise and invites the frog into the castle for dinner. Katrein has difficulty talking with her father, believing that she is ugly and that is the reason why her father hasn't let her go to any dances.
- Daddy's Girl: She's the youngest of her sisters and her father loves her a lot, which is one of the reasons why he hasn't arranged a marriage for her yet.
- I Am Not Pretty: Katrein is convinced that she is not as pretty as her older sisters. While she's certainly not as beautiful as the princesses in the other stories, it's justified, since Katrein is younger than them.
(Blonde) Albertina & (Dark) Albertina
One Albertina is the legitimate daughter of the king, the other an illegitimate child conceived with the courtwitch. In her anger, the queen had the courtwitch executed and the witch's daughter was made into the personal maid of the princess Albertina. For the engagement to Prince Christo, the princess told the maid to write poetry and send them as gifts to him.
Unbeknowst to one Albertina, the other is waiting for an opportune moment to usurp her position and live a good life, while also enacting revenge for her mother's undignified demise.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Blonde Albertina, who wrote lovely poetry to Prince Christo, but with the secret intent of getting revenge on the other Albertina for having her mother get executed, including mocking said execution for fun.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: One Albertina eventually gets sentenced to be 'stripped naked, shoved into a barrel with inward-poking nails, which will be dragged up and down the streets by horses'. Couples as Karmic Death, as this was the execution of the maid Albertina's mother and was specifically chosen for that reason.
- Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: As Prince Christo separates the two, one is the Blonde Albertina and the other the Dark Albertina.
- Significant Name Overlap: Both girls are named Albertina, which is fitting considering that their arc revolves around identity switcheroo.
Christo
- Hikkikomori: Christo first appears, hiding among the many lolicon dolls in his room and looking like he hasn't left it in quite some time.
- Otaku: Plain and simple, that's what he is.
- Scary Shiny Glasses: Obtains them when he decides to step up his game and become a proper ruler and has fallen for Blonde Albertina's lie and had the real Princess Albertina executed.
Cinderella
Cinders is being used as a maid in her own home, practically ignored by her father and horribly teased by her two older stepsisters. Despite this, she retains a happy demeanour, by deluding herself into believing that her life is alright and the abuse is a sign of love, with the housework all a means of preparing her for wifehood.
She's been in love with Prince Balduin for some time, but doesn't know if he'd remember her. Ludwig gives her an opportunity to attend the ball the Prince is giving and tells her to impress him.
- Cute Clumsy Girl: Though it's implied that some of her klutzy accidents are done on purpose.
- Embarrassing Nickname: She's quite happy with her being nicknamed 'Cinderella' or 'Cinders', it's much better than her old nickname Miss Bigfoot.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Cinderella or Cinders.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Cinders, the deluded girl who smiles in ecstacy when insulted, actually cries when her sisters tell her that Balduin doesn't love her? Even Ludwig is shocked at that reaction.
- Shoe Size Angst: This version of Cinderella has huge feet for a girl.
- Stepford Smiler: Since her sisters are horrible to her, she deludes herself into thinking that their behavior is merely well-meant teasing and acts like her life is happy.
- Victoria's Secret Compartment: She puts the gecko, Isolde, into her bustier when running out of the Prince's burning greenhouse.
Balduin
- Collector of the Strange: Balduin has a greenhouse filled with exotic animals, including geckos, alligators, snakes and similar. His mother is horrified of this 'hobby' of his and rumors of it have reached outside of the castle walls.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Cinderella stepped on his pet gecko, Isolde. It's not clear what he was gonna do at first, but he later thinks that marrying Cinderella would give him the opportunity to torture and insult her for the rest of her life, as punishment.
Hänsel & Gretel
Two children of a woodcutter family, they were abandoned in the forest by their father, as the family was too poor to keep feeding four mouths. Hänsel uses his bread to leave crumbs as a path behind him, but the birds eat the crumbs and the two end up lost.
Hänsel finds a house in the middle of the forest and begs the woman in the house to please let him and his sister stay and feed them, in exchange of doing housework and similar. Gretel eventually learns that Hänsel is being physically abused by the woman as part of the deal, and she kills her in self-defense. The two grew up and become assassins.
- Deal with the Devil: Hänsel agrees to let the 'angel', who actually killed the old lady of the 'gingerbread house', use him as her whipping boy and took any abuse, in exchange for giving his sister food, water and shelter. They also agree to work as assassins for Julius.
- Disney Death: Cendrillon ends with Gretel's flamethrower exploding, with Hänsel having thrown himself over her, to protect her. Both are last seen in the burning remnants of the greenhouse. They both re-appear later on, in a heroic moment of saving Ludwig.
- Every Scar Has a Story: Hänsel has a large scar across the left side of his face. It comes from when his mother attacked him with a sickle, because he stole food for Gretel.
- Gentle Giant: Hänsel could never hurt a fly.
- Girlish Pigtails: Gretel wears them up to adulthood.
- Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Hänsel towers over his sister by a good foot or so.
- Ironic Name: They call the woman in the house an 'angel', when she's a murderer and robber, who abuses Hänsel for the sake of 'keeping in form' and 'entertainment'. Subverted with Ludwig. They referred to him as their angel and he is the first person to show them true kindness.
- It's All My Fault: Gretel sees Hänsel's scar as being her fault, since the food he stole was for her, because she was hungry.
- Kill It with Fire: Gretel burns the evil woman to death in self-defense. Her flamethrower is also her main weapon.
- Mood Whiplash: Contary to most of the fairytale-based chapters, theirs is very dark and played absolutely seriously. Done intentionally by Kaori Yuki.
