Characters / Rule of Rose

This character sheet includes the major characters in Rule of Rose.

Warning: Spoilers of doom below.

Protagonists

Jennifer, The Unlucky Girl

Voiced by: Jo Wyatt

The protagonist, who returns to the orphanage when she's 19.

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• Accomplice by Inaction: She blames herself for Brown's murder because it might not have happened had she stood up to her bullies (earlier).
• Amnesiac Hero: Her primary goal is to remember the promise she made to "her dear friend." Turns out there's a lot more than that that Jennifer has forgotten.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: If you unlock the four-leaf clover door, you get to dress Jennifer up in a variety of outfits, such as a French maid or an octopus.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Everyone's so mean to Jennifer, even the adults.
• Break the Cutie: A good majority of the game has people (and monsters) doing this to Jennifer.
• The Chain of Harm: She's at the bottom of one. See, Hoffman vents his frustration by sexually abusing Diana, who vents her resulting fear by socially abusing Meg, who vents her resulting anger on Jennifer… who is basically the only character who uses constructive coping methods.
• Coming of Age Story: "I learned many things at this orphanage... The alphabet… words… how to clean and do laundry... But the most important thing I learned… was the lesson I received in exchange for my dear friend's life... I finally came to understand myself. My beliefs and the will to stand up for them… I don't want to lose those ever again."
• Curtains Match the Window: She has pea-green eyes and dirty blonde hair. Both shades are so dull that they look the same at first glance.
• Determinator: Eventually shows herself to be one, despite her young age. Nothing breaks her spirit - not being kidnapped, not the deaths of multiple loved ones, and not even the physical and emotional abuse her peers constantly subjected her to. (Though it takes some time before even she realizes that last part.)
• Designated Victim: What a poor, lonely, unlucky girl.
• Due to the Dead: One of the main reasons Jennifer explores her repressed memories is because if she doesn't remember all those who died in the orphanage massacre, nobody will.
  I'm sorry, everyone... You don't deserve to be forgotten. But I'll remember you.
• Doom Magnet: The airship Jennifer was onboard crashed, killing her parents. The guy who consequently found her was delusional. The girl who saved her from him was an obsessed sociopath. The orphanage that took Jennifer in was a den of bullies presided over by a pedophile. The dog she befriends is tortured to death. At this point, Jennifer's personality sort of wraps back around into total fearlessness: she's been through the worst life has to offer long enough to know it can't corrupt her.
• English Rose: Jennifer presents the intriguing concept of a classic English Rose forced into a Resident Evil-style survival horror environment. Jennifer is a timid, fair, soft-spoken young English woman who seems weak and is easily pushed about by others - although this is understandable considering the situation she was forced into. However, her ability to endure constant bullying and punishment shows her to be very determined and loyal. In this regard, she can be viewed as a strong character.
• Everyone Has Standards: Jennifer will do anything the club orders her to do… except abandon Brown. Unfortunately, the latter is what Wendy's trying to force her to do. The entire game leads up to Jennifer realizing that she does in fact, have standards that nothing she's goes through will ever break.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: The clearest difference between Jennifer's young and elder self is her hairstyle: the former's is short presumably because Gregory cut it, the latter's is long and bound up.
• Forced into Evil: Jennifer is told in the beginning of the game that the Princess of the Red Rose will kill her if she disobeys orders, right before she sees the princess' minions kill someone else. It only gets worse from there.
• Forgiven, but Not Forgotten: In the "Once Upon A Time..." chapter, Jennifer pities the other children and acknowledges that they were experiencing just as much emotional turmoil as her. (She specifically chooses to remember Wendy's friendship, stating that it was and is important to her.) She decides to preserve her memories, but refuses to let them sabotage her new life.
• Good Is Not Soft: Jennifer is a kind, loyal person. Her slapping Wendy when the latter goes too far is treated as an extension of these traits and a display of great Character Development.
• Heroic Mime: Almost. She has one line at the beginning, three at the end (one of them is her ripping the others to shreds) and she talks to Brown in single words. Everything else, she's silent or squeaking.
• Hidden in Plain Sight: Invoked. Jennifer hid her stuff inside the orphanage's many trash cans, where it wouldn't be stolen.
• Irony: Jennifer is such an unlucky girl, except when she seems to be just lucky enough to be the sole survivor of both a catastrophic airship crash and a tragic orphanage massacre, emotional damage notwithstanding.
• Kleptomaniac Hero: Her regurgitated memories show that Jennifer had firsthand knowledge of other people's diaries.
• Memento MacGuffin: After escaping Gregory's house, she gave a teddy bear to Wendy in exchange for a rose-carved brooch (as seen on Jennifer's lapel). After defying Wendy and her aristocrats, she flings the brooch away.
• Mercy Kill: She helps Gregory commit suicide, because they both know that his sanity is only decreasing and he'll murder more children the next time he snaps.
• Morality Chain: The only reason Wendy cared about even faking humanity was because she knew Jennifer would like her for it.
• My Greatest Failure: She describes herself as a "coward" whose passivity led to the murder of her best friend.
  I'll never break a promise again.
• Not So Stoic: Jennifer acts in an emotionally restrained fashion in order to separate herself from her tormentors (most of whom were immature) and deny them some of the satisfaction of hurting her. The utter fury she reacts with with when Brown is murdered proves that this is a facade, and indeed, the whole game is about Jennifer achieving catharsis.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Jennifer is extremely conflict-avoidant, in part because she deeply fears her fellow orphans. Except when those children murder Brown. Then, it is on.
• Prim and Proper Bun: Jennifer sports one. It may be symbolic of her effort to repress her childhood memories.
• The Quiet One: Jennifer doesn't have much to say to the kids that are constantly bullying her. At first.
• Reluctant Warrior: In some of Jennifer's attacking animations, she actually covers her eyes with one hand while striking with the other. All battles in the game are initiated by someone else - frequently by them ambushing Jennifer and locking the door so she can't escape. (Though some battles can be avoided, eventually Jennifer will have to kill someone in self-defense. It's inevitable.) The Good ending - which is also the only canonical one - is achieved by staying true to this trope and not killing a particular enemy.
• Replacement Goldfish: For Gregory's dead son, Joshua. Gregory even seemed to have deluded himself into believing that she actually was Joshua.
• Sanity Has Advantages: Jennifer faces the Final Boss alone, because even though he's threatening everyone, she's the only orphan left who has something to fight for.
• The Scapegoat: Averted, chronologically. Because she's the lowest-ranking club member, everyone in it vents their negative emotions on her. (In particular, Jennifer is framed by Diana several times for her crimes.) However, there is a reason Jennifer occupies that rank, a reason that isn't revealed until pretty far into the game. For the first few chapters, it appears that she's a straight example - everyone bullies her just because. Their actual motivation for doing so is almost as petty, though.
• Silly Rabbit, Cynicism Is for Losers!: There wasn't much good in her life, but she remembers what good there was so clearly that even its loss (or murder) does not break her. This is borne out in gameplay: the imps are masked, the orphanage is a shadowy maze, but everything important to Jennifer - even things so small as a sunlit window - are clear and mentioned in her narration.
• Silk Hiding Steel:
• The Stoic: Compared to the other children of the orphanage, Jennifer is a reserved, shy girl who doesn't let her emotions show. This makes her most similar personality-wise to Eleanor, though while Eleanor is passive in her detachment, Jennifer deliberately pushes others away.
• Sugar-and-Ice Personality: In public, child!Jennifer acted very detached and "adult" as a way of feeling superior to her peers. (Her actual coping mechanisms, such as playing with Brown, are more appropriate to her age.) Some years later, she realizes that this was silly of her - and that her image of adults was incorrect anyway.
  But what does it mean to be an adult? Will I ever become one?
• Sweet Tooth: Jennifer heals herself by munching on sweets.
• Sympathy for the Devil: She understands that Gregory only acted the way he did because he was deranged by grief. She also really didn't like being kidnapped and caged in a total stranger's house.
• Tomboy: Averted. Jennifer's child self looks rather boyish - and describes herself as a "prince" to Wendy's "princess" - but not because she wants to: because Gregory forced her to resemble his dead son as much as possible, and refused to acknowledge her actual gender or identity. After escaping Gregory, she expresses joy at being able to be who she really is.
• The Tragic Rose: The scene where Jennifer realizes how viciously Wendy has betrayed her is marked with a rose bouquet being spilled on the floor and a rose brooch being cast aside. It's clear in the scene that both "roses" - girls - have thorns.
• Trauma-Induced Amnesia: She considers this trope the reason that so much weird shit is going on in her memories. The disturbing actions of her fellow orphans, for example, are "censored" by them instead appearing as faceless imps. When Jennifer finally remembers exactly who killed Brown, she does not take it well. However, she ultimately states that recovering her memories was worth the emotional pain of doing so.
• Unreliable Expositor: In many ways, although - as a character - Jennifer is trustworthy.
  • For most of the game (i.e, Jennifer's journey through her memories), she portrays Wendy as a compassionate, victimized non-entity; because Jennifer desperately wants to believe that. In this case, the exposition erases the beginning of Wendy's character arc (in which she was a very important person in Jennifer's life), and its end, in which Wendy was still important to her (though for much darker reasons). When young, Jennifer instinctively shied away from these truths because she couldn't reconcile them.
  • She portrays the orphanage as having always been a place of fear and sorrow, because, in Jennifer's heart, those emotions are so strong that they drown out the truth of the situation. In actuality, several months passed in Jennifer's life before the orphanage became as uniformly horrific as (most of) the game depicts it.
• Vision Quest: Basically the whole game's plot. A now older-and-wiser Jennifer works through her amnesia and emotional repression so she can let go of her sadness and remember everything about her childhood - both its good and bad parts. As well as rediscovering why everyone she remembers from that time is dead.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: It is unknown what happened to Jennifer after the massacre at the orphanage. Though it is safe to assume that she at least lived to the age of 19, as we see her in-game.
• When She Smiles: Wendy considers Jennifer's smile very beautiful, not that she feels any guilt for making her sad. The game's Bittersweet Ending ends with a closeup of it.

Brown, The Filthy Dog

Jennifer's pet dog.

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• Always with You: After Brown's murder, Jennifer invokes this trope, imagining that he is still beside her. The finale plays it straight: Jennifer accepts his death and moves on, but still loves him and treasures the memories they shared.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Depending on the ending you get or by interacting with certain items, Brown can be dressed in a costume similar to Jennifer's. He can even turn into a crab or a chair.
• Canine Companion: He is always at Jennifer's side, unless physically forced away. Both psychologically and gameplay-wise, Jennifer treats him like an extension of her own body - a fact which confuses Wendy and arouses her rage.
• Contrived Coincidence: It's never explained why a stray puppy would be wandering around the English countryside, especially in a place as remote as the orphanage.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: In Brown's first appearance, Jennifer finds him hanging upside down from the rafters his paws are tied to. She cuts the rope and saves him. Unfortunately, Brown is not so lucky the next time.
• Dog Walks You: The majority of the game is spent following Brown to one place or another.
• Guide Dang It!: Brown can trace any item, anywhere, anytime... unless the target item is on a different level, you haven't triggered the right cutscene, or you're too many rooms away from the item you're looking for.
• Ironic Name: Despite his name being Brown, his fur is more of a yellow color.
• Kick the Dog: Everyone except Jennifer hates Brown. Ends up happening quite literally when he's killed.
• Morality Pet: It's implied that his selfless, unconditional love was the main thing keeping Jennifer sane while she was in the orphanage. The other children - who either lost their pets or never had one in the first place - have fully succumbed to Wendy's toxic philosophy, losing all hope and compassion.
• Precious Puppy: As we see in the good ending, he was heart-meltingly adorable as a puppy.

Aristocrat Club Members

Joshua, The Bear Prince

Voiced by: Teresa Gallagher

• Creepy Crossdresser: Is actually Wendy masquerading as Gregory's dead son.
• Evil Laugh: Laughs like this.
• The Evil Prince: Taunts Jennifer during her Controllable Helplessness sequence, and threatens to kill her if she doesn't obey him.

Diana, The Strong-Willed Princess

Voiced by: Joanna Hall

One of the oldest orphans and higher ranking girls in the Aristocrat Club.

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• Alpha Bitch: Diana looks down on the other members of the club, particularly Jennifer, and often uses peer pressure to torment them.
• Animal Motif: Fish.
• The Atoner: There's two ways to interpret her words to Jennifer in Stray Dog and The Lying Princess. Either she's desperate for leadership and desires to keep her position, so she apologizes to do so... Or she's this, being genuinely sorry for her actions and would have made an actual attempt to make it all up to Jennifer had she not been killed alongside the rest of the orphans during the massacre.
• Big Brother Bully: Much of her interactions with the others come off as her falsely and cruelly mimicking the energy of a kind big sister and warping it into something manipulative and vindictive. Best shown during the first rat-stick scene where she mockingly rubs a frightened Amanda's head and says "There, there, there."
• Blue Blood: Invoked — Diana uses the title "Duchess", the most senior non-royal rank in the British peerage.
• The Corrupter: Diana forces Amanda and Jennifer to hurt each other, and when Jennifer balks, she kicks her forward.
• A Day in the Limelight: "The Mermaid Princess" chapter.
• The Dragon: She's strongly implied to be this to Wendy due to how gleefully she contributes to Jennifer's suffering at Wendy's command and leads the rest of the girls to do the same.
• Evil Is Petty: She can be very rude and standoffish to Jennifer, and is childishly cruel towards her friends behind their backs.
• Evil Redhead: Second to Wendy, she's the most antagonistic of the Aristocrats.
• False Friend: She conspires with Meg to steal and kill Eleanor's bird, and the two talk about her cruelly in the girls' bathroom. She also hangs around with Eleanor and complains to her about how clingy Meg is, claiming that she doesn't like her at all, even going so far as to tear up her love letter.
• Freudian Excuse: Diana was sexually abused by Hoffman. This would make her a more sympathetic character, if she didn't take her resulting anger out on everyone else.
• Growing Up Sucks: A complex example. The prettiest and most mature of the Aristocrats, she couldn't wait to become an adult. At the same time, though, she was afraid of what doing so would entail. She also fixated on the fantasy of being a mermaid, pure and beautiful, but as she grew older she realized that she was straying more and more from her ideal self. Factor into this the strong possibility that she saw in Clara her own potential future – the eldest orphan, sexually mature, sexually abused, broken, caged – and, as the second eldest, was terrified of crossing that threshold and opening herself up to that awful existence.
• The Heavy: Aside from Wendy, the Hidden Villain Big Bad, Diana is the character whose actions drive much of the conflict.
• Kick the Dog: She steals and kills Eleanor's bird just to get a reaction out of the girl, and also tries to get rid of Meg's love letter to her after tearing it in half.
• Kiddie Kid: Seemingly invoked as a defense mechanism during one particularly disturbing scene where Hoffman is pawing and groping at her. She seems to be trying to invoke the image of a much younger child by sobbing loudly about being scolded in an attempt to get him to lose interest in her. It seems to work, and as soon as he leaves the room she immediately returns to her true personality and furiously wipes at her clothes in disgust before taking her anger out on Jennifer.
• The Leader: Seems to play this role for the club when Wendy isn't around.
• Manipulative Bitch: Evident in her treatment of her "friends."
• Meaningful Name: Diana is a Roman goddess known for hunting and childbirth, reflecting Diana's own superior attitude, time spent hunting for victims, and her being sexually abused by Hoffman.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Looks a lot like a young Kirsten Dunst.
• Noodle Incident: How she came to need the bandage around one of her thighs. Given what we know about her and Hoffman, that's something we might not want to dwell on.
• Number Two: For Wendy, although it's not immediately clear on the first play through, as you'll likely believe her to be the true leader of the club.
• Pet the Dog: Some of Jennifer's narration in the epilogue chapter indicates that when she wasn't around the other orphans, she could be kind, suggesting that her behavior is brought upon partially by peer pressure. We never see any of this in game, however.
• Red Herring: For much of the game, she seems to be the true ring leader of the Aristocrats, with the Princess of the Red Rose being represented in cutscenes as a doll that the club seems to worship in a cult-like fashion. However, chapter 9 reveals that not only is the princess an actual person, but that she's Wendy and Diana is just her Number Two. This is possibly foreshadowed by Diana's connection to fish symbolism and her red hair.

Meg, The Wise-Looking Princess

Voiced by: Barbara Barnes

Diana's lackey and second-in-command.

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• Animal Motif: Goats.
• Beta Bitch: She is Diana's Number Two and only slightly less bitchy than Diane.
• Blue Blood: Invoked — she uses the title "Baroness."
• Cool Big Sis: Appears to be this for Susan. She's the one who teaches the younger girl how to read.
• A Day in the Limelight: "The Goat Sisters" chapter.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Meg thinks Jennifer destroyed a love letter she wrote… so she traps Jennifer in a sack and fills it with various insects. It's a wonder Jennifer didn't die of spider bites.
• Evil Genius: If her notebook is to be believed, she was working on a torture chair, and came up with the Onion Bag punishment.
• Moral Myopia: She doesn't believe she has any personal flaws, and her reaction to Jennifer reading her love letter is, "How could she do that to me?! What did I ever do to her?!" After, you know, demeaning and forcing her into servitude like everyone else.
• Undying Loyalty: Completely devoted to Diana.
• Villainous Breakdown: Loses it when she thinks Jennifer read and destroyed her love letter.

Eleanor, The Cold Princess

Voiced by: Joanna Hall

A quite and withdrawn girl who's third-in-command.

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• '20s Bob Haircut: Justified, given the time period in which the game is set, she dons this sort of haircut.
• Aloof Dark-Haired Girl: She doesn't socialize and tends to keep to herself. This adds to her overall eeriness.
• Animal Motif: Birds.
• Cope by Pretending: What is notable about how she reacts to Diana and Meg killing her priced pet bird is actually her utter lack of an overt reaction. She just continues to carry the empty cage around with her, as if the bird was still alive.
• A Day in the Limelight: "The Bird of Happiness" chapter.
• Blue Blood: Invoked — she uses the title "Countess."
• Emotionless Girl: She has very few voice lines and expresses little emotion, even when she finds her beloved pet bird killed and wrapped in her own dress.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Despite her status as one of the Aristocrats, both Diana and Meg are revealed to hold her in some degree of contempt, finding her to be a weirdo because of her quiet and stoic demeanor. This culminates in her eventually becoming a target of their bullying too, as they conspired to kill her pet bird.
• Foil: To Jennifer. Both are emotionally and socially withdrawn children, though with opposite positions - Eleanor is a member of the aristocracy that torments Jennifer, while Jennifer is a minion of said aristocracy. How they react to their respective pets' deaths also sets them apart but further unifies them: Eleanor reacts to her bird's death by bottling up her emotions and carrying around the animal's cage as if it hadn't died, whereas Brown's death proves to be Jennifer's breaking point.
• Ice Queen: Her being cold and emotionally distant is her defining trait. She is even referred to as the "Cold Princess."
• Morality Pet: Implied. Cardinal birds are symbolic of emotion and vibrancy - the very traits Eleanor lacks.
• Parental Neglect: Eleanor is implied to have not been an orphan in the traditional sense, in that her parents hadn't died or lacked the resources to care for her. Rather, as a newspaper clipping hints, she was "orphaned" by a quite odd inversion of Divorce Assets Conflict: neither party wanted her once the marriage was kaput.
• The Stoic: She doesn't even react when she comes across her prized, dead bird.

Amanda, The Small-Hearted Princess

Voiced by: Clare Corbett

A heavier set girl who's designated as lower class but is a rank above Jennifer.

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• Animal Motif: Pigs. She's chubby and wears pink.
• A Day in the Limelight: The "Rag Princess Sews" chapter.
• Fat Bastard: Easily the plumpest of the girls, and shows herself to be a cruel, whiny brat.
• Fair-Weather Friend: She basically tries to please everyone, and ends up on the club's side because they'll accept this in a minion/friend but Jennifer won't.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: She goes from seeming uncomfortable about shoving a rat in Jennifer's face to reveling in her newfound power. Then not long after, her guilt overcomes her and she tearfully apologizes to Jennifer, encouraging her to take revenge on her if given the chance, desperately hoping they can be friends. And then it's back to hate when Jennifer upstages her in rank.
• I Just Want to Have Friends: Implied to be her motivation for doing what the Aristocrat Club demands.
• Ironic Name: Amanda is Latin for "worthy of love", which her peers definitely don't see her as.
• Lower-Class Lout: Unlike her fellow club members, she bears no aristocratic title and is the designated representative of "the poor."
• Madness Mantra: Goes on for three pages in her diary.
  I HATE HER I HATE HER I HATE HER
  I HATE HER I HATE HER I HATE HER
  Oh my! I've got to sew the rags...
• Plain Jane: Unlike the rest of the girls, who vary from being cute to attractive, she is designed so as to be conventionally rather plain.
• Regal Ringlets: Surprisingly, given her station, Amanda sports a complicated ringlet hairstyle that would take time and skill to achieve.
• Sanity Slippage: While she wasn't the most stable person to begin with, she really starts to lose it after being outranked by Jennifer.
• Tragic Villain: Her trying so hard to advance in rank is all for nothing; she succeeds, but she's no less bullied because of it.

Wendy, The Lonely Princess / Sick Princess

Voiced by: Teresa Gallagher

A girl in white who's the highest-ranked of all Aristocrats.

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• Animal Motifs: Subverted. Her "pet" is a group of rabbits, but, unlike the other children, her true self bears no particular similarities to it.
• Big Bad Friend: Jennifer's Only Friend in the orphanage is also the author of her woes.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Do NOT be fooled by her sweet disposition.
• Blue Blood: She uses the title "Princess", and as such she is the highest ranking character in the Club.
• The Chessmaster: Rules over the Aristocrat Club from the shadows and has them obey her every command. After her position is usurped, she still finds a way to take control...
• Control Freak: She can't regulate her own feelings, so she tries to compensate by regulating the cause of them - Jennifer. It doesn't work: no matter what Wendy does to her, Jennifer will not abandon Brown. Even after his death.
• The Corrupter: To many characters, at different points in the story:
  • Most of the orphans, out of fear and desperation, let Wendy take charge and declared her their ruler. Big mistake. They may have built the club's sadistic society, but it is she who planned it.
  • After (and possibly before) the club collapsed, she disguised herself as Joshua and convinced Gregory to murder her former minions.
• Delicate and Sickly: She's outright called the "Sick Princess" and is often confined to her bedroom due to an unspecified illness. This lonely existence is possibly why she latches so hard onto Jennifer for being the first girl to give her any attention, and why she takes it so poorly when Jennifer starts being affectionate to Brown.
• Entitled to Have You: Jennifer makes another friend. Wendy considers this a horribly cruel act of betrayal that Jennifer must be punished for.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: She assumes that Jennifer must only "love" Brown for self-serving reasons; therefore, she thinks that killing Brown will make Jennifer stop loving him (as he can no longer provide anything - emotional or otherwise - to her). The idea of a selfless love that transcends death is alien to Wendy... so she didn't expect that Jennifer would still care enough about Brown to avenge him, or retain the confidence his love gave her.
• Face of an Angel, Mind of a Demon: Even as she's overseeing Brown's murder, she is smiling angelically and offering Jennifer flowers. Whether this is an expression of her true feelings or an act she puts on to impress Jennifer is ambiguous.
• Floral Motifs: Roses, specifically red ones, which are associated with love. However, roses have painful thorns, and she used her love to hurt people.
• Foil: She is the sadistic tyrant to Jennifer's victimized loner. Fittingly, while Wendy sees everything going on in the orphanage and understands none of it (because she doesn't understand the emotions which drive its inhabitants' actions), Jennifer is the opposite. She understands fully why the orphans acted the way they did, but doesn't see them doing these actions (because she's censoring her own memories).
• Green-Eyed Monster: She despised Brown immediately, just because Jennifer held affection for him.
• Image Song: The game's theme, "A Love Suicide", is commonly believed to be sung from her perspective.
• Innocent Blue Eyes / Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: Her physical appearance is deliberately designed to encourage players to trust her. Both tropes are subverted.
• Karmic Death: Wendy is slaughtered by the same man she took advantage of. Then, even in death, she cannot move on from the orphanage.
• Lipstick Lesbian: A Psycho Lesbian who looks conventionally feminine.
• Living Emotional Crutch: After being rejected by Jennifer, Wendy loses whatever happiness (and self-restraint) she had. Everything she does from then on is motivated by her selfish desire to be, once again, the only person Jennifer loves.
• Manipulative Bitch: As the leader of the Aristocrat Club, she scares the other members into submission with stories of Stray Dog, orders them to taunt and harm Jennifer, and makes them kill a puppy just so she can have Jennifer to herself. After Jennifer defies her, Wendy dresses as Joshua, finds Gregory, and manipulates him into murdering everyone at the orphanage.
• Never My Fault: In Wendy's view, her murder of Brown is a perfectly rational and reasonable consequence of Jennifer's "sin." Only at the moment of her death does she apologize for any of the shit she's caused.
• Passive-Aggressive Kombat: She expresses her distaste for Brown by complimenting and insulting him in the same sentence.
• Please, Don't Leave Me: After Jennifer leaves the orphanage behind in the good ending, Wendy looks pleadingly through the gate at her.
• Pragmatic Villain: She readily feigns niceness when doing so would accomplish a goal, but ultimately it's just another "tool" of hers, discarded the instant it stops being effective.
• Psycho Lesbian: She and Jennifer vowed to love each other forever. Unfortunately, they were using... different definitions of the word 'love'.
• The Sociopath: She's a selfish, manipulating murderer, with a plan that hinges on Jennifer acting in a specific way that implies she does not understand basic human emotions.
  Jennifer: (in a letter to Wendy) I know you don't understand, but I can't just abandon Brown.
• The Social Darwinist: Of the 'Straw Meritocrat' type, which disdains compassion and empathy. She constantly degrades Jennifer for being a "filthy" commoner, insults that are all the more hollow because Wendy is the one who decided Jennifer's rank.
• Something about a Rose: Whenever Wendy appears in a cutscene, red roses are never far behind.
• Stalker with a Crush: There are several scenes where Jennifer wakes up to find Wendy (dressed as Joshua) staring at her. And touching her. As is typical of the trope, Wendy tries to isolate Jennifer socially and control her by lowering her self-esteem.
• What Is This Thing You Call "Love"?: Played with; Wendy understands romantic love, but not other kinds of love or why anyone would value them. After receiving the letter in which Jennifer first mentions her friendship with Brown, it takes Wendy ten days to formulate a response.
• Wounded Gazelle Gambit: In one chapter, Wendy says that the Aristocrats blame her for stealing Joshua the bear. Given Wendy's true identity, this claim is dubious at best.
• Yandere: She became cruel to Jennifer after Jennifer stopped paying attention to her in favor of Brown, eventually overseeing Brown's murder to have Jennifer all to herself.

Other Aristocrats

Lesser known and seen Aristocrats that aid more so in the main Aristocrats roles or side quests.

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Susan, The Impetuous Princess

Voiced by: Emma Tate

One of the younger girls.

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• Girlish Pigtails: Dons two braids.
• The Klutz: Not coordinated enough to avoid stumbling when she curtsies.
• Those Two Guys: She's often seen with Olivia.

Olivia, The Tearful Princess

Voiced by: Emma Tate

The youngest girl, who's always crying.

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• The Baby of the Bunch: If her overall appearance is an indication, she's the youngest of the whole cast.
• Creepy Child: Arguably, all of the Aristocrats qualify to some degree or another, but Olivia takes the cake as her age makes her more the case.
• Desperately Craves Affection: It's implied that she only cries as much as she does because she wants someone to pay attention to her.
• Meaningful Name: To Olivia from Twelfth Night, another character whose emotions get the best of her.
• Those Two Guys: She's often seen with Susan.
• The Unfavorite: To Hoffman, as he'd call her name last.
• Vague Age: Her age is more vague than the others in that she's, from her appearance, a toddler.

Xavier, The Gluttonous Prince

Voiced by: James Daniel Wilson

A chubby boy in striped shirt who's always eating.

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• Arch-Enemy: He considers a pig this, hoping to beat it in eating.
• The Bully: Not to such a heavy degree as the other Aristocrats, but he's mostly an emotional version of this to Jennifer. Otherwise, he's an Accomplice by Inaction.
• Fat Bastard: He's less jerky to Jennifer, but still portly and unpleasant.
• Extreme Omnivore: Downplayed, as he eats the usual things being a big eater, but he even wonders if paper tastes good at one point.

Nicholas, The Sloppy Prince

Voiced by: Susan Sheridan

Xavier's best friend and sometimes accomplice.

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• Fat and Skinny: He plays the "skinny" role to Xavier's fat.
• The Pig-Pen: He's covered in either dirt and soot, along with looking slightly more unkempt than Xavier (but a lot less unkempt than Thomas). He's not called the "Sloppy Prince" for nothing.
• Those Two Guys: With Xavier and, wherever the former is, he's not far behind.

Thomas, The Mischievous Prince

A withdrawn boy who prefers to spend time with his trains and likes to play pranks

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• Ambiguous Disorder: Like Eleanor, he demonstrates symptoms of autism.
• Freudian Excuse: His fondness for trains (and possibly his trickster nature) is because he has no other companionship.
• The Prankster: His biggest role in the plot is locking Jennifer in rooms with imps for kicks.

Minor Characters

Gregory, The Mysterious Man

An odd figure who lurks round the orphanage.

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• Ambiguous Situation: The stories of Stray Dog are very heavily implied to be about him, made up by Wendy to control the other orphans. However, whether the gobbling up of children in said stories is true is ambiguous at best.
  • Going even further, some theories indicate that the stories aren't about him, but about Brown, in an effort by Wendy to justify her desire to kill the dog to the other orphans.
• Animal Motif: Dogs, as we eventually find out that he was Stray Dog.
• Boss-Altering Consequence: If you give him the gun, he will shoot himself and you will get the true ending, but if you instead fight him, you will get the bad ending.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: At the end of the game, it is revealed that Wendy had manipulated him so much that he believed himself to literally be a dog and murdered everyone in the orphanage.
• Driven to Suicide: The player has to give him his gun in order to get the good ending. After apologizing to his dead son, he shoots himself in the head.
• Drowning My Sorrows: He drank very heavily as a result of his son's death.
• I'm a Humanitarian: Possibly, if the stories of Stray Dog are to be believed. Some theorize he kidnapped children and ground them up to be used as food. He (as well as the children at the orphanage) even refers to his victims as "peas."
• Morality Pet: Though he murders most of the orphans, he spares Jennifer.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Has a moment of clarity after Jennifer gives him his gun.
• Noodle Incident: We know his son Joshua died, but we don't know what exactly happened.
• Sanity Slippage: The death of his son Joshua really pushed him over the edge.
• Walking Spoiler
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: A loving father turned murderous psychopath after the death of his son.

Mr. Hoffman, The Strict Teacher

Voiced by: Ian Thompson

The proprietor and teacher of the Rose Garden Orphanage.

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• Asshole Victim: One interpretation of both his death and the "Sir Peter" chapter was that the orphans hunted him down for his abuse of Clara and Diana and killed him in revenge.
• Broken Pedestal: Jennifer, who seems to want to remember primarily Hoffman's good qualities, begins to piece together (alongside the player) his inner demons.
• Creepy Souvenir: The hanged man symbolism surrounding Hoffman indicates he was either Driven to Suicide or that the orphans hung up his body after his murder as some sort of trophy for an unknown period of time.
• Dirty Old Man: Has sexually abused at least two of the orphans.
• Driven to Suicide: In-game imagery implies that Hoffman hanged himself when the My God, What Have I Done? realization hit him for taking out his sexual frustration on the orphans.
• Fighting from the Inside: The "Sir Peter" storybook hints that he at least initially tried to resist molesting Diana and Clara, "hold[ing] in" his sexual releases until "he found a toilet."
• Laser-Guided Karma: If you go with the Asshole Victim interpretation of his death than he was hunted down and killed by the children in revenge for his abuse of two of their number.
• My God, What Have I Done?: If you go with the Driven to Suicide interpretation.

Martha, The Queen of Cleaning

Voiced by: Emma Tate

The orphanage's housekeeper.

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• Adults Are Useless: Averted; she tried to be useful but was ignored.
• Ambiguous Situation: Why exactly she was killed is ambiguous at best. The two most popular theories are that either Wendy found out she tried to report Gregory to the police or she discovered Hoffman's dead body. Thus her death was an effort to cover up his (possible) murder.
• Cassandra Truth: She was at least somewhat aware of the goings-on surrounding the orphanage. However, it's revealed in the Golden Ending that all such concerns were ignored by authorities.
• Creepy Housekeeper: She is eerie, calls Jennifer a wretch, and is suspected to be a witch by the children.
• Failure Hero: One could make the case that she's this. She, at the very least, knew about Wendy and Gregory's interactions and reported it to the police, only to be ignored. There's also implication in the Golden Ending that she at least suspected something was going on between Hoffman and Clara and made an effort to reach out to the girl. However, Martha would ultimately be murdered by the very children she sought to protect for ambiguous reasons.
• Good All Along: Despite being portrayed as a cold and unfriendly woman, she actually did care about the children's well-being.
• Killed Mid-Sentence: The way her letter to the police regarding the interactions between Wendy and Gregory cuts off implies this on a literary scale rather than a verbal one.
• Only Sane Woman: The only one of the staff concerned about the children, she sent letters to the police regarding Gregory's strange behavior and Wendy's manipulations. She was completely ignored.

Clara, The Frightened Princess

Voiced by: Unknown

The oldest orphan, a timid girl who keeps to herself.

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• Berserk Button: The only time in the entire game where she raises her voice is in a very easily missed optional scene where she'll prevent Jennifer from opening a medicine cabinet. The implication is that there's some form of birth control, such as condoms or pills, or even an aborted fetus within.
  • Jennifer's narration indicates that Hoffman and Martha were this. The former is perfectly understandable, but why Martha got under her skin so much is left unclear.
• Broken Bird: The game heavily implies that she was sexually abused by Hoffman, which, if true, is likely the reason she is so timid.
• Driven to Suicide: The possibility, at least, is heavily implied.
• Shrinking Violet: Unless you get the above mentioned optional scene where she snaps at Jennifer, she only ever speaks two words to her.
• Team Mom: There's hints that she may have acted as a motherly figure to the other orphans, being about 15 or 16 while the others are 14 and younger.

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