Characters / Steven Universe — White Diamond

Steven Universe Main Character Index
Crystal Gems (Steven Quartz Universe | Garnet | Amethyst | Pearl | Rose Quartz | Connie Maheswaran | Peridot | Lapis Lazuli) | Gem Fusions | Homeworld Gems | Diamond Authority (Yellow Diamond | Blue Diamond | Pink Diamond | White Diamond) | Yellow Diamond's Court (Jasper) | Blue Diamond's Court | Spinel | Off Colors | Gem Monsters | Little Homeworld | Humans (Greg Universe) | Other

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White Diamond

WARNING! As the majority of White Diamond's characterization occurs in the closing episodes of season five, ALL spoilers will be left unmarked. You Have Been Warned!

Voiced by: Christine Ebersole

^{Click here to see her mural.}

"Now all the impurities you've encouraged in them are gone! Now they are brilliant! Now they are perfect! Now they are ME!"

The last of the Diamonds to appear, and the last to be mentioned by name. She is the supreme ruler of the Gem Homeworld, and is the oldest and most powerful Diamond.

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A-F

• Abusive Mom: She's the oldest of the Diamonds and the one in charge of the group. Blue and Yellow seem terrified of her, and it's implied they try to limit their interaction with her to avoid getting on her bad side; Yellow Diamond specifically mentions her poofing and bubbling the other Diamonds as a punishment. As shown in "Change Your Mind", she readily employs physical violence and even brainwashing to keep the Diamonds in order. She finally grows out of this at the end of the episode, however. Given the primary theme of the show is interpersonal relationships, it's little surprise its apparent ultimate villain embodies one of the most toxic of relationships.
• Affably Evil: While greeting Steven, White speaks to him in a friendly motherly tone, but the fact that she does so with an undertone of talking down to him and doesn't even let Steven speak may suggest otherwise. She delves into Faux Affably Evil territory in "Change Your Mind", but is proven to be a genuine example of this trope after her Heel–Face Turn.
• Affectionate Nickname: Has called Pink "Starlight" in the past and uses it again when she meets Steven.
• All There in the Manual: Her body makes it too bright for her gemstone to be seen until "Change Your Mind", but art drawn by Rebecca Sugar◊ as well as a Hot Topic t-shirt revealed that her forehead-placed diamond is shaped exactly like Pink's brilliant cut, but rotated to be right-side-up.
• All Your Colors Combined: Part of White's justification for her supposed perfection is how, unlike with the other Diamonds, whose impurities prevent them from reflecting all colors back, she's composed of every color of the light. This is also a hint that she's not as perfect as she thinks she is, since truly flawless diamonds (or as close as they get in real life) are clear.
• All Your Powers Combined: White's main ability is a blend of Yellow (dominion over the physical form of a Gem), Blue (emotional control), and Pink (astral projection) into a single, effective ability. She uses it to turn Gems into People Puppets, making others into literal extensions of herself. When her Pearl speaks, it isn't the Pearl talking... it's her.
• Ambiguously Evil: She casually welcomes "Pink" back to Homeworld and speaks to him with motherly affection, but as Yellow and Blue explained she tends to have terrible mood swings and as the leader of Homeworld, she is likely responsible for the oppression of "off color" Gems and the rigid caste system. It turns out that out of all the Diamonds, she is indeed the most genuinely malevolent, and has to be forced to realize her justification for being so, her believed perfection, is a farce to finally be forced to change.
• Ambiguous Situation: When the Crystal Gems land Pink Diamond's ship on Homeworld, crowds from all four courts greet them, and White Diamond already knows Pink is alive and identifies Steven as her without being told. It's unclear if she knew Pink Diamond faked her shattering and was Rose Quartz all along from the start, figured it out along the way, or found out when Blue and Yellow did because she was somehow monitoring them. Then there's the fact that when Steven tries to protest he's his own person and that White Diamond is insulting his mother, White reacts as if she knows what a "mom" is and brings up that Steven has been dreaming about Pink's memories. She uses this knowledge to make Steven think that he's just a vessel for Pink.
• Anatomy Anomaly: She is the only character in the entire series with visible fingernails or toenails.
• Anti-Villain: Despite how the other Gems perceive her and how she presents herself, she is just trying to be the perfect example of a model Gem that her Homeworld subjects can take after, since all of her ridiculously perfect standards are a result of her genuine, yet deluded belief that she is perfect above all others.
• Arc Villainess: Of the Diamond Days arc at the end of season five, culminating in the finale, "Change Your Mind".
• Assimilation Plot: Zig-zagged; White Diamond is capable of outright overwriting others Gems' personalities with her own, but does so conservatively, least she "spread [her] uninhibited self so thin". She instead favors a culture of absolute conformity, saving the "bleaching" as a last resort for aberrant gems she doesn't want outright shattered for whatever reason. And since White Diamond created the Gem Empire, her "plot" isn't making it that way, it's keeping it that way.
• The Assimilator: As indicated by her page quote, White Diamond is able to forcefully remove what she considers to be "imperfections" from other gems and make them into her puppets. This is reflected by the Gems losing their coloring and turning a contrasting black, white and grey color scheme. She did this to Pink Pearl in the past, and in the finale does it to Blue and Yellow Diamond, as well as Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever:
  • Exaggerated. Blue and Yellow are about eighty feet tall, and she's a head taller than them, making her around a hundred and ten feet tall.
  • Whenever White moves, the ground rumbles beneath her feet. This is used to humorous effect in The Movie.
• Badass Cape: It's lined with diamond and star designs.
• Believing Their Own Lies: Unlike the other Diamonds who seem to know they're imperfect and have to live up to their image as such, White genuinely believes that she's perfect and it's the motivation for the callous way she treats everyone else. When she realizes that she is off-colored (in the form of a pink blush), she is surprised and appalled, either mortified that people can see it or is surprised by it herself, having been hiding it for so long that she forgot about it.
• Berserk Button:
  • According to Yellow and Blue, being embarrassed, or at least political embarrassment for her empire. Yellow notes they would be lucky if she ever talked to the other Diamonds again after "recovering" Pink. Considering how she blushes when Steven points out she's acting like a child after her temper tantrum leading to her Heel–Face Turn and her violent reaction earlier to Blue and Yellow defying her out in the open, it's safe to say it's any form of it.
  • Suggesting the idea anything is wrong with her design or she's made a wrong decision. This is the reason the other Diamonds largely ignored their realizations Homeworld's system is immoral and broken: to fix it they'd have to admit to White it was broken, something she'd never tolerate until Steven finally shatters her pride.
• Big Bad: She is undoubtedly the true main antagonist and the ultimate source of all Gem-involved external conflict in the original Steven Universe series. Her supreme authority over Homeworld is why their empire is so rigidly conformist, expands at the expense of any other form of life, and fought a war on Earth against several Gems who turned against her, which resulted in many Gems either being shattered or corrupted into monsters.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Subverted. Of all the Diamonds, White is the most alien in her mannerisms and goals; Yellow is loud and violent, Blue is depressed, but White is at once domineering and cold, never really seeming like she's all there. The Empire operates through conquest and resource gathering, but to her, it's less about domination and more about spreading a rigid ideal of perfection as far as she can. She seems to see other Gems as extensions of herself and her will rather than as their own entities. However, as her conflict with Steven shows, White's goals really aren't as alien as they first appeared. She's basically a domineering parent wanting to control her "children" rather than see them make their own decisions and mistakes. She acts out of what she thinks is best for them even as her methods become abusive and at the end of the day she isn't unfeeling so much as trying to present the image that she's unfeeling.
• Boomerang Bigot:
  • White Diamond sees herself as the most perfect being above all others, and thus she does not seem to possess much respect for her fellow diamonds, bleaching Yellow and Blue when they begin to question her and seeing Pink as her polar opposite as both a Gem and a person. This gets better when she realizes that she is not as perfect as she thinks she is.
    White: Poor Yellow. Her impurities absorb all the blue in her light. She's so strong... but so weak when it comes to Blue. Ah, and Blue — her impurities soak up all of the warmth in her spectrum. She thinks she needs you, Pink. As for me, I'm certain I don't need you.
  • White Diamond possesses a dislike towards off-colors Gems much like Yellow and Blue and is clearly uncomfortable when she is forced to play nice with the Off-Colors on Earth. Considering all of Homeworld's hierarchy and the laws that governs it all come from her, it is safe to say that discrimination of off-color Gems are all her doing. What makes this ironic is at the end of "Change Your Mind", it is revealed that she secretly has a flaw (in her case, a pink blush) that makes her off-colored.
• Break the Haughty: The only way she can be reasoned with at all is by making her finally realize that she's not nearly as perfect as she thinks she is, causing her to have a complete meltdown. In the end, her pride is so fully shattered that she's left questioning her entire worldview, as her own perfection was the linchpin.
• Break Them by Talking: She uses her ability to read the minds of other Gems to figure out their insecurities and pick at their flaws. When she confronts Steven she plays on his fears, first by claiming that he only keeps the Crystal Gems around because their imperfections make him feel superior by comparison. Second, she claims that Steven never existed in the first place and that Pink Diamond simply deluded herself into believing that she was a different person. The appearance of Pink Steven instantly disproves this.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • Ironically, it's doing this to her to herself that makes her finally possible to be reasoned with at all, as realizing she's not as perfect as she thinks she is forces her to talk to Steven like a normal person instead of being so secure in her perfection she'll never consider anyone else as worth listening to.
  • To a lesser extent, this also applies to Blue and Yellow Diamond, who lose both their fear and respect for her when they discover that she's off-color. Yellow reacts with disgust, and Blue seems like she's about to throw up. Nonetheless, they seem willing to make amends with her when they cure Corruption together.
• Bright Is Not Good: If she were any bigger, she could legally pass as a star in outer space with the level of light she emits. Also, she's not the most mentally stable being.
• Brightness Shadows: Seems to have this as an active superpower she can intensify at will.
• The Caligula: White is the supreme ruler of Homeworld, and more than a little off her rocker.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Some of her behavior when she appears seems a little... off, to say the least.
• Condescending Compassion: Her "conversation" with Steven is just oozing with this, being motherly yet very patronizing. It's implied that this is also how she treated Pink, which is probably why Pink never mentioned her.
• Control Freak: Everything in her Empire has to be run how she wants — just look at how her representative White Pearl (her Meat Puppet) is pleased with a dance floor where the gems literally spin like cogs, then scowls when Steven and Connie dance together — even before this leads to them fusing. She's willing to even force Yellow and Blue to behave if she has to. She has a complete meltdown when Steven turns out to not be Pink, and no matter what she does, she can't get the outcome she wants.
• Costume Evolution: At some point during the two-year time skip between the end of Season 5 and The Movie the grey in her dress changed to a subtle shade of pink. Whether this is a result of White intentionally changing her form or a side effect of her no longer repressing the aspect of her being she created Pink Diamond from is unknown.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: At first, she attempts to berate Steven, his friends and the other Diamonds by saying Pink brings out the worst in others by encouraging their deficiencies. She turns the other Gems into zombified puppets, and extracts Steven's gem from his navel. After Steven re-unites his body and gem, she throws a childish tantrum, accusing Pink of acting like a child, which prompts Steven to say that he is a child (with a contrastingly pure and innocent maturity), which permeates her with a blushing pink light, which restores the Gems to their natural colors. After she is shown to not be as flawless as she thought she was, Steven tells her that she can make a change for the better by letting everyone on Homeworld, including White Diamond, be themselves.
• Demiurge Archetype: While the Diamond Authority is billed as four matriarchs working together to lead the Gem Homeworld, White is the defacto God Empress of all gemkind. Her power easily surpasses that of Blue and Yellow Diamond, let alone lesser gems. She claims to be the perfect being, with all other gems, even the other Diamonds, merely being flawed reflections of herself. She refuses to listen to others or admit that she is wrong, and the end result of her plans would be the annihilation of all other life in the universe in order to fuel the creation of more gems- more subjects for her to rule. She demands that her subjects be perfect in their actions, thoughts, and desires at all times, and destroys everything that is "off-color". The only one shown to be able to stand up to her is Steven.
• Depopulation Bomb: She gave the final push to Yellow and Blue's attack on Earth to, ostensibly, wipe the planet clean of all Gems. But instead this resulted in their corruption.
• Diabolus ex Nihilo: Played with; White Diamond has a defined personality and goal, and isn't purely antagonistic. She still created a dystopic empire that threatens all other life in the universe, and we're given little reason why and no idea whatsoever how.
• Dissonant Serenity: She appears quite calm and understanding in the face of seemingly learning one of her fellow Diamonds staged a rebellion against her empire, faked her own assassination, hid away under an assumed identity for 6,000 years, and then up and walked back into her throne room as a half-organic, no less. Almost too calm and understanding. When she finally loses her temper, it's explosive.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • White Diamond takes pride in the fact that she is white and free of "impurities", lording it over "colored gems" (including her fellow Diamonds) as something that makes her superior to them, and is devastated when she discovers that she has a bit of color in her too. It also does not help that she is the oldest and most stubborn, making her something of a Racist Grandma for Steven.
  • Her idea of making other Gems "perfect" is to take away the color and personalities that makes a Gem unique, literally taking away their voice and their capacity to disagree and replacing them with her own voice mindlessly giving her praise for doing a good job.
• Doting Grandparent: By the time of The Movie, she acts as this role to Steven, along with Blue and Yellow as his Cool Aunts. All of them beg for him to stay with them on Homeworld so that they could shower him with affection to the point where Steven (who is famous for being a Cuddle Bug) finds it too much. White in particular turns up the ham in order to guilt-trip when he tries getting out of it.
• Drama Queen: She is shown to possess Large Ham tendencies, if her Star-Spangled Spandex, Anime Hair and perpetual glow did not tip you off. In The Movie, this is Played for Laughs when she tries guilt-tripping Steven into letting them stay on Earth with him, punctuating it with literal ground-shaking steps, something she's learned to do since she won't just mind-control people when she doesn't get her way anymore.
  White: But Steven! It's been soooo boring since you've left! [sobs] I guess we'll just waiiiit for you to visit us wheneeeeever you'reeeee reeeeady~.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: In "Change Your Mind", when Yellow and Blue voice their grievances towards the system that she had established, White reacts by using her Eye Beams and assimilating both of them. Later in the episode, she explains how this is her way of purging people's "flaws" and how she "makes things better", so it is very likely she actually did hear them and this was her way of "helping".
• The Dreaded: When Yellow finally says her name, all the Crystal Gems (sans Amethyst, who presumably didn't know who she was) have expressions of shock and fear. Even Yellow and Blue are scared of her, at least until they find out that she's off-color.
• Easily Forgiven: Steven, Blue and Yellow don't hold it against her despite everything she's done to them. However, "Homeworld Bound" shows that Steven still has a lot of suppressed anger towards her for all the trauma that she put him through, which surfaces when White allows Steven to control her body, even attempting to shatter the gem on her head by smashing it through a pillar as revenge, only for Steven to snap out of it at the very last moment and exit White's body.
• Emotion Suppression: She reveals to Steven she's not just white but all of the colors of the Gem race (or at least that's what she thinks), and has to work especially hard to suppress the aspects of pink in her. Hence her Hair-Trigger Temper whenever someone threatens to cause her embarrassment. When she embarrasses herself, she can't help but blush pink, revealing she's an off-color.
• The Empress: The highest authority of the Gem Empire, and although formally they're a council of four, she seems to be far beyond the others in scope, power, and authority. "Together Alone" demonstrates that all Gemkind must present their best selves to the Diamonds, but in turn the Diamonds too must present their best selves to White Diamond, making her the Diamond of all Diamonds.
• Entertainingly Wrong: A very dark example; she believes that "Steven" is just a human vessel that Pink created to play a new game and improve herself against her "flawed" friends. Considering that Pink Diamond was once a Spoiled Brat who would engage in numerous mischievous behaviors to get her older family members to pay attention or give her respect, a static Homeworld Gem could reach that conclusion. Rose Quartz did once believe that dating humans was a game, as Pearl and Greg recounted... but the difference was that Pink knew she was flawed and wanted to become a better person than what a Gem form could allow, and she wanted people to call her out when she made mistakes while respecting her. Thus, Pearl was able to motivate her to fight for the Earth and form the Crystal Gems, while Greg told her that she was worth loving despite her flaws. And as Steven realized in "Storm in the Room", Rose wasn't lying when she said that she was so excited to make Steven and give birth to him. It wasn't all about using an innocent child for her fun, but inspiring her son to rise above her flaws and become a better person.
• Establishing Character Moment: White Diamond is first mentioned in "Legs From Here to Homeworld", Blue Diamond and Yellow Diamond (who intimidate all other regular gems) visibly afraid to involve her in anything, Pearl describing her as though she's as much of an alien to gems as gems are to humans. We are introduced to White Diamond abruptly spiriting away Steven away from the others. She towers over Steven within her Headship and acts as though everything that has happened for the past 6,000 years was just a childish game Pink Diamond was playing, not even allowing Steven to get a word in edgewise, all with a condescending tone. This establishes her as a Control Freak who sees the problems of other people — the Gem War, the profoundly negative effect it had on the other Diamonds, Steven and his mission to uncorrupt the Earth gems — as beneath her in every way and not even worth taking seriously.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good:
  • Her assumption that Pink/Steven surround themselves with "imperfect" beings to feel good about themselves is incredibly skewed to say the least.
  • She believes she's a perfect, completely flawless entity, and thus her design is also perfect and flawless. The concept her design needs fixing (which would imply it is flawed) is a major Berserk Button. As Gemkind is part of her design, the very idea of Character Development is beyond her ability to understand, and much of her assessment of others fails to account for it. This is also the reason Gems on Homeworld are expected to be Static Characters.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • To Pink Diamond. Both have problems with empathy, but while Pink is Innocently Insensitive, White seems to have an extreme Lack of Empathy. Both have a problematic relationship with Blue and Yellow, but while Pink would constantly feel overruled by them and the rebellion was basically one huge Calling the Old Woman Out to them, White is feared by them and they're overruled by her. Both also have a tendency to lie and project the image of being "perfect" to their followers. Pink assumes the identity of the wise and kindhearted Rose Quartz in an effort to outgrow her Immortal Immaturity and escape the crushing pressure of her life on Homeworld, while in White's case she uses the persona of being the perfect Diamond to justify her actions and demand all of Homeworld to live up to her impossible "perfect" standards. The key difference is that White Diamond seems to genuinely believe her own lies, while most evidence in the show seems to suggest that Rose at least felt some genuine remorse for deceiving her friends. Last but not least, both have Small Role, Big Impact-like roles in the series, but while Pink is the Big Good, White seems to be the Greater-Scope Villain.
  • To Garnet. Both are the leaders of their respective four-member teams, the tallest with hairstyles that dwarf their heads with personalities that alternate between cold and aloof and a thunderclap of rage.
  • To Steven. She genuinely believes that she is helping other Gems overcome their flaws, except her idea of "helping" amounts to forcing gems to comply to her impossibly high standards and brainwashing those who can't live up to them. Her People Puppets ability is essentially a stronger version of Steven's Demonic Possession power that allows her to control multiple beings at the same time. Finally, she shares Steven's distaste for physical violence and greatly prefers Talking the Monster to Death, however instead of trying to help the other person see her point of view she picks at her enemy's fears and insecurities until their spirits are utterly broken.
• The Evils of Free Will: When White takes control of Yellow, Blue, Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl, she remarks that it is only then that they are flawless, the various "flaws" that she used to describe each of them merely being summaries of their personalities.
• Evil Matriarch: The leader of the Diamond Authority and technical "mother" of the other three Diamonds. And with The Reveal of Steven being the son of Pink Diamond, makes him White Diamonds' grandson.
• Exotic Eye Designs: Her pupils are white rather than black, and diamond-shaped like the other Diamonds'.
• Eye Beams: How she takes control of other Gems.
• The Faceless: Our first glimpse at her personally occurs in a flashback in "Your Mother and Mine", but all we see are her hand (which is much larger than Yellow or Blue's) and silhouette. The light that radiates from her gem is so bright it actually obscures most of her face, save for her eyes and mouth.
• Fantastically Indifferent: Doesn't show much emotion about the fact that Pink started a rebellion and faked her death, which led to the corruption of thousands of Gems. That said, she is apparently known for her temper problems.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Her infamous temper turns out to be hers: while she starts off in Sugary Malice, when she finally encounters something she can't control (that Pink Diamond is truly dead and never coming back no matter what she does), it devolves into rage before becoming a temper tantrum. Notably, this flaw being forced into the light is what finally forces her to realize she's not as perfect as she thinks she is.
  • Perfectionism. She holds everyone to an impossible standard that no one is capable of meeting, at least without serious psychological effects. In the end, even she can't meet her own standards and has a Villainous BSoD upon realizing she's not as perfect as she thought she was.
  • Pride. White Diamond thinks of herself as a completely flawless, perfect being, devoid of all impurities. As such, she thinks she can never be wrong. Everything must be as she commands it, and all dissenters must be turned into her puppets. She lives in a giant monument to herself, all of Homeworld must worship her and the other Diamonds, and woe betide someone who thinks she isn't perfect. Notably, it's only after her pride is completely shattered that she's possible to be reasoned with at all.
  • Her belief that other Gems are incapable of change. This is especially true of Pink Diamond, who she continues to treat like a misbehaving child even after she leads a planetary rebellion, successfully fakes her own assassination, and created a new form of life in Steven. When Pink is proven to be truly gone White has an Villainous Breakdown.
• Femme Fatalons: She has long, black fingernails that are clawed at the tips, as opposed to the smooth tips of the others.
• Final Boss: After serving as The Ghost for most of the series she finally appears in season 5 and becomes the main, and final, antagonist of the Diamond Days arc and the last obstacle Steven has to overcome to end Homeworld's tyranny and cure the corrupted Gems on Earth.
• Five Stages of Grief: While Blue and Yellow represent Depression and Anger respectively, White Diamond displays Denial about Pink Diamond's death. She's correct that Pink faked her shattering during the war, but wrong that Pink just used a human child as a vessel for her new form. When she finds out that Pink and Rose are really gone, and no amount of force will bring "Starlight" back, she doesn't react well.
• Foil:
  • Her personality contrasts perfectly with Pink/Rose/Steven; the latter is an extroverted people-lover, and the former is a shut-in who doesn't even realize that empathy exists.
  • Unlike Yellow, who constantly looks irritated and ready to snap at a moment's notice, White has enough self-control to act calm and loving even when angry, which makes the experience of bearing her wrath even more terrifying.
• For Your Own Good: Is so madly delusional about her own perfection, that she genuinely believes "bleaching" Gems, making them a part of her and removing their "flaws" is making them "better", because now they're an extension of herself, and thus "perfect". Made even more clear when she says this line to Pink Steven before attempting to use her "bleaching" beams on them after they continue to resist her.
  White Diamond: I only want you to be yourself!! If you can't do that, I'll do it FOR YOU!!!
• Freudian Slip: The movie has her blurt "lower lifeforms" before Steven reminds her that it's "equal lifeforms".

G-O

• Galactic Conqueror: Is the leader of the Gem Empire. It's implied that her need to spread her own perceived perfection across the universe is the driving force behind their conquests in the first place.
• The Ghost: She is conspicuously scarce in both sight and speech, even compared to the other Diamonds, to the point it's not even clear just what her relationship to them is like. For multiple seasons, her existence was only implied by her mural and the presence of the white shape on the Diamond Authority sigils. Even in the Wanted arc, which took place on Homeworld, she's not even referenced by the other Diamonds, though a structure that strongly resembles her mural is seen at the end of "The Trial". She then briefly appears in a flashback in "Your Mother and Mine" (or, more precisely, her silhouette and her arm), but was still not directly mentioned. Even when Yellow and Blue personally invade Earth with the intent of awakening the Cluster and getting their revenge, White seemingly still can't be bothered to even send a representative. She finally makes her physical debut in "Legs From Here to Homeworld".
• A God Am I: Even when compared to Yellow and Blue, White seems to think highly of herself. She goes on about how she is a perfect being, and uses basic science about the light spectrum as a fundamental law of the universe to justify it. Even her method of "perfecting" Gems is simply draining the color from another gem, imbuing them with her voice and controlling their minds.
• Got the Whole World in My Hand: Her mural in the moon base depicts her with a large orb (presumably Homeworld) in her hands.
• Greater-Scope Villain: She is the head of the Diamond Authority, and ruler of Homeworld and the Gem race as a whole. The placement of her color at the top of both the Era 1 and Era 2 Homeworld sigils, and the fact that her mural depicts the largest number of claimed colonies and is the only one displaying Homeworld itself, attests to this. It gets even more blatant when on Homeworld itself: the largest structure on the planet is her palace/flagship which is crafted in her image. Blue and Yellow appear to handle the day-to-day operations of the Empire while White simply lords over them, not even bothering to inform them when she senses Pink is alive. "Change Your Mind" conclusively establishes all of Homeworld's misery goes back to her literal perfect standards, but White herself only appears in full toward the tail end of the fifth season. In "I Am My Monster" she lampshades this as an admission of guilt.
  White Diamond: Everyone knows that all of this is because of me!
  Spinel: No, it's me! I tried to wipe his friend's memories so he would die alone on a barren world!
  White Diamond: That was because you were angry with Pink! And if Pink hurt you it was because I hurt her, like I hurt Yellow and Blue and Steven and everyone in the entire universe! This is all my fault!
• Greyscale of Evil: She is entirely monochrome and serves as the Greater-Scope Villain of the first five seasons. In addition, the chamber she appears in in season 5 is also monochrome, as are the Gems she assimilates and controls. Noticeably, when she's made to realize she's not perfect, the greyscale breaks as she blushes bright pink. In the movie, two years later, looking at her closely reveals she now has a slight pink tinge in parts of her clothing, indicating that she is slowly getting better as a person.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Her temper is enough to frighten Yellow Diamond. And if Yellow's comments are to go by, it's not the first time she acted in a rage.
• Hartman Hips: "Change Your Mind" reveals that she has these to further highlight her womanly, goddess demeanor.
• Heel–Face Turn: After eons of ignorance and deluding herself that she is perfect above all other life-forms, even her fellow Diamonds, Steven finally manages to get through to her to realize that she isn't perfect, causing her to have a Villainous Breakdown at first, before finally realizing how awful she had been to Pink Diamond and the rest of her empire, and eventually agrees to help cure all the corrupted Gems back on Earth.
  • Whether it's a complete turn or just a Hazy-Feel Turn is up for debate at the moment, as she still exhibits a lot of her more troubling traits even post-"reformation". And the intro to Steven Universe: Future features her both as an ally and a potential enemy. Fully reformed or not, she's at least willing to try and meet Steven half-way (or whatever she interprets as being half-way) because she loves him and wants to honor Pink's memory.
  • The episode "Homeworld Bound" in the events of Future show that she has pretty much changed completely for the better. All the Diamonds are actively using their once-destructive powers for good: Yellow restoring previously shattered Gems, Blue using her emotion-based powers to spread happiness, and White is helping other Gems regain their self-worth by allowing them to channel themselves through her by reversing her mind-control powers, literally lending her voice to gems who used to go unheard. Her dialogue also implies that her job doesn't include just the Gems on Homeworld, but every Gem, including the ones on other planets. Unlike the seeming Hazy-Feel Turn in the movie where she Wants a Prize for Basic Decency, she takes genuine pleasure in doing her new job and is exceedingly gracious when speaking to others. When Steven goes to see her, she has no problem responding to Steven's needs in what amounts to a therapy session. Even after it takes a terrible turn where her powers reveal Steven's disturbing vengeful thoughts towards his trauma done by her, she shows nothing but concern for Steven and a sincere wish to help him.
• High-Heel Power: She wears extremely stylish high heels upon her Feet-First Introduction, and she asserts her dominance over Steven, or in her mind, Pink Diamond, by sending him to Pink's room before he can even barely speak. It's a thing that all Gemkind, especially the bosslike Yellow, fear White Diamond.
• Hikikomori: She spends all her time locked up in her room, to the point where her Pearl comes to the ball for her under the claim that "White Diamond... has more important things to attend to".
• Hive Queen: She can control her subjects, even the other Diamonds, like puppets.
• Hoist by Her Own Petard:
  • Her ripping out Steven's gemstone causes Pink Steven to appear and knock the crap out of her.
  • She imposes her hatred for off-color Gems on Blue and Yellow Diamond. When she's revealed to be off-colored herself, Blue and Yellow are disgusted.
• Hufflepuff House: We don't see any of White Diamond's followers except for her Pearl (who originally belonged to Pink Diamond) and some Faceless Masses from all four courts in "Legs From Here to Homeworld". In "Your Mother and Mine", she's not among Pink Diamond's "Diamond allies" called in to fight the Crystal Gems, but is shown to have her own colonies. These suggest she was only dragged in out of desperation to corrupt all the Gems on Earth, and otherwise doesn't care about the conflict there (or its aftermath).
• Humanoid Abomination: Everything about her appearance is unsettling and eerie, like some kind of ethereal statue made of light that has facial features floating around, attached to nothing. Though she speaks more or less normally, White Diamond shows a bizarre disconnect with her surroundings and even the people she's supposed to be talking to. Pearl emphasizes that she's fundamentally different than any other Gem, or even the other Diamonds. Her confrontation with Steven in "Change Your Mind" takes this further, with her Assimilator powers on full display — with an added dose of Voice of the Legion — and her facial features distorting nightmarishly.
• Hypocritical Humor: When Steven's gem and body are reunited, White Diamond throws a temper tantrum, accusing Steven/Pink of acting like a child:
  Connie: Steven, ohh! Are you back together, are you you?
  Steven: Yeah, I'm me. I've always been me.
  White Diamond: [pounding the floor in a temper tantrum] No! You are Pink Diamond! That is Pink Diamond's gem! You do not look like this! You do not sound like this! You are not half-human, you're just... acting like a child!
  Steven: I am a child. What's your excuse?
• Hypocrite:
  • Holds everyone up to an impossibly high standard to be completely flawless, but isn't flawless herself. White is completely oblivious to this fact... until Steven forces her to realize that she's as flawed as anyone else, and she has a complete Villainous Breakdown as a result.
  • In her "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Steven, she says "Pink" chooses to surround herself with flawed, inferior beings so she can feel like "The best of the worst." All this after she brainwashed and surrounded herself with Gems whom she continues to deride as inferior as well, only in her case she justifies it by claiming she's now made them "Perfect".
  • When describing the Crystal Gems flaws, White Diamond calls Pearl "obsessed". Obsessed, however, can be used to describe White, who is indeed obsessed with living up to her self-imposed expectations of being the perfect Diamond and has a breakdown when she realizes she's not.
  • She rants about "Pink" trying to deceive herself, yet spent eons deluding herself into thinking she's flawless and that Pink Diamond is still alive.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: It is revealed that under all of that A God Am I gravitas lies a lonely Gem that is only able to keep herself together through her perceived superiority, unable to handle the fact that she isn't the model of perfection that everyone (including herself) thinks she is. What makes this especially ironic is that before her mask slips, this is exactly what she accuses Pink of doing, surrounding herself with imperfect Gems below their station and encouraging their flaws as a means of making her seem superior to them.
• Inexplicably Awesome: All other Gems, even the Diamonds, are most likely the direct and indirect creations of White Diamond. How she could do such things or what kind of being that makes her is not addressed at all.
• In Their Own Image: Her ultimate goal is basically this, as she wishes to take over the universe so she can remake it about herself.
• Ironic Name: White diamonds symbolize purity and clarity, but White Diamond embodies madness and corruption. White Diamond is known for her terrifying anger, comes across to viewers as decidedly off, and participated in a corruption blast that mutated countless Gems. White diamonds also symbolize love, given that they are traditional components of women's wedding rings. White Diamond implies herself to be devoid of love or empathy. Of course, she sees herself as the embodiment of purity and clarity, and perhaps even love (as she sees "freeing" others from being flawed as being for their own good).
• Irony:
  • The head of the Diamond Authority and Homeworld, who strives for perfection in everything, is actually off-colored herself, and blushes pink (instead of gray or bright white) whenever feeling self-conscious or embarrassed.
  • For all her big show about not needing anyone, she almost immediately reaches out to Blue and Yellow in her Moment of Weakness.
• It's All About Me: She views the entirety of the Gem Empire as a direct reflection of herself and has mandated every Gem live up to her set of standards, which prove impossible for anyone to actually hold themselves to, including White herself, it turns out. Although only in extreme cases does she step in and forcibly make a Gem live up to her standards. As it turns out, White is deluding even herself, as that perfect version of herself she is forcing everyone to live up to exists only in her own head and is nothing but a toxic fallacy. It's only when she realizes this that she begins to understand the harm she's done to everyone she was supposed to nurture and protect.
• It's All My Fault: In "I Am My Monster", everyone starts having a breakdown about how Steven turned into a monster because of all of them. In White's case, she cites the fact that everything bad that has ever happened in the series - from creating the Empire's oppressive system, all the way to Pink defecting and the harm that drove Steven unto this state - was all because of her.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Yellow and Blue's attempt to talk to White results in her mind-controlling them.
  • Despite apparently knowing what Steven and Connie have been through together, White Diamond still views Connie as just Steven's pet.
• Knight of Cerebus: According to the creators, she is the ultimate challenge to the show's "problems can be solved by communicating your feelings" mentality. That's because she doesn't have any problems other than the belief that she's flawless, and it's not her feelings that she needs to search, it's her flaws.
• Lack of Empathy: While this is basically Homeworld's hat, White takes this further than any other Gem, including the other Diamonds. She refers the entire Crystal Gem rebellion and everything both sides fought for as just a "little game" of Pink's. It's also implied that she figured out that Pink faked her shattering and was Rose Quartz all along, but never bothered to tell the obviously still grieving Blue and Yellow. It's implied that this was the result of perceiving herself as the Ultimate Lifeform and thus all other beings being lesser than herself. It isn't until Steven forces her to see she's not that she finally starts seeing anyone else as worth listening to let alone caring about.
• Large and in Charge: She's the Diamond Authority's highest (or at least most senior) figure, and Yellow Diamond and Blue Diamond's hands are only as big as her palm.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After spending millennia ruling everyone in fear and tyranny, White finally gets what's coming to her when Pink Steven proves to be more powerful than her and completely demolishes everything she throws at him.
• Lean and Mean: Even more so than the others; she is far thinner than Yellow or Blue.
• Leitmotif: Befitting the leader of the Diamond Authority, her leitmotif is primarily based around the first, highest synth tone from the Diamonds' collective theme, but it's continuously overlaid by an atonal, reverberant electronic ambiance that renders it a far more sterile and unsettling theme than any of the others. It carries over to her Pearl, too, though in her case the overlay is of a noticeably warmer timbre.
• Light 'em Up: During what very little we see of her in "Your Mother and Mine" during the Diamonds' attack, the Diamonds show off their abilities as they charge it with Yellow's electricity, and Blue's emotion-based power, and when White's hand shows up? Burning bright, white light, and it massively overshadows the abilities of the other two. Her power is later found to be Mind Control, sucking the color from Gems and putting them under her direct control and thus free of "flaws".
• Light Is Not Good: She is strongly associated with light and even glows, as well as being the supreme leader of the Gem Empire. However, like Blue and Yellow, she eventually makes a Heel–Face Turn and cures Corruption alongside the Crystal Gems.
• Literal Metaphor: She's secluded herself for eons in her Faceship mecha, cutting herself off from everyone else, even her fellow Diamonds, left to sink deeper and deeper into her unhealthy perfectionist mindset - she's quite literally stuck inside her own head.
• Literal Split Personality: Implied to be the case in "Change Your Mind", where after encountering White inside of her head after assimilating Yellow and Blue into her Hive Mind, she implies that she had created the other Diamonds in a bid to rid herself of her perceived flaws; but that the process when creating Pink Diamond had seemingly been a flawed as she insists that Pink's "The part I always have to suppress".
• Living Statue: Much like her Pearl, the only features on White Diamond's body that appear to move are her eyes and mouth. The rest of her body appears to be frozen in place in its current crucifixion-like posture. She is also drawn in the same style as the show's static background to emphasize that immobility. She finally moves in "Change Your Mind".
• Luminescent Blush:
  • "Change Your Mind" reveals that she blushes bright pink, making her technically off-color and underscoring that even she doesn't live up to her own impossibly high standards. The blush is implied to be literally luminescent, too: the entire previously white room turned pink as well.
  • In the book The Tale of Steven, she visibly blushes upon realizing that she had been wrong for the whole story, figuratively (the book being a tie-in with "Change Your Mind") and literally (by having the text upside-down).
• Mad God: She's a Physical God like her fellows and implied to be on another level than even them... but seems just off and not quite right. She believes her unnatural behavior is a sign of her perfection and would like nothing more than to see the rest of the universe like herself.
• Manipulative Bitch: She tries to convince Steven that the Crystal Gems are simple crutches to Pink, as they are less perfect than her, making Pink feel better by comparison, which is untrue in every sense of the word.
• Marionette Master: When the Diamonds and Gems enter White Diamond's chamber, she turns Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl, Blue & Yellow Diamond into zombified puppets, removing their free will and "impurities".
• Marionette Motion: Victims of her power exhibit this at first, including Abnormal Limb Rotation Range. It's creepy as hell.
• Mark of Shame: When White blushes pink, Blue and Yellow are visibly disturbed by it, Yellow commenting that she is "off-color". Whether or not White is just blushing and is embarrassed by it or if the pink in her cheeks is an actual flaw in her gem, literally making her an off-color Gem (something she implies earlier) and that she simply has been hiding it all this time is up for debate.
• Mistaken Identity: Most Homeworld Gems think Steven is Rose Quartz or Pink Diamond, but White Diamond's view is a bit different. Rather than just thinking Pink has taken a very different-looking form (again), White knows Steven has a human body and believes himself a different person. However, White still thinks Pink just stuck herself in that body, took it over, and deluded herself into thinking she was Steven. This conclusion actually has enough physical evidence to worry Steven himself but is disproven when pulling his gemstone out just makes a full-Gem version of Steven.
• Mirror Character:
  • Her appearing in public as White Pearl brings into mind how Pink Diamond led a double life as Rose Quartz.
  • Like Steven, she has a tendency for Condescending Compassion, and both of their Character Developments involve them becoming more mature. Steven possessing Lars in "The New Lars" to make him a better person also mirrors White Diamond's ability to forcefully remove what she considers to be "imperfections" from other gems and make them into her puppets.
  • Like Pearl, she has an unhealthy obsession with Pink Diamond. Both of them are also perfectionists who seek to maintain order, both of them have made attempts to rip out Steven's gemstone (with White Diamond actually pulling it out at one point), and ultimately both of them accept that Steven is not Pink and come to love him for himself.
  • Like Garnet. Design-wise, they are the tallest of their respective teams as well as their leader, their hair dwarves the rest of their head and their moods swing between calm and calculated and Unstoppable Rage. They both inspire a level of fear in the rest of their team (though Garnet is only as hard as she is to inspire strength in the others while in White's case, it's unambiguously abusive) and have a soft spot for their youngest (but while Steven and Garnet are close, Pink, like Yellow and Blue, did everything to avoid White).
  • To Spinel; both of them had been waiting in silence for thousands of years for Pink Diamond's return, only to find out they gave up their physical form to create human life, even breaking down dramatically upon discovering the truth.
• Monster Progenitor: She claims that Pink Diamond is "a part of me, a part I always have to repress." If the Diamonds truly are aspects of her, that means she indirectly created the entire Gem race.
• Mundane Utility: After the Movie, she eventually learned how to allow others to possess her instead of the other way around. By the time Steven meets with her in "Homeworld Bound", she has since used it as a tool to help the self-worth of other gems in the same vein as a therapist or self-help guru.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Notably, she does ultimately get to the point she feels genuine guilt over what she's done and understands every awful thing to happen was ultimately her fault.
• Mysterious Past: Where exactly she (as well as the other Diamonds) came from is a complete and utter mystery so far.
• Narcissist: Just like any other narcissist, White Diamond truly believes she is perfect. She also gaslights Steven, which is another feature of narcissists: manipulation. However, when she finds out she is not perfect, she breaks down and has her Heel–Face Turn.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The Crystal Gem Pearl doing what she was made to do led to her suggesting to Pink Diamond that she explore the Earth under the guise of a Rose Quartz, which led to Pink realizing the damage Earth's colonization is doing to the planet, which in turn led to her leading a rebellion against Homeworld to save Earth, and subsequently faking her death, as well as the circumstances that followed, including Steven's conception, the person who would convince White, Blue, and Yellow to turn over a new leaf and end their tyrannical ways. Absolutely none of this would've happened if White hadn't taken Pink Pearl from Pink Diamond and given her a replacement Pearl.
• Non-Standard Character Design: In "Legs From Here to Homeworld", Pearl explicitly describes White Diamond as being different from other Gems, even from the other Diamonds. And when we meet her in person, we see that Pearl wasn't exaggerating as her appearance alone waves a red flag that there is clearly something off about her. Her body is mostly obscured by the light emanating from her gem, making it look like her entire body is made of light (to the point that her head looks almost like it's two-dimensional from some angles). She also stands completely motionless with her arms outstretched in a crucifixion pose which, when combined with her dissonant, monotone voice, makes her seem almost robotic. The only part of her body that makes any movement is her face, making it seem disconnected from the rest of her body. Moreover, she is drawn in the style of the show's background art, as if to further emphasize her rigidity and immobility. Her design is specifically based on the works of American artist Nell Brinkley, while the other three Diamonds curb influence from three Japanese manga and anime artists (Hirohiko Araki, Leiji Matsumoto, and Chiho Saito for Yellow, Blue, and Pink, respectively). And when she does start moving in "Change Your Mind", the animation only adds to her unsettling nature as her face and fingers constantly distort, resulting in some unnerving facial expressions. She's also the only Gem to have eyebrows at all times (the others only have them in close-up shots), and the only one at all to have fingernails, giving her a disturbingly more human-like quality than the other Gems.
• No Social Skills: After her Heel–Face Turn, she has zero social skills and is clearly completely out of her element interacting with other beings in a social capacity.
• Nothing Nice About Sugar and Spice: Per the creators, White, unlike other Gems, was given markers of an old-fashioned, stratifying femininity to emphasize her alien nature even when compared to the other Diamonds.
• Not Me This Time: Future reveals that while she did turn Pink Pearl into a Meat Puppet, she had nothing to do with said Pearl's cracked eye and face as was previously implied. Pink Pearl came damaged that way courtesy of one of Pink Diamond's tantrums.
• Not So Omniscient After All: White Diamond somehow has an intimate knowledge of Steven's life, and that of many others, even if her perspective is very warped. However, she proves herself flat out wrong about Steven's true nature. Even without his organic body, Steven's gem takes his form, not Pink Diamond's — because "she's gone".
• Obliviously Evil:
  • Sort of. She is the most genuinely malevolent of the Diamonds, but she seems so obsessed with her own perfection that she genuinely can't comprehend that other beings matter as much as she does and believes that everything else would be more perfect if her empire and her subjects did exactly what she said. When she's forced to realize she's as flawed as anyone else, she more or less completely shuts down and has no idea what to do with herself.
  • White rips the gemstone out of Steven's body because she sincerely thought each was a separate person. Although in actuality, she was tearing him in half, from her perspective, she was simply making Pink Diamond stop using Steven as a puppet.
• Oh, Crap!: The moment that Pink Steven appears instead of Pink Diamond after Steven's gem is removed is the first time White Diamond's expectations are broken down, leaving her confused. Pink Steven's powerful shout then disrupts her footing, causing a true moment of this and kick-starting her Villainous Breakdown as her emotions start running rampant.
• The Older Immortal: Implied. Going by the pre-Rebellion-era murals depicting the Diamonds surrounded by their colonies, she's conquered the most planets and moons of all (35 planetoids in total, more than the other Diamonds put together), and if the large planet in her mural's hands is in fact Homeworld, it might be meant to symbolize she was the first Gem.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: How other characters react to her speaks volumes of her status and power. Yellow Diamond is scared of her temper, and her Pearl denied Yellow's request to see her without as much a complaint from Yellow.
• Orcus on His Throne: It has been stated that she never leaves her head these days and couldn't be bothered to attend the first royal ball in a millennium. Deconstructed, as her refusal to leave her throne is a big part of the unhealthy, isolationist mindset that's made her the Greater-Scope Villain in the first place.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Is horrified to discover that her younger fellow Diamond Pink truly is gone and that there's no way to bring her back.

P-Y

• Parental Favoritism: She is implied to have treated Pink Diamond well in the past, yet two of her other fellow Diamonds, Blue and Yellow, are afraid of her temper. In a twist of events, it's Yellow who's scared for Steven when White finds out what Pink did, showing that she is unaware of White's apparent favoritism of Pink over her. "Familiar" confirms that White favored Pink over Yellow.
• Parental Neglect: For as much as she qualifies as Pink Diamond's "mother", White Diamond is notably absent from nearly all scenes with the Authority, including the trial of Pink's alleged murderer; the other Diamonds themselves never acknowledge her to the point that when Pink was pleading with her fellow Diamonds to spare the Earth through long-distance communication, White doesn't even show up and no mention is made of what she thinks of Pink's desire. The only time she intervened at all was to help Yellow and Blue unleash the Corrupting Light on Earth after Pink's alleged shattering. The reason for this deadbeat behavior has yet to be seen. She reacts to "Pink"'s homecoming in "Legs From Here to Homeworld" with a mixture of patronization and nonchalance, showing concern for Steven without actually caring or listening when he tries to speak. Presumably this was how she treated Pink as well. It is not until she gets a firm reality check and realize that she isn't as perfect as she thinks she is does she decide to be an active participant with Yellow, Blue and Steven, and by the time of The Movie, the three of them lay it on thick to Steven just how much he means to them.
• Parental Obliviousness: Played with. White somehow has a pervasive knowledge of Pink and Steven's lives, even when they were on Earth, but doesn't understand either's character, or that they're even two different people.
• Parents Know Their Children: She is Pink's "mother", and instantly recognizes Steven as her the second he steps into the throne room, despite his gem being covered by his shirt. Even Blue and Yellow Diamond didn't recognize Steven as Pink until he was able to project her aura during their fight in "Reunited". "Change Your Mind" implies that she also knew that Rose Quartz and Pink were the same person. Subverted in that she was wrong and Steven was never Rose, much to her shock.
• People Puppets: "Change Your Mind" reveals that she can control other Gems and even speak through them, turning them monochrome in the process. Not even Blue and Yellow are immune.
• The Perfectionist: Taken to an insane and unhealthy degree. Everything on Homeworld, or the galactic empire, has to conform to her "perfect" caste system. Everyone has to look their best for her, constantly. Fusions and Off-Colors enrage her and are punishable by death. Seeing herself as the Ultimate Life Form, White has now isolated herself away from other gems, even the other Diamonds, to limit contact with them. In "Change Your Mind" she elaborates upon this and explains that all Gems, even the other Diamonds, are essentially inferior copies of her. She has a Villainous Breakdown when she realizes that she isn't flawless.
• Perpetual Smiler: Surprisingly, she's seen smiling the entirety of her meeting with Steven, though her smiles aren't sincere until her Heel–Face Turn.
• Personality Powers: White's Signature Move is the ability to assimilate other gems with her Eye Beams to act as extensions of herself, a literal form of Psychological Projection reflecting her Control Freak tendencies, her god complex and her inability to comprehend the thoughts and feelings of other people. Between her Heel–Face Turn in "Change Your Mind" and "Homeworld Bound", she eventually learned how to use this power in reverse and allows others to possess her instead, a power that compliments her newly-acquired humility.
• Pet the Dog:
  • White Diamond does seem to genuinely want to be a good parent to her fellow Diamonds, despite her perfectionism and reclusive nature straining their relationship, and gives them a lot of leeway and autonomy, insofar as their actions don't significantly clash with her agenda:
    • The fact that she figured out Pink's scheme at some point, at least to some extent, and didn't immediately haul her back to Homeworld shows she was willing to let Pink "get [her rebelliousness] out of her system" and take all the time she wanted to do so. Not informing Yellow and Blue of the same, while cruel, can probably be attributed to her massive disconnect with their feelings rather than genuine malice.
    • When Steven and the Crystal Gems confront her in her ship, she asks whether Pink "wants her legs and planet back" in a gentle and seemingly complaisant tone, although it carries a level of condescension. While White emphasized she wouldn't let Pink leave Homeworld, she seemed to be willing to give Pink her colony and ship back, much like a parent offering a fussy toddler a toy to stop their tantrum.
    • While her attempt to rip out Steven's gemstone comes off as creepy, she seems to genuinely want her littlest fellow Diamond Pink back.
  • With regard to lesser, "imperfect" Gems, she at least tries to be nice to the Off-Colors when Steven introduces her to them. In The Movie, Steven has been trying to get her out of this mindset much more — insisting on calling others "equal lifeforms" instead of "lower lifeforms", though how sincere she is in this is up for debate.
  • Steven Universe: Future shows how much she and the other Diamonds have changed, as they've developed new powers that contrast their Signature Moves, with White, in particular, allowing other Gems to control her instead of her controlling other Gems, allowing them to help rediscover their self-worth.
• Power Glows: She's the most ancient and powerful of a race of aliens made primarily of light, and it shows. Her body is so luminous when she appears in person that all of her features except her lips, eyeliner, eyebrows, and nail polish (which are all black) are concealed. You can't even see her gem until "Change Your Mind", because it's glowing just as bright as her skin and hair. Not until she is given a reality check does it stop.
• Psychological Projection:
  • White Diamond assumes Pink Diamond is still alive, and Steven's organic body is just a human child she's used as a Meat Puppet for his whole life. That's something Pink would never do to any living thing, but White does constantly.
  • She also assumes that "Pink" surrounds herself with flawed Gems to make herself look better, something that describes her rather well.
• Psychopathic Womanchild: She may act like she's above everyone else, but when her attempts at getting Pink Diamond to turn back to her old self fail, she hammers at the floor like a fussy toddler in contrast to the creepy matriarch she has been portrayed as before.
  White Diamond: You are not half-human, you're just... a-acting like a child!
  Steven: I am a child; what's your excuse?
• Psychic Powers: Despite remaining in her palace, White has a great knowledge of the facts (if not the meaning) of Pink/Rose and Steven's lives — up to knowing what the latter was dreaming. It strongly suggests White Diamond has either clairvoyance or telepathy.
• Pure Is Not Good:
  • White diamonds are considered the purest form (technically, colorless diamonds are, but this is as close as we'll get here) of diamond. White Diamond the character knows this, giving her a massive superiority complex toward the other Gems, even with her fellow Diamonds. This purity possibly came from casting off her emotions into the other Diamonds, and Steven points out this leaves her devoid of happiness. White pointing out that she consists of all the various colors of light instead of just a partial spectrum like Blue and Yellow is also a hint that she's not as devoid of flaws as she believes that she is...
  • Power-wise, she can purify other gems and make it possible to restore them from Corruption. But taken the other way, this also allows her to purify them of their personality, turning them into another extension of herself.
• Racist Grandma: A dark example; because she is Pink's "mother", Steven is technically her grandson. She tends to think the Diamonds are above... pretty much any and every being in the universe, and even then only started treating Yellow, Blue, and Steven as beings equal to herself recently, and that's not even to mention her zero tolerance for off-colors. This is apparently something Steven has been working on with her by the time of the movie.
  White Diamond: I've been saying "Please" and "Thank You", even to lower lifeforms!
  Steven: What did we talk about?
  White Diamond: Ugh, equal lifeforms.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Lays out a vicious one to Steven in "Change Your Mind".
  White: It's a pity the way you bring out the worst in others. See how you've encouraged their deficiencies? It's written all over their gems. [about Amethyst] Insecure... [about Garnet] dependent... [about Pearl] obsessed...
  Steven: No! No no! Guys! Come on! Snap out of it!
  White: Please stop "helping" them! You'll only make things worse. That's what you do. I make things better. Here... [snaps fingers and starts speaking through Amethyst] "Oh thank you, White Diamond! I feel excellent now! Oh thank you, how generous of you!" [speaking through Garnet] "Thank you, White Diamond! We feel so much better now!" [speaking through Pearl] "I feel excellent!" There we are! I've removed their flaws! Now there is nothing to hinder my white light from sparkling through them! I'd rather not spread my uninhibited self so thin, you know, but you've made it absolutely necessary. Now all the impurities you've encouraged in them are gone! Now they are brilliant! Now they are perfect! Now, they are ME!
  Steven: You're wrong! [White gives him a Death Glare] Please, just listen to me! My friends don't need to be fixed! They're fine the way they are! Flaws and all!
  White: There you go again. Do you understand why you defend their flaws? I know why, Pink. [speaks through ALL of Steven's friends] You LIKE surrounding yourself with inferior Gems!
  Steven: What!?
  White: You enable their terrible behavior, so you can be the best of the worst!
  Steven: That's not true! [losing steam] And even if it is... even if it was...you're talking about my mom! You're not talking about me!
  [White, the Crystal Gems, White Pearl, and the Diamonds all start cackling like madmen]
  White: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! YOUR "MOM"? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
• Red Herring:
  • Despite the abusive air around her suggesting that she cracked Pink Pearl's eye, "Volleyball" reveals that it was Pink Diamond herself who damaged her Pearl in a fit of rage.
  • The opening of Future shows an enraged, pink-shaded version of White among the villains. It turns out that's her being controlled by Steven.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The blue to the other three Diamonds' red, being much more reserved and antisocial than them.
• Secret Secret-Keeper: In her first meeting with Steven, her dialog suggests she knew Rose Quartz was Pink Diamond all along but kept it to herself because she thought Pink was going through some extended temper tantrum and needed to get it out of her system.
• Shadow Archetype: To Pink Diamond. Both are very feminine Chessmasters who play millennia-long games with each other, to the point that White assumes that Pink Faking the Dead and staging a rebellion was just her latest "game" with her. Both also tend to be insensitive and dismissive of other gems, but while Pink is Innocently Insensitive, White's condescension is both intentional and from a genuine belief she is perfect. Even their gems are perfect mirrors to one another — White's gem is the exact same shape and cut as Pink's gem, only facing in the opposite direction. White Diamond even acknowledges this in "Change Your Mind", White describing Pink as a "flaw" that she has to suppress, how Pink "corrupts" as she herself "perfects", and then realizing that she herself has a flaw when she blushes pink.
• Shadow Dictator: She's the highest authority in an intergalactic empire, but seemingly secludes herself in a single room and only lets people in when completely necessary. Even the other Diamonds barely ever see her, and her Pearl leaves her ship as soon as she brings Steven to White Diamond.
• Shoulders of Doom: Her mural depicts her with these. "Your Mother and Mine" implies it may be part of a cape she wears similar to Jasper's cape. Her shoulders aren't as large when she actually appears.
• The Shut-In: "Legs From Here to Homeworld" reveals that she hasn't left Homeworld in eons. How she apparently still manages to have more colonies than the other Diamonds is a mystery, although she most likely just stopped colonizing planets at some point. Either way, she finally leaves Homeworld at the end of "Change Your Mind".
• Significant Double Casting: She shares a voice actor with her Pearl, making Christine Ebersole the only actor on the show to voice two different types of gems, and White Pearl thus far the only Pearl not voiced by Deedee Magno-Hall. This is because she's using her as a puppet, and the same ends up applying when she controls others.
• Sinister Surveillance: She is aware of many things that neither she nor her subjects could have witnessed in person, such as the truth about Pink Diamond's "shattering", the exact time and place that Blue and Yellow would return to Homeworld, the Crystal Gems' deep-seated insecurities, and the fact that Steven has been experiencing his mother's memories. However, she is also clearly not The Omniscient, as her assumption that Pink was using Steven as a Meat Puppet proved to be incorrect.
• Skull for a Head: The way her hair shapes her head mixed with the prominent cheekbones some perspectives give her makes her head look like it is shaped like a skull.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: She took Pink Pearl from Pink Diamond — and then used her mind control powers on said Pearl, turning her into White Pearl and leaving her nothing but an Empty Shell for White to use as her Meat Puppet; the other Diamonds either poof or shatter lower Gems that displease them, so this makes White especially cruel. And given who White is, she probably didn't see it as any different as confiscating a toy from Pink.
• Spiky Hair: Her murals are identifiable in part by her unmistakable flower-like hairstyle. Her actual hair is somehow even more pointy than the murals depict.
• Star-Spangled Spandex: She wears a cape patterned with white diamonds on a black-and-grey background which resembles a night sky.
• Sugary Malice: In "Change Your Mind", one of her lines is: "Now Starlight, this has gone on long enough" and making it clear that she is absolutely furious at Steven, though you wouldn't know that by her voice. This line she says right before she "bleaches" Amethyst as punishment for calling what she's saying nonsense is also absolutely dripping with venom.
  White Diamond: Oh! Hello there! Your new friends are so funny. Is that what they're supposed to be? Funny?
• Tautological Templar: White Diamond's entire worldview turns out to be based around the idea that she is a perfect and flawless being, which means that she knows best and justifies her enforcement of a caste system that ultimately just makes everyone miserable, and even her taking control of other Gems to remove what she sees as their flaws. It's only when she realizes that she isn't perfect that Steven is able to reason with her.
• Third-Person Person: When she speaks through White Pearl, she refers to herself as if they were distinct entities.
• Time Abyss: She is truly an ancient being, this attribute together with her insane powers makes her Fantastically Indifferent to other Gems, even other Diamonds.
• Time Dissonance: She refers to Pink's Faking the Dead and the consequences that followed as her game, and it's likely that to her, bubbling the other Diamonds for the next few millennia is equivalent to grounding them (especially since there are pink bubbles in Pink Diamond's room, and Yellow implies that it has been done to her before).
• Top God: Blue and Yellow fear her authority, or at least her temper. Pearl explicitly states that she's different from all other Gems, even her fellow Diamonds.
• Transformation of the Possessed: White Diamond using her powers to control other gems make them turn monochrome like her and speak in her voice.
• Troll: While masquerading as White Pearl, she puts on a big show about White Diamond being about to show up, including a spotlight and drum-roll, only to immediately say she isn't coming and dash everyone's hopes, seemingly just to be a jerk.
• Ultimate Lifeform: While all the Diamonds are seen as this, Yellow and Blue seem to be aware it's only a façade, while White genuinely believes she's a perfect, completely flawless entity and thus all other beings are only worth anything if she is controlling them. This also means that she's impossible to reason with due to her believing no one else is worth listening to at all. It's only when Steven shows her she's not as perfect as she believes she is that it's possible to reason with her at all.
• The Unfettered: While Blue and Yellow can appreciate the heavy casualties from the Gem civil war (at least as a loss of resources), White describes Pink Faking the Dead and starting a civil war with heavy casualties on both sides as her playing a "game". She even uses the same tone of voice that a parent might if their teenager took the family car for a joyride.
• The Unfought: The most direct harm done to her is when Pink Steven knocks her off her balance with his primal scream of "She's GOOOOOOOOONE!" and bringing her to her knees by reflecting her control beams back at her. Otherwise, she fights through proxies like the Diamond mecha and mind-controlled Pearl and is only actually defeated though talking and non-violent action.
• Unseen No More: White Diamond is alluded to in various Homeworld iconography, from murals depicting her likeness to the appearance of the color white on the Diamond Authority's Era 1 and Era 2 symbols. It is not until her debut episode "Legs From Here to Homeworld" is she ever even mentioned by name five seasons in.
• Used to Be More Social: She used to attend Pink's balls to celebrate the Diamonds' conquests, even playing games, but all of that stopped when Pink went to manage her own colony. Not speaking to Blue or Yellow, she has effectively isolated herself away from everyone else in her ship, though this is usually a good thing due to her Hair-Trigger Temper. By the end of the fifth season, she's on her way to "coming out of her head" and interacting with others again.
• Villain Forgot to Level Grind: White Diamond believes she's a completely perfect being, and thus remains a Static Character, and encourages the entire Gem Empire to do the same. According to Rebecca Sugar in the Steven Universe Podcast, this was ultimately the reason Pink Steven outclassed her: while White remained the same and has never meaningfully changed at all, Steven has had to grow and earn his power, "nurturing" it and resulting in its full untapped power having gone from the weakest of the Diamonds to being able to outmatch White herself.
• Villainous Breakdown: When she's forced to face the fact that Steven really isn't Pink, she has a complete breakdown, which only worsens when she realizes she did so and thus is flawed.
• Villainous BSoD: After discovering she's flawed, she just kind of... shuts down, questioning literally everything, and finally being able to be talked down.
• Voice of the Legion: She's able to speak directly through the Gems she controls, no matter how many there are. This is demonstrated by her Pearl, and the climax of "Change Your Mind" has her doing this through five other characters. Normally she speaks through them one at a time, except at a key point when she laughs.
• Voices Are Mental: Whether White Diamond is possessing someone or channeling their light, the one controlled speaks with the voice of the controller. Justified given Gem bodies are are made of Hard Light.
• Walking Spoiler: Although her existence had been implied for a while, she isn't even mentioned by name until "Legs From Here to Homeworld". Once she appears in person, she implies she may have known about Pink Diamond's Secret Identity all along and sends Steven off to Pink's chambers in a cliffhanger ending.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Due to her genuine belief that she's flawless and better amongst all other life forms, even her fellow Diamonds, White Diamond honestly thinks that everything would be better if her empire and her subjects did exactly what she said.
• We Used to Be Friends: As stated by Blue, White was once close to her fellow Diamonds, frequently playing games with them and attending Pink's balls. However, after Pink's alleged shattering, White secluded herself in her own ship and never personally interacted with Yellow and Blue for six millennia. It's not until the climax of "Change Your Mind" that White finally makes amends with Blue and Yellow, but she can never truly apologize to Pink for what she had done.
• When She Smiles: One of Pink's drawings in "Familiar" depicts her with a genuinely happy smile. She gives a small but sincere smile at the very end of "Change Your Mind", and it's adorable.
  • The Movie has gone even further with the beauty of White's genuine smile, especially when she and the other Diamonds invite Spinel to live with them on Homeworld. Compare her expression when she and the other Diamonds sing the first line of their "Let Us Adore You" reprise to her expression in her debut appearance, it's hard to believe these two are the same character.
  • Future continues this, showing that White is clearly enjoying the help she's giving to other Gems.
• White Hair, Black Heart: Naturally has white hair and is the most twisted of the Diamonds.
• Willing Channeler: In Era 3 she discovers that by reversing her powers she can allow other gems to control her, literally lending her voice to gems who used to go unheard.
• The Worf Effect: Not even the supreme leader of the Gem race could lay a finger on Pink Steven.
• You Are What You Hate: Everything she throws at Steven during her "The Reason You Suck" Speech, how "Pink" deludes herself, hides her face, makes things worse, surrounds herself with Gems with flaws that make her look better, is perfectly applicable to White herself.

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