History Characters / WanderingWitchTheJourneyOfElaina

* WalkingTheEarth: The whole point of her journey, and the premise of the series, is the witch wandering from one country to the next for no reason other than to see what is there.

* BigScrewedUpFamily: Turns out to be part of one. [[spoiler:Her father's idea of a ParentalMarriageVeto? To pull a {{Caligula}} on her lover and their child. Her response? To turn him into an AndIMustScream DraconicAbomination... In the end, a whole kingdom is the victim of its royal family's problems at home.]]

* {{Bokukko}}: Uses the pronoun "boku" to refer to herself, which pairs with her BoyishShortHair to give her a tomboyish look.

* PeekABangs: Her hair covers up the left side of her face so her left eye is almost never seen.

!!!'''Voiced by:''' Creator/SatomiSato (Japanese)

!!!'''Voiced by:''' Creator/YuikoTatsumi (Japanese)

!!!'''Voiced by:''' Creator/DaikiYamashita (Japanese)

!!!'''Voiced by:''' Creator/RinaSato (Japanese)

%%* BespectacledCutie: A CuteWitch (as usual) with small glasses. %%Could use more context regarding her personality.

* EasilyForgiven: She is surprisingly willing to take back her king even after he threw her out into the streets.

* AlternateSelf: Inverted. [[spoilers:As revealed in "A Story About All Kinds of Ashen Witches", the Estelle we were following in ''Retroactive Grief'' is an alternative timeline counterpart from Protagonist Elaina's timeline.

* TitleCharacter: She's the titular "Wandering Witch".

---> '''Avelia (thinking)''': Who is she? A ManicPixieDreamGirl? Wait, hold on. The broom is talking back to Elaina. But it's got her voice... Is it {{ventriloquism}}? Manic pixie dream girl, confirmed.

* BecauseYouWereNiceToMe: [[spoiler:She never brought the knife against Emil due to his kindness to her.]]

* MistakenForRelated: According to Elaina, Nino looks similar to Saya, and wonders if they're related.

* BrotherSisterIncest: Heavily implied to be the case in the manga adaptation. On the other hand, neither the light novel nor the anime implies anything of the sort beyond familial love towards his sister.

* CuteAndPsycho: She seems adorable at first, but she's a sadistic, murderous psychopath.

* BigScrewedUpFamily: Turns out to be part of one. [[spoiler:Her father's idea of a ParentalMarriageVeto? To pull a {{Caligula}} on her lover and their child. Her response? To turn him into an AndIMustScream AnimalisticAbomination... In the end, a whole kingdom is the victim of its royal family's problems.]]

* BigScrewedUpFamily: Is revealed to be part of this. [[spoiler:Her father pulled a {{Caligula}} on her lover and their child. She retaliated by cursing him to a FateWorseThanDeath that would make him destroy his kingdom.]]

* ShesGotLegs: Her legs are always exposed and are quite beautiful.

* SheIsAllGrownUp: The "Many Years' Journey" arc that occupies the last four chapters of Volume 7 star two students at Latorita State University, where Elaina works part-time as professor, now in her mid-20s and grown more beautiful. [[spoiler:She returned to Latorita seven years after her initial stay in the country to help [[TimeTravel close out a time loop that the two heroines of the chapter got involved in]], and that involves her sending back a golem seven years in time for her past self to defeat in the country.]]

* AllPowerfulBystander: Despite her immense power, Elaina mostly chooses not to intervene in the affairs of the countries she visits. No matter how much suffering she witnesses, so long as the situation neither harms nor benefits her in a way, she will do nothing but passively observe as an outsider. She is merely a traveler, not a hero, and as part of her promise to her mother, chooses to strictly abide by that code outside of a few special exceptions.
* AlternateSelf: In "A Story About All Kinds of Ashen Witches", Elaina meets up with many other alternate versions of herself and how they dealt with their own journeys. [[spoiler:In fact, the Elaina we follow in the "Retroactive Grief" story in Volume 3 is one of those alternates, though the readers don't learn of this until the "A Story About All Kinds of Ashen Witches" story spells it out.]]
* AmbiguouslyGay: In chapter five of the fifth volume of the light novel, Elaina outright says that she doesn't have a boyfriend and never will when asked. She also denies having a girlfriend but doesn't say that she won't ever have one. A few times later in the volume, she is asked if she is interested in women but we, the readers, never find out the answer to that question as the story repeatedly cuts away before Elaina answers the question.
* AnimateInanimateObject: In Volume 3, she uses a spell to give human form to her broom, which shares her voice and personality whether in broom form or human form. In human form, her broom looks exactly like her but with pink hair and has handwriting that greatly resembles that of her mistress. Her broom gives her own observations and point of view, has the ability to communicate with inanimate objects, and plays important roles in several stories in later volumes.

** Insulting her looks and intellect are two surefire ways to draw her ire. Also, do not insinuate the fact that she looks like a child.
** Cutting her hair is a good way to bring her wrath on your head, and unlike the previous cases, she won't hesitate to use force.
* BreakTheCutie: [[spoiler:Violent Elaina is essentially the result of the trauma Elaina experienced during "Retroactive Grief": a self-loathing, angry, and depressed young witch who hates herself for being unable to do anything despite her talents and power.]]

* CantHoldHerLiquor: The first time Elaina drank something alcoholic in her entire life, she ended up becoming so tipsy that she drunkenly used her magic to turn grapes into super fast bullets that painfully shot everyone in the country she stayed at unconscious.

* ChildProdigy: She's a very gifted magic user, having passed the sorcery exam with flying colors at only the ripe age of fourteen. She also became a full-fledged witch in only a year of training with Fran.

* DecoyProtagonist: [[spoiler:The Elaina we're following in "Retroactive Grief" turns out to be a WhatIf AlternateSelf who later reappears and fight Protagonist Elaina in "A Story About All Kinds of Ashen Witches".]]

* EveryoneHasStandards: Her neutral stance as a nigh apathetic observer may make her seem cold and selfish on paper, but even she has lines she won't tolerate:
** In "Bottled Happiness", she's clearly disgusted with the village chief and his treatment of Nino, to the point that she came ''real'' close to blasting the bastard to smithereens on the spot with her magic when his abuse of Nino quickly turned physical in front of her, only stopping herself at the last moment.
** In "The Princess Without Subjects", she very nearly breaks her code of staying neutral by attempting to help Mirarosé defeat and kill the monstrous Javalier after becoming attached to her. However, after seeing how Mirarosé brutally tortures and kills the beast and learning later on [[spoiler:that said beast was formerly Mirarosé's ''father'', that she was directly responsible for her country's demise by turning him into the Javalier herself, and later seeing how insane she really is,]] Elaina quickly hightails it out of there.
** In "Before the Snow Melts", [[spoiler:Elaina feels pity for Elise's situation that the former accepted the magistrate's request of kicking the [[CruelToBeKind latter out of the country for her sake]]. Elaina accompanies Elise until the latter can stand on her own feet, refuses the magistrate's payment, and requests it to be delivered unto Elise.]]
** In "Retroactive Grief", [[spoiler:Elaina, despite being broke and in dire need of money, doesn't take Estelle's payment for the former's services due to the fact [[ShootTheShaggyDog that both still failed in saving Selena.]] Elaina is even traumatized by the experience, leading to the existence of "[[AlternateSelf Violent Elaina]]" in "A Story About All Kinds of Ashen Witches".]]
** In "Amnesia's Forgotten Homecoming", there are multiple examples, as pointed out by Elaina herself as well as other characters in the chapter:

** In "Broom Racing", Elaina agrees to be the partner rider for Dorothy, a 15-year old broom racing jockey, in her bid for her tenth consecutive championship. [[spoiler:Although Dorothy had promised general financial compensation, Elaina also agrees to take the time to help her because the way the older, more established BR jockeys in town were colluding to blackball Dorothy [[BirdsOfAFeather reminded Elaina of how the witches of Robetta treated her back when she became an apprentice witch at the age of 14]]. She also foregoes the financial reward altogether and lets Dorothy have all the award money when she learns that the girl's mother is suffering from a terminal heart condition, telling Dorothy to buy the medicine her mother needs.]]
** In "Seven Days of Ariadne", Elaina decides to spend seven days in the Commonwealth of Latorita to help [[spoiler:Elizabeth, a great baker who had fallen into despair after her daughter, a non-mage, left home seeking to become a mage because she believed nobody could be happy without the ability to use magic. While Elaina wants to try the bread Elizabeth was so renowned for, she also becomes increasingly invested in helping everyone involved because she can't tolerate the notion that anyone could think that magical ability is a prerequisite for happiness.]]
** In "Frederika", Elaina accompanies Frederika to the hometown she had been exiled from for her reunion with her twin sister Lunarik. [[spoiler:It's eventually revealed that the "Frederika" Elaina is traveling with is actually Lunarik and the "Lunarik" who remained in the city is actually Frederika, and at the twins' reunion in the city square, Frederika tries to kill Lunarik. Elaina intervenes to save Lunarik from getting murdered and turns Frederika in, but the authorities do not believe her, and Elaina and Lunarik are exiled from the city for their trouble.]]

* HeroicSelfDeprecation: She puts herself down as a good-for-nothing ordinary traveler incapable of anything following her failure to [[spoiler:help Estelle save Selena]].
* ImportantHaircut: In "A Story About All Kinds of Ashen Witches", [[spoiler:one of Elaina's personas, Violent Elaina, has her hair cut in which True Elaina speculates is due to the trauma she experienced in "Retroactive Grief". Violent Elaina refuses to grow back her hair.]]

* LikeMotherLikeDaughter: Most of Elaina's personality and habits [[spoiler:comes from her mother. Fran even teases her master about it, much to the latter's chagrin.]]

* NotSoStoic: By the end of "Retroactive Grief", the normally self-confident Elaina simply breaks down crying in despair over [[spoiler:her helplessness with the messy end to the tragedy of Estelle and Selena]].

* OnlyInItForTheMoney: In "Retroactive Grief", she agrees to accompany Estelle in traveling to the past and preventing the murder of Selena's parents, if only for the generous financial compensation involved. [[spoiler:The situation with Selena isn't as it was made out to be, however, and by the time it's done, Elaina forgoes the financial reward altogether and leaves Estelle by herself, traumatized by the experience.]]

* PetTheDog: While usually a neutral observer, she does display this tendency toward younger and/or less-experienced mages throughout her journey, such as Saya, Yuuri, Dorothy, Priscilla, and [[spoiler:young Fran]]. Though given that it's [[JerkWithAHeartOfGold Elaina]], she also displays an uncanny ability to KickTheDog in the very same moment.

* ProudBeauty: Her narrations will constantly remind you that she's beautiful and that she knows it. Heck, her first test to see if she can lie in "The Land of Truth Tellers" has her trying to say that she isn't beautiful, which instead results in her loudly proclaiming that she is.

* SelectiveObliviousness: It's all but stated that Elaina has put two and two together and figured out that [[spoiler:Niké is her mother]] through Fran in "The Two Disciples", but upon thinking about what this knowledge means to her and her ongoing journey, decides to overlook it and not acknowledge it, as she doesn't want her own travels to come to an end just yet.

* SheIsAllGrownUp: The "Many Years' Journey" arc that occupies the last four chapters of Volume 7 star two students at Latorita State University, where Elaina is working temporarily as a professor in her mid-20s, and she has grown into an even more beautiful young woman. [[spoiler:She returned to Latorita seven years after her initial stay in the country to help [[TimeTravel close out a time loop that the two heroines of the chapter got involved in]], and that involves her sending back a golem seven years in time for her past self to defeat in the country.]]

* SupportingProtagonist: While Elaina's TheProtagonist of the overall series, individual tales typically focus on the characters du jour she meets along the way.

* ThouShaltNotKill: She is unwilling to take lives no matter the reason. While she was angry enough to threaten death upon the Slasher [[spoiler:after the Slasher cut her hair off]], it was played for laughs and wasn't taken too seriously. It's for this reason that [[spoiler:even when Selena was about to kill her]], she still refuses to use lethal force. [[spoiler:Just indirectly helping Estelle brutally murder Selena in "Retroactive Grief" was enough to [[HeroicBSOD shake the normally unflappable Elaina up very badly.]]]]
* TimeStandsStill: [[spoiler:After the events of "A City on Ice", Elaina picks up the time-suspending ice magic spell she had been frozen by in that chapter. As part of her and Avelia's plan to rescue and exonerate Amnesia, Elaina employs this spell at the climax of "Amnesia's Forgotten Homecoming" to temporarily freeze [[BigBad the Rose Witch Elimia's]] security detail from the Holy Knights. Elaina then duels Elimia one-on-one until the latter admits her culpability for the crimes Amnesia had been convicted of and sentenced to a "Forgotten Homecoming" for. Elaina crucially does ''not'' freeze the mirror crystal at the site of their battle, allowing the rest of Elimia's countrymen to hear her unwitting confession.]]

* TrademarkFavouriteFood: She's always seen munching on bread during meals. In fact, whenever she travels to a new country, the first thing she would usually do is to head to the nearest available bakery so she can have a taste of the country's local bread.

A fully-fledged witch from a distant country, who came to Elaina's hometown to train Elaina at her parents' request.

* MeaningfulName: Although her title, the "Stardust Witch", was given to her because of the RuleOfCool, Elaina notes that it's actually significant [[spoiler:given that her true homeland, Bielawald, was built on top of the fragment of its eponymous comet. Fran was literally born on stardust.]]

* MistakenForSpecialGuest: In a certain country Elaina visits, Fran's ''The Adventures of Fran'' is a bestseller, to the point where the country has put up a giant statue of Fran and has many street stalls selling paraphernalia bearing her likeness. Regardless of Fran's low opinion of what she had written, she had sold a bag that supposedly belonged to a legendary traveler with her manuscript in it. She thus gets mistaken as ''that'' legendary traveler, with the cover of her book even having the king of the country endorsing her as a legendary traveler.

* OldShame: InUniverse. Like Elaina, she was also a fan of ''The Adventures of Niké'', and during her youth even wrote a similar book about her own adventures. However, she was too embarrassed to publish it and thus kept it in her bag, only to accidentally sell the manuscript along with the bag when she sold it to a pawnshop, and now she cringes at the thought of anyone reading it. Unbeknownst to her, ''The Adventures of Fran'' was also a bestseller.

* ThePromise: [[spoiler:"The Night It Rained Stardust", the final chapter of Volume 8, shows that her true homeland is ''not'' Celesteria, but Bielawald, a now-abandoned country named for a comet that passes every 22 years and causes strange natural phenomena whenever it does. Fran was an orphan who, at age 13, was chosen as a HumanSacrifice by Bielawald's authorities for [[CuriosityKilledTheCast questioning the country's traditions and secrets too much]]. But when the comet came, [[TimeTravel she was mysteriously transported 22 years into the future]], where she met Elaina, her future apprentice, in the abandoned ruins of her homeland. Elaina recognized her and taught her enough magic to defend herself over a week, at the end of which the comet has returned, forcing Fran to return to her era. Fran promises Elaina that she will meet her here again once she grows up, and fulfills this promise just after Elaina sees her younger self off.]]
* RedOniBlueOni: The calm, collected, and more demure blue oni to Sheila's red during their apprenticeship period under their master.
* RoamTheEarth: This came with the territory of being [[spoiler:Niké’s]] apprentice, and after becoming a full-fledged witch, she would travel on her own for a stint before settling into a day job as a magic teacher.

A novice witch from a faraway country, who traveled to the Land of Mages to further advance her training. There she met Elaina, who helps her pass her exams.

* HeroicBSOD: Goes through one in "The Resurrection Lily That Blooms in Solitude" in Volume 9, [[spoiler:where her friend Monica passes away in her arms in a DownerEnding to the chapter. Mind you, Saya had been called to Monica's country to apprehend a serial killer, and this serial killer turned out to be Monica, who had been euthanizing people suffering from Lycoris Disease, an incurable terminal disease for months. [[IDidWhatIHadto Saya thus had to defeat her and turn her in]], but learned her motivations for doing so afterward from the hospital coroner; her reaction is along the lines of MyGodWhatHaveIDone When Saya finds Monica at the execution grounds outside the city walls, she finds that she had been fatally stabbed by the soldiers who took her there and was herself dying from this disease; there's nothing Saya can do to save her friend at this point.]]

* HeroWorshipper: Is this in spades towards Elaina. Even her title, "Charcoal Witch", was deliberately chosen to be as closely related to Elaina's as possible.

* OOCIsSeriousBusiness The events of "The Resurrection Lily That Blooms in Solitude, [[spoiler:which ends with her friend Monica dying in her arms]], leaves her in such a deep depression and state of mourning that even Sheila can pick up on it.

* TragicKeepsake: [[spoiler:Receives Monica's diary from Elaina by way of Sheila in Volume 10, which helps her turn the page on her friend's death in "The Resurrection Lily That Blooms in Solitude.]]
* UnwittingInstigatorOfDoom: PlayedForLaughs in "The Wall Etched by Travelers". Saya deciding to etch her love for Elaina on the titular wall and convincing the townsfolk to write their desires on it ultimately leads to the wall's destruction by the time Elaina arrives. This is made even funnier in the light novel version since Saya decided to etch her love for Elaina after seeing Niké's writing, whom Saya recognizes as writing of [[spoiler:Elaina's mother [[LikeMotherLikeDaughter due to the similarities.]]]]

* IdenticalStranger: According to Elaina, Nino looks similar to Saya, and wonder if they're related.

* HeroicBSOD: Goes through one in "The Resurrection Lily That Blooms in Solitude" in Volume 9, [[spoiler:where her friend Monica passes away in her arms in a DownerEnding to the chapter. Mind you, Saya had been called to Monica's country to apprehend a serial killer, and this serial killer turned out to be Monica, who had been euthanizing people suffering from an incurable terminal disease for months. [[IDidWhatIHadto Saya thus had to defeat her and turn her in]], but learned her motivations for doing so afterward from a doctor; her reaction is along the lines of MyGodWhatHaveIDone When Saya finds Monica on the outskirts of her country, she finds that she had been stabbed by the soldiers who expelled her and was herself dying from this disease; there's nothing Saya can do to save her friend at this point.]]

* TragicKeepsake: [[spoiler:Receives Monica's diary from Elaina by way of Sheila in Volume 10, which helps her turn the page on her friend's death from Volume 9.]]

* AllAPartOfTheJob: Her work with the United Magic Association occasionally has her performing law enforcement-esque duties. This usually isn't a problem for her, but sometimes it puts her into JustFollowingOrders situations. [[spoiler:It causes great tragedy for her when she has to apprehend Monica, her old friend from the Land of Mages, in Chapter 3 of Volume 9 in her capacity as a witch dispatched by the Association.]]

* HeroicBSOD: Goes through one in Chapter 3 of Volume 9, [[spoiler:where her friend Monica passes away in her arms in a DownerEnding to the chapter. Mind you, Saya had been called to Monica's country to apprehend a serial killer, and this serial killer turned out to be Monica, who had been euthanizing people suffering from an incurable terminal disease for months. [[IDidWhatIHadto Saya thus had to defeat her and turn her in]], but learned her motivations for doing so afterward from a doctor; her reaction is along the lines of MyGodWhatHaveIDone When Saya finds Monica on the outskirts of her country, she finds that she had been stabbed by the soldiers who expelled her and was herself dying from this disease; there's nothing Saya can do to save her friend at this point.]]

* BalefulPolymorph: In the anime, Artemisia was converted into that of a human-shaped plant compare to the light novel and manga, where she was a non-sentient half-plant and half-human.