This page is an incomplete listing of the characters appearing in Maria Campbell of the Astral Clocktower. This page assumes basic knowledge of My Next Life as a Villainess up to the end of the Web Serial Novel (or the second published novel, or the first anime season).
open/close all folders
Main Characters
The Reincarantors
Maria Campbell
Maria Campbell, formerly Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower, formerly of the Healing Church, formerly of Byrgenwerth, formerly of Cainhurst Castle.
The former Lady Maria of Bloodborne, now reincarnated into the body of Maria Campbell, the original heroine of the Otome Game Fortune Lover
- Adaptational Curves: While she wasn't lacking in figure in the source material, she also wasn't an Amazonian Beauty like this Maria is.
- Amazonian Beauty: She has a chiseled body thanks to her training. Male and female characters alike find this physically attractive.
- The Atoner: How she feels after being Maria of Cainhurst.She was just Maria Campbell doing her chores. It was hard work, but it was a good hardness, of honest labor and clean work and no one was hurt, nothing was defiled.
Carrying only guilt from a life already past, Maria found a semblance of peace. - Bad Powers, Good People: She has Dark Magic, allowing her to manipulate people's memories as well as a degree of mind control, but she doesn't use it without royal permission because it is both illegal and immoral.
- Berserk Button: Pretty much all of her rational thought flies out the window when she finds out her mother has been kidnapped.
- Bizarre Taste in Food: Due to her past life she has a taste in blood, to the point where she tried to bake blood into sweets and make blood cocktails, to little success.
- Combat Pragmatist: She fights seriously with anything on hand, even a piece of bread.
- The Cynic: Due to her past life's experiences, she was initially very cynical about the society she's now in.
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Zigzagged. She quickly finds that she cannot rely on her past life's memories in a fight because her body is untrained. However, later on, when fighting Sirius, her using a dagger in her offhand instead of a shortsword causes it to repeatedly undershoot her swings with it. Given that she's not aiming to kill, however, this works out to her advantage.
- Disappeared Dad: Like in canon, her father disappeared when Maria was young, shortly after she unlocked her Light Magic. The townsfolk speculate that he left them as a result of his wife's affair with a noble that gave birth to Maria, but it is never confirmed, with her secretly hoping that this isn't the case. Eventually, she learns that Estella Almera, a jealous rival of her mother for her father's affection, killed and buried him.
- Fatal Flaw: Her Guilt Complex from her past life causes her to take on many tasks and burdens by herself. It's implied several times throughout the story and outright stated when she runs herself ragged accommodating the slaves she rescued in her manor by herself without even a majordomo to assist, to the point of feeling like she has failed them when she has to be dragged off by Katarina and Diana before passing out. When her friends ask if they can help, she initially declines, fearing that she'd be inconveniencing them.
- Friend to All Children: She is this towards the children she rescued, with some of them even regarding her as their 'mama'.
- Gadgeteer Genius: Considering she recreated gunpowder and used it to make guns, fireworks, and grenades. She also later replicates her beloved sword Rakuyo. Though somewhat inverted, in that she mostly draws up schematics before commissioning blacksmiths, rather than making them herself.
- Healing Hands: Her Light Magic can mend soreness and broken bones alike.
- Heartbroken Badass: She can feel things inside her breaking as the evidence against Sirius Dieke mounts, to the point that her voice is shaking as she asks him to stand down while dueling him with swords, and she freezes rather than finish him.
- Heel–Face Reincarnation: She is the reincarnation of Maria Cainhurst, the penultimate boss from Bloodborne: The Old Hunters, but she maintains the role of the All-Loving Hero and intended heroine of Fortune Lover (if Katarina didn't make the plot Off the Rails). Part of the story involves Maria becoming a Workaholic owing to her Guilt Complex over her past life.
- Heroic Build: Several comments have been made about how well-endowed she is, and she's a honed fighter who takes on all manner of threats.
- Hidden Depths: Despite her Jade-Colored Glasses, she has a strong sense of justice and later works to keep Katarina "safe" from her harem, as she believes Katarina is not mentally competent to consent to intimate behavior.
- Humble Hero: She insists that her summer holidays' actions didn't qualify her for any kind of reward.
- I Gave My Word: She always keeps her promises.
- Innocent Fanservice Girl: Her memories of living in a foreign culture have given her an entirely different set of social cues, often leaving her out of touch with the expectations of her new world. This attitude combined with her natural beauty and tendency toward form-fitting clothing often causes "outrage" in many of the male and female members of the school. It doesn't help that when she's told the dress code for a sleepover is just their normal sleep clothes, she assumes her usual choice of sleeping in the nude is a valid option.
- Nailed to the Wagon: No matter her cravings, she literally can't get any blood in this world like Maria of Cainhurst drank because the magic is different.
- Parental Substitute: The children she rescued regard her as this, with some of them even calling her 'mama' and her mother 'grandma'. In exchange, she cares for them greatly and tries to do her best for them.
- The Reliable One: She continually did the paperwork alongside Sirius while the rest of the Student Council were absent due to concerns over Katarina's coma.
- Signature Move: No one surpasses her at the lunge.
- Sleeps in the Nude: She doesn't have any form of nightwear, since when she was 10 she found her room too hot to wear clothes to bed, and when she's older she find them constricting. She also very casual about said nudity, such as when she went to Katarina's sleepover and was never embarrassed once, even when she found out how uncomfortable it made everyone else.
- Supreme Chef: Her sweets (and threats to stop making them) are about the only thing able to make Katarina behave. Despite her staff being taught how to make the sweets, her friends are still able to immediately distinguish hers from those made by her kitchen staff. They chalk this up to hers simply being better.
- Urban Legend Love Life: Before she starts dating Rafael, Maria was rumored to be in a relationship with both Nicol and Sophia Ascart, due to her classmates misinterpreting certain events.
- Workaholic: She does her duty. That is literally all she does. A number of the things she does are fun, so it takes her friends quite a while to realize that everything is either "this is my duty" or "this makes it easier for me to do my duty." She did paperwork because it was her duty, she took in the rescued slaves because it was her duty, she trains Katarina because it's her duty. Even her cooking, which naturally everyone assumes she enjoys, is a manipulation tactic because she knows how much everyone loves her cooking. Sophia is the closest thing she has to a best friend, and they rarely talk about anything besides business. She gets better after all of her friends and Duchess Claes hold an intervention.Duchess Claes: In my experience. One who throws themselves so strongly into their duties is doing so because they're trying to forget something. Something that won't leave their mind. Something that haunts them, and only putting their full effort into something almost constantly lets them function.
Katarina Claes
Katarina Claes, formerly Yamada Tae AKA "Monkey Girl"
An ordinary Japanese high school student who got hit by a truck, reincarnated as a spoiled noble, and regained her memories when she hit her head as a child. She is very interested in Maria's well-being and love life, since depending on Maria's choices she could end up dead or exiled.
- Accent Slip-Up: After serving as a translator for the Ashina slaves, Katarina starts greeting people in Ashinago, i.e. Japanese, and putting honorifics like -chan on people's names.
- Boring, but Practical: Her swordsmanship style. It's very basic, and has little to no active attack capabilities because Katarina spent much of her time refining her defense and evasion at the cost of offense, and any method of attack is reliant on being able to parry, riposte, or counter the opponent's attack. However, Katarina has diligently practiced this style every morning for years, to the point where her defense is practically unbreakable, and can dodge any sort of attack and quickly launch a strike back before returning defensive. Her cousin Matthew, a trained knight, has never won a spar against her no matter what weapon she uses (even a tower shield), forcing her to wear a helmet to avoid her nose being busted(again) by her. Matthew's teacher also quickly lost against her (and got his nose busted), and even Maria is suitably much impressed by her skill.
- Chekhov's Skill: Two of them.
- Her training in swordsmanship, introduced in Chapter 2, doesn't get used properly until the School Festival's play, where the heroine, played by Maria, has an epic final duel with the villainess, played by a disguised Katarina, to the amazement of everyone. It would later become one of the key factors for her becoming a squire under Maria's tutelage to become a knight.
- Her Japanese, learned from her previous life, becomes useful when Maria rescues a group of Ashina slaves, who can't speak Sorcier's language and require a translator.
- Covert Pervert: Like in the canon, she is extremely Oblivious to Love. However, as seen in the second interlude, her past life seems to have a thing about Incest Yay Shipping of Fortune Lover characters.
- The Cuckoolander Was Right: She is proven right in her guess that the Student Council President didn't really want them dead and in her refusal to kill him after he passed out.
- Fearless Fool: She steps unflinchingly into a cloud of Dark Magic that frightens Maria.
- Friend to All Children: She is this towards all the children of Maria's estate, due to her being seen as One of the Kids.
- Genre Savvy: Chapters from her perspective make it clear that she still sees everything entirely in game terms, though she probably realizes she's not literally in a game. This gets all twisted around, because while she is correct that Maria is the protagonist, she's the protagonist of an entirely different story than the one Katarina is familiar with. This isn't a Dating Sim or even Unwanted Harem story, it's a Slice of Life with a dash of Cosmic Horror Story.
- Good Cannot Comprehend Evil: She is completely incapable of comprehending that she might actually be targetted by someone of ill intent.
- Hidden Depths: Contrary to her personality, her swordsmanship is Boring, but Practical and she diligently practices in the early mornings before class.
- Incorruptible Pure Pureness: How Maria sees her, who always sees the best in people and helps others see the best in themselves as well, in spite of having been kidnapped or influenced by Dark Magic users several times. However, she notes that some people would wish to snuff out her light specifically because of this.
- Loophole Abuse: Maria is very strict about how she addresses people, as she is a noble who needs to act like it. But Sorcier doesn't have any rules on how to address people using Ashinago, so Katarina is able to get away with using honorifics that would be considered incredibly familiar in Ashina.
- Master Swordsman: Her swordsmanship is on par with Maria's, albeit from the opposite direction. After her big duel in the school play, several knights approach her to complement her.
- Nice to the Waiter:
- She always remembers everyone's names, including their hobbies, their children, and their dreams. Exactly once, she apparently doesn't recognize someone... because they're a recently promoted knight wearing full-body armor. She figures it out quickly.
- At the diplomatic summit, the building is constructed in old mythic style, an entirely unnecessarily complex form of architecture that requires climbing ladders, going through hidden doors, and jumping down into hidden gardens, all just to get to the main meeting halls. She immediately realizes there must be a series of secret passages to make it easier to get around, because otherwise "how would the servants do their jobs?"
- One of the Kids: She is seen as a fellow kid by the Wards of the Kingdom and the Ashina children.
- Secret Secret-Keeper: She (of all people) ends up piecing together Anne's secret relationship with Maria's mother and voices her approval to Anne in private.
- Simpleminded Wisdom: She observes that if Sirius had really wanted to kill her, he'd have killed her after putting her to sleep, so he probably wants to talk about something.
- Stern Teacher: Katarina to Maria when she's teaching her Ashinago. And later Diana, when teaching her Gerudosa.
- Suddenly Bilingual: She is the only one who is able to speak Ashinago initially in order to act as a translator for the freed Ashina slaves. Everyone is both incredibly surprised, incredibly confused, and incredibly shocked that Katarina, of all people, somehow knows the language without seemingly any prior contact with Ashina. When anyone asked how she knows it, Katarina just replies "Why wouldn't I know it?", forgetting that she knew it from her past life.
- This also applies to speaking Hollow, because of a strange soul-swap between herself and Yamada Tae of Franchouchou.
- This actually becomes somewhat of a plot point, where another reincarnator during the International Assembly Arc recognizes that she must be a reincarnate via her odd descriptions of how she acquired knowledge of the languages.
Sophia Ascart
Sophia Ascart, formerly Atsuko "Acchan" Sasaki
As in the My Next Life as a Villainess canon, she is the reincarnation of the "Monkey Girl"'s best friend Atsuko "Acchan" Sasaki, who was a far bigger otaku than the "Monkey Girl." However, the changes to the setting in this story seem to give Sophia—who in the My Next Life as a Villainess canon was strictly a medieval equivalent of the Thinks Like a Romance Novel shoujo otaku—quite a bit of bloodlust, plus an association with Seath the Scaleless. Who she is not. That would be silly.- A-Cup Angst: She has this when compared to either Mary's "Pride and Dignity" or Maria's "vials of blood".
- Albinos Are Freaks: As in the My Next Life as a Villainess canon, she was ostracized as a child due to her albinism. However, there's an additional reason here: Seath the Scaleless, one of the ancient enemies of humanity, was an albino dragon, and he keeps reincarnating into new bodies every few decades. Albinos are referred to as "scaleless" and generally seen as nothing but potential Seaths. A few lines imply that the reincarnations lose pigmentation once Seath's soul comes to the fore, but Sophia insists that there is no record of one of the reincarnations losing pigmentation before they became Seath. Of course, there's also a Running Gag that it's Sophia's personality that makes people think she might be the newest reincarnation of the Paledrake.
- Best Served Cold: She takes manic glee in charging all her old bullies (and everyone else, but especially the bullies) an obscene amount of money for nightflowers. She's especially amused at how quickly the court whispers about her turn from calling her "that scaleless freak" to "that ethereal beauty."
- Beware the Quiet Ones: She expresses a burning interest in the firearms that Maria is making, even putting in a commission and asking if they can be made with multiple barrels, self-reloading, and big enough to "remove bridges, castles, dragons and inconvenient gods", a desire which makes Keith and even Maria feel disturbed.
- In Love with Your Carnage: She springs a Nosebleed when she sees Katarina in combat.
- Maria thinks very highly of her because she is level-headed, rational, reasonable, intelligent, imaginative, bloodthirsty, and mildly terrifying. All of which Maria views as positive traits, especially in a business partner.
- Revolvers Are Just Better: She not only comes up with the idea of a revolver, she commissions one from Maria, and later gains an exclusive permit to carry one for personal use.
- Running Gag: This fic would like to (repeatedly) remind you that she is not the latest incarnation of Seath the Scaleless (See Albinos Are Freaks, above). That would be silly.
