Characters / Umineko: When They Cry - Witches

aka: Umineko When They Cry Beatrice

Main Index | Humans from 1986 (Cousins, Parents, Servants and Guests) | Humans from 1998 | Witches | Meta | Demons and Furniture | Other Characters | Spoiler Characters

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In General

The witches of Umineko: When They Cry are enigmatic, powerful beings who observe and have control over several aspects of the game board. Each of them have their own motivations for interfering with the game board, but all of them are Trolls of a certain caliber, especially towards Battler. Each of them has a certain power which allows them to draw out the truth based on the rules of the game board.

A human may ascend to witch level once they have figured out the truth of the game board, and will have the privilege to become the Game Master. Despite using the feminine term "witch"/majo, a TIP clarifies that any human of any gender can become a witch.

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• Abstract Apotheosis: Witches become concepts in the Human Realm.
• Always Chaotic Evil: Played With. There is evidence that becoming Witch can inherently create the desire to be cruel in a person but some manage to resist it better than others.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: In truth these witches are nothing more than the fruit of the imagination of their human counterparts, disillusioned with reality to the point of taking refuge in the world of fantasy where they can feel represented as they want, and/or by other characters who believe in magic (for example the Virgilia's existence is supported solely by the fact that her counterpart Kumasawa acted as a mother figure and mentor to Sayo, aka Beatrice). Some of them also serve as a physical manifestation of concepts (e.g. certainty, miracles and origins) and certain situations that played a cathartic role on the day of the Rokkenjima massacre (e.g. Lambdadelta which could, if desired, represent the bomb) and as storytellers (like Featherine). In the eighth game we are given (while playing from Ange's point of view) the choice of wanting to believe whether magic and witches actually exist or not.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: How witches are created.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: They function much like Lovecraftian Gods in the sense of being powerful abstract deities who legitimately seem to treat their horrific Deadly Games as just that — games which they play for amusement, with no real hard feelings towards any of their victims. When not killing the Rokkenjima residents, they are perfectly capable of being civil with them, while witches who acted as bitter enemies to each other and tried to kill each other during a game can go back to being the best of friends after. In particular, Bernkastel and Lamdadelta treat gruesomely torturing and murdering each other as just another expression of their love. Since boredom is literally toxic to them, they have to amuse themselves or they will die, and Bernkastel suggests at one point that witches acting so sadistic during games is them intentionally playing the part of a villain as a role, just like they can play the part of a hero in a different game.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Most of them love to inflict endless death and suffering wherever they go because it is the only thing capable of chasing away their perpetual boredom.
• Desecrating the Dead: Some of them (especially the Beatrices) are not satisfied with killing their victims once but put them in an extremely cruel, humiliating and inhuman Resurrection/Death Loop situations topped with Cruel and Unusual Death and they constantly make fun of them, and once they are finally tired they leave their corpses in awful conditions.
• Humanoid Abomination: Witches in this series are Lovecraftian Gods, but their appearances are still based on what they looked like before ascending.
• Sadist: Many with the attainment of the ability to be able to use magic and become a witch also gain an insane predisposition to bask in pleasure in the miseries of others.
• Slasher Smile: Having one and sporting it as the default setting to manifest joy is what makes a witch one.
• Wicked Witch: Most of them. Some are better than others.

Beatrice

The Golden Witch/The Endless Witch

Voiced by: Sayaka Ohara (JP)

"...But, at least in your eyes, I want to be a witch."

Also known as the Golden Witch and the Endless Witch, she is the main antagonist and then deuteragonist of the series and stands by the "magic" side, claiming that all the murders were done by magic. She claims to have given Kinzo all of his wealth, and so when the family is gathered, she issues them a challenge: find the gold that Kinzo hid in the Ushiromiya estate or else she would collect it, with their lives as interest. She then further forces Battler to replay those days in a game with her. She tells him a story of how she murdered them using magic, and he needs to disprove her story.

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• Affectionate Nickname:
  • Beato, of course. Given to her by Battler in the manga, but in the visual novels she asks him to call her this.
  • When talking about her, Virgilia always calls Beatrice "that child/that girl", which somewhat emphasises the latter's childishness and their mother/daughter-like relationship.
• Alchemy Is Magic: Claims to have procured the gold through alchemy and claims to be Kinzo's alchemical counsellor.
• Alto Villainess: Sayaka Ohara put a lot of effort into giving Beatrice a very low and powerful voice befitting of a magnificent, evil witch.
• Always Someone Better: There's no doubt that Beatrice is a powerful and cunning Witch, but for all the effort she puts into it, once the other Witches get more active in the later episodes it becomes clear that their power and cunning widely surpasses hers.
• Ambiguously Evil: Especially during Episodes 3 and 4, where she's still Battler's enemy but her true motives have started surfacing.
• Angst Coma: In EP5, Beatrice is left in a catatonic state as a result of losing her will to keep fighting against Battler. After Battler loses against Dlanor, Beatrice finally gives up on him finding her truth and disappears.
• Annoying Laugh: Battler and Ronove make fun of the way she laughs.
• Antiquated Linguistics: Her whole speech is old fashioned, which lends to her image as an elegant witch who has lived a thousand years. She's notable for using the archaic feminine pronoun "warawa" for herself, and addresses others with "sonata". However, there are a few times where she slips into cruder, masculine Japanese like Jessica.
• Anti-Villain: After all of her antics in and out of the Face–Heel Revolving Door, her character evolves into this. EP5 reveals she was never evil to begin with and the entire time she was acting as a Stealth Mentor to help Battler reach the truth.
• Aww Look They Really Do Love Each Other:
  • She mocks Battler cruely throughout the different Games, but she does genuine care for him, creating a party for him when Ronove told her he was unresponsive and lying in the ground sulking.
  • Quiet antagonist to Virgilia too, but she clearly sees her as a mother-figure running to her whenever wrong happens and even bought her a gift for White Day, even if it's making fun of her age.
• Bad Samaritan: She helped Shannon and George to get together only to enjoy the inevitable failure of their relationship, and tried the same thing with Kanon and Jessica. But as it turns out in the sixth game, this is really a metaphor for Sayo Yasuda's conflict over being in love with both George and Jessica.
• The Baroness: The Sexpot type. She's very attractive and her sadism makes the dominatrix aspect very apparent. Her rivalry with Battler has romantic undertones that only increase as the story goes on.
• Battle Couple: She becomes an item with Battler in EP6 where the climax ends with them shooting down Erika together.
• Beauty Is Never Tarnished: There are times Beatrice is cut and mutiliated, but never loses her beauty from the injuries.
• Becoming the Mask: She fakes a Heel–Face Turn in Episode 3 as part of an elaborate gambit to prevail over Battler, but in subsequent episodes it becomes clear that the feelings that were invoked during this ordeal were genuine and she ultimately has a real Heel–Face Turn.
• Berserk Button: Shannon asserting her humanity really seems to set her off for some reason. She's basically trying to crush her own self-esteem.
• Big Bad: She sets herself up as this at the end of Episode 1. The truth is a bit more complicated.
• Blatant Lies: "I cannot lie or deceive. All my emotions show up on my face." Uh-huh.
• Blessed with Suck: An endless witch has the ability to restore anything, creating eternal happiness. But that eternal happiness leads to eternal boredom, which Beatrice can't stand.
• Blood Knight: If given the chance to go violent, Beatrice is usually the first to go for it, delightfully fighting her mentor in a witch duel in Episode 4 and Erika in Episode 6 and 8, in a quickdraw mystery game and then a swash buckling pirate fight.
• Body Backup Drive: In Episode 5, Beatrice dies after finally giving up on Battler finding the truth. She's brought back in the next arc when Battler creates a new body for her, with (eventually) the same memories and personality.
• Break the Haughty:
  • In the 3rd Tea Party, after Beatrice mocks Lambdadelta one time too many. The manga makes a point in getting Beato off her big horses in that scene, with Lambda splashing hot tea on her face, forcing her to kneel down and threatening her while she trembles in terror, before starting to forcibly erase Beato's witch form. We're talking about Beatrice here, who at this point was the troll-in-chief and fearsome witch of the series, being bluntly reminded by Lambda that a Witch of the Senate is not to be trifled with.
  • Bernkastel/Erika's whole scheme in Episode 5 leads to this against Beatrice or more specifically, the piece who is representing Beatrice during the game while Meta!Beatrice is comatose. The Beatrice of this game is meant to protect Natsuhi and help her maintain Kinzo's death secret. Bernkastel then has Erika compose a theory that not only completely denies Beatrice's existence as a witch, but frames Natsuhi for the murders. Piece!Beatrice is sentenced to be Devoured by the Horde of goats, Battler tries to save her but only gets utterly defeated by Dlanor and Beatrice finally loses it when Battler states he doesn't remember their promise. By the end of the trial, Piece!Beatrice is reduced to a sobbing mess, Laughing Mad as she tells Dlanor to kill her already and begs Battler to die with her.
• Broken Bird: It's revealed that the sweet personality Chick Beatrice displays is actually how Beatrice was like 1000 years ago before she went through all her trauma that turned her into the cruel person she is now. This trauma is actually Battler's sin and her living "1000" years is actually symbolism for how long the six years Sayo Yasuda spent waiting for him felt.
• Butterfly of Death and Rebirth: She's very strongly associated with these. In the manga it's explained that when a character is able to see golden butterflies on a gameboard, it means he either is an accomplice or is about to die.
• Came Back Wrong: In Episode 6, sort of. The Beatrice Battler creates has none of the real Beatrice's memories.
• Card-Carrying Villain: In the first arc, nobody really knew who murdered all the people on the island. Then Beatrice burst in to announce that she did it and is damn proud of it.
• Character Catchphrase: "Omoshiroi! Jitsu ni omoshiroi!" (Interesting, really interesting!)
• The Chessmaster: It's her job as the Game Master to come up with both a plan for the culprit and a fantasy narrative to cover it.
• Classy Cane: When wearing her casual outfit in the gameboard, Beatrice carries a cane that resembles the golden eagle of the Ushiromiya symbol.
• Clingy Jealous Girl: In Episode 8, she isn't pleased by Asmodeus trying to flirt with Battler.
• Complexity Addiction: Derives from her (and Kinzo's) definition of magic.
• Composite Character: An in-universe version of the trope. Beatrice as a whole is a mixture of the ghosts legends surrounding Rokkenjima, the rumor surrounding Kinzo's secret lover, and the real Beatrice's identities. In EP7 it's shown how Sayo Yasuda started with a simple idea of Beatrice being a trickster ghost and ended with the product of knowing the stories behind the real Beatrices, her grandmother who gave the Italian gold to Kinzo and her mother who was kept in Kuwadorian and was also Kinzo's lover.
• Confusion Fu: During the first Episodes, she really likes to toy with Battler when he's trying to think.
• Criminal Mind Games: Her gruesome displays on the gameboards, and the very fact she creates the gameboards in the Meta World.
• Death Seeker: In the fourth arc, when she gives up on Battler ever realizing the truth.
• Deal with the Devil: She struck a deal with Lambadelta before the game, having her be her sponsor and giving her territory for the Golden Land and Game Board in the Meta-World in exchange for weaving endless tales of slaughter to lure Bernkanstel in an endless lope.
• Despair Event Horizon: Crosses it in EP4 after Battler fails to remember his sin. It goes to the point that Beatrice tries to abandon the game and live with Maria in the Golden Land. However, Ange ruins things for her by "resurrecting" Sakutaro and Beatrice is forced to fight against Battler one more time, where she lets Battler's Blue Truths pierce through her. As a result, she becomes an Empty Shell and finally, thinking Battler is dead and won't return, dies moments before Battler finally reaches the truth.
• Determinator: In EP3, Beatrice won't allow Eva-Beatrice to interrupt Jessica and Kanon's short reunion. Not even getting stabbed in the heart by the Chiesters several times and getting her body blown up makes her give up, going as far as to keep protecting Jessica and Kanon even when there's only her heart left. However, this is subverted since all that was part of an act to get Battler to acknowledge her and in EP4 she gives up on Battler being able to reach her truth and later lets herself die.
• Deuteragonist: More evident in Chiru, but with hindsight you can also see her this way in the first four arcs. It progressively becomes very clear that Beatrice is just as much the main character of the story as Battler is. The entire mystery is about understanding who she is, where she comes from and what her motivations are.
• Disc-One Final Boss: From EP5 onward, it's clear that she isn't the real Big Bad of the story, especially since Bernkastel has taken up the position.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Her cruelty especially towards Rosa as shown in EP 2 tea party is explained as such: She's the daughter of Beatrice II whom Rosa met as a schoolgirl and accidentally and indirectly caused her death. Beatrice also dislikes the way Rosa treats Maria, a fellow witch and dear friend. Ironically, Rosa feels a deep and constant remorse for the real Beatrice's death, which is part of why hearing the witch's name is so painful to her.
• Dragon with an Agenda: EP3's Tea Party reveals Beatrice's game is only meant to help her guardian Lambdadelta keep Bernkastel around for eternity. Lambdadelta knows Beatrice may have different intentions, so she warns Beatrice that she can take away her power if she does something that threatens keep the game going forever. In fact, Beatrice's real agenda all along was to lose against Battler so he could find out her true identity. When Beatrice gives up on it, Lambdadelta takes over the game board.
• Driven to Suicide: At the end of Episode 8, Beatrice jumps into the sea because she feels she won't be accepted by anyone and won't be able to fit in the world outside of Rokkenjima. Battler decides to go down with her since all of the murders happened because of him. Although the final outcome of the scene can be interpreted in many ways in the VN, the manga confirms this is how Beatrice's original self Sayo Yasuda died in the real world; "Battler" indeed died with her, but his physical body survived and became Tooya Hachijo.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference:
  • In her first anime appearance she has a statuesque, obviously supernatural beauty; once showing that is out of the way she quickly becomes cute in the same art style as everyone else over the course of a couple episodes.
  • A similar thing happens in the manga, where Kei Natsumi draws her with a "cuter" and less aggressive appearance as her behavior progressively changes.
• Empty Shell: In EP5, she does nothing, since she gave up on trying to make Battler understand her and her truth. She just sits there like a motionless doll until she finally lets herself die.
• Even Evil Has Standards: It says a lot that Beatrice is disgusted with Rosa's treatment of Maria but as you notice in episode 8 and think about it, Rosa was the one who accidentally let Beatrice II, Sayo's mother die and she also sees Kinzo's cruelty inside Rosa, for these reasons, she does hold a larger grudge towards Rosa than all the others parents beyond Natsuhi. However, she still steps in when Eva-Beatrice takes her "fun" with Rosa too far after Battler slaps her and scolds her badly.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: In EP3, Beatrice doesn't really understand why Battler blew up at her after she made him watch how Eva-Beatrice brutally tortured and murdered Rosa and Maria over and over again. Beatrice saw it as nothing but an amusing spectacle and she thought there was nothing wrong with what Eva-Beatrice was doing to Rosa and Maria because they can be revived no matter how many times they are killed. Subverted since she's well aware that what she's doing is wrong, but it's all part of her Stealth Mentor facade. Virgilia even confirms that she doesn't actually enjoy murdering Battler's family over and over.
• Evil Laughter: The VN has "*cackle* *cackle* " and ahaha.wav; the anime has Sayaka Ohara starting great and getting better every episode.
• Expository Hairstyle Change: In EP5, Beatrice lets her hair down for the whole EP because she now can't even fix her hair. Or move, or eat, or speak... Virgilia is even combing her hair for her.
• Expository Pronoun: Occasionally switches from the second person pronoun "sonata" (polite and archaic) to the rude "omae" when she drops the elegant facade. She also switches from the archaic feminine pronoun "warawa" to the more contemporary and gender-neutral "watashi" when she drops the evil witch act and resurfaces as Sayo Yasuda.
• Face–Heel Revolving Door: And she revels in it. Though in EP6 and beyond, she is a Face.
• Fangs Are Evil: Her little fangs are a lot less cute than the ones other cast members have.
• Faux Affably Evil: At first, anyway. Then the ship tease and moe-moe start showing up.
• Flower Motifs: She wears a rose in her hair.
• Freudian Excuse: It's complicated but yes, she has one. Perhaps even several. Understanding it is actually one of the main parts of the mystery.
• Friendly Address Privileges: The fact that she asks Battler to call her Beato early on is a hint in itself. In the manga, Battler just starts to use that name on his own, though.
  Beatrice: Those close to me call me "Beato".
• Full-Name Basis: With "Ushiromiya Battler" − sorry, "Ushiromiya Battleeeeer" −, when she is in full Troll mode.
• Generation Xerox: Her relationship with Battler plays this theme hard. Their relationship at several points is meant to parallel Kinzo's relationship with Sayo's grandmother and mother. EP7 reveals Kinzo looked almost identical to Battler when he first met the first Beatrice. Although, Battler and Beatrice do manage to eventually work things out and end up Happily Married, while Kinzo's love for his Beatrice turned into a sick obsession that led him to rape his own daughter.
• Giant Poofy Sleeves: Her Pimped-Out Dress has puffs on and just below the shoulders.
• Girls Love Stuffed Animals: She loves Sakutaro the stuff animal of Maria that she even used her magic to turn him alive, which she cuddles whenever she can.
• Good Smoking, Evil Smoking: She carries around a long pipe, similar to an Evil Cigarette Holder.
• Go Out with a Smile: In EP5, she gives Battler (who is supposedly dead at the time) a Tearful Smile right before she finally allows herself to die.
• Go Through Me: She does this in EP3 to prevent Eva-Beatrice from interrupting Jessica and Kanon's reunion. She keeps doing it even when there's only her heart left.
• Gratuitous English: KONGURAAAAAAATULEEEEISHOOOOOOONS!! AAAAANDO HAAAWAAAYUUU?? AM FAIIIN SENKYUUUU!!
• Happily Married: She marries Battler at the end of EP6. They look very happy together in EP8.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: In Episode 4 (and 8), her elegant, tea-drinking witch image takes a hard blow when she calls Battler over the phone while very obviously drunk on wine. Also note that she's 19 years old, so technically underage in Japan.
• Heel Realization: Subverted. A large part of Episode 3 focuses on Beatrice realizing how cruelly she has been abusing her powers until that point. She reforms, eventually even helping the Ushiromiya side of the game board, and ends up denying witches to have Battler win the game, causing her own demise. At the very end of the episode, all of this is revealed to only be an act to get Battler to voluntarily recognize the existence of witches. Although this gets zig-zagged in the following episodes, as it turns out the Heel Realization was genuine and her revelation of it all being an act was so that the game between her and Battler can continue so that he can reach the truth.
• Hellish Pupils: Her eyes are drawn with slitted pupils in the Episode 4 manga.
• Hero's Muse: Rather like the lady from The Divine Comedy who she was named after, Beatrice was designed by Sayo Yasuda to be the ideal woman for Battler. Her game is actually meant to be a quest for Battler to understand her heart while she plays the role of Stealth Mentor.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: EP5 confirms that, while Beatrice is mischievous by nature, her sadistic behaviour in the first four arcs was an act as part of her being a Stealth Mentor towards Battler.
• Hot-Blooded: A penchant to go full ham whenever she has to fight whether it's Battler, Erika, or Dlanor, loudly boasting arguments and magic against her foe. [[spoiler: She's also the first to go full blooded when her deceit is expose in Episode 8, leading the Golden Land inhabitants against Featherine's army in the Battle for the Golden Land.
  "If you wish to enter with your shoes on, then let us give you a proper welcome! In other words, to put it elegantly... WASH YOU FACE IN MISO SOOOOOOOOUPPPP!!!"
• Hot Witch: She looks very good for a thousand years old witch. Invoked, since Sayo Yasuda modeled Beatrice's appearance on Battler's ideal woman.
• Humanizing Tears: In the ending of EP4, she pretty much gives up on the game and lets Battler's Blue Truths pierce through her. While in unbearable pain, Beatrice breaks down in tears and desperately begs Battler to uncover her truth to end her suffering. This is one of the first moments where Battler and the reader first get the true sense that Beatrice isn't the monstrous witch she pretends to be.
• I Just Want to Be Loved: Or at least I just want someone to understand me. Battler eventually does, but too late.
• Image Song: Chain, Golden Nocturne and Epilogue.
• Imaginary Friend: In EP1 she's treated like this to an extent in regards to Maria. In EP7 it's shown that from an anti-fantasy perspective, she really was a sort of imaginary friend to her. In the fifth arc, she also became Natsuhi's imaginary friend, along with her furniture.
• Immortal Immaturity: While she can act the part of a dignified witch who's lived for a thousand years, a lot of the time she's very childish. Justified since later on it's revealed that she isn't even close to a thousand years old; she's actually 19.
• Immune to Bullets: As Natsuhi found out the hard way. However, it's subverted in later chapters which reveal that, when they actually do get hit, magical beings are especially susceptible to man-made weapons such as guns. The manga reveals that Natsuhi's gun wasn't even loaded during her duel with Beatrice, since Sayo Yasuda removed the bullets beforehand.
• Insult of Endearment: Whenever Battler does something dumb, she loves to call him incompotent or pathetic in a playful manner.
• Intergenerational Friendship: With Maria, as Beatrice is 1000+ years old, actually 19.
• Invisible to Normals: According to EP2, no one in the island can see her besides Shannon and Kanon, unless she allows them to see her.
• Jackass Genie: In the second Tea Party, Beatrice is apparently willing to literally bring to life Rosa's old and numerous murderous thoughts, dreams and desires against her older siblings for ruining her whole childhood by trying to sympathize with her situation, only to cruelly taunt and torture her by forcing her (with the help of goats) to feed with their blood and their flesh. The icing on her cake is also feeding her with Maria's head as a dessert, based on the fact that, according to Beatrice herself, Rosa hates and blame even her own daughter for ruining her life.
• Killer Game Master: From EP1 to EP4. Subverted twice however: first because she can revive whoever she kills thanks to her Endless powers, and second because she isn't actually trying to kill anyone from Rokkenjima.
• Kneel Before Zod: Loves to do this in the first two Episodes.
• Lady of Black Magic: A graceful witch with power over life and death as an Endless Witch as well as powerful summons.
• Large Ham: "Let's start torturing each other, USHIROMIYA BATTORAAAAAAAAA!!!" Ohara was definitely enjoying herself.
• Laughably Evil: At least in the anime. More tragic in the novels and manga.
• Legacy Character: The name Beatrice and the titles Endless Witch and Golden Witch were passed down to her from Virgilia, her mentor and the former Beatrice. Actually, Sayo Yasuda based Beatrice on the ghost legends surrounding Rokkenjima and the stories behind the real Beatrices. Her portrait is based either on Beatrice Castiglioni, Kinzo's mistress or Beatrice Ushiromiya, their daughter, more heavily implied to be on the latter.
• Legacy Immortality: Even though Beatrice claims to be 1000 years old, the details of her "past" are really borrowed from the lives of Sayo Yasuda's mother and grandmother, who were both named Beatrice.
• Leitmotif: Several, most notably Organ Opusculum No. 600,000,000 in C minor.
• Lemony Narrator: In the first Tea Party, the narration constantly mocks Battler for being stupid and irrational − while at the same time praising the "wise" Maria. Interestingly, more than a funny gag, it is actually the first hint that the third-person narration is not objective.
• Lethal Chef: "Half a day was spent in spectacular violence that would have shocked the culinary world."
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: The dark to Shannon's light. However, this is really representative of the different aspects of Sayo Yasuda.
• Light Is Not Good: Actually Light Is Not Nice.
• Literal Split Personality: In the sixth arc, this is the way she Came Back Wrong. Chick Beatrice and Beato the Elder represent a different part of Beatrice; Chick Beatrice is what Beatrice was originally like while Beato the Elder embodies the aspects of the Golden Witch.
• Love Hurts: It hurts so much that 6 years can feel like a thousand.
• Loving Bully: A grossly exaggerated example. Beatrice brutally murders Battler and his family and traps him in a game where he undergoes endless suffering until he acknowledges her as a witch. In some way, her behavior is comparable to a schoolgirl trying to get attention from her crush by messing with him. EP5 reveals she does indeed love Battler and she's playing the role of Stealth Mentor with the hopes he reaches her truth. Battler realizes her merciless torture was her twisted way of expressing her feelings for him.
• Magic Wand: Her pipe functions as this. It can turn into a sword too.
• Male Gaze: In her special graphics in the PS3 port, her dress has curiously a lot more cleavage than in her sprites.
• Manipulative Bitch: In Episode 3, she makes Battler think she learned the wrong of her ways and reformed to trick him into acknowledging witches. She actually has to force herself to be this to push Battler into reaching for the truth.
• Many Spirits Inside of One: She's one of quite a few people inside Sayo Yasuda, along with Shannon and Kanon, though this is a mundane example since they're all "characters" Sayo Yasuda created and not real people.
• The McCoy: Among Shannon, Kanon and herself, Beatrice is obviously the most emotionally-driven one with her sadistic and hammy nature. She coerces them into giving in to their emotions and desire for love, only to rejoice in the unavoidable failure of their romances. Beatrice represents Sayo Yasuda's strong and aggressive side, as well as her most destructive and dangerous emotions.
• Mentor Occupational Hazard: She dies in Episode 5 just after Battler had finally figured out she was playing the Stealth Mentor role for him.
• Mercy Kill: To Maria and Rosa in the third arc.
• The Mirror Shows Your True Self: This is the reason why one of Beatrice's weaknesses is said to be mirrors. Namely because Sayo Yasuda hates them, since mirrors remind her that she's not really a powerful, elegant witch like she pretends to be in order to cope with her low self-esteem.
• More Hero than Thou: In Episode 5, her piece self decides to fight Erika and Dlanor herself rather than expose Gaap to danger.
• Multilayer Façade: Her actual identity is so complicated that there have been flow charts made in order to clarify it.
• Multiple-Choice Past: Whether you take the fantasy or mystery perspective. It's all but stated outright that the mystery perspective is her true past.
• My God, What Have I Done?: She suffers a minor one in the beginning of Episode 3, where her foiled attempt to fool Battler has her believe he's lost hope... only to find he's all fine and well. She has much more serious ones, though. In that same episode, she seems to feel genuine remorse over Battler's rage toward her even though she never truly intended on changing her ways as a result. She feels horrible guilt from conceiving the murder plots as Sayo Yasuda, as can be seen in Confession of the Golden Witch. The Episode 8 Manga also shows her crying horribly when Ange screams out all of her despair that magic can't help her or make her life better, as Beatrice knows all too well the same issues and furthermore realizes she's indirectly made Ange step onto the same suicidal path that she has.
• Noblewoman's Laugh: Often. In the anime it comes across as a harsh braying. Ronove lampshades its inelegance, to her complete lack of concern.
• No, Mr. Bond, I Expect You to Dine: During the second tea party, Beatrice forces Rosa to eat parts of her family's bodies. ETT'S PAAFEKUTO!
• Obliviously Evil: Episode 3 implies she sees nothing wrong with what she's been doing because in the end she always fixes what she breaks. Subverted since she actually knows exactly what's she doing, and Virgilia even confirms in red that she didn't enjoy murdering Battler's family over and over again.
• One to Million to One: She can transform into golden butterflies.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Beatrice's name is treated as a title, and indeed, when Eva-Beatrice becomes the new Endless Witch, Beatrice claims that she is now "nameless". Battler then gives her the nickname "Beato" to use, which has been used for her more often than not since.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: To Battler.
• Parental Substitute: She has shades of this with Maria in the first half of the story. The affection she shows towards her is in stark contrast with her cruelty during her games, or with Rosa's treatment of Maria.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Her relationship with Maria. She acts as a mentor/imaginary friend figure to Maria, who is always among the last to die in games where she is in control. In Arc 3 when she sees that Maria has actually been suffering from all of Eva-Beatrice's ways of killing her and Rosa, she even gives Maria a quick, painless Mercy Kill after comforting her, which is a contrast to the just as quick but more gruesome way she dispatches of Rosa afterwards.
  • Also to Natsuhi in Arc 5, although that Beato was a result of Natsuhi's delusions.
• Pimped-Out Dress: A floor-length black dress with a hoop skirt, wide sleeves, a bow on the front and a matching choker.
• Prim and Proper Bun: Subverted; she wears her hair in a bun, but she'll only act prim and proper when she feels it'll lend well to her "elegant thousand-year-old witch" image. Most of the time she's more sadistic and mischievous.
• Proud Beauty: She loves to boast her bewitching beauty to Battler, bragging her lovely hair, her massive busom, and adorable yet elegant physique and face, daring Battler to try touching her knowing he won't. It's a representation of what Sayo wants to be.
• Psychopathic Womanchild: An explanation to her behavior given in EP3. Virgilia describes her as a naive child who loves to play with toys without the fear to break them and also with a power so big that she hardly realises she can handle. She apparently sees nothing wrong with brutally murdering people over and over again because she can revive them any time she wants. Subverted once we find out more about her real self and motivations.
• A Pupil of Mine Until She Turned to Evil: Virgilia repeatedly states her disappointment with how Beatrice has chosen to use her powers as Endless Witch. This parallels how Kumasawa, the one who introduced Sayo Yasuda into mystery novels, might have ended up giving Sayo the source of her ideas about how to carry out the murders.
• Really 700 Years Old: She looks like a young woman, but is actually 1000 years old. Subverted; she's actually only 19.
• Really 17 Years Old: She claims to be Really 700 Years Old to pass as a legendary witch even though she's 19 years old, and was made a witch only for a few days.
• Redemption Equals Death: In the magic ending, Beatrice is convinced she can't atone for her sins by living on and commits suicide by jumping into the sea.
• Reduced to Dust: In Episode 5, she finally gives up on Battler finding the truth and allows herself to die, leaving nothing but a mountain of sand behind.
• Reformed, but Not Tamed: After she's returned at the end of EP 6 and is a full-on good guy, she never loses her edge and is still prone to acting like an arrogant, cackling sadist complete with Slasher Smile expressions.
• Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: Like several other characters in the series, Beatrice derives her name from Dante's The Divine Comedy.
• Sarcastic Devotee: Loves to jab her love ones, but does truly love them as family or lover, something she retained from her human life Sayo who was mischeavous.
• Sadist: She finds endless enjoyment in brutally murdering Battler's family over and over again. Subverted when it's revealed her sadistic behaviour was only an act.
• Say My Name: U-shi-ro-mi-ya BWAAATORAAAAAAAAA!!!
• Sealed Evil in a Can: She claims Kinzo bound her to the grounds of Rokkenjima and sealed a great part of her magical power. Subverted. Not only is Kinzo dead, making him unable to have summoned her in the first place, but not even Beatrice herself qualifies for this trope.
• Sealed Inside a Person-Shaped Can: According to her, the Beatrice of 1967 was a "homunculus" that Kinzo trapped her soul inside. Considering what is later revealed in EP7, this most likely isn't true.
• Sexy Backless Outfit: Due to exposed shoulder blades on her dress.
• Shipper with an Agenda: She helped Shannon in her romance with George so she could enjoy to see their relationship inevitably fail. She tried to do the same with Kanon and Jessica, but he didn't fall into her trap. Of course, this was all a big metaphor for the conflict within Sayo Yasuda's heart.
• Silent Scapegoat: She was taking the blame for killing Battler's family to push him towards finding the truth. Battler figured it out too late. Poor Beatrice.
• Silly Rabbit, Romance Is for Kids!: She goes on a rant about this in EP2:
  Beatrice: Love is lust and can't be measured without sleeping together. Men are flies and maggots that get caught in your female scent and gather around you. Do you still not understand that at your age?? You'll despair after that glasses man behind you gazes at you even once with dark lust. You'll lose heart, be shocked, dumbfounded, stupefied, and it's all useless isn't it, Shannon?? ...That's enough, stop talking, furniture. Furniture, furniture, furniture! Who do you think you are talking like that, showing off this fraud that love is beautiful, when really it's filthy filth. Don't people become adults when they realize that?
• Slasher Smile: Complete with fangs. Exaggerated in creepiness in the PS3 remake of the game.
• Sophisticated as Hell: In Episode 7, she describes her own speech style as "a mix of formality and rudeness". And indeed, she often goes into a Jessica-ish speech when screaming.
• Sorry That I'm Dying: In EP5, she apologizes to Battler before finally giving up and dying. Made infinitely worse in that Battler wakes up after having solved the mystery just in time to see her die.
• Speak Now or Forever Hold Your Peace: Combined with She's Back in Episode 6, Beatrice blows down the doors of the chapel, announces her big return and challenges Erika to a duel to take Battler back.
  "Erikaaaa!!! I'm here to celebraaaaaate!!!"
• Stealth Mentor: Revealed to be the case in EP5, towards Battler. The whole reason she was playing her "game" with him was so he could realize who she was and what his "sin of six years ago" was.
• Suicide by Sea: She does this in the magic ending, by throwing herself into the sea after deciding she can't live on to atone for her sins. The manga confirms this is how Beatrice's original self Sayo Yasuda died in the real world.
• Surpassed the Teacher: In her battle against Virgilia in EP3, Beatrice defeats her teacher in her very first move, but revived her for a while to make the fight a little longer and have some more fun.
• Talking to Themself: With Shannon and Kanon, as the conversations between all three of them represent Sayo Yasuda's inner conflicts.
• Tearful Smile: She does this at least once before her death in EP5, upon the "Who... am I?" question to Battler in EP4 in the anime, and a couple of other times besides in the manga. There's a reason for it each time.
• Theme Serial Killer: Her murders go according to the epitaph.
• Throwing Down the Gauntlet: In EP6, she throws a glove when she challenges Erika to a duel for Battler's hand in marriage.
• Together in Death: In the magic ending Beatrice, thinking she can't live on to atone for her sins, throws herself into the sea. Battler soon follows her and they drown together. It's eventually made clear in the manga that this was the moment Beatrice's original self Sayo Yasuda died and "Battler" died trying to save her to then become Tooya Hachijo.
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: In Episode 6 once she [[marries Battler]], Beatrice is more happy then she ever could be having drop most of her sarcasm with genuine happiness.
• Tragic Heroine: As Sayo Yasuda, she played a big part in the Rokkenjima tragedy. In the Meta World, though, her goal is to help Battler reach and accept the truth about what happened.
• Troll: Very much so towards Battler during their confrontations, and she's become infamous for it in the fandom. At least until her true Heel–Face Turn, though even then she has elements of The Gadfly. And though she may be the best known of the witches for her trolling, she's nowhere near as cruel as Bernkastel.
• Tsundere: A complicated example exaggerated to the extreme. Beatrice horribly tortures Battler mentally and physically by repeatedly murdering him and his family in gruesome ways. She also mocks him for being too incompetent to come up with logical explanations to deny magic. However, she's not doing it because she hates him; she actually likes Battler as her rival and wants to have a fun game with him. In EP3, she starts acting soft and cute when she seems to have seen the error of her ways. While it was part of an act to trick Battler, her dere-dere moments are genuine from the fourth arc onwards. In EP5, it's revealed all her cruelty towards Battler was her playing Stealth Mentor so he could reach her truth. Once Battler knows this, he calls Beatrice a 'tsundora' and concludes her antagonism was her way of encouraging him to win their game. She plays it more straightforward in the TIPS in which she gets Ship Tease with Battler.
• Tsurime Eyes: Reflecting her sadistic nature.
• Two Aliases, One Character: Actually three aliases. She, Shannon and Kanon are all the same person, created as personas of Sayo Yasuda.
• Unreliable Expositor: Not only is her narration unreliable, but much of what she reveals to Battler in the first four arcs is not exactly truthful, and later arcs outright contradict some things she says.
• Unreliable Narrator: The main narrator of anything that happens outside of Battler's view is Beatrice, and she eventually lets him know ouright that anything that is not in red text is not necessarily true.
• Unseen No More: During the entire Episode 1, Beatrice's name is constantly spoken, but she is an ominous, invisible presence whose existence is uncertain. She appears only halfway through the Tea Party, when you expect it the least.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: According to the flashback at the beginning of Episode 3, Beatrice was once a very sweet and innocent little girl who wanted to become a witch so she could achieve eternal happiness, after she was inspired by seeing Virgilia repair a broken vase with magic. She got what she wanted, but with that eternal happiness comes eternal boredom that she can only get rid of by abusing her powers to kill and revive people in sick ways. While this flashback was really just a heavily idealized memory of Kumasawa getting Sayo Yasuda out of trouble for breaking the vase by saying a cat did it, it still foreshadows how Sayo really was a sweet kid, but some traumatic revelations and having a lonely, almost friendless life drove her to do some rather questionable things.
• Villainous Breakdown: From Shannon in Episode 2. Twice. While she can play Kanon like a harp, it turns out Shannon isn't quite as docile once she understands that Beatrice is a Bad Samaritan. During their second encounter near the end of the arc, the Witch ends up spewing incoherent words and insults in rapid-fire. Of course, since Beatrice and Shannon are both alter egos of Sayo Yasuda, both scenes are highly symbolic of Sayo's self-loathing.
• Villainous BSoD: In Episode 4, she challenges Battler to confess his sin from six years ago. Battler assumes that it's leaving the family, but is completely clueless when she insists that there's something else he did wrong, and gets mad when she implies that her murders are indirectly his fault. Once it become clear that she's not getting her answer, the once gleefully drunk witch goes completely sullen and refuses to continue playing with him, intending to leave their game hanging forever. When Battler doesn't accept this, she pushes him into a Heroic BSoD by using carefully placed red truths to convince him that he's not really related to the Ushiromiyas. Her condition gets even worse by Episode 5.
• Weaksauce Weakness: According to legend, Beatrice can be rendered powerless through spider webs or mirrors. The spider webs are drawn from Kumasawa's stories about the youkai people believed would haunt the islands, and the mirrors are symbolic of how much Sayo Yasuda hates them due to her low self-esteem.
• Womanchild: In the third game, when she asks Virigilia for advice, she sounds less like a dignified witch and more like a little girl throwing a tantrum. When she gets rejected by Battler in Tsubasa Chronicles for destroying the Stakes' White Day, she latches on to Virgili crying how unfair she doesn't get to be happy in White Day and tries to throw the blame on Lucifer or Battler.
• Worthy Opponent: To Battler.
• Zero-Approval Gambit: She wants Battler to hate her to keep him struggling to find the truth (with the goal of denying her existance).

Bernkastel

The Witch of Miracles

Voiced by: Yukari Tamura (JP)

"I am the cruelest witch in the world. I will make any opponent of mine surrender without fail. Even if that opponent is the Endless Witch Beatrice. So you must do your best as well. You won't bore me, will you?"

The Witch of Miracles, and the most powerful witch in the universe (multiverse?). An enigmatic figure who offers Battler her help in defeating Beatrice during the tea parties for nonhumans. She has the power to create miracles as long as the possibility of the event occurring is greater than 0. She has a long-standing rivalry with the witch Lambdadelta, who was formerly the most powerful witch until Bernkastel beat her in a game. She is instrumental to Ange's, and later Erika's, involvement in the story.

Her relation to Frederica Bernkastel is unclear, but they are most likely the same character.

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• Adaptation Dye-Job: Like Rika from Higurashi, her hair is indisputably blue in the games/manga, and weird purple-blue color in the anime.
• Adaptational Curves: Depending on the artist, her representations vary from totally flat to B-cup at most… until the manga of Episode 8 where her bust-size suddenly became on par with Ange. Witch of Miracles indeed.
• Adaptational Nice Girl:
  • It's not that she's become a particularly good person in Golden Fantasia, but her sadism and sociopathic callousness towards the lives and feelings of others feel much Lighter and Softer compared to the depths they go to in the original story, where she is a truly horrific Hope Crusher.
  • The EP8 manga shows her as holding some actual remorse for what she did to Erika after EP6, whereas in the game she couldn't care less and only brings Erika back because Battler won't accept her challenge otherwise.
• All Witches Have Cats: She has hundreds of cats as her minions, although it's suggested that they technically belong to Featherine (to whom Bern is also a cat too.)
• Aloof Ally: She seems to be this, though whether she's the ally of Battler or the audience is unclear. Some of the things she says throughout the game can be seen as a way to guide the reader. Subverted at the end of EP4, when her true motives are revealed. In EP5 she takes up the position of Big Bad.
• Alto Villainess: Yukari Tamura gives Bernkastel the same deep voice she used for Rika's true self. While she doesn't start as antagonistic, once Bernkastel gets the chance to get her hands dirty she shows why she's known as "The Cruelest Witch".
• Animal Motifs: Strongly associated with cats, and in EP8, it's revealed that from a mundane perspective she's actually Ikuko's pet cat. Quite a few cat tropes apply to her.
• Anthropomorphic Personification:
  • One interpretation is that she (at least partly) represents Ange's negative emotions and unhealthy obsession with the truth.
  • She could also be a personification of how the general public likes to vilify the Ushiromiya family for fun when creating theories about the Rokkenjima incident, not caring about the fact that they were real people.
  • In a meta sense, she could also represent readers who wanted a tragic and bleak conclusion to the story, as she actively works towards that goal in EP8 and in the manga.
• Ax-Crazy: It becomes very obvious as time goes on that Bern is very disturbed. The fact that she goes out of her way to cause pain and suffering just for shits and giggles as well as the sheer amount of glee she takes in it makes it safe to say that those hundreds of years of torment for the Rikas have effectively destroyed both her sanity as well as her humanity.
• Bad Boss: She treats her piece Erika like garbage when the latter fails to achieve any worthwhile results. The manga amps this up even further, though it also adds a Pet the Dog moment that suggests Bern does care for Erika on some level that she doesn't want to acknowledge.
• Bad Samaritan: All her seemingly helpful actions towards Battler and Ange were only to further her own goals.
• Being Tortured Makes You Evil: She's a culmination of all the dead Rikas who were brutally killed over and over again for hundred years. Yeah, when you know when she comes from, it becomes quite obvious where she got her obsession with "ripping out the guts".
• Berserk Button: Don't ever remind her of her past. Erika got off with an angry warning.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Assumes the position with Lambdadelta in the fifth arc (in the meta-world at least), and solidifies it with each consecutive installment, although by the end Lambda falls out of it and Bern is left as the unrivaled Big Bad.
• Birds of a Feather: With Lambdadelta. They are both cruel witches who torment others in order to escape boredom and forget about their own painful pasts.
• Borrowed Catch Phrase: In the Tea Party of Twilight, when her, Erika and Lambdadelta receive letters from Heaven.
  Bern: Just by the presence of this letter, see how far Bernkastel's reasoning can take her. What do you think, everyone?
  Erika: M… My Master, that's no good! There can only be one detective!
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • There are a few scenes where it's intentionally unclear if she addresses Battler or the player. In the anime, Battler is nowhere to be seen during that scene so she's clearly talking to the viewers here. In the visual novel, however, an exchange between Battler and Bernkastel reveals that she was indeed talking to him during Beatrice's games. This is only just revealed in the eighth arc right before the plot truly kicks in; blink and you'll miss it.
  • A more humorous example occurs in Episode 3's hidden Tea Party, when she threatens Lambda to spoil her the culprit of Higurashi. Lambda quickly covers her ears, saying that she hasn't finished reading it yet.
• Broken Bird: Her dark past left her with issues, to put it mildly. Her underlying reason for wreaking havoc and staving off boredom is so she doesn't have to think about the pain she endured.
• Call-Back: In the ??? of Episode 2. Also the first sign that she is more than an Expy.
  Bernkastel: Hum… how did I use to do in this kind of situation? F… fight… ooooh… Mii~. Nipah~*! ……… it's a bit embarrassing. See how far I go for your sake.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Once the end of Episode 4 shows her true colours, Bern doesn't even pretend she has any other motivations than liking cruelty. She even flat out admits that she kidnapped young Ange in front of everyone at the party in EP8.
• Cats Are Magic: One of her magical abilities is to turn into a black cat, and the transformation is so complete that you could mistake her for any other common black cat.
• Cats Are Mean: Her cat minions are certainly not friendly, and as it turns out, neither is she.
• Cats Are Snarkers: She's closely associated with cats, having a cat's tail and being able to turn into a cat, and she can also be quite sarcastic.
• Cat Girl: Downplayed; she has a cat's tail and a lot of cat themed tropes associated with her, but no cat ears to complete the image.
• Catchphrase Insult: Those she looks down on are called "gerokasu" (pukespittle).
• Combat Pragmatist: Bernkastel will play by the rules presented to her, but only as far as Exact Words; otherwise she'll stack the odds in her favor however she pleases. Demonstrated to perfection in EP8 during the fight with Battler; forced to go by the rules of his game board, she gives him closed room mysteries under the guise of blue truth blades to solve. She just happens to launch all of them at once, which gives Battler barely any time to come up with the correct answer to break one blade while frantically dodging all the rest, and faltering for even a second means death. For all the levels in badass he took, even he can't stand up to that - fortunately it doesn't stick.
  In that case, this wasn't 'mystery' anymore. This wasn't an intellectual game, but a merciless assault.
• Contrived Coincidence: Bringing them about is at least one aspect of her power.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Delivers two over the course of the story.
  • First was versus Will. Sadly an Offscreen Moment of Awesome, but after the fight Will looks like, in Lion's words, a bloodstained scarecrow and is missing an arm. When Bern tracks them down, she hasn't suffered so much as a scratch.
  • In EP8's climax, she completely demolishes Battler with a closed room mysteries barrage. Fortunately, Ange gets a power up that allows her to demolish Bernkastel.
• Curtains Match the Window: Purple or blue Depending on the Artist, but her eyes and hair are always the same color.
• Dark and Troubled Past: In EP6, Lambda says that Bern was originally a piece in a game that the Game Master made Unwinnable. Lambda did not explicitly say whether the game was of the Unintentionally Unwinnable or the Unwinnable by Design variety.) The Game Master then abandoned Bern as a piece and left her to fend for herself. Bern eventually ended up winning the game anyway and gained the title of Witch of Miracles. The manga implies that the game in question was Higurashi, which would make sense given her origins. While this does explain her cruelty however, it's no excuse for it.
• Deadly Euphemism: "If I get bored, I could throw popcorn at you." We don't want to know what kind of "pop-corn" she would throw.
• Delayed Reaction: It had been so long since she'd last felt pain that it takes a minute for her body to register that Battler just punched her.
• Dirty Coward: She makes it known that she loves games that she can win. When it seems she CAN'T win, expect her to bail from the game rather than stay around to witness her own defeat. This is shown most clearly in EP 6 where she prematurely leaves the duel between Beato and Erika when it becomes clear that Erika is done for (which would reflect badly on Bern since Erika is her piece), and the climax of EP 8, where she frantically tries to run away from the golden eagle that ANGE has created to devour her. In a way, she is also a coward for forever running away from boredom and turning her back to the truth of her own past, which even Erika feels a little disdainful towards her about.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Beatrice and Battler undo her plans for one game? Time to tear apart all their hopes and dreams!
• Driven to Villainy: Her love for causing suffering and misery in the worlds she screws around with can be explained by the fact that Bernkastel is an incarnation of all of the Rikas who were killed over and over again for centuries as her friends went insane and killed each other and her hometown was destroyed. In fact, Bern remembers everything from Higurashi up to Saikoroshi-hen wherein she was purged from Rika's consciousness. While it doesn't excuse her cruelty, anyone would have some serious mental damage after coming out from something like that.
• Dungeonmaster's Girlfriend: When Lambdadelta is running the game, she rules very generously on behalf of her and her self-insert, Erika.
• Emotionless Girl: Apart from her eyes moving, she literally has no expression on her face until the EP4 Tea Party, where she laughs with an epic troll face. Fans shat bricks. And then, in EP5, she suddenly becomes much more expressive.
• Empty Eyes: This is the default appearance of Bern's eyes. It makes her interactions with the rest of the cast all the more unsettling, especially from EP5 onwards. Her genuine facial expressions done with those emotionless eyes are really unnerving.
• Enemy Without: She's confirmed to be all the "Rikas" who gave up on fighting destiny and now wanders between the fragments doing whatever she can to ease the pain.
• Enigmatic Empowering Entity: To Ange, by giving her the Witch title and bringing her into the game board just to get things more exciting. Although she did this just to be a Bad Samaritan.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: When invited to party with Battler, she's notably bewildered by Battler's willingness to forgive Beatrice, Erika, and Bernkastel herself. She likes winning and Battler's carefree attitude towards opponents startles her. While she briefly seems to enjoy and admire this trait, she ultimately follows through on her plan to destroy Battler's happy ending.
• Evil Wears Black: She wears a dark Elegant Gothic Lolita dress and while she at first seems to help Battler against Beatrice, she eventually reveals she's a cruel and ruthless Witch like any other in the series.
• First Injury Reaction: In EP8, Battler punches her in the face. Feeling pain for the first time in a century is unpleasant enough for her to cause a Villainous Breakdown.
• For the Evulz: Basically her driving motivation. She loves to make people suffer and fall into despair.
• Freudian Excuse: As a being that can live for untold centuries, boredom is poison to Bernkastel - or more accurately, her mind since memories of her Dark and Troubled Past start to resurface if she isn't constantly entertained or enthralled with something else. She will do absolutely anything to make herself forget, especially if it involves causing people to suffer like she suffered.
• Friendly Enemy: The true relationship between her and Lambadelta. More the former than the latter, to stave off boredom.
• Giant Poofy Sleeves: She wears puff sleeves.
• Gone Horribly Right: Featherine wanted someone to entertain her and ease her own boredom, and she got that when she brought Bernkastel into being - whose idea of entertainment is sewing turmoil and agony into people's lives. Ultimately subverted however since while there's no doubt Bern causes havoc on an insane degree, Featherine is largely indifferent to it and just likes the good story that results from it. She will often use Bernkastel to rip apart the worlds of those stories to find the answers to their mysteries.
• Good Powers, Bad People: She's the Witch of Miracles, right? Able to create a miracle as long as the probability isn't zero. But a miracle is just something that the odds are against. No one said anything about those miracles being "good".
• Hime Cut: Blunt bangs, bra strap length sidelocks, and hip length straight hair. She has this hairstyle to match her Elegant Gothic Lolita attire and to make her look like Rika.
• Hope Crusher: Battler outright calls her out as such, and she doesn't deny it in the slightest. Having her own hopes and dreams repeatedly crushed and mangled hundreds of times over in her past life probably has something to do with this.
• Horrifying the Horror: Bernkastel, Hope Crusher extrordinaire and The Cruelest Witch is absolutely terrified of Featherine. It helps considering her status.
• I Hate You, Vampire Dad: Bern is very resentful to Auaurora for the way she made her a witch and taught her to 'hunger for meat'. Not that it stops her from reveling in it to escape her Dark and Troubled Past.
• Image Song: Doctrine of the Fundamentally Good.
• In-Series Nickname: Lambdadelta often calls her "Bern".
• It Amused Me: Her take on this is a grade nastier than other Witches, but it's still all entertainment to her.
• Karma Houdini: While she is defeated by Ange, the latter spares her and lets her go with Erika and it's implied they could cause more havoc in the future.
• Kick the Dog: Currently sued by animal rights associations for dog holocaust. Seriously, name one character that isn't Featherine and it's likely she's kicked him or her at some point. Even her lover Lambdadelta isn't safe, although she at least enjoys being kicked.
• Killer Game Master: Of EP7 on her own, and of EP8 where she competes against the much more benevolent Game Master Battler.
• Lack of Empathy: She treats real people how one would expect an author to treat their characters, ruining their lives for her and the audience's entertainment.
• Leitmotif: Several. She's the Big Bad after all.
  • Haze is equally associated with both Ange and Bern, specifically during the skyscraper scene.
  • Kururi is shared with Lambdadelta.
  • Patchwork Chimera on the other hand, is shared with Erika.
  • The Executioner appeared only once with her, but it has become iconic.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: She's the somber Dark Feminine in a black dress while Lambdadelta is the playful Light Feminine in a pink dress.
• Lipstick Lesbian: Her clothing and manners is very feminine and she reciprocates Lambdadelta's disturbing "love".
• Little Bit Beastly: Partially, since she has a cat's tail but no cat ears.
• Little Miss Snarker: A trait she kept from her human self.
• Loners Are Freaks: Unlike Lambda, a sociable witch who counts many friends among the infernal elite, Bernkastel reacts awkwardly to friendly overtures and her social circle doesn't extend beyond Featherine, Erika, and Lambda herself, each of whom she has a twisted relationship with. When Bern tries to confirm Lamba's double-cross in EP8, she whips open her phonebook, ponders why she has no numbers saved, then remembers that she has no friends.
• Malicious Misnaming: She mockingly calls Featherine "Auaurora", referencing her Verbal Tic from Higurashi: When They Cry.
• Manipulative Bitch: Towards her enemies, such as Beatrice. She is responsible for making Ange's life miserable so that she can have a piece to use against Beatrice (and eventually Battler). In EP8, she also manipulates Ange into thinking that Battler is just toying with her, causing Ange to go on a rampage and start the Golden Land's destruction.
• The Masochism Tango: With Lambdadelta. They both seem to really enjoy it.
• Meaningful Name: Bernkastel was the type of wine that Rika would drink.
• Medium Awareness: Breaks the Fourth Wall the most out of all the characters.
• Mentor Archetype: A meta example as much of what she has to say is actually pretty helpful. Not to the characters, but to the player. More specifically, her words are useful in guiding the player's thoughts as to how to solve the mystery. Given The Reveal, definitely the Evil Mentor subtype.
• Miko: She used to be Featherine's miko.
• Mirthless Laughter: To express boredom or contempt, or to feign them. Featherine sees through it to the fear she's trying to mask.
• Ms. Exposition: In the early arcs she tends to serve in this role.
• Mysterious Watcher: She watches Battler's struggles, helping him from the shadows... until EP5.
• Narcissist: Best reflected through Erika, who is Bern's self-insert that is good at everything she sets out to do and upstages everyone around her, all while also kissing Bern's ass at every opportunity. It's also telling that the only person she loves is Lambdadelta, who holds nothing back in displaying her affection for Bern.
• Pass the Popcorn: She orders some for the final showdown in End of the Golden Witch. This becomes a running joke by EP7 where Will frequently comments that Bern's probably enjoying his deductions from some unseen location with a large bucket of popcorn.
• Pet the Dog: The manga has Bern actually display remorse for condemning Erika to oblivion because she lost on her behalf, with Battler realizing her pride is preventing her from being honest with herself on how she regrets that decision.
• Psycho Lesbian: In EP5, Bern directly tells Lambda that she loves her. This is reinforced at the end of EP8, with her and Lambda making a Psycho Lesbian couple.
• Psychotic Smirk: She makes a smirk when being diabolical.
• Punch-Clock Villain: Implied near the very end of EP8, in that Bernkastel and Lambdadelta take turns going through worlds deciding who has to be the "bad guy" in each story. While the games are traumatic events for the people involved, to them they're simply very entertaining games of chess, with them taking turns which one plays what color.
• Reality Warper: Can manipulate probability: the force of nature that sets forth the laws of reality.
• Really 700 Years Old: Since Higurashi takes place in 1983, it depends on whether you count all of Rika's century-long "Groundhog Day" Loop in her age. But even so, as a Voyager Witch she can travel through time at will, so she has basically no notion of past or future.
• Red Baron: "The Cruelest Witch."
• Redemption Rejection: Battler spends a good portion of EP8 trying to get Bernkastel to undergo a Heel–Face Turn and become friends with everyone else. He fails miserably.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The emotionless Blue Oni to Lambda's energetic Red Oni. The roles get switched in Chiru, especially EP8, as it turns out Bern isn't as emotionless as she seemed and she takes losing a lot more personally, making Lambda look more chill by comparison.
• Reused Character Design: She looks just like Rika from Higurashi: When They Cry, even sharing the same seiyuu. It's justified since she's Rika's Enemy Without.
• Right-Hand Cat: She has hundreds of them. And she herself used to be Featherine's.
• Sadist: Her favourite thing is the pain and suffering of others, especially when she's the one responsible.
• Sarcastic Clapping: A pretty funny one Episode 7.
  Will: How do you like my reasoning? If you're satisfied, at least applaud or something. *cue applauds and cheers coming out of nowhere* Well, thanks a bunch.
• Say My Name: When she realizes Lambda had undergone a Heel–Face Turn. "Lambdaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawg!"
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: When Erika gets fatally shot by Beatrice after failing to solve her locked room mystery at the end of EP6, Bernkastel simply disappears instead of giving Erika a chance to recover, or even just watch over her finale. Cornelia is disgusted, but Erika is relieved that she won't get another scolding before she dies.
• Self-Insert Fic: Invokes it herself. When Lambdadelta hijacks the Rokkenjima game board in EP5, Bernkastel immediately suspects her plan to trap her in an endless game and sets about ending it. Her first attempt is to slip Erika Furudo into the game and give them both relevance to it, allowing them both to tear the mystery's catbox apart. Fortunately for the rest of the cast, this plan falls through with Erika's defeat in EP6. But then Featherine came along and made her the Game Master of EP7, allowing Bernkastel herself to start wreaking havoc directly...
• Shadow Archetype: To Rika Furude from Higurashi: When They Cry, both literally and figuratively. Whereas the real Rika at least had a few shreds of empathy even at her worst, Bernkastel is basically Rika having Jumped Off The Slippery Slope - faithless, cruel and reveling in the suffering of others.
• Shaping Your Attacks: During her duel with Battler in the climax of EP8, Bern summons gradually more absurd amounts of closed room mysteries as blue truth blades until they eventually form eight giant snakes resembling the mythological Orochi.
• Sinister Scythe: Favors her scythe. Ironically however, in the two times she's seen with it in the story, she never actually uses it to fight. The first time against Will she decides he's not worth the effort of carving up with it, and the second time against Battler she deigns to skewer him with hundreds upon hundreds of blue truth mystery blades.
• The Sociopath: Far and away the cruelest character in the series, so much that cruelty is part of her moniker. Bernkastel will lie, turn friend against friend, Mind Rape, and much more if she sees it necessary for victory or just if she feels like it; nothing is sacred to her, and any pain her targets suffer at her expense is its own reward. She also has no love lost for humans, and would even allow the one person she has affections for (Lambdadelta) to be brutally murdered without a passing thought.
• Sore Loser: It's revealed in EP8 that Bernkastel barely or just plain doesn't understand the concept of fun, only caring about winning. From the end of EP6 onwards, Battler and Beatrice making her plans fall through is what drives her to utterly destroy them. Her antics include: trying to break the heart of and kill a separate incarnation of Beatrice, turning Ange against the whole family, and even organizing an assault that destroys Rokkenjima and the Golden Land. If it wasn't for the fact that she had plans for Battler and Beatrice in EP8, she probably would've flipped when they beat her in her tabletop mystery.
• The Stoic: In most situations, she can be icy cold. But, certain situations can turn her to be very, very Not So Stoic. This is usually a sign that very bad things are about to happen to the cast except for the last half of EP8.
• This Was Her True Form: The Ushiromiyas' Combined Energy Attack in the finale reduced her to a black cat (which is apparently what she really is in the human world), though Ange let her live.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Dried plums. Preferably in her tea.
• Transplant: In a sense. Bernkastel is technically a character brought from Higurashi: When They Cry, as she's an amalgamation of all of the dead Rikas who never made it past June of 1983. Whether or not she's the same Frederica Bernkastel we see in Higurashi is never spelled out, but it's very likely she is.
• Troll: She isn't called "The Cruelest Witch" for nothing. Bern doesn't start out antagonistic, but when she finally does get the chance to dirty her hands, she quickly causes the most destruction out of any witch in the series, almost reaching YuukiTerumi levels of trolling. That's saying a lot.
• Unholy Matrimony: With Lambdadelta. Their favorite pastime is toying with the lives of people.
• Villainous Breakdown: EP8. And it is glorious.
• Walking Spoiler: It's hard to talk about EP5 onwards without knowing or revealing her part in it. Half of this entry is white for exactly this reason.
• Wicked Witch: Though she's no old crone.
• Winds of Destiny, Change!: Her power as the Witch of Miracles.
• Yandere Couple: She doesn't show it quite as much as Lambdadelta does, but it's eventually made clear that she reciprocates Lambda's twisted love for her in an equally twisted way. In EP8 she says that she will tear off Lambda's limbs, skewer her through her butt, then place her beside her bed so she can kiss her good morning and good night every day.
  Bernkastel: "If this is some new joke of Lambda's, I'll cover her whole body with honey using my tongue as a reward. And then, I'll stick parasol chocolates into her eyes and tell her to never do it again."
• You Bastard!: She says, to the reader, something to the effect of, "It's more interesting to have Eva make Ange's life a living hell, isn't it? That's why you're reading this far, after all."
• You Have Failed Me: She repeatedly makes clear her intention to throw her piece Erika into oblivion if she loses in the game. And does so at the end of EP6 when Erika loses against Beatrice. However, Bernkastel brings her back in EP8 at Battler's insistence.
• You Monster!: Bernkastel calls Featherine one, although she's certainly one to talk. Bern even says that she "learned" from her in that department…

Lambdadelta

The Witch of Certainty

Voiced by: Fuyuka Ōura (JP)

"If I'm paper, Beato is rock, and Bern is scissors. It's true that my paper will lose to Bern's scissors... but if it's super-paper, which is stronger than regular paper, it could even win against scissors, right? In other words, I, Lady Lambdadelta, am super-paper! Ooohohohohoho!!"

The Witch of Certainty, who has the power to kill unfailingly. Formerly the most powerful witch in the universe, she now harbors an intense grudge against Bernkastel, who took that title away from her. She sometimes offers Battler help during the tea parties for nonhumans, and yet half the time appears to be working against him. Although she acts very childish in general, she is not to be trifled with, as she is incredibly powerful.

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• Adaptational Nice Girl: Her more malicious aspects are considerably toned down in the anime.
• Adaptation Dye-Job: The anime gave her red eyes. In the games, they're more of an amber color.
• Affably Evil: Quite charming and likable for a seemingly evil witch who enjoys sadistic games and ruining the lives of others for her own amusement. Also, in contrast to Bernkastel, her friendly moments are entirely genuine.
• Ambiguously Evil: She's on Beatrice's side at the beginning, but then she actually isn't, and then she's actually Bern's Friendly Enemy, but then she decides to oppose Bern, but then she doesn't, but then she does, etcetera.
• Awesome, but Impractical: Lambda's actual power goes far beyond being able to kill unfailingly, and is either this or a Story-Breaker Power depending on your point of view: she has the ability to cause any event that she chooses to eventually happen, provided that who or whatever is trying to make it happen does not give up. However, her ability may be nullified if whatever is trying to make the event happen does stop trying, and she never says how long or how many failures it will take before the event happens. She basically has the power to guarantee that certain hard work will not go unrewarded.
• Bad Samaritan: Nowhere near Bern's level in that regard, but the human she lends her power to in another series didn't meet a happy end in most of the timelines. It's implied that Takano was either made a scapegoat, disposed of or Driven to Suicide after the Hinamizawa disaster. And of course, Beato's fate isn't much happier.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Her childish and ditzy behaviour can make it hard to take her seriously at first glance. However, you must not forget Lambdadelta is still a Witch just as powerful and capable of cruelty as Bernkastel.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: She assumes the position with Bernkastel in the fifth arc (in the meta-world at least), and solidifies it with each consecutive installment, although by the end Lambda falls out of it and Bern is left as the unrivaled Big Bad.
• Birds of a Feather: With Bernkastel. They are both cruel witches who torment others in order to escape boredom and forget about their own painful pasts. In EP6, Lambdadelta admits the reason why she loves Bernkastel is because she thinks Bernkastel is the only one who can understand her as a fellow witch survivor from hell.
• Bizarre Alien Biology: According to EP8, she is literally made of candy.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: In line with Ambiguously Evil. Lambda will side with either the good guys or the bad guys depending on who offers her the most "entertaining" scenario. TIPs have her making clear she will help grant any wish, whether it's a good or bad one, as long as the person who asks for it gives their all to accomplish it.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall: She does this very often, even to the point of asking the readers to vote for her in the character popularity poll.
• Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Despite her whimsical nature, she takes her job as a Witch of the Senate very seriously. She won't hesitate to threaten even Bernkastel - not with Psycho Lesbian intentions, actually threaten - to not damage her reputation.
• Composite Character: She freely borrows traits from both Satoko and Takano of Higurashi. She is the witch equivalent of Satoko, and may have driven Takano as a game piece.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment: She likes to imagine various and very imaginative ways to torture Bern. Let's call that her peculiar way of expressing her love.
• Cute and Psycho: She's childlike, playful and cute as a button. She's also a Witch just as twisted and cruel as any other in the series.
• Cute Witch: Subverted. Despite her appearance and mannerisms, she's certainly not cute when it comes to her personality. The crazed expressions she can put on are terrifying.
• The Ditz: As seen in the third Sound Novel's tea party, where Bernkastel and Beato are teasing her about Santa Claus. The second Bernkastel leaves, she drops the act.
• Enigmatic Empowering Entity: She was the one who made Beatrice into a witch because Lambda found the design of Beatrice's game amusing. This is only alluded to briefly in the third tea party, in Requiem and once again in the extra TIPS. What this means in an anti-fantasy perspective is up to debate.
• Even Evil Has Standards: While always ready and willing to take part in messing up many mortals lives alongside Bernkastel for the sake of entertainment, she still has limits. She has to intervene no less than three times throughout the story when she feels Bern is taking things too far, and while the first was more for her own amusement, the latter two absolutely weren't.
• Expy: Her character closely resembles Satoko from Higurashi: When They Cry, with her trickster personality, her Noblewoman's Laugh and her relationship with Bernkastel, Rika's Expy. Higurashi Gou / Sotsu confirms that she began her existence as Satoko's witch self.
• Foil: To Bernkastel, surprisingly. While both revel in the suffering of others, Lambda also happens to hold her title of Witch of Certainty in high esteem and takes the duties that come with her position very seriously, whereas Bern only sees her witch status as a means to hurt others. Bern will also only help others if she can screw them over later or if she gets something out of it, while Lambda can and does genuinely help others for the sake of it if she feels that they've earned it.
• Foregone Conclusion: Loves to defy this for the sake of entertainment, or just to piss off Bernkastel. Particularly in EP6 where she stealthily helps Beatrice reach Erika for the episode's final battle.
• Freudian Excuse: Being in the same situation as Bernkastel, she will do anything to escape boredom and keep her Dark and Troubled Past repressed.
• Friendly Enemy: The true relationship between her and Bernkastel. More the former than the latter, in fact, to stave off boredom.
• Game Master: In EP5 she takes Beatrice's place as this.
• Giant Poofy Sleeves: Her dress has poofy shoulders.
• The Gloves Come Off: In Episode 8, she stops holding back and starts fighting Bern seriously.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: Bernkastel is her sworn enemy/love-hate buddy/plaything, and they've always been on opposite sides. It does not stop them from having slumber parties. However, EP5 shows that Bernkastel and Lambdadelta have been friends and allies all along (and even hints that they are lovers), and that until that point they were pretending to be sworn enemies. The slumber party happened in EP4's ????, and was the first time that they clearly dropped the enemies act. It's only in EP8 that Lambda actually fights against Bernkastel, but since she's the Wild Card they go back to their usual relationship in the afterparty.
• Go Mad from the Isolation: We find that in the past, Lambda was trapped in a logic error. It was so bad that she still seems to wonder if she isn't still trapped there and just hallucinating everything.
• Gratuitous English: Frequent in her POP, CUTE and PERFECT dialogues!
• Gravity Master: She can create an area of concentrated gravity, not entirely different from a black hole, during her fight with Bernkastel in Episode 8.
• Greater-Scope Villain: For the first half of the story. She made Beatrice a temporary witch to drag Bern into her game, but she doesn't really care about what happens to Battler and the rest.
• Hates Being Alone: According to Bern. If what she tells about having being trapped alone in a logic error is to be believed, this is somewhat understandable.
• Heel–Face Turn: In EP8, although it's later clarified to be just one stop in a perpetual Heel Face Revoling Door.
• Hidden Heart of Gold: For most of the series, Lambdadelta seems to be the same as all the other witches; selfish, cruel, petty and only caring about seeking entertainment through the suffering of others. However, later on there are circumstances in which she helps out the heroes even though she's supposed to remain neutral, always under the excuse that she's doing it for her own amusement. This is best shown in EP8 where she risked her life to give Battler and Ange enough time to get the key of Book of the Single Truth and even went as far as to face off against Featherine, the most powerful witch in the setting. She didn't accomplish much as she was effortlessly thrown into a bookshelf and her limbs got severed, but it's the thought that counts. Though the last tea party reveals she and Bernkastel consider themselves to be playing a role, respectively the good and the bad guy.
• Hypocritical Humor: In Episode 4, she mocks Beatrice, saying that "all blond women are dumb". Yeah… what is Lambda's hair colour again?
• Image Song: Hide and Seek
• Immortal Immaturity: Same as the other witches, Lambdadelta is actually hundreds of years old, but she still acts the age she appears. Subverted when it becomes clear it's an act.
• Improbable Weapon User: Candies.
• In-Series Nickname: Bernkastel often calls her "Lambda".
• It Amused Me: Like Bernkastel, the reason why she goes around toying with people's tragedies is because she hates boredom.
• Karma Houdini: Downplayed. While she is killed by Featherine, she is later resurrected by Ange (or Featherine in the manga), and is reunited with Bern and Erika to cause more havoc in the future. However, unlike Bernkastel she did care for the Ushiromiya in the end, and is not as villainous as expected.
• Lack of Empathy: Lambda doesn't think much of human lives and is always ready to have them ruined if she finds it entertaining. She's still better off than Bernkastel; Lambdadelta at least can be genuinely helpful to those who work hard for their goals and believes that hard work deserves to be rewarded, going as far as to sacrifice herself to protect the heroes in the final arc.
• Laughably Evil: Although not everyone agrees on the "evil" part.
• Leitmotif: Kururi, shared with Bernkastel.
• Light Feminine and Dark Feminine: She's the playful Light Feminine in a pink dress and Bern is the somber Dark Feminine in a black dress.
• Light Is Not Good: She wears a pink Sweet Lolita outfit and has bright blonde hair, but sides with Beatrice and is every bit as cruel as any Witch in the setting.
• Lipstick Lesbian: Her clothing and magic utilize quite a lot of pink and cuteness, and she only has eyes for Bernkastel.
• Made of Explodium: Her candies, which are her weapons.
• The Masochism Tango: With Bernkastel. They fight each other in a game whenever they come across each other in the ocean of the kakera. The penalties for the loser are very severe cases of a Fate Worse than Death. And yet they always assure how much they "love" each other. They both greatly enjoy it.
• Meaningful Name: Lambdadelta in Greek letters equals 34, as did Takano's first name's kanji.
• Morality Pet: In a strange way, she's this to Bernkastel. Psycho Lesbian Unholy Matrimony though it is, Bernkastel's relationship with Lambdadelta actually serves to humanize Bernkastel, as it's the only thing in the entire series that's shown her to be capable of love of any sort, twisted though it may be... though even then, she does nothing as Lambdadelta is killed by Featherine.
• Mythology Gag: She signs off on Eva-Beatrice's succession because she feels for her bad childhood.
• Noble Demon: She will mercilessly toy with others' lives to get some amusement out of it, but she will never abandon those who work hard for the certainty to achieve their wishes.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: She isn't as childish or ditzy as she appears to be.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Toward Bernkastel. Lambda wants Beatrice to keep her game going forever because she wants to keep playing against Bern forever.
• Pass the Popcorn: She orders some for the final showdown in Dawn of the Golden Witch. Subverted because she actually uses this popcorn to influence the fight despite having to stay neutral.
• Psycho Lesbian: She claims to be in love with Bernkastel and her way of showing it sure is twisted. EP5 reveals that the feeling is mutual. See Bern for more info.
• Reality Warper: All witches are this. Being a Witch of the Senate, Lambdadelta is especially powerful. As the Witch of Certainty, she can also grant wishes and make things certain to occur as long as the one she blesses strives for it.
• Really 700 Years Old: Like all witches in the story, her age is more of a psychological thing.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The energetic Red Oni to Bern's emotionless Blue Oni. The roles sort of get switched in Chiru, especially EP8.
• Reused Character Design: Physically she looks like young Takano from Higurashi: When They Cry (and has her Seiyuu).
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: In Ep 8 Beatrice manages to stall Erika's armada simply by mentioning that Lambda has gathered her friends. Erika is aware that Lambdadelta has enough friends to build a noticeable country in sea of fragments. Even Bernkastel, after hearing this, described Lambdadelta's friends as some "crazy monsters".
• Stalker with a Crush: To Bern. The very reason Lambdadelta pressures Beatrice into keeping her game interesting is to make it into a cage where Lambdadelta can keep Bernkastel as her prisoner for all eternity.
• Tailor-Made Prison: Her initial plan for coming to Rokkenjima is to use Beatrice's game, make it endless and trap Bernkastel there. It's hard to say whether or not she actually would've done this given her real relationship with Bern but also her dickish qualities, but Bern counteracts it either way.
• Troll: Not nearly as bad as Bernkastel, but she'll still start sewing discord into the situation if she gets bored.
• Tsundere: Beatrice believes her to be such in one of the earlier extra Tea Parties. It isn't obvious at first, but it turns out to be more true than you'd think.
• Unholy Matrimony: With Bern. And while Bern's feelings for Lambda are a matter of the reader's perception, it's hard to call Lambda's love anything but genuine.
• Unrealistic Black Hole: She can create black holes on a whim.
• Villainous Breakdown: The entire Ushiromiya family begging her for help in EP8 leads her to chew everyone out harshly for ignoring both that she was just supposed to be a spectator, and that she'd be going against Featherine's and the Senate's wishes...
• Villainous BSoD: She has one in EP8, when she can't decide which is more important: the certainty of the family that a good ending will come, or her own well-being. Once Ange comes back just like everyone hoped, she warms up to the idea and decides to help them out in the end.
• Voice Changeling: In Episode 5 it's mentioned that she can change her voice at will, and she does the voice of the Man from 19 years ago, likely to hide his real identity. This raises the question of whether there really was a man calling Natsuhi or if it was some trick of Lambda's. The man turns out to have been Sayo Yasuda, since Will later states that in one game Sayo appears as a man. However Episode reveals that it was Battler on the phone the entire time, and he was revealed to be reading off a script for Sayo.
• What If?: Lambdadelta's game is revealed to be a major one, due to the fact it contradicts as to what's driving the entire plot. Lambda has it set up so that the epitaph is solved almost immediately by the detectives and not potential culprits, not only does it not adhere to the standard rules of Beatrice's normal games, but it also does not adhere to what Sayo would normally do. Instead of using the Epitaph to decide her fate and the fate of the Ushiromiyas, Sayo instead uses it as a cover in order to settle her grudge with Natsuhi. It blatantly ignores Sayo's entire point of her game with Battler. Lambda's Sayo isn't motivated by sorrow like normal and is instead motivated by pure unbridled hatred of Natsuhi that even makes her forget Battler's sin. In the end this turns Lambda's game from a normal whoduunit to a rather jarring version of Spot the Imposter.
• What Kind of Lame Power Is Heart, Anyway?: Lambda's ability is first introduced as "the power to kill unfailingly." Not a lame power at all, but the other magical characters have no trouble killing people on top of all of their other abilities. Then the "Lambdadelta's Diary" TIP and EP5 reveal what her power actually is...
• Wild Card: She'll essentially side with whoever can entertain her more. Luckily for the Ushiromiyas, Earn Your Happy Ending stories are the ones that entertain her the most.
• Willfully Weak: Likes to play this part, especially when Bern is involved.
• The Woman Behind the Man: Episode 3's Tea Party reveals Lambdadelta is the one granting Beatrice her power as a Witch, with the sole intention that Beatrice creates a perfect endless game to keep Bernkastel around forever. Lambdadelta reminds Beatrice that she can take away her power anytime she wants if Beatrice fails to satisfy her or tries to do anything other than keep the game going.
• Yandere Couple: She and Bern have very... peculiar ways to express how much they love each other by describing how they plan to horribly torture one another. After all, both are witches who revel in causing chaos and destruction so it's natural the affection between the two is very warped.
  Lambdadelta: "...Yeah I like Bern. I even love her. I would like to gouge out her eyes with a spoon so that they can see no other than me."
• You Monster!: Lambdadelta gives Featherine this treatment after getting utterly destroyed by Featherine. She takes it as a compliment.
• You Shall Not Pass!: In EP8, to give Battler and Ange time to take back the key of the Book of the Single Truth, Lambdadelta fights Bernkastel on her own to hold her back long enough. Lambdadelta actually does pretty well on her own... until Featherine shows up. Still needing to buy time for Battler and Ange, Lambdadelta charges at Featherine but ends up getting smashed into a bookshelf with all her limbs severed without knowing how the hell it happened. Luckily Featherine eventually rewrites the story to where Lambdadelta is alive and well again.
• Zen Survivor: And true to type, she's another Stealth Trickster Mentor in EP6.

Virgilia

The Witch of the Finite

Voiced by: Kikuko Inoue (JP)

"Using magic to break or kill is very easy. But real magic is one that can repair and resurrect."

The former Endless Witch/Beatrice, and Beatrice's mentor who taught her all about magic. Although she dislikes how Beatrice uses the power she has been bestowed, Virgilia is nonetheless loyal to her student and works to help Beatrice achieve victory. Apparently, her full name is "Publius Virgilia Maro".

From an anti-fantasy perspective, she is Kumasawa.

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• Beam Spam: Entirely possible in the fighting game through Gungnir.
• Butt-Monkey: In Episode 4, curiously. And hilariously.
• Eyes Always Shut: She only opens her eyes when she's making a scary Slasher Smile. In the anime, it's more like Eyes Always Half-Open.
• Formal Characters Use Keigo: In contrast to Beatrice's Antiquated Linguistics, Virgilia speaks a very formal and traditional Japanese to highlight her Yamato Nadeshiko traits.
• Giant Poofy Sleeves: Her Pimped-Out Dress has large puffs below the shoulders.
• Hime Cut: Blunt bangs, chin length sidelocks, and mid-back length straight hair. A traditional hairstyle befitting for a Yamato Nadeshiko.
• Improbable Weapon User: Her arsenal of weaponry in the fighting game includes daggers, the divine spear Gungnir, mirrors, and candlesticks.
• Lady of Black Magic: She has a very elegant demeanor and is a former Endless Witch, able to fight Beatrice in a magical duel with powerful Summon Magic.
• Love Informant: A variation. In EP5, she reveals to Battler that Beatrice had always wanted Battler to win their game and solve her mystery. She then compares their relationship to two teenagers in love waiting for the other to figure out how they feel. With this, Battler finally figures out Beatrice loves him.
• Mad Eye: What she looks like with her eyes fully open. It's actually less "mad" and more... kind of deformed.◊
• Magic Wand: Wields a simple, classic wooden wand, as shown in the anime, the PS3 port and the fighting games.
• Medium Awareness: In the fourth arc, she is sometimes aware of the user interface.
• Mentor Archetype: She is introduced as Beatrice's former mentor and mentors Battler in the Meta World now and then.
• The Mole: She acts as this in the third arc.
• Mystical White Hair: She has silver hair and she was Beatrice's magic teacher.
• Noblewoman's Laugh: Shares this with Kumasawa, her "real world" form, along with many expressions.
• No Fourth Wall: During the infamous Krauss vs. Goat scene.
• Not So Stoic: Virgilia is the most calm and even-tempered of all the witches. That's unless she's in the presence of Gaap and the demon's teasing causes Virgilia to lose all her composure, even resorting to somewhat childish fits of temper.
• Out-of-Character Moment: Virgilia of the fourth arc acts very differently from Virgilia of the other arcs. Justified since it's obviously Played for Laughs.
• Parental Substitute: She plays a mother figure role to Beatrice. It makes sense when you realize that Kumasawa, whom Virgilia is based on, was the closest thing to a mother Sayo Yasuda had.
• Pimped-Out Dress: Similar to Beatrice, Virgilia wears a floor-length black dress with a hoop skirt, puff sleeves, and a choker.
• Really 700 Years Old: Like with all witches, her age is a psychological thing.
• Religious and Mythological Theme Naming: She named herself after the Roman poet Virgil, as in Dante's guide to Beatrice.
• Summon Magic: Her meta-super summons fricking Odin and throws a giant spear at her enemy. On a minor scale, she can summon the goats to aid her.
• Team Mom: Despite the fact that she's not technically a mother (and there are four actual mothers in the cast), Virgilia takes this role, gently smoothing out problems with Beatrice's furniture, nurturing the goats and Chiesters, chastising Beatrice, and brewing black tea for anyone miserable.
• Trademark Favorite Food: Mackerel, just like Kumasawa.
• Villainous Breakdown: During Episode 4, though like most of her behaviour in that arc, it's Played for Laughs.
• Write Who You Know: An In-Universe example; Virgilia was based on Kumasawa by Sayo Yasuda, who saw Kumasawa as a mother figure and learned about the ghost stories of Rokkenjima and mystery novels from her.
• Yamato Nadeshiko: She's an elegant witch and Beatrice's mentor who will drop more than a few hints in order to help Battler succeed.
• Yaoi Fangirl: Played for Laughs in the TIP "Angel of 17 Years".

Eva-Beatrice

The Black Witch/The Golden Witch/The Endless Witch

Voiced by: Miki Itō (JP)

"Why don't you just give up and die?"

A "successor" to Beatrice who appears as a younger version of Eva and is in some sense, an embodiment of Eva's desires and lack of satisfaction of her place in the family and in general. The way she describes her ability is the power to turn anger into miracles. She also represents all the theories which place Eva as the culprit.

She makes her first appearance in the third arc, where she manifests on the island and orchestrates the remaining murders. In the fourth arc, she reappears as a representation of hatred born from the pain not only of Eva, but also Rosa and Kasumi Sumadera, called "The Black Witch". She makes her final appearance in Twilight of the Golden Witch.

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• The Ageless: When she first manifested, she could have been Eva's twin sister. Thing is, she looked the same, Sailor Fuku and all, when she briefly appeared years later after Eva found out she was never going to be the family head, and again in the present day before becoming a witch.
• Ambiguous Innocence: Present when she kills Rosa by twisting her happiest childhood dreams, but mostly dropped after that in favor of playing up a more aggressive form of insanity.
• Adaptational Nice Guy: Similarly to Bernkastel, she's nowhere near as malicious in Golden Fantasia, which plays up her wacky side.
• Animal Motifs: Being Beatrice's successor as the Golden Witch, her magic manifests itself as golden butterflies and at a certain point she compares herself to a butterfly about to come out of its chrysalis (Eva in this case). However, in reality she seems to be more aligned with spiders, starting from when she kills her sister by transformed her into a butterfly which gets eaten alive by a spider and uses the Red Truth in the form of a sticky cobweb.
• Anthropomorphic Personification: She's a personification of theories that place Eva as the culprit of the murders. In EP4, Ange also sees her as the "Black Witch" (who now encompasses Rosa, Kasumi, and Eva's suffering). In EP6, she also serves as a personification of Eva's My Beloved Smother tendencies towards George.
• Arc Villain: Upon becoming the new Beatrice, she supplants Beato as the Big Bad of Episode 3. In subsequent reappearances, she is downsized to a secondary antagonist.
• Asshole Victim: After all she has done in the third arc, it's immensely gratifying to watch her die by Beatrice's hand. Even in Alliance and Dawn it's very satisfying to see her get exactly what she deserves.
• Attention Whore: Wanting to impose herself at all costs as the true culprit of Rokkenjima Massacre and also embodying Eva's dissatisfied ego, Eva-Beatrice always tries to put all the attention of the public and readers on her. Revealed in EP8 to be due to Eva not wanting Ange to know the Awful Truth about her parents.
• Ax-Crazy: During Episode 3 she becomes this more and more, as she gets Drunk with Power. She also gets increasingly frustrated with Beatrice for telling her to tone down her murders after the latter got chewed out by Battler for being excessively cruel.
• Bad Boss: She acts incredibly demeaning toward all who work under her, especially when she feels they have failed her in some way. Even Belphegor sacrificing her own life to save Eva-Beatrice fails to earn her a shred of sympathy or gratitude.
• Bait the Dog: Aw, she's so happy with her new title. That's right, Battler, feel free to applaud!
• Big Sister Bully: The tortures she inflicts on Rosa, exploiting her childhood dreams and memories, represent how Eva has always tormented and berated her sister as a way to vent her frustration.
• Black Magic: According to Ange in the 4th arc. The general rule of thumb is that black magic heals pain by shoving pain onto others. White magic heals pain by creating good things to distract you.
• The Bully: Her entire character, her way of interacting with everyone by costantly making fun of them and her cruel and sadistic actions strongly impose her heavily as one, not only towards all her victims and subordinates but also towards her colleagues and superiors like Beatrice. Especially towards Ange and, indirectly, Maria in EP4.
• Burn the Witch!: When Battler and Beatrice question Eva-Beatrice's existence status both as a witch and as a culprit by blaming Eva directly, her body begins to burn and take on the shape of her human version.
• Cain and Abel: All the slaughterhouse that she combines in EP3, starting from the torture physically and psychologically Rosa, make her a perfect Cain. However, in EP8 everything is subverted when it turns out that she probably did what she did only to prevent her niece Ange discover that in reality the Cain among the 4 siblings is her father Rudolf.
• Catchphrase Insult: Heso kande shinjaeba~?! ("Why don't you just give up and die?!"); and various other phrases ending with -eba~?!. In a curious instance in Episode 8, she actually says Heso kande shinjaEVA~?!
• Control Freak: Episode 3 describes and portrays her as the union of Eva's repressed desires and grudges regarding her being unable to have everything she wants without anyone being able to fight back to her selfish will.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: What happens to the people she kills. Repeatedly.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Often she is the executing part of this.
• Cute and Psycho: Ain't she just adorable? Initially, we only get a bit of an inkling of how cruel she can really be. Later she drops the "cute" part altogether and becomes much more aggressive.
• Deceptive Disciple: She's supposed to be Beatrice's apprentice, but Eva-Beatrice has her own ideas of how to use her new magic.
• Disproportionate Retribution: Let's just say that she ''really'' didn't take Rosa's legitimate claim of her share very well. And then Beatrice came and turned her into a witch. Guess who her first victim is?
• Drunk on the Dark Side: From the very first time she uses her powers to kill, she easily gets extremely euphoric using them to create endless spectacular and chilling deaths and quickly revels in her role as a fairytale-like evil witch.
• Due to the Dead: In the EP8 manga, after Ange commits suicide upon finding out about the One Truth, she closes Ange's eyes.
• Enemy Without: To Eva Ushiromiya. She's essentially an embodiment of Eva's darkest desires and ambition.
• Enfant Terrible: She appears as Eva's younger self, but that doesn't mean she can't be ruthless and sadistic.
• Evil Aunt: She represents the way in which Ange sees Eva in the guilty role of the massacre.
• Evil Counterpart: According to Ange in EP4, she is the opposite of Maria - Eva-Beatrice takes out all her pain and rage on innocent and defenseless people with the help of her Black Magic, while Maria (before the Sakutaro's death) had learned to use her White Magic to cope with her suffering and create spells of happiness for others.
• Eviler than Thou: In EP3, she proves to be far more cruel and ruthless than Beatrice, to the point where Beatrice appears to undergo a Heel–Face Turn in order to stop her.
• Evil Is Hammy: Especially after she gets her Endless Witch powers; she practically breaks into Ham-to-Ham Combat with Beato after that. Not to mention that Miki Itō tends to get fairly creative with the delivery of her Catchphrase.
• Evil Laugh: In the PS3 version, Miki Itō gives us a childish, high-pitched, rapid-fire laugh, which should sound completely ridiculous but is somehow terrifying instead.
• Evil Matriarch: Dramatic type both for Ange (through abuse) and George's (through being an Education Mama).
• Fanservice: Played for Laughs in the TIP "Game Master Battler". She's told that she can't beat Erika in the popularity polls because her look isn't fanservicey enough (among other things). So she begs Battler to help her be more popular. This results in her wearing a ridiculous mishmash◊ of several Otaku fetishes (cat ears, Girlish Pigtails, a Sailor Fuku top, gym bloomers, and white thighhighs).
• A Form You Are Comfortable With: She states at one point to Ange that she only retains Eva's appearance because of her own lingering emotions towards her.
• Glass Cannon: Highlighted in her fight with George in the sixth game. As a witch, Eva-Beatrice has immeasurable offensive power, but if you can dodge or at least resist her attempts to kill you and get close enough, or get her guard down, she becomes extremely vulnerable.
• A God Am I: "My Power is a God's Power".
• Gold Fever: Her reaction when her human counterpart agrees to give Rosa her share in exchange for her silence speaks for itself.
• Groin Attack: Her grab in the fighting game.
• Hate Sink: Up to Episode 8 she was undoubtedly one of the most hated and despised characters in the story because of her free and inhuman cruelty, her self-centeredness, and her sadistic actions.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Her reaction when she discovers that as New Endless Witch can destroy and repair anything, including human lives.
• Heel–Face Turn: During EP8. It's probably more accurate to call it a Heel Ange Turn, though.
• Image Song: Der Schauspieldirektor
• Imaginary Friend: She was this to Eva, according to EP3. Not so friendly when she resurfaces in the present day.
• Immortal Immaturity: See The Ageless above. While Eva grew older, EVA did not, and still looks like Eva did in middle school, Sailor Fuku and all, before becoming a witch in the present day.
• Insufferable Genius: Despite her lack of experience and immaturity, she really is talented as a witch, mastering magic swiftly despite her relative youth in comparison to the other witches' old age. She knows it, and she flaunts it.
• It's All About Me: In Episode 3 she tortures and massacres the whole family (including her husband and son), simply because they are all guilty of preventing her from having every single gold bar to herself. When she replaces Beatrice for the execution of the murders, she quickly comes to see herself as a better witch than her predecessor, to the point of replacing Beatrice's self-portrait with hers. The rest of her antagonistic actions towards her predecessor are all dictated by the fact that she can't stand being held back and reprimanded.
• Jackass Genie: In EP3, she tortures Rosa by granting her childhood wishes in the most horrific ways possible; for example, she twists Rosa's old wishes of "drowning in a sea of delicious jelly" and "becoming a butterfly so she can fly everywhere freely" by literally drowning her in jelly and then turning her into a butterfly that gets caught in a spiderweb and eaten.
• Joshikousei: Her first form before taking the name Beatrice is a middle school aged Eva in a Sailor Fuku.
• Karma Houdini: In EP8, after helping Ange, she is forgiven for all the crimes she committed in the Magic ending to the point where she is allowed to enter the Golden Land with everyone else.
• Karmic Death: In the third arc she's finally punished for all her evil deeds by being almost totally eradicated and erased by Red Truth. In EP4 she is killed by Mammon (while assuming Eva's form) after she had belittled and teased Ange and Maria by destroying the latter's diary through Kasumi. And in EP6 she is killed by her son George as retribution for taking complete control of his life.
• Kick the Dog: Like Eva, she loves not only metaphorically kicking with words, but also literally and actively kicking her victims.
• Kick the Morality Pet: She at first has the intention to kill everyone in the family except Hideyoshi and George, knowing how important they are to Eva. However, she ends up killing Hideyoshi when he gets in her way and later she doesn't hesitate to kill George too.
• Kids Are Cruel: More evident in the VN, but this theme is hit a few different times with her in the third arc. Most obviously during her conversation with Eva after she's killed Hideyoshi.
• Leitmotif: Happiness of Marionette.
• Literal Split Personality: Sort of. She is an Anthropomorphic Personification of a side of Eva's personality. At some point she does cast herself off from Eva and operate independent of her, but when she gained that ability, and when she used it instead of playing puppet master with Eva's body, are both unclear.
• Magic Staff: It acts as her own version of the Ushiromiya Emblem, shared with Maria.
• My Beloved Smother: Appears as this to George in EP6, claiming his whole life was kept under her control through regimented education, tutoring and training. Symbolically he has to kill her to assert his independence.
• Narcissist: As she is basically presented in the third arc as Young Eva and explored further when she becomes Eva-Beatrice, where she sincerely shows that she does not feel horror in her monstrous actions by justifying them and considering Eva's emotional relationships and morals an obstacle to the realization of their childhood dream of be Kinzo's heir. This goes so far beyond that in the end, after Hideyoshi's murder, her own human adult counterpart turns against her and distances herself from her even with a "The Reason You Suck" Speech.
• Oh, Crap!: Her reaction to Beatrice denying the existence of all witches near the end of EP3 has her panicking. She gets held down by Ronove as Beatrice finishes the denial and her existence is erased.
• Older Than She Looks: Kind of. She's technically about as old as Eva, despite appearing as a younger version of her.
• One-Woman Army: Not only she can imprison an entire army of theory goats in her sticky red truth web trap with Erika's help and then kill them all easily, but she takes out all the barriers that protect Eva's diary key while simultaneously guiding Ange, Battler and Lambdadelta to it, and randomly eliminates at least dozens of Bernkastel's cats before she is then eliminated off-screen.
• Pet the Dog: Eva-Beatrice is unexpectedly kind to Ange in EP8, going as far as to help out the heroes for Ange's sake at one point. This is to represent how, despite everything, Eva always cared for Ange deep down.
• The Power of Hate: How her magic is described by Ange in the fourth arc.
• Psychopathic Womanchild: Despite having chronologically 50 years as the true Eva, she mentally acts in an even more childish, unpleasant and spoiled way than one would expect from her already younger appearance. Coupling that with the unusually sweet and cute methods that she uses to kill and torture Rosa and Maria out of sheer sadism makes her a perfect example of this trope.
• Purple Is Powerful: She wears almost totally purple outfit after becoming a full-fledged witch and her Endless Magic is noticeably more powerful than Beatrice's.
• Reality Warping: After having obtained most, if not almost all of Beatrice's powers, she begins to show off her new magical abilities by experimenting them on Rosa and her daughter, bringing to reality all the dreams, desires and memories of her ex-little sister when she was still a child in the most creatively cruel ways.
• Reformed, but Not Tamed: Eva-Beatrice is firmly on Ange's side during Episode 8, providing assistance behind the scene. She remains as arrogant and sadistic as ever.
• Sadist: She's extremely sadistic, both on the gameboards and in the Meta World. She can't have enough of brutally torturing and killing her victims over and over again with her magic.
• Sailor Fuku: Before she becomes a witch, she wears a sailor uniform from her school days.
• Shadow Archetype: She's the personification of Eva's ambition and desire to be in control of everything in her life, as well as what she would be willing to do if she decided getting the family headship and fortune was more important than her husband and son.
• Sibling Murder: She repeatedly kills and revives Rosa and her daughter in order to have torturing them with her new magical powers just for fun and later, through the Chiester 45 and Chiester 410, she also indirectly kills Krauss and Rudolf together with their respective wives.
• Silent Scapegoat: Just like Beatrice for Battler, she is this for Ange. Eva-Beatrice deliberately let Ange hate and blame her as the culprit so Ange wouldn't find out the truth about her parents.
• Smug Snake: She's incredibly arrogant, treats her allies poorly whenever they fail to entertain her and she acts like a total jerk when she feels safe. So naturally, she's reduced to a screaming mess when the situation inevitably ceases to go her way.
• Spirit Advisor: A malevolent form. She serves as this to Eva in the third arc (before she gets her witch powers) and Kasumi Sumadera in the fourth.
• Split-Personality Team: Her and Eva's original dynamic. When Eva was younger, EVA would motivate her via Tough Love. This changed when she resurfaced in EP3 after being gone for so many years since Eva didn't need her anymore.
• Spoiled Brat: Just look at the pathetic and pitiful state in which we find her immediately after Rosa convinced Eva to share the gold to see it.
• Spooky Painting: Look closely at this picture. Nothing strange? Now try to pause the video at the beginning, and jump directly at the end.
• The Starscream: She aims to usurp Beatrice's name and role as the culprit.
• Superpowered Evil Side: She's the incarnation of Eva's worst personality traits and selfish ambitions taken to the extreme. Since Eva-Beatrice is a witch, she's much more powerful than the human Eva in the fantasy scenes and can use magic for very gruesome things.
• Teens Are Monsters: She is a version of Eva stuck in her adolescence but she is also one of the most dangerous and sadistic witches that you would like to deal with.
• Torture Technician: She has very... creative ways of torturing her victims.
• Tough Love: Her jerkish behavior was initially just to motivate Eva to work harder, but in the present, said behavior evolves into something much worse.
• Viler New Villain: So much so that her predecessor and inherited furniture are humanised through their disapproval of her depravity.
• Villainous Breakdown: Experiences this several times, especially when she learns that she can't destroy Beatrice's heart but tries to squash it beneath her foot anyway, as well as her Oh, Crap! moment near the end of EP3.
• Unskilled, but Strong: Eva-Beatrice consistently overcomes her youth and lack of experience through sheer talent and determination. During her logic battles with Battler, she began the game outclassed by her more experienced opponent, who had nearly three episodes worth of practice with Beatrice, whereas she was literally taught the rules minutes before they began. However, with every loss, Eva-Beatrice improves alarmingly fast, culminating in her final riddle, which left Battler utterly helpless and Ronove and Virgilia in awe of what a meticulous and thorough checkmate it was.
• Unwitting Pawn: During the end of Episode 3, Beatrice and Virgilia confess that they have been manipulating her to use the Sun and North Wind Strategy against Battler.
• Wicked Witch: She is the physical manifestation Eva's ambitions to become the family head, and is seen as exaggeratedly cruel and sadistic even by the standards of other witches. Then in EP8, she abruptly becomes a force for good, and works to help Ange. Which is justified, considering how Eva hid the truth from her niece into the point of painting herself as a villain. Eva-Beatrice might also represent her desire to reconnect with her favorite niece.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity: Finding tons of gold (or, in other words, becoming able to use magic) isn't good for her psyche.
• Would Hurt a Child: Although she is not the first character to do so, the cruelly sadistic methods of torture she subjects Rosa and Maria to, simply for her own sick enjoyment, make her the most remarkable character in entire series to represent this trope.
• Zero-Approval Gambit: She made herself as evil as possible so Ange would never think of blaming her parents.

Ange-Beatrice

The Witch of Resurrection/The Witch of Truth/The Golden Witch/The Endless Witch

See Ange Ushiromiya entry on the Umineko: When They Cry - 1998 Humans page.

MARIA

The Witch of Origins

See Maria Ushiromiya entry on the Umineko: When They Cry - 1986 Cousins page.

Goldsmith

See Kinzo Ushiromiya entry on the Umineko: When They Cry - 1986 Parents page.

BATTLER

The Endless Sorcerer

See Battler Ushiromiya entry on the Umineko: When They Cry - 1986 Cousins page.

Erika Furudo

The Witch of Truth

See her entry on the Umineko: When They Cry - Meta page.

Featherine Augustus Aurora

The Majestic Witch of Theatregoing, Drama and Spectating

Voiced by: Michiko Neya (JP)

"For one such as I, who knows everything, everything is boring... However, I don't dislike letting the ignorant read my works to see what kind of reaction they have."

The Majestic Witch of Theatergoing, Drama, and Spectating. Featherine first appears in Episode 6 when Ange meets the mystery writer Tooya Hachijo and is invited to read her last forgery, Dawn. Unlike the other witches, she feels satisfied with acting as an observer of the game, although that changes a bit as she gains interest in finding the answer to Beatrice's riddles.

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• Affably Evil: She is completely indifferent towards the suffering of everybody else, but she sure is polite.
• All-Powerful Bystander: She has more than enough power to solve any problem in the setting or destroy everything in the blink of an eye if she wanted to. Fortunately, Featherine prefers to remain a spectator for the most part while she lets Bernkastel cause all the trouble she wants. The one time she does intervene in the plot during her "fight" with Lambdadelta we see that everything would have been lost for the main characters if Featherine was an active enemy.
• Always Someone Better: Bernkastel is regarded as the strongest Witch, but even she knows not to get on Featherine's bad side. Even Lambdadelta, who was more than holding her own against Bernkastel earlier, is terrified at the thought of having Featherine as an opponent. It makes sense when you realize Featherine is not just a Witch, but a Creator as well. She may just be a Witch in name only.
• Ambiguously Evil: Both Bern and Lambda describe her as extremely nasty, and indeed she doesn't think much of humans, but she doesn't really have any Kick the Dog moments, and in the end she gives up on publicly revealing the contents of Eva's diary, thus preserving the catbox as Battler and Beato wished.
• Antiquated Linguistics: Similarly as Beatrice, Featherine speaks in an old-fashioned manner, often referring to humans as "child of man."
• Author Avatar: Featherine is implied to be Tooya's avatar. And incidentally, Ryūkishi07's.
• Classy Cane: She carries a cane that makes her look even more majestic.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Delivers one to Lambdadelta in Episode 8. Special mention to the fact that Featherine didn't even have fight at all; she simply wrote down "I utterly defeated Lambdadelta and sliced her into pieces". And then poof, Lambda is completely dismembered.
• Curtains Match the Window: Purple hair and eyes.
• The Dreaded: Anyone that can inspire genuine fear from Lambdadelta and even Bernkastel is definitely not to be trifled with.
• Evil Mentor: Implied to have been Bernkastel's in the ???? of EP6.
• Expy: She shares many deliberate similarities with Hanyuu from Higurashi: When They Cry. Featherine's memory device looks like horns, the name Augustus Aurora references Hanyuu's Verbal Tic, "Hanyuu" means "feather," Featherine addresses people as "Child of Man," and Featherine says that Bernkastel used to be her miko. To complement it, when Ange first meets her, "Over the Sky" plays. It was Hanyuu's Leitmotif in Higurashi.
• The Fog of Ages: She has lived for so long that she needs a special horseshoe-shaped device around her head to keep her memories and avoid insanity.
• God Is Evil: Averted, though just barely. She's not so much evil as she is uncaring of how she achieves her goals... though given the things she does do in the story (and apparently before it), you'd be forgiven for thinking it was played straight.
• Graceful Loser: Upon Bernkastel's defeat at the end of EP8, Featherine actually applauds the Ushiromiya family and decides not to open the Book of the Single Truth in light of it, and lets everyone go. She's even kind enough to inform Ange that Lambdadelta had also been revived by her newly-acquired powers, just not in the room. And still in pieces.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Featherine is said to be a Witch thousands of times more powerful and evil than Bernkastel could ever be, but she never becomes a direct villain to the story (the closest she comes is EP8 where the party she's holding during which she will read from the Book of the Single Truth directly threatens the continued existence of the Ushiromiyas, which corresponds with Ikuko announcing she will reveal the contents of Eva's diary to the public in the real world 90's period) and remains a bystander for the most part. However, she is indirectly responsible for all the problems from EP7 afterwards as she was the one who gave Bernkastel the power to keep messing with the game board because she wanted Bernkastel to rip the game apart for her and give her the answers to the mystery.
• Greek Chorus: With Ange in EP6, as they read and comment the Episode itself which she has written.
• Hime Cut: Same as Tooya Hachijō, Featherine has this hairstyle. In her case, it's meant to symbolize her status as a high-ranking witch.
• Image Song: Gloria in excelsis Dea
• Impossibly-Low Neckline: She wears a strapless light pink ball gown which resembles a kimono. She isn't at risk of a Wardrobe Malfunction since she has a large kimono belt to hold the dress.
• Insult Backfire: When Lambda pulls a You Monster! on her, she takes it as a compliment, which has really horrifying implications of the amount of chaos she caused in her distant past.
• It Amused Me: The main reason she doesn't fit into God Is Evil instead. Physical Godliness and lack of a Freudian Excuse notwithstanding, she's still a Witch at heart and will do whatever it takes to keep herself entertained.
  • The definitive example is that she's ultimately the one responsible for bringing Bernkastel as we know her into existence. It's heavily implied that she was the one who abandoned Bern as a piece in the Unwinnable game (that she ended up winning anyway), likely through abandoning her avatar Hanyuu and rendering her impotent in guiding Rika Furude toward the game's end goal, and it's made clear in the narration that Featherine was the one who taught what would eventually become her miko and the Cruelest Witch. All because she was bored and wanted someone to help stave off future boredom. It's not so much that she meant harm by creating Bern, more that she doesn't care as long as she is entertained.
• Lack of Empathy: Definitely, but better off than Bernkastel at least. Like any other Witch, Featherine sees human lives as nothing but means of entertainment, but she can show her respect to her opponents when it's due and at least now, doesn't seek to actively make others miserable for amusement's sake.
• Leitmotif: A Single Moment
• The Man Behind the Man: Once Featherine is officially introduced in EP6, she becomes this to Bernkastel.
• Manipulative Bitch: In the past, she's used Bernkastel as her monkey wrench to unlock the mysteries of worlds and game boards alike, whether Bern wanted to do it or not. Worse yet, Bern was aware she was being used but couldn't do anything about it because Featherine was just that good. This does in fact happen in the story, where she makes Bern the Game Master to crack the mystery of Rokkenjima when the rest of the cast loses interest in it, using Bern's desire for revenge against the family as her motivation.
  • If you want a more "literal" example, she can use her power to rewrite the script of reality itself and have people do as she dictates. And you would never even know she's doing it.
• Meaningful Name:
  • There is a bit of speculation on her name (Featherine>Feather>Ha>Hanyū).
  • She shares a name with Emperor Augustus, who appears in Virgil's Propaganda Piece The Aeneid and Dante's The Divine Comedy.
• Mysterious Watcher: Bernkastel and Lambdadelta weren't the only ones to take an interest to the mystery of Rokkenjima, though Featherine stands out because the cast, the readers and even her former miko are unaware that she's even there until the end of EP6.
• Noble Demon: Featherine may be callous about lives ruined or lost in her pursuit of amusement, but she always appears to reward generously those she could've controlled by force, and shows mercy to opponents she's defeated. Even if purely out of virtue, she's a Graceful Loser.
• Offstage Villainy: Bernkastel, the cruelest example of a witch so far seen, finds her a hundred times more horrific than she could ever be. The evidence is suggested at, but never concretely shown. Within the series, Featherine never does anything nearly as horrible as the other witches. Of course, Bernkastel is no doubt very biased, seeing as how she came into existence because of Featherine's callousness and indifference. She probably has room to exaggerate.
• The Older Immortal: By far the oldest witch in the series.
• The Omnipotent: Without a doubt, the most powerful character in the setting. She's perfectly capable of pausing the plot when she wants a scene to play out a different way.
• Outside-Context Problem: Needless to say Featherine is in a whole other league compared to the other witches Battler deals with in the story, which is really saying something. A single wave of her hand to make Bernkastel the Game Master is all she needed to do turn Battler's happy ending into a non-ending.
• Overly Long Name: Several characters have trouble with her full name; in the case of Bern though, it's more that she doesn't bother to remember. If that's long, try adding her title and home to it: "Lady Featherine Augustus Aurora the Great Witch of Theatergoing, Drama and Spectating's Noble City of Carefully Selected Books."
• Really 700 Years Old: She is said to be older than Bernkastel and Lambdadelta, both who are said to be centuries old. By the way it's alluded, Featherine might as well be a Time Abyss.
• Retired Monster: Given what Bernkastel and Lambadelta say about (and to) her, it's implied she was a far worse Chaotic Evil than them in the past and now has just retired from active villainy due to incredibly old age.
• Rewriting Reality: Her power as a Witch/Creator and as an Author Avatar. Featherine can literally rewrite the script of reality itself to make events go as however she likes. She doesn't even need to write how things go, she only needs to write the result.
• Spanner in the Works: If it weren't for Featherine's growing interest in the mystery of Rokkenjima, the story would've ended with Erika's defeat at the end of EP6 as Bernkastel was out of ways to meddle with the game board. Wanting the answers to the mystery however and seeing that no one at Rokkenjima was interested in said mystery anymore, she personally intervenes and has Bernkastel cut to the heart of the matter. Suffice it to say things rapidly go south from there...
• Story-Breaker Power:
  • Literally. When Lambdadelta tries to attack her with magic, Featherine just says that she doesn't like the development of the story, stops time and begins editing the script of the story herself. Not willing to write a fight scene at the moment, she starts from the end of the fight where she dictates Lambdadelta was smashed into a bookshelf and had all her limbs severed. She doesn't even think about how she accomplished such a brutal attack, deciding to "figure it out later". When Featherine starts time again, Lambdadelta ends up just as she wrote, with "what the fuck just happened" being her last conscious thoughts before dying.
  She couldn't comprehend the 'something' that Featherine had killed her with. However, that was only natural. After all, Featherine herself hadn't decided what the 'something' was. However, Lambdadelta did understand one thing. She was already dead.
  • A blink-and-you'll-miss-it case: it's made apparent that in order to become a Game Master for a game board, you need to have a complete and utter understanding of the mechanics and mysteries of that board. Bernkastel doesn't have that, so she has to use other means to meddle with the board, which eventually fail… until Featherine shows up before the seventh game. She basically just says "You're the Game Master now, Bern." And then poof, she is.
• Troll: Maybe. See Retired Monster above due to implied status.
• You Cannot Grasp the True Form: The memory device around her head also preserves her form. At one point in the past it got damaged, abruptly changing her personality and appearance. Her witch power also allows her to weaponize this. Refer to the spoiler in Story-Breaker Power above.

Piece

Voiced by: Nao Tōyama (JP)

A Witch who appears to crash the Ushiromiya's party in the bonus story Last Note of the Golden Witch. She has the power to erase game pieces from existence and challenges Battler, Beatrice and Ange to a simple game: finding out who she is.

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• Always Someone Better: She boasts in the Red Truth, in detail no less, that she has much more experience solving riddles than Beatrice and is much better at it, and she found Kinzo's epitath riddle easy and regrets not being able to solve it alongside Beatrice in reality. Beatrice doesn't take these words lightly.
• Cannot Spit It Out: After Ange rudely dismisses Piece's motives as a witch (in front of Beatrice, no less), Battler makes a passionate speech about how witches are lonely, but don't have the ability to express their feelings outside of games, so he will take Piece's challenge seriously so that her feelings don't go to waste. Piece is so touched that she says that just hearing those words makes challenging Battler worth the trouble.
• Driven to Suicide: She erases herself so that Battler and Ange won't have to acknowledge a future where almost everyone lives Happily Ever After because Asumu took Kyrie's place as an Ushiromiya and Ange remained as an illegitimate child, and that Asumu would torment Ange with this future because of her grudge towards Kyrie stealing her family after she died.
• Due to the Dead: Her ability to Ret-Gone her victims is referred to as excruiciatingly cruel because nobody will mourn the dead after they die. She not only swallows their lives, but their "dignity" as a human who lived, too.
• Good All Along: Despite her antagonistic nature and intent to erase Kyrie and Ange, she's ultimately revealed to be Battler's loving mother Asumu brought back by Featherine. Piece admits she wanted to hurt Kyrie and Ange but had a Jerkass Realization after meeting Ange. She eventually parts on good times with Battler, Beatrice, and Ange after her identity's revealed.
• Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: Piece's game is fairly straightforward, however there were decidedly cruel undertones to what the game was supposed to accomplish. If the 3 were unable to find out who she was, then she wins. The real goal was to get them to acknowledge that had Asumu lived, then nothing bad would've happened to the Ushiromiyas. This would've been at the cost of Ange's happiness and place in the family as Asumu living would turn Ange into an illegitimate child. Piece intended to cause Ange suffering for the crime of being born from Rudolf and Kyrie's union, and having to acknowledge Piece as Asumu would have cemented that. However Piece takes a third option and sabotages her own game so that she wouldn't win or lose.
• It's All My Fault: Piece, as Asumu, blames herself for what happened to Beatrice, Battler, and the rest of the family, stating if she hadn't died when she did she could've been there to help both of them and stopped a lot of suffering from happening. Unfortunately she also acknowledges such a world would require Ange to not be a part of the Ushiromiyas because she'd be an illegitimate child, and apologizes for trying to hurt Ange after getting to know her.
• Kill and Replace: The first thing she does in the game is murder Kyrie and take her place as Rudolf's wife. Which foreshadows that she is really Asumu Ushiromiya, Rudolf's previous wife.
• Leitmotif: Busy Devils, an unused Luck Ganriki track unearthed just for her.
• Metaphorically True: She declares in the Red Truth that she is a person that has existed from episodes 1-8 and had the ability to erase people during this time, but she's never shown it off to Battler's team before. Because her true power in reality is based in For Want Of A Nail, and she's a Posthumous Character.
• Point of Divergence: Her game portrays an alternate reality where Asumu remained as Rudolf's wife, which averts Batter and Shannon's detached relationship and ultimately, the Rokkenjima massacre, while Kyrie and Ange would never be recognized as proper members of the Ushiromiya family. Ange even briefly feels that her mere birth messed up the family's future.
• The Power of Hate: Piece was born from the lingering feelings of hatred from Asumu's spirit. She was livid when she discovered that Rudolf had remarried Kyrie and fathered Ange with her. A major source of drama comes from her own feelings of hatred towards what Ange represents, but at the same time the shame of being a mother who knows she is placing so much guilt on a child unfairly.
• Prehensile Hair: She can use them to constrict people and crush them, which is how she consumes them.
• Ret-Gone: The people she eats not only die, but disappear from everyone's memories. Her victims in the story she presents are those whose fates would've been radically changed if she had been allowed to exist during 1986. Kyrie and Ange would no longer be recognized as Ushiromiyas, Sayo wouldn't have suffered due to Battler's absence, Kinzo's death wouldn't have been concealed, and Genji and Sayo would have no further attachments to Rokkenjima and would have left. In the story, Kyrie is her first victim, and Piece takes her place as Rudolf's wife. When Ange refuses to acknowledge Piece as her mom in place of Kyrie, Piece erases her too. And while Beatrice, Kinzo, Shannon, Kanon, and Genji all see Piece as a member of the Ushiromiya family, they still detect her as an outside threat. They try to fight her off together, but Piece erases them one by one until none are left.
• The Reveal: She is the witch form of Asumu Ushiromiya, brought back by Featherine to present a fragment that turns out to be a hypothetical world where Asumu hadn't died and she played a pivotal role in solving the epitaph much earlier.
• So Proud of You: Hearing Battler's heartfelt speech at not mocking the identities and motives of witches causes Piece to think her job was worth it, if only to see how much her son had grown.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: Piece acts like an eccentric and cruel witch early on, almost like Erika Furudo, but she drops her quirks and becomes serious when discussing her motives as the culprit of her story. When Piece reveals her motives by stating them in the Red Truth despite it putting her at a major disadvantage, everyone else is stunned at the change in attitude.
  ...That calm intensity made everyone gulp. Right now, she was not speaking as the witch of the gameboard. She was speaking from the heart of the culprit. ...This was a confession.
• Square Race, Round Class: Piece is the embodiment of Asumu's anger and hatred, and despite this Piece wasn't able to continue with the game in a serious capacity. After spending time getting to know Ange, Piece finds herself unable to continue with her cruel game which is considerably unwitch-like behaviour. Piece even mentions that had they met in real life they would've been fast friends, and regrets all the pain she intended to inflict on her. Towards the end she can't even continue the farce and basically tells Battler, Beatrice, and Ange who she is without saying her name.
• Verbal Tic: Coins "pisu" or "pi−su" at the end of her sentences, at least when she's goofing around.
• Wham Line:
  Piece, in Red Truth: "Ange. ....Of course you wouldn't know. ....Because. Even though you know my name, we have never met even once. Furthermore, I will say this. Until I became the Witch of the Piece, I did not know your name, or even that you existed."
  Ange: "T-Then I'd like to know the opposite as well! Did you meet onii-chan, or Beato?!"
  Piece: "I'll answer!! Did I meet those two humans? I didn't just meet them. I listened to their hobbies. I listened to them talk about fashion. I listened to them talk about what they liked. About the weather, or the weirdly shaped shells they found on the beach. We really had so many meaningless conversations! I was always willing to talk for hours if I could see their smiling faces...!!!"
  • Piece even mentioned that her revealing those words were the equivalent of jumping and flailing around since it reveals precisely who she is.

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