Sandbox / Steven Universe The Main Diamonds

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

Yellow Diamond

Yellow Diamond

Voiced by: Patti LuPone (English), Gara Takashima (Japanese), Giò Giò Rapattoni (Italian)

^{Click here to see her mural.}

"This is what White Diamond expects of all of us. From the thinnest flake of mica to the deepest, hardest stone, we all must make sacrifices for the sake of our perfect empire!"

The first Diamond to be mentioned and the second to make an appearance. She commands Homeworld's military, is in charge of the Cluster geo-weapon project, and is the yellow Gem depicted on the mural from "Serious Steven". She briefly appears in the extended theme song, and premieres properly in "Message Received".

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• Affably Evil: After discovering that Rose Quartz/Steven is Pink Diamond in "Reunited", she stops her rampage and in the following episode, agrees to help Steven cure Corruption and ceases her hostility towards him and even the Crystal Gems.
• Alien Invasion: In "Reunited", she and Blue Diamond attack the Earth in an attempt to get revenge on "Rose" for allegedly shattering Pink Diamond.
• Aloof Big Sister: To Pink, as revealed in "Jungle Moon". The flashback from Pink's point-of-view showed Yellow being cold and distant towards her, treating her like a nuisance while she was planning an invasion, and implying she doesn't view Pink as an equal, throwing an Acting Your Intellectual Age question at her younger Cheerful Child fellow Diamond. This is part of why Rose/Pink underestimated how she and the other Diamonds actually cared about her when she ultimately decided to fake her own death. However, "Familiar" reveals that Pink always managed to make her laugh, implying that Yellow wasn't all cold towards her.
• Anger Born of Worry: While she legitimately cares for Blue and Pink, the only ways she seems to know how to show her concern is to put on a professional face and reprimand them, upgrading to anger when it persists. She meets with Blue at the Human Zoo in "That Will Be All" to remind her that she is shirking her responsibilities, revealing her vulnerable side only at the end of her Villain Song. In the beginning of "Legs From Here to Homeworld", the first thing she does is demand an explanation for everything that has happened (why Steven looks and sounds nothing like Pink, why Pink faked her death, etc.), but she is noticeably less hostile, helping heal Nephrite at Steven's request and limiting herself to sarcastic quips.
• Anguished Declaration of Love: Non-romantic example. As she sings to Blue, they will always miss Pink Diamond: "Yes, of course we still love her, and we're always thinking of her..." Yellow has a miserable expression when she sings the second refrain of this.
• Anti-Regeneration: Her lighting doesn't just poof Gems, it can keep them from regenerating for days.
• Ascended Meme: With every single occurrence of the fandom depicting her as a giraffe with a stretchable neck, it eventually happens during a dream sequence in "Together Alone".
• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: Both her shoulders and upper torso resemble armor, and she has a warlike and overtly aggressive personality compared to Blue Diamond.
• The Atoner: In "Homeworld Bound", it's revealed that she now seeks to make up for her "awful" Gem experiments by fixing the Gems she once shattered. She even tells Steven her intention to fix the shattered Gems made to create the Cluster!
• Ax-Crazy: It is clear from her first appearance that she has an extremely short fuse.
• Bad Boss:
  • Although very displeased with Peridot's apparent failure on Earth, she does offer a ship to retrieve her before the Cluster destroys it. Then Peridot insults her, and Yellow Diamond tries to kill her for it.
  • In "The Trial", while poofing Blue Zircon for suggesting a fellow Diamond was responsible for Pink's shattering may have been understandable, she then poofs her own Zircon. It's unclear whether this was because Prosecuting Zircon heard too much, or because Yellow was just lashing out at her for speaking at the wrong time, most likely the latter given that she didn't shatter Pink Diamond.
  • A flashback/vision from Pink Diamond's point-of-view shows Yellow Diamond casually threatening to personally shatter a subordinate and her entire crew if they fail her.
• Be Careful What You Say: She told Pink angrily to act like a Diamond and stop being bratty if she wants a colony. Well, when Pink got her colony and prepared to destroy the Earth... she grew to genuinely love it and ended up rebelling against Yellow.
• Benevolent Boss: Surprisingly, she has her moments too. She seems fond of Yellow Pearl and treats her with respect, giving her real work to do as her secretary instead of having her around to look pretty. Also, even when Peridot informed her about her failed mission on Earth, she did offer her a ship to come back to the Homeworld.
• Berserk Button:
  • Anything to do with the Earth or Pink Diamond's demise — poor Peridot's attempts to reason with her never had a chance. Ironically enough she also displays little patience for being flattered and fawned over. She clearly prefers others to be respectful, but concise.
  • Don't interfere with her attempts to get revenge on Rose Quartz for shattering Pink Diamond, even if you're Blue Diamond. Fortunately, her reaction to the truth is far more pleasant than one would expect.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Often serves in this role with Blue Diamond. They even invade the Earth together. It's also shown that Blue, Yellow, Pink, and White are part of this as a Dysfunctional Family archetype.
• Big Sister Bully: Not intentionally, but her constant dismissal of Pink, manhandling her for slights such as batting at her communication device, combined with her refusal to let Pink spare the Earth, led Pink to dislike Yellow and believe she never cared about her. In the present day she seems to have realized this, as she blames herself for Pink's "death". Then she snaps back when "Pink", actually Steven, fuses with a human and she poofs the Crystal Gems and a Jade for coming to Stevonnie's defense before locking up the latter. She finally realizes she's this after enforcing Homeworld's strict rules forces her to attack Blue Diamond.
• Big Sister Instinct: She holds Blue Diamond protectively when they are confronted with "Rose Quartz" in "The Trial", which is understandable considering Rose allegedly shattered her other fellow Diamond, Pink Diamond.
• Broken Pedestal: Peridot's faith in her is shattered when she finally reestablishes contact with her in an attempt to argue that the Earth is more useful intact, only for Yellow Diamond to make it very clear that she wants the Earth destroyed out of spite and revenge, rather than for any logical reason. Peridot ultimately turns on her when it's clear that Yellow Diamond won't see reason.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: She's one of the most brutal and short-tempered characters shown throughout the series, but deeply loves Blue and Pink and bursts into tears upon realizing how her behavior towards her littlest fellow Diamond drove her away.
• The Brute: Easily the most physically violent of her fellow Diamonds, and the one who is the best fighter. However, she's far from stupid, and despite her giant size is wickedly fast.
• Brutal Honesty:
  • She definitely has her moments.
    Peridot: I wouldn't have called just to waste your time with a report.
    Yellow Diamond: You already have.
  • When Steven complains that it's hard to talk with White Diamond, Yellow Diamond tells him that getting two and a half words in a conversation with White is a record. She bluntly says that White has been trapped in her mind and the only reason Steven got to talk to her at all was because Pink was White's favorite.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday:
  • When it comes to any planet except Earth, she treats planetary genocide like anyone would a desk job and seems more bored with it than anything else. Then again, we haven't seen any intelligent life aside from Gems and humans, so this may be understandable. It turns out that it's less she's bored and more she's long since devolved into doing it solely in an attempt to get White Diamond to give her any acknowledgement at all, something she knows is a distant or if not impossible goal. As of the Movie, she's liberated her colonies.
  • In "Reunited", an excited Peridot asks if Yellow remembers calling her a Clod. She denies it with a bored expression before immediately zapping her with an Agony Beam.
• The Chains of Commanding: Despite being one of Homeworld's rulers, one gets the impression that she's "performing her assigned role" as much as the lower-ranking Gems, telling Blue Diamond that they have to appear as strong, stoic leaders and do their jobs. She also seems to have taken over the bulk of her fellow Diamonds' duties since Pink was "shattered", Blue's resulting depression caused her to neglect her duties, and White Diamond withdrew into solitude long ago — no wonder she's irritable. She seems to dislike over-the-top flattery and implies that she leaves the long-term strategizing to her Sapphires.
  • In 'Change Your Mind', she's forced to admit that she's been repressing her discontent with the way White Diamond does things for a long time, partly out of (well-founded) fear of White's reaction.
• Character Development:
  • For a long time in the original series, she's presented as a cold, ruthless, and ill-tempered tyrant who couldn't care less about organic lifeforms. As of Future, however, she dismantles the Gem Empire, becomes far more pleasant, and is now even willingly fixing the Gems she once shattered. She's also shown to now have plants in her private rooms, in contrast to her former disdain for organic life.
  • Pink Diamond resented how Yellow never listened to her; Steven encounters the same issue. Future shows that she has gotten better about her boundaries towards Steven and doing her best to hear him out when he's on the verge of a breakdown. It doesn't work, but it's the thought that counts.
  • Like her fellow Diamond Blue, she is disdainful of cross-fusions, to the point that she locked up Stevonnie for fusing at the Era 3 ball by accident. In Future, she works with Garnet to help calm down Steven without a moment's hesitation.
• Classic Villain: She represents Ambition, Pride, and Wrath.
• Color-Coded Elements: She can control yellow lightning.
• The Comically Serious: After giving a genuinely unsettling Shut Up, Kirk! to Peridot in "Message Received", being called a "clod" prompts a rather hilarious expression of shocked indignation. Unfortunately for those on the receiving end in "The Trial", said wrath suddenly becomes much less funny.
• Control Freak: She wouldn't allow the enthusiastic Pink to assist her in any way while colonizing a planet, not even allowing her younger fellow Diamond to contact the fleet commander on her behalf, getting irate when Pink merely touches her control panel and bats at the keys, though this is understandable considering Pink's attitude at the time.
• Cool Aunt: After her Heel–Face Turn in 'Change Your Mind' she, like Blue, becomes this toward Steven. She finally starts calling Steven by his name instead of Pink, and becomes protective of him, telling him to run back to Earth in her ship while she and Blue distract White, and later eyeing Jasper when the Corrupted Gems are cured to make sure she doesn't attack Steven. When the Diamonds leave Earth, her ship flashes a quick peace sign as a goodbye.
• Cool Big Sis: Yes, even as a villain she had shades of this. Yellow has been shown to always do what Pink and Blue want (especially the latter), sometimes without them even asking first, and even going against what she wants/would do. Pink wants a colony? Fine, she can get a colony. Pink's weird new half-organic form wants help healing a corrupted Gem? It's Yellow who first agrees to help. Pink's weird new half-organic form is really upset that the healing didn't stick? Yellow suggests that they might need White Diamond, even though she is terrified of White. White Diamond might not be happy about the rebellion and the past 6000 years? Yellow offers to take on the brunt of White Diamond's wrath. And when Blue was having her usual bad episode at Pink's room in the zoo, Yellow sung for her and then proceeded to immediately make plans for what Blue might wanted ("The window for preserving their specimens is closing." "Is that what you want? [...] Then there's still time.") After her Heel–Face Turn in the season 5 finale she mellows out a lot more, even disbanding the majority of her army at Steven's request.
• Curtains Match the Windows: Matching yellow hair and eyes.
• Deadpan Snarker: When not confused or enraged, Yellow usually keeps her responses to sarcastic quips.
  Steven: Let's go to Homeworld!
  Connie and Amethyst: Yeah!
  Yellow: Fantastic.
• Depending on the Artist:
  • Her neck was oddly thin-looking when she first appeared, something the show later made fun of with a Dream Sequence where her neck is absurdly long.
  • She wears a much shorter coat in "That Will Be All", but switches back to the longer one in "The Trial".
• Disappointing Older Sibling: Eventually, Pink Diamond went from worshiping her big fellow Diamond to secretly rebelling against her by posing as Rose Quartz. Pink was hurt and disappointed that she wasn't given the choice to spare the Earth, and believed that far from being a Cool Big Sis, Yellow was nothing but distant and cold.
• Disproportionate Retribution: She detonates the Diamond Communicator in an attempt to kill Peridot after Peridot calls her a clod.
• The Dragon: As the leader of Homeworld's military, Yellow functions as an enforcer to White Diamond.
• Dragon-in-Chief: She's generally acted as the public face of the Diamond Authority in Era 2, since Blue has been in mourning since the war and White was confined to her ship. She's also the most antagonistic Diamond towards Earth in the first three seasons, as she specifically oversees Jasper and Peridot, as well as the Cluster project.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: At first she accepts the explanation that Pink rebelled, Steven is a "new form" of Pink without the latter's memories, and only expresses hope that the memories will return. When they all return to Homeworld, however, she and Blue immediately fall back into treating "Pink" as their silly little fellow Diamond who exists to make them laugh. Steven understandably gets frustrated when he tries to have a serious conversation, and by the end of a rather disastrous ball she tells off Steven for fusing and locks Stevonnie up.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • She believes the Cluster will destroy the Earth any moment, unaware that it's been completely neutralized by Rose Quartz's son, Steven, with the help of one of her former subjects, Peridot.
  • After Steven escapes with Lars into Homeworld's depths in "The Trial", she thinks "Rose" is trapped with nowhere to hide. However, sometime after that, Steven manages to return to Earth, completely unaware of it.
  • She wants Rose Quartz destroyed after she shattered Pink Diamond, except the irony here is ten-fold after the revelation that Pink Diamond and Rose Quartz were the same person. She eventually finds out.
• The Dreaded: When Jasper drops her name, Lapis and Peridot give shocked expressions. In "Message Received", Garnet and Pearl are terrified by the prospect that Peridot will contact her. Being Pink Diamond's Pearl, Pearl is likely familiar with Yellow Diamond's personality.
• Early-Bird Cameo: First appeared in the extended theme song, and made her appearance in the second season.
• Energetic and Soft-Spoken Duo: While her fellow Diamond Blue is a soft-spoken, reserved diplomat who is often quite lethargic and unmotivated these days due to her Excessive Mourning from losing a beloved family member, Yellow Diamond is a dynamic and assertive military general who rarely speaks below a commanding tone and buries herself into her work to try heavily and forget the pain of losing Pink Diamond.
• Establishing Character Moment: Within minutes of her first appearance: "I've heard enough! I don't care about potential or resources. I want my Cluster, and I want that planet to die. Just make that happen."
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones:
  • She really seems to care about Blue Diamond, and bluntly telling her to stop grieving seems to be the only way she knows to snap Blue out of her depression. In "Change Your Mind", White all but states that taking care of Blue is Yellow's main emotional priority.
  • Her Villain Song, "What's the Use of Feeling (Blue)?" admits that she still thinks about Pink Diamond. She can't even finish said song — in the last line, she lets go of Blue's hand and turns away, as though she doesn't trust herself to finish. As businesslike as she acts, it's clear that Pink Diamond's death affected her deeply. In "The Trial", she not only seems eager to shatter Steven (who she thinks is Rose) and be done with it, but when confronted with Blue Zircon's theory and accusations that either she or Blue had Pink Diamond killed, Yellow's response is to poof Blue Zircon by smashing her with a finger. She ceases her onslaught against the Crystal Gems the moment Steven manages to prove his true nature as Pink's Reincarnation.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • Despite demanding deference and respect from her subjects, she is also annoyed by excessive butt-kissing, rolling her eyes at the likes of Holly Blue Agate or her own Zircon's brown-nosing. She also rewards those loyal to her, as shown with Yellow Pearl.
  • When Steven reveals that he has Pink Diamond's Gem, she's notably horrified and stops the onslaught against the Crystal Gems. She also agrees that the Corrupted Gems need to be healed. When venting to "Pink" about being The Unfavorite, she doesn't blame Steven for the disparate treatment and actually laughs when Steven tries to cheer her up.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good: She's unable to understand why Pink Diamond would have a Zoo to store humans, even while under the assumption that she did so because she saw them as trophies of her conquests.
• Evil Is Petty: Her interest in the Cluster has less to do with science, and more to do with having it destroy the Earth out of spite. She also tries to kill Peridot by remotely detonating her Diamond communicator after the latter talks back to her and calls her a clod. This turns out to be doubly petty with The Reveal Homeworld is running low on resources. "That Will Be All" reveals that she wants Earth destroyed so she doesn't have to think about Pink Diamond's death and the sadness that comes with it; while understandable, she's basically willing to kill billions of innocents in a selfish attempt to escape her own sorrow.
• Evil Laugh: Well, maybe not an evil laugh, but she otherwise lets out one of these in "Familiar".
• Exotic Eye Designs: Like Jasper's, hers are more detailed than the rest of the cast. She has thick eyelashes, yellow irises, and diamond-shaped pupils.
• Face-Revealing Turn: What she does in the extended opening.
• Fantastic Racist: When Peridot mentions all the life that's flourished on Earth, Yellow Diamond says "Organic life" with noticeable disgust on the first word. Even after her Heel–Face Turn, she still shows shades of this, as evident by the look on her face when watching the humans attending Sadie's concert. She is also initially disgusted and horrified at the revelation that White is off-colour.
• Fatal Flaw: Wrath. She is so intent on destroying Earth that she commissions the creation of a Cluster (violating countless shattered Gems in the process) and seeks to destroy Earth in spite of the many resources it could offer to Homeworld. While she loves her fellow Diamonds and does try to hold back her temper, she has snapped at them as well. It gets even worse with The Reveal that Rose Quartz was Pink Diamond, which means that Yellow has unknowingly tried to kill her fellow Diamond and said fellow Diamond's son multiple times while mourning her.
• Feeling Oppressed by Their Existence: Downplayed; Yellow Diamond hated organic life even before Pink Diamond had ever set foot on Earth, but only escalated into self-destructive hatred of such to avenge Pink.
• Final Solution: She wanted to shatter Rose Quartz's entire Gem type for the Rose we know of rebelling against and shattering Pink Diamond. Blue Diamond instead chose to spare them, albeit as bubbled prisoners.
• Five Stages of Grief: Has a foot firmly in the "Denial" and "Anger" stages of grief, wanting to remove every trace of Pink Diamond so she doesn't have to think about her and feel the sadness that comes from her loss. But if you push her buttons, even Blue Diamond isn't safe from her ranting.
• Foil:
  • To her fellow Diamond, Pink. Pink was a spoiled little brat demanding for her own colony, whereas Yellow was a serious matriarch who colonized multiple planets. Pink was unaware of the damage she was doing to her colony, whereas Yellow wanted organic life to be destroyed. It's reflected best in the ideals Pink expressed as Rose Quartz. Rose sincerely valued all life and sought to protect it, while Yellow Diamond utterly hates all organic life, not just humans, and wishes it to be permanently annihilated. Rose loved and cared for each Gem under her command, while Yellow Diamond sees them as mere drones who are rather replaceable. Even their names are similar and both are voiced by Broadway actresses. However, Pink constantly fails to take her fellow Diamonds' feelings into consideration, whereas Yellow is always looking out for them.
  • Also, to her other fellow Diamond, Blue. Aside from their masculine/feminine personalities, Yellow Diamond copes with the death of Pink Diamond by completely repressing her own emotions, destroying everything that reminds her of her grief, and sees grief itself as useless feelings.
  • Also, to Dr. Maheswaran, according to "Jungle Moon", where the former is being portrayed by the latter as a symbolically similar treatment toward their younger family member/daughter, Pink Diamond/Connie. However, unlike Priyanka, who managed to see the error of her ways and reconcile with Connie before she damaged their relationship even further, Yellow refused to allow Pink to give up her colony and took away her control of Earth just because she won't complete it, and lives to regret how she treated Pink by seemingly allowing her to be destroyed along with their relationship.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling:
  • Yellow and Blue (responsible) and Pink (foolish). After Pink's Heel–Face Turn, the roles are reversed.
  • This trope is Zig-Zagged between her and Blue in the present day during Steven's trial. While Blue does act depressed and unable to function in her normal daily life, at the very least she's insistent on continuing the trial properly. Yellow, on the other hand, while determined to keep her forces in line, treats the trial like a Kangaroo Court.
• Forced Transformation: She can alter the physical forms of other Gems, as shown in "Legs From Here to Homeworld" when she forcibly changes Nephrite's form. It's implied that this was her contribution to the corruption attack. In Era 3 she turns this power towards restoring the physical forms of the Gems she shattered and also making cosmetic changes for Gems who want them.
• Four-Star Badass: In charge of the Gem Empire's military force, and the more martially inclined of the Diamonds. Unlike Blue, she doesn't mess around and would immediately press her advantages to quickly turn the table during fights.
• General Ripper: Yellow Diamond is incredibly trigger happy and thoughtless to other lifeforms, to the point she was willing to have Earth destroyed by the Cluster out of pure spite.
• Giant Foot of Stomping: Upon seeing Steven again in "Reunited", she immediately dashes over and proceeds to stomp on him.
• The Ghost: Mentioned by Jasper in "The Return", and can briefly be seen looking menacing in silhouette in the extended intro, but does not appear in the show until "Message Received", the second to last episode of the second season.
• Go to Your Room!: Inflicts this on Stevonnie at the end of 'Alone Together'.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: It's quite apparent that Yellow Diamond has a volcanic temper, particularly if it involves anything related to Earth.
• Hanging Judge: During "The Trial", Yellow is determined to get "Rose" shattered no matter what and is clearly only going along with the formality of the trial because Blue wants to, and she keeps questioning Defense Zircon's line of thought that Rose was most likely framed.
• Hazy-Feel Turn: Though she relents her attack at the end of "Reunited", it's clear that Yellow Diamond is still a firm believer in Homeworld's strict rules and caste system.
  • Later, as of "Change Your Mind", it's clear that Yellow's adopted a proper Heel–Face Turn alongside Blue.
• Heel Realization:
  • She has one at the end of "Reunited", in which she finally discovers that Steven/Rose is Pink Diamond and stops her rampage.
  • She has a bigger one in "Change Your Mind", when Steven questions how perfect a society that's forcing her to harm her own family is and it hits her she attacked Blue. This in turn causes her to realize why Pink would rather live on Earth in the first place.
• Hellish Pupils: Her pupils are diamond-shaped.
• Hidden Depths: Yellow Diamond is first presented as a wrathful, unreasonable tyrant. Later episodes show her trying to be a voice of reason to Blue Diamond. If the end of the song "What's the Use of Feeling (Blue)" is any indication, she's still heartbroken over Pink Diamond's death. While she's not the perfect objective decider Peridot saw her as, it seems like she genuinely values reason and objectivity and strives toward it to an extent, but anything to do with the Earth and the subject of Pink Diamond's demise is a hot button issue.
  • In "Reunited", we learn that the reason for all her anger comes from self-loathing, as she blames herself for Pink Diamond's death.
  • In "Change Your Mind", it's implied by Blue Diamond that Yellow is actually quite miserable having to carry out the ruthless doctrine laid out by White Diamond, and having to hold everyone — including herself — to such draconian expectations.
• Humans Are Ugly: It took just one glance at the human Steven, who is masquerading as "Rose Quartz", to make her decide to want to shatter "her" immediately. She seems to have stopped having this belief at the end of "Reunited", and it's likely that she was just looking for reasons to shatter "Rose Quartz" immediately.
• Hypocrite:
  • She rebukes Blue for still grieving over Pink's death all those millennia later, but she herself is very emotional on the topic, being willing to destroy hundreds of perfectly serviceable Quartzes and other Gems and a perfectly good colony planet simply because they remind her of Pink.
  • Yellow also took away Pink's colony partly because she thought she was being ungrateful, yet Yellow only gave it to her so she'd stop bothering her. Not to mention despite everything Pink did to fix her fellow Diamonds' relationship with each other, she repaid her with frequent punishments and neglect.
  • In "Change Your Mind", she accuses Blue of hurting a fellow Diamond, even though she (and Blue) hurt Pink in the past, with Yellow even physically manhandling her at one point. Blue magnificently calls her out on it.
• Hypocritical Heartwarming: Yellow frequently abuses Pink, whether she does so by physically manhandling her or just being cold and distant towards her. Yet, when Yellow believes Pink to have been shattered by Rose Quartz, Yellow becomes hell-driven to get revenge on Rose, whether it be by blowing up the planet she's on with the Cluster or attempting to shatter the person she believes to be Rose at the trial. Additionally, despite imprisoning Pink's son Steven in a prison tower as punishment for fusing with Connie, she eventually resorts to telling Steven to return to Earth safely with his friends, even if it means she and Blue will have to face White's wrath alone.
• Inelegant Blubbering: "Change Your Mind" shows that she's one of the "Ugly Crying" variant. She's stoic, hardhearted, and struggles not to feel, but she does have a breaking point, and when it's reached she collapses into tears, her face a wretched mask of anguish.
• Inopportune Voice Cracking:
  • In "Message Received", as it becomes increasingly apparent that she's Not So Stoic, she begins shouting to the point where her voice breaks in the middle of interrupting Peridot.
  • In "Change Your Mind", her voice breaks again when she's going on her Motive Rant.
• Insane Admiral: According to Peridot, she's more or less the commander-in-chief (or at least one of them) of the Gem military, and it seems to take very little to incite her to use it.
• Ironic Name: Yellow Diamonds are the birthstone for Virgo, and Virgos are associated with order, intelligence, and cold calculation. When she finally appears in the show proper, she does fit the bill at first, but as her talk with Peridot goes on, it becomes readily apparent that for however much a being of logic she might be, she's clearly also a vengeful and spiteful being who would gladly destroy the Earth for payback against the rebellion.
• It's All About Me: She is shown to be an extremely arrogant ruler who shows no concern about non-Gem worlds and does not care about any valuable resources that the Earth may contain, as long as she gets her Cluster. Keep in mind, Homeworld is currently low on resources and producing weaker Gems as a result. That said, at least part of it seems to be motivated out of hate for the rebellion and Rose shattering Pink Diamond.
• It's All My Fault: While she doesn't show it externally, she genuinely does blame herself for Pink's shattering.
  How miserable. I knew Pink couldn't handle her own colony. But I gave in, and now I'm to blame for her fate.
• It's Personal: It's pretty clear from what's seen of Jasper that the Homeworld Gems who remember the war hold a certain degree of hate for Earth and the Crystal Gems. Yellow Diamond, however, takes this hate to extremes: In her eyes, the destruction of Earth, its billions of inhabitants, and whatever resources that could be useful to Homeworld are secondary to the personal satisfaction of finally wiping the symbol of Rose's rebellion and Pink Diamond's death off the star charts. As of "Change Your Mind", she does appear to be warming up to the Earth a little, as she refers to it as Pink/Steven's home and is later shown having fun with White and Blue in Rose's fountain, which is located on Earth, while curing the Corrupted Gems.
• Jerkass: Just from her introduction it's clear she's probably the most vicious, spiteful character in the show.
• Jerkass Has a Point:
  • Though she's not exactly the nicest and is not handling Pink Diamond's death any better, Yellow Diamond is right that Blue Diamond can't continue to grieve and obsess over Pink Diamond. She also observes that Blue Diamond is neglecting her leadership duties and wants her to be responsible again.
  • When Pink Diamond was trying to get her attention, Yellow Diamond manhandling her was out of line but she stops Pink cold by asking her why she doesn't act like a Diamond if she wants to be treated like one. When Pink receives a colony it turns out she has no real interest in ruling and finds the actual work of running a colony to be very boring, proving Yellow's point correct.
  • Steven understands her point when she angrily demands an explanation for why "Pink" is in a new form, and why didn't Steven say who he was at the trial. Fortunately, she accepts Steven's explanation when he says he doesn't have Pink or Rose's memories, or he would have told her.
• Kick the Dog: Has a bad habit of this.
  • In her first appearance, she tries to kill Peridot with a bomb after Peridot insults her.
  • "The Trial":
    • She calls Rose Quartz really Steven hideous and claims they should shatter her on the spot for her appearance.
    • Poofing both Zircons for daring to speak out of turn also definitely counts.
  • She casually threatens to shatter a subordinate if she doesn't do her job in a flashback in "Jungle Moon".
  • In addition to poofing the Crystal Gems and imprisoning Stevonnie in a prison tower in "Together Alone", she also poofs Lemon Jade after she stood up for the Crystal Gems and expressed her joy at not being the only cross-gem fusion.
• Kick the Morality Pet:
  • She and Blue Diamond perform a dual one in a flashback in "Now We're Only Falling Apart", in which they reject Pink's offer to spare the Earth.
  • In "Together Alone", she once more overrides "Pink's" authority over the ball (which is explicitly the thing Pink holds dominion over in the Authority) and completely refuses to accept any of the things Steven desires to do outside of what's "accepted", to the point of once more threatening to override Steven's authority and do the ball herself. She also gets furious at Steven and Connie for fusing to the point of poofing their friends and imprisoning them as punishment.
  • A brief time afterwards in "Change Your Mind", she actually ends up attacking Blue Diamond for trying to take Steven's side, even if it's visible in her face that she's regretting it the entire time. When she tries to justify it as upholding the Gem empire's "perfection", Steven points out any order which forces her to assault her own fellow Diamond cannot be perfect, which puts an end to both her rampage and her support for White's form of order.
• Knight of Cerebus: Her introduction just shows how vicious she is.
• Lack of Empathy: She's shown no regard for anyone else but the other Diamonds, including Steven.
• Large and in Charge: Easily the biggest non-fused Gem seen thus far, standing over 50 feet tall. The Pearl she uses as a secretary easily fits in Yellow's palm. But she's still one head shorter than White.
• Laser-Guided Karma: She was a Big Sister Bully towards Pink, physically manhandling and just being straight up cold towards her, leading to Pink Faking the Dead and causing Yellow to grieve for millennia. Yellow being physically violent towards Pink also comes back to bite her when Blue attacks her with an energy ball, and she's later forced to face that, since Pink is now truly gone, she can never truly apologize to her for what she had done.
• Leitmotif: "Message Received" gives her a personal variation of the Diamonds' distinct rising/falling synth rhythm. At first, hers is less harmonious and more subdued than Blue Diamond's, seemingly fitting her clinical nature. However, as she becomes progressively angrier and more unhinged, so does the theme, incorporating drums and a much more menacing synth crescendo. She's also the only one of the Diamonds thus far to have a secondary theme, a trilling echo that plays whenever she's about to do something violent.
• Lightning Bruiser: As seen in the fight with the Crystal Gems, she's strong enough to easily smash her way out of her ship and lift wreckage off of Blue, and when she goes on the attack, she dashes forward with incredible speed and knocks Steven unconscious despite him having put his shield up.
• Light Is Not Good: All Diamonds, yellow ones in particular, stand for the energy of the sun according to gemstone mythos. It doesn't stop Yellow Diamond from attempting to kill an entire planet out of spite and revenge.
  • Light Is Good: Like Blue and eventually even White, she makes a Heel–Face Turn in "Change Your Mind" and stops her tyrannical ways.
• Mama Bear: In "Change Your Mind", she directs an angry look at Jasper as she prepares to attack Steven under the belief that he's Rose Quartz, before brushing it off with a smile.
• Mean Boss: When Peridot calls her, she makes it clear she doesn't care about the opinions of the people working for her at all.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Yellow Diamonds are the birthstone for Virgo, and Virgos are associated with order, intelligence, and cold calculation. These are the standards she holds herself and her subjects to, although as mentioned above, she's ultimately willing to sacrifice all of this for revenge.
  • Yellow Diamonds are one of the more common colors and as such more likely to be used for industrial lasers and technological applications than for jewelry, fitting YD's pragmatic, no-nonsense personality.
• Misplaced Retribution: Blames all Rose Quartz Gems for the actions of the Crystal Gem's Rose shattering Pink Diamond, wanting them shattered in turn.
• Mood-Swinger: The bereavement of Pink has made Yellow very erratic. Sometimes she acts like the strong, calm, logical leader that Peridot and Holly Blue see her as, but in the next moment she's yelling and poofing Gems left and right. Because she has repressed her grief and internalized the blame for Pink's shattering, Yellow is constantly causing herself emotional harm. And when anyone reminds her too much of the tragedy, she lashes out like a wounded animal.
• Moral Myopia: Yellow Diamond had no moral qualms about creating a Cluster out of shattered Gems or leading an interplanetary empire with blood on its hands. However, the death of Pink Diamond emotionally devastated her, to the point that she seeks to destroy Earth in retaliation. It likely helps that she sees herself as responsible for Pink's alleged death in the first place, however.
• Muscles Are Meaningless: Is an extremely competent and powerful general and fighter despite her slender build.
• My God, What Have I Done?:
  • You wouldn't think it would be possible for a tyrant like her but, it seems that, like Blue, she regrets the way she treated Pink and wishes she could take it back so Pink could still be alive.
  • She looks worried as Steven regains consciousness, after she and Blue have realized he was telling the truth about being Pink Diamond. She nearly lost her family member a second time, and would have turned out to be Pink's shatterer like Defense Zircon theorized.
  • The biggest one comes during "Change Your Mind", when Steven's Armor-Piercing Question leads her to realize that not only was her strict enforcement of White Diamond's ruthless policies the very catalyst for Pink Diamond's rebellion, but that same doctrine has led her to attack Blue Diamond. This time, she finally breaks down and progresses to a full Heel–Face Turn.
  • In "I Am My Monster," she laments that her mistreatment of Pink and Steven led to Steven becoming Corrupted. Connie tells her and the others to pull herself together.
• My Greatest Failure: In "Reunited", it's revealed that she didn't believe that Pink was ready for a colony, but she gave it to her anyway so she'd stop whining. Pink seemingly gets shattered because of this, and Yellow's been carrying the guilt of being responsible for the circumstances of her family member's apparent death for 5,000 years since.
  Yellow Diamond: How miserable. I knew Pink couldn't handle her own colony. But I gave in, and now, I'm to blame for her fate.
• Never Be Hurt Again: She wants to destroy everything related to Pink Diamond with the full intention that she and Blue Diamond will stop grieving over her.
• Never My Fault: One of Yellow's many flaws, and to further drive the point home that not even the Diamonds are anywhere near flawless. While she does have legitimate reason to be angry at "Pink" for faking her death and causing her and Blue to grieve for millennia, she never once takes into conideration that it was her and Blue's treatment of Pink that drove her away, as evident by "Legs From Here to Homeworld" and "Change Your Mind", even telling Steven "Ugh, Pink. How many perfectly adequate Gems did you have us ruin?" in the former episode and outright stating that Pink abandoned them in the latter episode. Subverted as she eventually does realize that it's her fault in a My God, What Have I Done? moment.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • She's so anxious to secure the Cluster that her reconnaissance missions inadvertently draws attention of its existence to the Crystal Gems.
  • Her Revenge Before Reason attitude towards the destruction of Earth (she'd rather see Earth destroyed as revenge for Pink Diamond's shattering than keep it intact and utilize its resources despite the fact that the Gem Homeworld is in critical need of resources) turns Peridot against her, causing her to defy Yellow Diamond and join the Crystal Gems. Peridot would be instrumental in stopping the Cluster.
• Nice Mean And In Between: Yellow (mean) is a short-tempered Bad Boss, Blue (in-between), while initially as bad as Yellow, seems to have Took a Level in Kindness in recent years thanks to Pink Diamond's "death", and Pink (nice) is an All-Loving Hero and a Benevolent Boss who cherishes and wishes to protect organic life.
• Nigh-Invulnerable: Even moreso than most other Gems. She endures being thrown by the Cluster while in her ship, punches her way out of the wreckage, and stands tall completely unscathed.
• Noble Demon: While Yellow's normally spiteful and cruel, she displays a nicer side to herself as time goes on. She is always watching over Blue, trying to gauge her reactions and shield her from anything that might upset her unnecessarily. In contrast, Blue doesn't even seem to consider that Yellow is still mourning Pink too, until the latter breaks down at the end of her song "What's the Use of Feeling Blue?". She even stops her attack on the Crystal Gems for Steven when she finds out that he is Pink Diamond, and in "Legs From Here to Homeworld" isn't angry that he doesn't have Pink's memories. In "Change Your Mind", she finally learns the error of Homeworld's ways and drops the "Demon" part, even admitting the only reason she couldn't act on her Being Evil Sucks mentality is fear of White's wrath.
• No Good Deed Goes Unpunished: When she finally gave Pink Diamond her own colony, the Earth, Pink ends up loving it and faking her death causing Yellow to grieve for millennia.
• No-Nonsense Nemesis: Upon seeing Steven again, she immediately goes in for the kill.
• Non-Standard Character Design: Similar to Jasper, her design is a lot more detailed than other characters, with extra lines in her face and neck (this is especially obvious juxtaposed against Yellow Pearl). This is quite effective in making her stand out as someone important, as well as making her overall slightly unsettling to the viewer who had gotten used to the style other characters are drawn in.
• Not Me This Time: Of the two Defense Zircon directly accused of Pink Diamond's shattering, Yellow's actions pegged her as the logical suspect. However, she really didn't have anything to do with Pink's "shattering", and was simply lashing out when accused of killing someone she loved as family.
• Not So Above It All:
  • She admits to Blue in "That Will Be All" that she also misses Pink, having loved her dearly. But she uses it as a point that she and Blue can't let grief cripple them.
  • When Steven says maybe Yellow should try failing to get White's attention, Yellow actually laughs and says she misses "Pink"'s jokes.
  • When Spinel does a handstand and makes a joke about 6000 years not being a very long time in the Movie, Yellow Diamond suddenly bursts out laughing. Of-course, she actually does think 6000 years isn't very long, but she laughs at it like it's the first joke she's ever gotten.
• Not So Stoic:
  • Peridot describes her as the epitome of logic and calculated reasoning. While at first glance she appears to fit the part, as her argument with Peridot wears on, Yellow Diamond begins to lose her cool, to the point where her voice starts breaking. As mentioned above, she also reveals that her interest in the Cluster isn't so much scientific, as it is petty vengeance against Earth itself.
  • At the end of her Villain Song, she comes very close to outright breaking down from her grief over Pink Diamond's death.
  • In "The Trial", she displays anger when Defense Zircon starts to point out the various flaws with Pink Diamond's death, and getting accused of it along with Blue Diamond leads to her promptly poofing both Defense and Prosecuting Zircon. Given the reveal she truly was innocent of the crime, it was likely the latter more than the former that enraged her.
  • She's visibly distressed upon finding out that Steven/Rose is Pink Diamond and has a visible look of concern on her face.
  • She actually cries after having a Heel Realization in "Change Your Mind", without Blue doing anything to cause it.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • When Peridot called her a clod, Yellow Diamond looked absolutely furious before trying to blow her up. When the Defense Zircon accused her of shattering Pink Diamond, her expression remained neutral as she got to her feet... and promptly started poofing both her and the Prosecution Zircon.
  • A positive example happens in "Reunited", in which she has a visible look of concern on her face for Steven when she discovers that he is Pink Diamond. Yellow hasn't even shown that much concern for Blue (or in this case, Pink herself) before. The revelation that Rose Quartz is Pink Diamond leaves her so stunned that she is left speechless.
  • She finally breaks down in tears in "Change Your Mind" upon her Heel Realization, and assumes that it's Blue making her do it. Blue tells her she isn't.
• One-Hit Kill: She can emit a yellow Agony Beam from her hands that poofs a gem with one shot if it connects.
• Perpetual Frowner: Is almost never seen without an angry scowl on her face.
• Personality Powers: Yellow's Signature Move is a bolt of electricity that destabilizes a regular Gem's form instantly and inflicts pain onto her fellow Diamonds. This reflects her cool and efficient way of managing her Gems and her tendency to lash out whenever her authority is questioned or whenever someone tries getting her to open up. Between her Heel–Face Turn in "Change Your Mind" and "Homeworld Bound", she eventually learned how to alter a Gem to their preferred state, showing that not only has she learned to look past physical appearance, but has developed a cause in undoing her inhumane experiments.
• Pet the Dog: For all the tyrant she is, even she's not without moments of kindness.
  • A small note — she seems to treat Yellow Pearl well, compared to her treatment of Peridot. She politely asks her who's calling on the Diamond line and then calmly takes over the call from there. She even allows Yellow Pearl to speak to her in an annoyed tone (albeit her attitude wasn't towards Yellow Diamond). Going back to Peridot, YD was perfectly willing to send a ship to get her before she called her a clod.
  • Her Villain Song in "That Will Be All" is basically her trying to snap Blue Diamond out of her depression and to convince her to move forwards. She even asks the Pearls to sing to Blue Diamond to help her feel better. It's also implied she genuinely misses Pink Diamond too. And when Sapphire makes up a false story on getting more humans for Pink Diamond's human zoos, she's inspired to come up with a solution to remedy Blue Diamond's grief (though possibly at the cost of Earth).
  • During "The Trial", Yellow clearly didn't take it as seriously as Blue did and simply wanted to punish 'Rose' as quickly as possible. Given how hard she tries to lock down her feelings, and how she blames herself for Pink's death, that trial was probably extremely painful for her. It's possible that just like her interest in getting more humans off Earth in "That Will Be All", Yellow's only there because it interests Blue and gets her to act.
    • When Blue Diamond's composure breaks during the trial, Yellow puts her hands on her shoulders and calls a recess, long enough for Blue to pull herself together.
  • In hindsight, her keeping Jasper and giving her a high rank and status in her court are this, given Yellow views the rest of the Earth-born Gems with disgust and it's implied Blue Diamond's desire to preserve Pink's things is the only reason any of them are still around. Of course, there's also the fact a completely perfect and incredibly powerful "Ultimate Quartz" stronger than a Topaz isn't exactly easy to come by.
  • "Legs From Here to Homeworld" has her take a level in kindness.
    • She's willing to work with the Crystal Gems to heal the corrupted Gems and is even willing to face White Diamond's wrath to ask for her help, all because Steven asked her to.
    • When the topic of White Diamond comes up, Blue is upset at even the mention of her name. Pearl explains to Steven that White isn't like any other Gems, nor even like "them", the Diamonds, and the camera pans back up to Blue looking distressed and Yellow, a supportive hand on her shoulder, looking at her with understanding.
    • Given that she comforts Blue when discussing White Diamond, braces herself as they reach Homeworld, and takes the lead and intends to do the talking (and therefore draw the ire) of White, it appears that when the Diamonds interact Yellow puts herself between the sensitive Blue, weird silly "Pink", and the one Diamond unquestionably scarier and more powerful than they are.
  • In "Familiar", she wishes Steven good luck in reaching out to White Diamond, and notes that Pink always managed to make her laugh.
  • In "Change Your Mind", when Steven tries breaking the ice between the Diamonds and the Off Colors, Yellow actually tries to smile.
• Pragmatic Villainy: Implied to be the reason she took Jasper and treats her far better than any of the other Earth-born Gems (who all went to Blue Diamond and are implied to have been on the chopping block otherwise): Jasper is completely perfect and far more powerful than any regular Quartz (even more so than a Topaz). As much as Yellow hates the Earth, those aren't easy to come by. Also, she didn't wipe out life on the Jungle Moon Base because it wasn't necessary for the colony.
  • Yellow is an interesting version of this; most people wouldn't kill because they think it's wrong. Yellow doesn't shatter a Gem as long as they're still useful. When Steven shows her and Blue how the Gems have been corrupted on Earth, Yellow considers it a waste rather than being remorseful for causing so much death and suffering. Basically she has a hard time understanding something existing for the sake of it rather than serving a specific purpose.
    Yellow Diamond: An army has a use, it can go and fight a war. A Sapphire has a use, she can tell you what it's for. An Agate terrifies, a Lapis terraforms...
• Psycho Electro: Somewhat downplayed, since she isn't exactly crazy and psychotic. However, she is still a narcissistic genocidal tyrant who clearly has a very bad case of a Hair-Trigger Temper and her aura and powers usually take the form of yellow lightning. She very much subverts this by the end of the series.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: She has a tendency to speak this way when she's losing her temper.
  Yellow Diamond: "You. Are out. Of line."
  "You are to leave the Cluster to grow. It will tear apart the Earth, and I will take immense satisfaction in erasing that hideous rock off of our star maps! Is! That! CLEAR?!?"
• Put Them All Out of My Misery: Her desire for Earth's destruction is based more on grief than pure disgust or spite; she wants to wipe out anything that reminds her of Pink Diamond.
• Quit Your Whining: Her Villain Song, "What's the Use of Feeling (Blue)?", at its core, is Yellow Diamond's hard-worded yet well-meaning attempt to get Blue Diamond to stop grieving for Pink Diamond and go back to leading Homeworld.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Gives a scathing one to Peridot when she tries to argue to spare Earth and questions her. Which then gets turned on her.
• Reasonable Authority Figure:
  • Before turning into a Bad Boss. She accepts Peridot's reason for using the Diamond line, thanks her for her report and tells her that she'll send her a ship shortly. Even when Peridot says that she crashed the ship herself, the worst Yellow Diamond says is that she'll inform Peridot's manager of her incompetence (which is entirely reasonable, since by omitting any mention of the Crystal Gems, Peridot made it sound like she lost a valuable ship through sheer negligence).
  • "Jungle Moon" reveals she was also this towards Pink Diamond. She was perfectly willing to let Pink watch her invade a planet to build a new Gem colony, and she only snaps at her after Pink messes with her communicator and throws a tantrum over not having her own colony. Considering how Yellow treats other Gems under her command, that is a major improvement.
• Red Herring: When Blue Zircon concludes that only a Diamond could have enabled Pink Diamond's assassination, Yellow begins destroying all witnesses and demands "Rose's" swift execution. Coupled with her get-on-with-it demeanor during the trial, she's suddenly looking very suspicious. However, Pink Diamond was really "assassinated" by herself. Yellow was completely innocent, was rushing the trial because (as was stated before) she wanted to move on with their lives, and simply enraged at being accused of murdering her own fellow Diamond.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni:
  • Yellow is aggressive and quick-tempered, compared to Blue who is mostly melancholic these days.
  • Both she and Blue serve as the blue to Pink's red, as they are more serious and less exitable than she is.
• Reformed, but Not Tamed: Even after accepting Steven as Pink Diamond, she continues to have an attitude towards him, though it's still an improvement on how she treated Pink.
• The Resenter: Yellow Diamond has some mild, one-sided rivalry with Steven/Pink Diamond. In "Familiar", she's resentful that White Diamond met with Steven/"Pink" but hasn't given her an audience in ages, despite the many planets she's conquered.
• Retired Badass: In-between "Change Your Mind" and The Movie, Yellow admits to having disbanded her armies and liberated her colonies.
• Revenge Before Reason: Homeworld is starting to lose access to vital resources, and Earth could potentially help the empire in unique ways. But Earth is also the place where Rose Quartz's rebellion was focused, and a symbol of what Pink Diamond was killed over, so Yellow Diamond wants the planet destroyed, regardless of whatever resources Homeworld could harvest out of it.
• Rule of Symbolism: White Diamond summarizes her personality towards her relationship to the light spectrum.
  White Diamond: Poor Yellow. Her impurities absorb all the blue in her light. She's so strong, but so weak when it comes to blue.
• Shadow Archetype: She is this to Dr. Maheswaran, being what would happen if she refused to relent on controlling her daughter, basically allowing Pink to be indirectly destroyed just because she still thought she was doing what's best for her.
• Shock and Awe: She has the power of lightning. She's capable of firing electricity from her hands potent enough to poof a Gem in one hit in similar fashion to the Gem Disruptor weapons. It's likely the Gem Disruptors are based on her power in the first place, especially since similar patterns of energy appear on Gems affected by each.
• Shoulders of Doom: Wide and pointy, like pauldrons.
• Sigil Spam: A yellow Gem can be seen on the mural in "Serious Steven", surrounded by a sun symbol. The Gem disruption devices that Jasper and Peridot use are yellow, and the prison cells in their ships are guarded by a yellow energy force field.
  • She also favors the Era-2 Great Diamond Authority symbol — the tripartite version consisting of White, Yellow, and Blue triangles — over the Era-1/Era-3 GDA symbol featuring four diamonds.
• Silence, You Fool!: She electrocutes her own prosecuting Zircon for smugly thinking the trial was "over". Having Blue Zircon's defense implicate Yellow herself as a potential suspect in Pink Diamond's murder, rather than sealing a guilty verdict for Rose, and also tipping off Blue Diamond to the fact that someone is trying to cover something up in regard to Pink Diamond's death, Yellow knows this case is anything but closed. She's actually innocent of the deed in question, but her haste and rage simply make her look guilty to all outside observers.
• Sour Outside, Sad Inside: As it turns out, despite never showing it, she blames herself for Pink's apparent death. And, as of "Change Your Mind", it's clear that she hates having to be so ruthless in punishing those who go against Homeworld's rules, particularly when Blue goes against them.
• Sparing the Aces: Notably, the one Earth-born Gem she actually took for her court and treats with anything other than disdain is the completely perfect "Ultimate Quartz" Jasper.
• Static Electricity: Her method of healing.
• The Stoic: She adheres to literal stoicism as a rather unhealthy coping method for dealing with her own grief over Pink Diamond, by bottling up all of her emotions and repressing them, and destroying everything that will make her bottled feelings rise up and boil over.
• Strong and Skilled: She's this in contrast to the Unskilled, but Strong Blue, being far more mobile and frighteningly decisive in her attacks in what is thus far shown. Justified, as Blue is the leader of the nobility while Yellow is the leader of the military.
• Sufficiently Analyzed Magic: Her ability to poof Gems with her Shock and Awe powers is the apparent basis of the Gem Destabilizers.
• Super-Strength: Her physical strength is sufficient to poof a Gem with a poke of her finger or hurl a thick slab of wall as big as she is flying with one hand.
• This Is Unforgivable!: She decides that Peridot defying her orders and insulting her warrants Peridot's execution. In "The Trial", she also decides that Blue Zircon accusing both her and Blue Diamond for orchestrating Pink Diamond's death warranted her being poofed.
• Three-Point Landing: After she emerges from her ship just moments after it was destroyed by the Cluster, she jumps down and executes such a drop.
• Time Dissonance: In The Movie, she refers to 6,000 years as "nothing".
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Yellow Diamond has been compared to a businesswoman, wears huge shoulder pads, pants and Power Hair, and isn't talented at remaining stoic. Blue Diamond herself is introduced (in a flashback) wearing a cloak and gown and sitting on a throne like a traditional queen and always speaks calmly even when she's losing her (very short) temper and ordering an execution.
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: Downplayed, but she does lighten up a little after reuniting with Pink Diamond (as Steven). She's also shown to be much more cheerful and social while curing Corruption alongside Blue and White near the end of "Change Your Mind".
• Tough Leader Façade: She deals with her grief for Pink Diamond's death by putting on a stoic, logical front, bottling up her grief, and destroying anything related to Pink Diamond.
• Tranquil Fury: When accused of potentially killing Pink Diamond, rather than shouting or growing visibly furious as she typically does, she remains entirely silent before slowly rising to her feet and poofing the Zircon who suggested it. When the truth behind Rose's death is revealed, it becomes clear that Yellow was so offended by the accusation that her immediate response was to violently imprison everyone in the courtroom.
• Trying Not to Cry: Yellow Diamond may pretend she has a heart of stone, but even she can crack like glass.
  • Her body language and voice at the end of her song "What's the Use of Feeling (Blue)?" suggests that she is trying to be strong for Blue Diamond's sake, despite her own grief over Pink Diamond's death.
  • Whenever she's affected by Blue's Emotion Bomb, she does her best to resist it.
  • Later, in "Change Your Mind", she struggles visibly to avoid breaking down after her Heel Realization, begging Blue Diamond to stop using her powers... except that Blue isn't using them. That's when Yellow finally starts crying in earnest.
• Tsundere: Type A. While she acts like an abusive Jerkass most of the time, it's clear that she cares deeply about Blue and Pink Diamond, and hates having to punish those who do not conform to Homeworld's ways — she just doesn't admit it.
• Tsurime Eyes: Yellow Diamond's eyes are slanted upwards and is vindictive, ruthless, arrogant, and quick to anger.
• The Un-Favourite: Yellow resents the fact that she works tirelessly on hundreds of Gem bases, yet is unappreciated by White Diamond, who hasn't said so much as two words to her in over a millennium whereas Pink can be invited over for pleasant conversation all while failing to manage even a single colony.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: As far as her own side is concerned. She off-handedly told Pink Diamond to act like she deserved her own army and planet to rule, not realizing Pink was just desperate for her attention and acting out, eventually leading Pink to believe that Yellow and Blue didn't care about her, culminating in Pink leading a rebellion against Homeworld and eventually faking her own death.
• Unwitting Pawn: She's unaware Pink has been playing her and Blue like a violin ever since she grew to love the Earth. It gets a bit sad when you remember she genuinely loves Pink.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: While she doesn't acknowledge it directly like Blue, her thoughts while fighting the Crystal Gems are not of satisfaction at finally crushing the last remnants of the group that caused Pink's alleged death, but of calm reproach to herself for causing the situation in the first place by giving Pink her colony.
• Villainous Breakdown: It all starts with her revenge plan to destroy Earth ruined when the Cluster turns against her, prompting her to personally try to kill Steven. Then, when "Pink Diamond" turns out to be "alive" and returns to Homeworld, with Yellow seemingly forgiving her for her betrayal, she's not the same person Yellow remembers and breaks one of Homeworld's sacred rules, enraging Yellow further. Finally, when Blue Diamond straight-up defies and attacks her to defend Steven, it was the last straw.
• Visual Pun: She represses her emotions and grief for Pink Diamond's death by bottling them up and hardening her own heart, symbolized by her gemstone lying in the center of her armor-like chest.
• "Well Done, Daughter!" Girl: Seems to have this dynamic with White Diamond, as "Familiar" implies that at least part of the reason for her obsessively conquering new worlds is a bid to get White's attention. She is mildly jealous that "Pink"/Steven was able to get an audience with White despite being a complete failure as a Diamond. In "Change Your Mind", she all but states that her villainy is just an attempt to please White.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: She justifies her colonizing many planets as it being for "the sake of the empire".
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: Her purpose is to colonize worlds to propagate her Empire, leaving them empty shells unable to support life by the time she's done with them. She does this mainly in a vein attempt to win White's approval. When her fellow Diamond Pink was supposedly killed on Earth, she responds by creating the Cluster to destroy it from the inside out.
• The Worf Effect: Her electrokinesis, which has managed to poof every other Gem she's used it against, was resisted by Blue Diamond and disabled by Steven.
• Workaholic: Implied, by the look she has in the flashback scene with Pink Diamond, while she displays her usual apathy and resolute attitude, for one moment during her work, she smiles. This naturally befits her "businesswoman" aesthetic. According to Pearl, "Yellow Diamond oversees all aspects of Gem production on every single one of her colonies, and when she's not doing that, she's off with her army conquering the next one".
• Would Be Rude to Say "Genocide": Has committed multiple genocides, but doesn't view organic life as having worth and sees absolutely nothing wrong with it. Her subjects see the benefits to Gemkind, implying she justifies it by how it profits her people. Her desire to destroy Earth and kill off all life on it, however, is far more personal and the cover story is that it was destroyed as collateral damage to defeat the Rebellion.
• Yellow Eyes of Sneakiness: Her eyes glow yellow.
• Your Size May Vary: Her first appearance depicted her Pearl as only just coming up to her knee, while her second depicted her as being able to comfortably carry two Pearls in the palm of her hand. The latter scale was kept going onward.
• Number Two: Is the second oldest Diamond and the presumed second highest ranking Gem in Homeworld who leads their military and along with Blue and Pink, is ranked lower than White but still has enough authority and influence in her own right. Although there’s the fact that White only ever let Pink speak with her and doesn’t seem to care much for Yellow and Blue’s endeavors.

Blue Diamond

Blue Diamond

Voiced by: Lisa Hannigan (English), Kikuko Inoue (Japanese), Giò Giò Rapattoni (Italian)

^{Click here to see her mural.}

"What good all this would do? The more I make these Gems suffer, the more I long to see you again, Pink..."

The second Diamond mentioned, and the first to appear in the series proper in "The Answer". She was at the Sky Arena during Rose's rebellion, and Sapphire used to report directly to her. She commands Homeworld's court system, leads Homeworld's diplomatic Gems, and is the blue Gem depicted on the mural from "Serious Steven".

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• Affably Evil: Is surprisingly friendly and cordial to Greg before kidnapping him for her Human Zoo, which she sees as an act of kindness to Greg due to her believing that the Cluster is still going to destroy the Earth. She also ceases her hostility towards the Crystal Gems after finding out that Rose/Steven is Pink Diamond.
• Alien Invasion: In "Reunited", she and Yellow show up to check up on the Cluster and attempt to decimate the Crystal Gems. The fact Ruby and Sapphire were having their wedding was just a coincidence.
• Aliens of London: In her later appearances she speaks with an Irish accent (her voice actress' natural accent), when all other previously seen Gems speak with American or English accents.
• Aloof Big Sister: Deconstructed. Not as much as Yellow, but she is shown to be condescending and hard towards Pink in "Can't Go Back", though she tries to encourage her to be a good Diamond. "Now We're Only Falling Apart" even has her callously reject Pink's offer to spare the Earth. Eventually, this is what made Pink believe that Blue never cared about her. "Together Alone" has her angrily telling "Pink" to "quit fooling around". Her actions drove Pink to fake her death in the Crystal Gems' rebellion (that she started herself), which has traumatized Blue so much that she remained deep in mourning for thousands of years. What makes this sadder is that Pink truly died giving birth to Steven, meaning that Blue or her surviving family could never apologize for their abusive actions.
• Ambadassador: Word of God describes blue Gems as typically created with diplomatic skills and Blue has been established to be in charge of Homeworld's court system. "Reunited" shows that despite not being in charge of the military, she is a dangerous warrior by herself that requires absolute teamwork from the Crystal Gems just to bring her to a knee. In fact, the episode showed that if motivated enough she's willing to get her hands dirty, which she does to get vengeance against the Crystal Gems despite Yellow already trying to force the Cluster to emerge.
• Arch-Enemy: To Ruby and Sapphire, and their fused form Garnet. While any one of the Diamonds is enough to put her on edge, Garnet shows the most hostility towards Blue Diamond for being the first real obstacle to their love, trying to have Ruby and Sapphire shattered for daring to fuse in her presence (even though it was an accident). Her component Ruby despises Blue Diamond for apparently being a merciless shatterer who yelled at Sapphire, and while Sapphire is more indifferent towards Blue Diamond, it's made clear that she views her as much of an enemy as Ruby does. Blue herself barely remembers them, but still makes her disapproval of fusion insultingly clear. As of "Change Your Mind", however, the animosity seems to have ended, as Blue is willing to help Ruby and Sapphire safely return to Earth and Garnet and the other Crystal Gems say goodbye to Blue Diamond as she returns to Homeworld alongside the other Diamonds.
• Arc Villainess:
  • She's the main antagonist of Ruby and Sapphire's love story.
  • She sets the events of "Out of This World" into motion when she "rescues" Greg, although she is never confronted and Holly Blue Agate is the one who directly opposes the Crystal Gems.
• Astonishingly Appropriate Appearance: She has droopy, sorrowful eyes, is colored blue, and wears a long veil. She's in perpetual mourning.
• The Atoner:
  • She wishes to make it up to Pink for ignoring her pleas to spare the Earth by preserving Pink's legacy.
  • Upon realizing her bad treatment of Pink in the past, she seeks to make up for it by helping Steven and Connie return to Earth. Her willingness to return Ruby and Sapphire to Earth implies that she wants to make up for what she did to them in the past as well.
  • In "Homeworld Bound", it's shown she regrets using her powers to make others feel the pain she feels, and is now bringing joy to others via clouds that her new power creates.
• Ax-Crazy: Downplayed; while she's quite calm normally, her depression makes her very emotionally unstable when provoked-she is quite quick to anger and Disproportionate Retribution. It's not yet clear if her violent anger was a result of losing Pink Diamond or not.
• Bad Boss: Blue Diamond's response to Ruby accidentally averting Sapphire's prophecy (by saving her, aka the job she was assigned to) and for fusing together with her? Why, smash Ruby's gem of course!
• Barehanded Blade Block: She stops a jumping sword attack from Connie with one hand, then effortlessly shatters Rose Quartz's sword.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: It's implied that in-between dealing with Sycophantic Servants, and Yellow Diamond's attempts to destroy everything related to Pink Diamond and seeing Blue Diamond's feelings as useless, Blue Diamond didn't have the time or place to properly vent and grieve. Then comes Greg, a mere human who not only takes the time to listen to Blue Diamond's thoughts, but tries to comfort her instead of dismissing her feelings or forcing her to move on. Blue Diamond takes such a liking to him that she decides to take him with her to the Zoo so he'd be spared the destruction of the Earth by the Cluster, unaware it'd been neutralized by the Crystal Gems.
• Beam Spam: Has the ability to manipulate energy, which includes making it rain energy beams.
• Benevolent Boss: She comes off as one in "The Trial", as she summons her palanquin for Defense Zircon to use for her argument when the latter requests her to, and later steps in on her behalf when Yellow poofs her. In "Together Alone", it's revealed that she allows Blue Pearl to draw pictures, to the surprise of Yellow Pearl. "Change Your Mind" has her outright realize just how unfair her and the other Diamonds' treatment of their subjects is.
• Berserk Button:
  • Don't interfere with her attempts to get to the bottom of how Pink Diamond was shattered, even if you're Yellow Diamond. Fortunately, her reaction to the truth is far more pleasant than one would expect.
  • Rose's sword, given her reaction at the trial, and once she actually sees it in "Reunited" she stops crying and goes into an earth-shaking rage before proceeding to break it like it was a toothpick.
• Beware the Nice Ones: While outwardly more sympathetic than most Homeworld Gems, we're occasionally reminded that she's still very much not someone to be trifled with. In particular, she's so bent on revenge against Rose that she specifically wants to hear what Rose herself thinks her plan is, so she can do something worse.
  • When it comes to her official role as head of the Gem Empire's court system she is known as merciful. However, the way she dealt with Garnet first fusing, and in the movie the fact the major change she admitted to making for Steven by not shattering Gems, in the same way Yellow gave up leading her armies, implies she's more prone to executing others then her reputation would let on.
  • Also, despite being meek and/or demure around Yellow Diamond, when evidence starts cropping up that her fellow Diamonds might have been responsible for Pink Diamond's shattering, she actually starts shouting.
  • Seen again in "Reunited". She's a terrifyingly capable warrior, using her emotion-based powers to effortlessly incapacitate the entire Crystal Gem team. It was only Lapis Lazuli, whose extremely tragic past made her immune to Blue's grief wave, that allowed them to temporarily stun her. And even then, she was back up in seconds.
  • In "Change Your Mind", she even fights Yellow to protect Steven.
  • Her power of reverse empathy is also arguably the worst of all of the Diamonds. Yellow's electric abilities can "poof" gems instantly, but they seem to be unconscious while in that state, and just need time to reform their bodies. White's mind-control is also terrifying, but as Pink Pearl/Volleyball can attest, a Gem's actual persona is also unconscious in this time—once the control is over, they awaken as if they were sleeping, with no memory of what's been happening. But Blue? Blue forces other Gems to feel such horrible grief that they can't move...and are aware of it. They're conscious during every second of the attack, which can last as long as Blue wants, and can't even find solace in the fact that they'll eventually pass out from the pain.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Often serves in this role with Yellow Diamond. They even invade the Earth together. It's also shown that Blue, Yellow, Pink, and White are part of this as a Dysfunctional Family archetype.
• Big Beautiful Woman: Not to the extent of, say, Rose Quartz, but in contrast to slimness and angularity of the other Diamonds, Blue is noticeably shapelier around the bust and hips in addition to being the most feminine Diamond.
• Big Sister Bully: Deconstructed. Her constant dismissal of Pink, combined with her refusal to let Pink spare the Earth, caused Pink to resent Blue and believe she never cared about her. In present day she seems to have realized this, as she blames herself for Pink's "death" and seems to have come to the conclusion that Pink was right about humanity not deserving to die. "Together Alone" has her angrily telling "Pink" to "quit fooling around". This reaches its ultimate conclusion when Steven angers her to the point where she physically assaults him, leaving Steven to ask Blue how many times she locked Pink away, hurt her, and made her cry. This forces Blue to confront the fact that it was her abuse that drove Pink away in the first place, and that her claims of loving her fellow Diamond rang hollow in the face of her actions.
• Big Sister Instinct: In a flashback, Blue at least tries to thoroughly praise and encourage Pink Diamond in light of the rebellion, a stark contrast to Yellow refusing to speak and turning her back on the latter. It doesn't actually work because she misunderstood Pink's motivation and comes off as Condescending Compassion, but she gets points for trying, unlike Yellow, who was straight-out ignoring Pink. In "Familiar", Blue notes that she always loved Pink's cheerful personality.
• Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: While not an unsympathetic character, Blue's role as the softer foil to Yellow can push her into this. Yellow's hostility is very visible and stated easily while Blue's isn't always evident but it's still there. Blue always comes across as the more empathetic of the two, but her Condescending Compassion and infantilization of Pink strike at a deeper level than Yellow's bluntness. It's especially apparent in scenes like when Steven meets her in the pool; Blue seems receptive at first but by the end of the conversation it's clear she doesn't "see" him as anything other than a facade Pink put on and when faced with Garnet she only acknowledges the Gems that make her rather than as her own person.
• Blue Is Heroic: Downplayed yet inverted. Her only color is blue and her name is literally "Blue Diamond", but she's an Anti-Villain who, despite her unsavory traits, starts out as the most sympathetic of the Diamonds who eventually realizes the physical/emotional harm she had caused everyone and becomes genuinely good.
• Broken Bird: This may overlap with Break the Haughty; while it's unknown how "evil" she was before Pink Diamond's shattering, it's clear that it left her in a state of depression that lasted for over 6,000 years, and even after learning the truth, has left her with emotional scars that aren't going to heal anytime soon.
  Blue Diamond: You cannot fathom how much I've mourned! What thousands of years of grief has done to me!
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday: When Blue Diamond sees Sapphire and Ruby face to face, she doesn't even remember them as the Gems she was furious at centuries before, though this is understandable as the event in question was over five thousand years ago. She remembers who they are in "Reunited" once she sees Garnet.
• The Chains of Commanding: If Yellow Diamond is telling the truth, Blue Diamond's deep and perpetual grief over the death of Pink Diamond may be causing her to neglect her duties as a leader of Homeworld.
  Yellow Diamond: Where's their Diamond when they need her, Blue? You've got to be a leader, Blue!
• Character Development:
  • While it's left up in the air how much of it is due to grief, her modern appearance suggests she has changed a lot since the Rebellion and Pink Diamond's death. She's also far kinder and more considerate towards Steven than she was in flashbacks to Pink. However, once everyone returns to Homeworld after finding "Pink Diamond", Blue reverts to her old aloof, controlling behavior by expecting Steven to host a royal ball exactly to the Diamonds' standards, and when Steven breaks protocol by dancing and fusing with Connie into Stevonnie, Blue threatens to unfuse them herself. In "Change Your Mind", Blue briefly reaches her Rage Breaking Point and blasts Steven with an energy beam, before Steven's Armor-Piercing Question makes her realize what she's doing and transition into a full Heel–Face Turn.
  • As of The Movie and Future she's improved her attitude immensely, and is now actively seeking to bring happiness to other Gems. She's also become far more loving towards Spinel than she was towards Pink.
• Co-Dragons: With Yellow towards White. They don't really enjoy it.
• Cool Aunt: After realizing Steven is technically Pink, she becomes far kinder, more supportive, and considerate towards him than she was to Pink. Where Yellow still has some harshness towards him, Blue is quick to come to his defense and instantly jumps in to try and help heal Centipeetle — when Yellow near instantly writes it off as a lost cause — because it's important to "Pink". "Familiar" briefly has her calling him "Steven" instead of "Pink". And then there's her Heel–Face Turn in "Change Your Mind", which has her fully acknowledge him as his own being and she even fights Yellow to protect him.
• Cool Big Sis: What she'd like to believe regarding Pink Diamond, but ultimately a subversion. While she was closer and more affectionate to Pink than the other Diamonds, and she did try to encourage her, it's revealed later that she had inadvertently emotionally abused her one time too many as well, by locking her up in a tower and later berating her when she made a mistake, ignoring her wish to preserve Earth's living inhabitants, and making her a Puppet Queen. It's also implied she may have used her emphatic abilities to make Pink cry too. This, along with Yellow's strictness all culminated Pink's belief that Blue and Yellow didn't truly love her and partially resulted in Pink rebelling against them as Rose Quartz. Blue redeems herself when she realizes how terrible she was to Pink, and resolves to help Steven and Connie escape Homeworld as atonement.
• Costume Evolution: The Moon base mural depicts Blue Diamond with a bare head and darker colored hair. When Blue Diamond appears in "The Answer" and "Steven's Dream", she wears a dark blue cowl and has bluish-white hair.
• Create Your Own Hero:
  • If she hadn’t been so quick to turn against Ruby and Sapphire for fusing into Garnet, it probably would have never resulted in the Crystal Gems and made Pink try to make Earth a home for dissatisfied and outcast Gems.
  • Her misguided harshness and controlling behavior towards Pink is part of what led to Pink becoming Rose Quartz in the first place.
• Creepy Shadowed Undereyes: She has heavy shadows under her eyes that are a darker shade of blue than the rest of her face, ostensibly from grief over losing Pink Diamond. Note that, in the flashback in "Now We're Only Falling Apart" where we see her face, she didn't have these, only because Pink was still alive then.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Her Emotion Bomb is so powerful that she seems to use it as a crutch in combat, to the point that she doesn't appear to know how to fight properly without it. It's telling that when Lapis shrugs it off her only backup plan is to bombard her opponent with magic until they poof.
• Curse of Babel: She was able to temporarily restore Nephrite's speech, implying that this part of the corruption was her doing.
• Curtains Match the Windows: Downplayed. Her hair is blue, but quite light when in comparison to her eyes.
• Cute Giant: Particularly after discovering Pink Diamond was never shattered.
• Dark Is Evil: Well, more of an Anti-Villain, really, but her overall dark color scheme and shadowed face match her occasional cruelty and indifference well enough.
• Dark Is Not Evil: She becomes this after Steven reveals to her the truth of Pink Diamond’s whereabouts. By the time of "Change Your Mind", this becomes far more blatant, to the point she even admits regretting what she's put her own Gems through.
• David Versus Goliath: What the fight between her and the Crystal Gems amounts to in "Reunited". Unfortunately for them, this Goliath is too damn hard to take down even with Lapis' help.
• Death Glare: Gives two to Steven in the "Wanted" arc. Before that she gave one to Sapphire in "That Will Be All".
  Blue Diamond: I want to know what SHE thinks we're going to do with her. Because I want to do something worse.
  • Shows up again in "Reunited". As the Crystal Gems stand on the beach to fight her, she stares at them with murder in her eyes, and gives a big absolutely terrifying one to Connie when she attacks her with Rose's sword.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: In "Change Your Mind", she slaps Yellow on the wrist, leading to an all-out fight between them.
• Disproportionate Retribution: She threatened to smash Ruby's gem, for fusing with a courtly Gem like Sapphire and "letting the rebels escape". This can be overlooked to some degree in that Rubies are literally Red Shirts, and Ruby herself was confused over Sapphire's actions because Ruby knew she was expendable.
• Dissonant Serenity: She's hardly fazed by Sapphire's announcement about an upcoming Rebellion attack, even when Sapphire details losses on Blue Diamond's side. Understandable in the fact that the Gems would've just been poofed, and Sapphire herself even says that she looks forward to seeing her again after she reforms.
• Doting Parent: In a flashback on the Moon base in "Can't Go Back", she speaks to Pink Diamond about the latter's first colony in a stern, yet kind way. That said, Pink Diamond didn't see her that way and believed she and the others never cared at all about her. After she learns that Steven is Pink Diamond reincarnated, the first thing she's shown doing in "Legs From Here to Homeworld" is crying tears of joy while nuzzling Steven. Later on, Blue is quick to support his decision to try to uncorrupt Centipeetle and is willing to go to Homeworld to talk to White Diamond despite her fear of White. In "Change Your Mind", Yellow calls her out for constantly bending the rules for Pink.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: The Human Zoo that was kept in Pink's name? That was created by Blue, because she misunderstood Pink's desire to preserve Earth. And she genuinely thought that her and Yellow's decision to make Pink a puppet ruler of Earth would help shield her fellow Diamond from the more difficult aspects of ruling, since she interpreted Pink's excuses as her having a hard time with colonizing Earth. It all backfired spectacularly.
• The Dreaded: In "That Will Be All", Blue Diamond struck such fear in her former subject Sapphire that the latter literally started freezing up, and had to be placated by Ruby holding her hand in secret. "Steven's Dream" shows that even Garnet is terrified of her.
• Due to the Dead: She secretly visits Earth to pay respects to Pink Diamond's "shattering" site behind Yellow Diamond's back, and knowing she'll disapprove. She also keeps a Shrine to the Fallen by bubbling Pink's Rose Quartzes and preserving her old Human Zoo and bed chambers. Yellow Diamond's efforts to Unperson Pink and destroy everything related to her, on the other hand, is at their core, someone desecrating a loved one's grave and memory for the sake of repressing her own pain and grief.
• Early Installment Character-Design Difference: She looked quite different in "The Answer" than she does in future appearances. She didn't have her loop of hair, her gem was a perfect rhombus shape like Yellow's instead of her teardrop-shape, and she's wearing a robe, which she rarely wears in other appearances. Since Blue's first appearance was a flashback thousands of years into the past and Gems have the ability to alter their appearances, some fans speculated that Blue simply changed her appearance in the intervening time. However, this proved untrue as "Now We're Only Falling Apart" and the movie both show Blue with her current design in flashbacks even further back than the one in "The Answer". (Plus, it's impossible for a Gem to change the shape of their gemstone). This also makes her mural look off as a result, since that was clearly based on her original design.
• The Eeyore: Since her powers are based off of her sadness and crying in tears, it's safe to assume that she's this compared to the other Diamonds. Ever since Pink Diamond's shattering, she's been depressed and sad all the time — so much that she began neglecting her leadership duties. She smiles more often after discovering that Pink Diamond was never shattered.
• Elderly Blue-Haired Lady: Is one of the oldest Gems in existence, and naturally has blue hair.
• Emotion Bomb: She has the ability to project her own sadness onto other Gems, and it's potent enough to make every Gem within the area start crying at once and even fall to their knees.
  • We see the full, horrifying extent of this in "Reunited". In earlier episodes, her projection power seemed like something she couldn't control — it only popped up when she felt strong emotion. Then we see that she not only has complete control over it, she knows how to weaponize it. With a single raise of her hand, she immobilizes the whole Crystal Gem team. (Barring Connie and Lion, who, as a human and lion, aren't affected at all.)
  • As of Future she has discovered that this power works with other emotions as well, allowing her to conjure blue clouds that induce pure happiness in Gems who touch them.
• Energetic and Soft-Spoken Duo: While her fellow Diamond Yellow is a dynamic and assertive military general who rarely speaks below a commanding tone and buries herself into her work to try heavily and forget the pain of losing Pink Diamond, Blue Diamond is a soft-spoken, reserved diplomat who is often quite lethargic and unmotivated these days due to her Excessive Mourning from losing a beloved family member.
• Energy Weapon: Her primary attack in "Reunited" is to slow down the Crystal Gems with Emotion Bombs and summoning self-directing Hand Blasts to barrage the battlefield.
• Even Evil Has Loved Ones: It's unclear how high she ranks on the "evil" scale in the present day, but she really seems to care about Yellow and Pink, comforting the former in "That Will Be All" and "The Trial" and having mourned the latter's supposed death for five thousand years.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • In contrast to Yellow Diamond, who views organic life as something to be snuffed out, Blue Diamond takes a more paternalistic approach by keeping humans in a nature preserve in Pink Diamond's memory.
  • Despite demanding deference and respect from her subjects, even she doesn't seem to care for displays of excessive brown-nosing, albeit not to the same obvious extent as Yellow.
  • During "The Trial", she's very insistent on taking the proceedings seriously (as opposed to Yellow Diamond, who openly treats it as a show trial).
• Excessive Mourning: Pink Diamond died over five thousand years ago. Blue Diamond still mourns her death as though it had happened yesterday. Justified, as she's lived for possibly eons, and five thousand years really is like yesterday for her.
• Exotic Eye Designs: Like Yellow Diamond, she has diamond-shaped pupils.
• Failed a Spot Check: Played for Drama. While helping to fight the rebellion on Earth, she never realized that Rose Quartz and Pink Diamond have distinctly the same voice. Even if you could excuse it as Pink changing her intonation dramatically, the real Rose Quartzes sound distinctly different from the Crystal Gems leader.
• Fatal Flaw: Sloth. If Yellow Diamond's song is anything to go by, Blue Diamond is so overwhelmed with grief that she is living in the past and neglecting her duties as a leader.
  • This seems to be a subversion after "The Trial", where Blue isn't just grieving, she's unable to accept the official story of her beloved family member's demise — because it makes no sense. The questions "How could Rose do it?" and "How did Rose do it?" are tearing her up inside. This, coupled with the fact that Yellow is uninterested in finding the truth, is causing her even more distress. A real-world equivalent would be a grieving person whose family member was murdered but they never located their family member's dead body. Little wonder Blue is unable to move on.
• Five Stages of Grief:
  • When she's first introduced, she's very clearly in the Depression stage and has been for quite some time, having not stopped crying in over several thousand years. She also regularly travels to Earth to visit Pink's shattering sight, despite knowing full well that the planet, and everything on it (including herself) could be destroyed at any second by the Cluster forming, and is in no hurry to leave when told this by her Pearl. This implies she may even have self-destructive desires or just doesn't care about her well being anymore.
  • To a lesser extent, she's also stuck at Bargaining, as she hoards anything and everything that belonged to Pink Diamond. It's a major reason she brought Greg (a native to Pink's "home planet" Earth) to the Zoo, as well as why she keeps all of Pink's Rose Quartzes bubbled instead of shattering them. It's also why she decides to go with court formalities in "The Trial", because she wants to know the truth behind Pink's "death".
    • "Change Your Mind" shows this may have also been fueled by Denial as well, as collecting life forms for Pink was apparently something Blue did frequently before Pink was "shattered".
  • Steven escaping the trial and Homeworld thrust her fully into Anger during "Reunited", with Blue actively going into combat before Yellow, and weaponizing her emotional powers. Seeing Rose's sword even triggers her to earthshaking shouting and attempting to hurt the Crystal Gems to make herself feel better, which she admits only makes things worse.
  • In the Diamond Days arc, she seems to have replaced her earlier seen deep Depression with heavy Denial. With Steven having revealed himself as Pink's son, Blue becomes eager to return Homeworld to an idealized version of its Era 1 stages when the Diamond Authority was whole and happy, and keeps calling Steven by his mother's name despite assertions that he's not Pink in an organic form. However, when "Pink" continuously breaks the rules and tells Blue to her face just how terrible things are on Homeworld, she can't keep her delusion from falling apart and eventually relapses into Anger, which worsens to the point she emotionally snaps and physically assaults Steven.
  • In "Change Your Mind", after Steven calls Blue out on how her and the other Diamonds treated Pink with emotional and physical abuse, she has a Heel Realization that allows her to finally move into the Acceptance stage, not only accepting Steven as his own individual apart from Pink (who is very much gone for good), but also accepting a slew of other issues she had been to afraid to admit, including; how Pink was right to leave and didn't belong on Homeworld any more than Steven does now, how dysfunctional the relationship between all four of the Diamonds is, how White Diamond's screwed up rules and standards on Homeworld are what is truly making her (and everyone else on the planet) miserable, and just how miserable she, herself, truly feels. After admitting all of this Blue becomes much more pro-active in helping Steven and trying to fix things and attempt to finally move forward.
• Foil:
  • To her fellow Diamond, Yellow. Aside from their colors and masculine/feminine personalities, Blue Diamond constantly and obsessively mourns Pink Diamond, collecting everything related to her to preserve Pink's memory, and is so utterly consumed by her own depression that she neglects her duties as ruler of Homeworld.
  • Greg saw Blue Diamond's loss of Pink Diamond as no different than his loss of Rose. Their experiences with the death of a loved one allowed both of them to bond; what's more, Blue kneels down to look at Greg at eye-level more or less as this happens, which is in its own way acknowledging this trope.
  • She's also this to Pearl (at the beginning of the series): both are trying to cope with the death of their loved one in the same way, by constantly grieving and refusing to move on.
    • Ironically, Greg's, Pearl's and Blue Diamond's loved ones are all the same individual.
  • To Amethyst (post-Gem War). Both are considered the lazy, undisciplined members of their team, lacking proper motivation to work with others due to unresolved emotional growth (Amethyst's inferiority complex being an Earth-born gem and defective, Blue Diamond believing Pink Diamond had died in what may have been a preventable tragedy) and have developed counter-dependent attitudes towards anyone that pushes them over it (Pearl/Yellow).
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling:
  • Yellow and Blue (responsible) and Pink (foolish). After Pink's Heel–Face Turn, the roles are reversed.
  • This trope is Zig-Zagged between her and Yellow in the present day during Steven's trial. While Blue does act depressed and unable to function in her normal daily life, at the very least she's insistent on continuing the trial properly. Yellow, on the other hand, while determined to keep her forces in line, treats the trial like a Kangaroo Court.
• Forehead of Doom: She has a very tall forehead which adds to her perpetually droopy face.
• For Your Own Good: When Pink was reluctant to continue with the Earth colony, she and Yellow directly intervened. She was quite vocal about it, wanting her younger fellow Diamond to be as successful as them.
• Gasp!: Blue Diamond reacts this way after Blue Zircon implies one of the Diamonds shattered Pink, either for the shock of such sacrilegious declaration, or because it actually makes sense (Blue Diamond trying to calm Yellow Diamond makes the latter a likely situation). She also gives one of these in "Reunited", when she realizes that Steven really is the supposedly-shattered Pink Diamond.
• Gentle Giant: She already shows shades of this in "Steven's Dream" with the kindness she displays towards Greg, but she doesn't truly fulfill this trope until her Heel–Face Turn.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: Very queenly (Greg even calls her "Your Highness"), and also very tyrannical. Does not hesitate to order Ruby executed for breaking a taboo, even accidentally while trying to do her job. She may have lightened up in the present day, though how much remains to be seen.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Ironically, Blue Diamond's temper can be even worse than Yellow Diamond's. It took one of her followers calling her what is probably the equivalent of a Gem slur, and in another case, being accused of murdering her own family member, for Yellow to finally snap and get violent. Blue, on the other hand, was immediately ready to shatter one of her own Gems for accidentally fusing with one of her elites, and totally lost her composure because "Rose Quartz" apparently didn't want to remember the most traumatic event in her life. As mentioned above in Axe-Crazy, it's unclear if her violent anger is as a result of Pink Diamond's supposed shattering. "Now We're Only Falling Apart" implies that she was like this beforehand considering how Pink Diamond express fear and guilt for leaving Garnet at her mercy, which makes her change her goal from scaring Homeworld off of Earth to making it a home for outcast Gems.
• Hartman Hips: The cinch at her waist gives her a set of these, most noticeable during "Together Alone" when she sashays side-to-side as she enters the ballroom.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: A dark example. Yellow has electricity-based powers which can effortlessly "poof" a Gem, taking them out of commission. Compared to this, Blue's Emotion Bomb gift of spreading her feelings to other Gems seems weak... Then "Reunited" aired, and we see that she can easily weaponize that reverse empathy to completely incapacitate every Gem in range. Her power is so strong that it unfuses Alexandrite within seconds.
• Heavenly Blue: She is, as her name implies, blue, resembles the Virgin Mary, has blue light attacks and is worshipped as a goddess. She is, however, an antagonist. For most of the series, anyway.
• Heel–Face Turn: Her love for Pink, and by extension Steven, eventually win out over her fear of White and her own lingering bitterness. She betrays White and fights Yellow to save the Crystal Gems and Steven, and openly admits what she's done to her own subjects was wrong.
• Heel Realization:
  • Has had a partial one. Unlike Yellow, she's realized humanity doesn't deserve to die and has come to respect them. However, she's unable, or unwilling, to go against Yellow and do more than spare a few of them.
  • Unlike Yellow, she seems to have realized she and Yellow were too callous and cruel to Pink, to the point of blaming herself for her apparent demise. When she realized Steven is Pink (in a sense), she stops her rampage and shows she really has changed, being far kinder and more considerate to him and what he wants. Though this also turns out to be downplayed in that it's clear she hasn't fully learned from her mistakes, and is still prejudiced towards humans and the Crystal Gems.
  • Finally has a full one that leads to a Heel–Face Turn when she hurts "Pink" yet again and Steven calls her out on it, with his words making her realize that doing this so many times drove Pink away in the first place. Blue outright admits that Pink was right to leave, and that Homeworld was failing Pink if she was happier on Earth than she was there.
  • She lets out during her confrontation with Yellow that she's realized the Gems under them have been suffering and seems to finally understand how immoral it is, but was burying it to live up to White's standards. This makes her sparing the Earth Quartz Gems, treating her Pearl well, and being furious at the trial when Yellow needlessly poofed the Zircons take on a completely different meaning.
• Hidden Eyes: Seems to be a theme with her, as her Pearl, Sapphire, and Blue Diamond herself all cover their eyes.
• Hidden Depths:
  • "Now We're Only Falling Apart" reveals Blue created the human zoo as an attempt to compromise with Pink Diamond’s begging to cease the colonizing of the Earth. Very surprising considering she was as dismissive of organics like Yellow Diamond yet she was able to make sure future generations of Zoomans wouldn’t understand feelings like sadness and pain.
  • A darker example in "Reunited". Previously, she had raised her voice on the show twice, both in "That Will Be All" and "The Trial", and she seemed almost weak compared to the war-like Yellow. Then we see her battling in action, and... let's just say it's not pretty.
    • The same episode demonstrates that she understands just how useless continuing the war with the Crystal Gems is, since no matter how much they suffer it can't bring Pink Diamond back.
  • She treats her Pearl well, spared the Earth Quartz Gems, and is enraged when Yellow needlessly poofs the Zircons. As it turns out and she admits to Yellow, she's realized their Gems are suffering needlessly and does feel bad about it, but is too afraid of disappointing and enraging White to act on it.
  • Out of all the Diamonds, she may actually be The Smart Guy when she allows herself to think independently, outside of White's ideals and standards, as she uses her status as the head of Homeworld's judicial system to create a socially acceptable way for Blue Pearl to indulge in her drawing hobby despite it being outside Homeworld norms, recognizes the logical inconsistencies in the testimony regarding Pink's "shattering" and, at the end of "Change Your Mind", she suggests using Rose's tears as a medium to channel the Diamond Authority's powers into the corrupted Gems.
• Hot Goddess: She is very elegant and beautiful and has fairly curvaceous figure to match. She is also an immensely powerful Physical Goddess Diamond.
• Hypocrite:
  • In a flashback in "Now We're Only Falling Apart", Pink Diamond is shown to be worried that Blue will reprimand her for visiting the Prime Kindergarten, but in "Steven's Dream", Blue herself is shown going against Yellow's orders and visiting the Earth against her wishes.
  • Also, in "Can't Go Back", Blue had the nerve to call Pink out on not finishing her duties as a Diamond and accuse her of being ungrateful, when, after Pink's demise, she spent millennia grieving instead of being a Diamond. And back when Pink was still alive, she did everything she could to fix the Diamonds' dysfunctional relationship, only for Blue to pay her back with locking her up whenever she stepped out of line and making her cry, even taking away Pink's first colony when she wouldn't complete it. Yellow calls her out on the former and Steven calls her out on the latter.
• Icy Blue Eyes: She has droopy, light blue eyes, which can appear innocent when she grieves.
• Implacable Man: In "Reunited", even with the combined efforts of the Crystal Gems (including Connie, Bismuth, Peridot and Lapis, who has the entire ocean as her weapon) all attacking Blue Diamond at once, all they manage to do is slow her down and knock her off her feet, Blue Diamond easily breaking any hold they have on her and shrugging off every attack, including Lapis dropping the barn on her and the Cluster slamming Yellow's ship onto her ship ONTO HER! And that was before Yellow Diamond joins in...
• I Never Said It Was Poison: Subverted, as she's definitely not the murderer of her beloved Pink Diamond. She does, however, correct Steven, who had become convinced his mother eventually used Bismuth's Breaking Point weapon to kill her own Diamond. Blue screamed it was a sword. Bismuth designed Rose's sword to slice through physical forms, but never shatter the gem itself.
• Innocently Insensitive: Where to begin; she responded to Pink's desire to spare Earth by giving her a People Zoo, she apologized to Steven for making him spend "6,000 years on this horrible planet", and she's generally incapable of reading a room.
• Improbable Hairstyle: A large part of her hair comes out of her head and goes back in, forming a seamless loop. It's the clearest demonstration that Gems' hair is formed whole, not grown.
• In the Hood: She wears a long blue cloak that does a good job of obscuring her eyes. It gives her a likeness to the Virgin Mary when she stands.
• Ironic Name: Blue diamonds represent peace, spirituality, and good health, which is ironic, given that her lasting grief and mourning over Pink is far from an improvement to her well-being.
• Irony: Blue, the one who seemed most interested in reconnecting with the other Diamonds, is the one who can't bear to even look at an off-colored (read: blushing) White; she even looks like she's going to vomit.
• It's All About Me:
  • Grieving has made Blue increasingly self-centered, causing her to push away her responsibilities to the Gems who follow her and reject Yellow's attempts to help her. Yet this selfishness comes with minimal self-reflection, as it's clear she's putting the burden of Pink's demise on everyone but herself.
  • In general, her role as The Empath is this since she uses it to force others to feel her pain while showing a complete Lack of Empathy for the pain of every other non-Diamond living being in existence. When she attacks the Crystal Gems, she tells them she wants to make them feel the pain she'd been feeling since Pink died, as if they hadn't collectively felt that pain and more.
• It's All My Fault: She blames herself for not preventing Pink Diamond's shattering at the hands of Rose, a sentiment that she privately expresses to Pink Diamond's ruined palanquin while visiting Earth in "Steven's Dream". "Can't Go Back" reveals she pressured Pink Diamond into continuing the war for Earth even though Pink wanted to just leave Earth and the Crystal Gems alone, explaining why she feels that way.
• The Juggernaut: Blue Diamond is often thought of as a lesser threat than the more traditionally villainous Yellow, and is known for her incessant mourning of the loss of Pink, but it also means her desire to crush those responsible is just as all-consuming and unstoppable. We get an extended battle sequence with her, and the team is completely outclassed. She is able to psychically shut down their fusion Alexandrite immediately, sends everyone flying with any attack, and is barely fazed by the team's combined weaponry and then having a house and then two spaceships slammed onto her head.
• Karmic Jackpot: Her pulling a Heel–Face Turn, realizing the error of the Diamonds' tyrannical ways, and attempting to help Steven and Connie return to Earth result in her finally being free from her status as one of Homeworld's rulers and reconciling with the other Diamonds.
• Kick the Dog:
  • In Ruby and Sapphire's love story, she threatens to have Ruby shattered for something that was an obvious accident.
  • She just laughs at Garnet for the latter being a cross-Gem Fusion.
• Kick the Morality Pet:
  • She and Yellow Diamond perform a dual one in a flashback in "Now We're Only Falling Apart", in which they reject Pink's offer to spare the Earth.
  • She also shoots Steven with an energy ball when "Pink" defies her one time too many. It's heavily implied she's done this before, and Steven lampshading this prompts her Heel Realization.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: In "The Answer", she knows her limits and tries to escape the rebels on her palanquin.
• Lack of Empathy: A variant; of the Diamonds, she does have empathy, and her emotional side was brought out after Pink Diamond was shattered. However, she's still a Bad Boss to her Gem subjects, and while she's a sympathetic character, she represents the negative side-effects of grieving in that she refuses to move on and accept help from those who genuinely care for her, preferring to shift responsibility and blame onto others while leaving herself stuck in a constant, self-defeating cycle. This is represented by her Emotion Bomb powers, which makes everyone in the vicinity suffer, while never acknowledging or accepting that she's part of the problem herself. Subverted when it turns out that she not only has enough empathy of her own to realize why Pink left Homeworld, but understand that the Homeworld Gems are suffering under Homeworld's ways as well.
• Lady of Black Magic: Of the four Diamonds, Blue is the most traditionally feminine, with her court mostly taking after her in looks and personality. Both her regal robes and hood invoke a resemblance to a classical witch, and unlike the combat-oriented Yellow Diamond, she primarily uses magic to fight — either in the form of her depressive aura or energy blasts.
• Large and in Charge: She's only slightly shorter than Yellow, as seen when the two stand side by side in the fourth and fifth seasons. The height difference is probably because Yellow wears heeled boots.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Because Blue was emotionally abusive and condescending towards Pink, the latter stages a rebellion against Homeworld and faking her death, causing Blue to grieve for millennia. Following the return of Pink's son Steven to Homeworld, Blue, seeing him as Pink, becomes eager to renew her familial bond with him only to revert back to her aloof behavior towards him, but it doesn't take long for him to (in Blue's view, anyway) turn out to be even worse than Pink, much to Blue's distress. It only takes Steven convincing her that her behavior was wrong for her to finally realize the flaws of Homeworld and the Diamonds — the kicker is since Pink Diamond is truly dead, she can never personally apologize to her littlest fellow Diamond for what she had done.
• Lean and Mean: In her initial appearance, she is veiled, ambiguously threatening with long, lean arms, and is perfectly willing to crush Ruby's gem more for accidentally fusing with Sapphire than allowing the rebels to escape. In the present, this is subverted as she is more traditionally feminine-looking than her fellow Diamond Yellow with a fuller, more hourglass shape. Whether this is due to Garnet being an Unreliable Narrator in "The Answer" or due to a regeneration in the intervening millennia is yet to be known. After experiencing a Heel Realization, she decides to avert it and help Steven and Connie get to White Diamond.
• Leitmotif: Her specific variation of the Diamonds' theme, heard during her meeting with Greg, incorporates a twinkling chiptune not dissimilar to Lapis' celesta.
• Light 'em Up: In her battle with the Crystal Gems she throws beams of blue devil light.
• A Lighter Shade of Black: As opposed to wanting to destroy Earth for the sake of Revenge (like Yellow Diamond), Blue Diamond wishes Earth wouldn't die (as it's one of the last remnants of Pink Diamond). In fact, she and the human Greg have a moment based around both losing loved ones. She still basically kidnapped him, but it was for more sympathetic reasons than spite. This is on top of her developing a respect for humanity for persevering through life despite, in her eyes, being weak. Her actions in "The Trial" only lighten her further, as she's a Reasonable Authority Figure compared to Yellow, adamantly refusing to cut straight to an execution without going through due process, and giving Steven and his defense lawyer adequate time to speak and defend themselves, even allowing Blue Zircon to present her personal Diamond palanquin as evidence. While she doesn't stop Yellow from poofing both Zircons, she IS furious that Yellow did so in the first place and lets her know it.
• Light Is Not Good: Her palanquin, hooded veil and flowing robes offset give her an eerily saintlike appearance. As the rest of these tropes will tell you, she's anything but — or, at least, she was back during the Rebellion. As the A Lighter Shade of Black entry explains, she's certainly a little better than Yellow Diamond these days. That said, she's the first of the Diamonds to side with Steven over White, and openly admits that what she's done to her Gems in White's name was wrong. She also fights Yellow as a result.
• Locked Out of the Loop: As "The Trial" reveals, she's (almost) completely in the dark about what really happened with Pink Diamond's death.
• Long Hair Is Feminine: The Moon base mural depicts her with long black hair, and in the present day her hair is long, flowing, and pale with a "loop" that wraps around her gem.
• Love Redeems: In "Change Your Mind", after Blue realizes how unhappy Pink was on Homeworld, due to how emotionally abusive the other Diamonds were to her, Blue herself included, she decides to help Steven and Connie escape Homeworld, fights off Yellow to protect Steven, and along with Yellow, tries to convince White that everything they're doing is wrong and it's tearing their family apart.
• Mama Bear:
  • It's heavily implied that she and Pink Diamond were very close, and her shattering affected her greatly. Her behavior in "The Trial" is akin to an angry, grieving parent searching for answers and confronting the (supposed) killer of their child on why they did it. In "Reunited", she takes a personal fight to the Crystal Gems, and very nearly defeats them in a matter of seconds, all because she despises the fact they're sullying Pink's former planet with their presence.
  • Her fight with Yellow is dripping with this, as she's fighting to protect Steven from Yellow.
• Maternally Challenged: Tries very hard to be a Cool Big Sis to Pink, and a Cool Aunt to Steven, but her consistent Lack of Empathy means that every time she interacts with them, she ends up hurting them in some way.
• Meaningful Name:
  • The Hope Diamond, the world's most famous diamond, is a blue diamond. Blue Diamond seems to be the direct leader of the nobility. The Hope Diamond is also believed to be cursed and bring misfortune to anyone who tries to wear it, which is fitting given Blue Diamond being very quick to shatter Ruby, and the fact Lapis (who wears Blue Diamond's symbol) has been hit with the most misfortune of any other being, Gem or human. Blue Diamond herself also suffered the loss of a loved one and has spent much time in constant mourning and heartache. She also has the ability to inflict sadness and sorrow on others.
  • When we finally see her again, she's in mourning, and is implied to have been so for the past few thousand years. Yellow Diamond's Villain Song "What's the Use of Feeling (Blue)?" mixes it with Punny Name; it's like being called "Sad Diamond".
• Messy Hair: In "Change Your Mind", after Steven gets through with her about her behavior towards Pink, Blue's perfectly groomed hair starts becoming more unkempt as she finally realizes the scope of her actions. It shows how her "Diamond" persona is breaking, allowing her to truly gain human empathy.
• Mighty Glacier: In contrast with her Lightning Bruiser sister Yellow, Blue is generally stationary during fights. But, she makes up for it by being tough enough to No-Sell all of the Crystal Gems' strongest attacks and easily shrugs off a barn being dropped on her.
• Mood-Swinger:
  • She suddenly snaps out of mourning when she's suspicious of Sapphire's (false) claim to have been on a special mission for her. Then Sapphire explains she was taking an opportunity before Earth was destroyed, and Blue Diamond instantly snaps back to looking miserable.
  • In "The Trial", she starts out calm but when she questions "Rose" who lies to her about how Pink was shattered, Blue is enraged for a second before grief and frustration overwhelm her, and she breaks down for a moment.
• Moral Myopia: Blue Diamond had no moral qualms about ordering Ruby's execution, suggesting that she has a harsh standard for Gems that disobey her rules. However, when her fellow Diamond Pink was killed, she mourned for centuries.
• My Greatest Failure: She and Yellow were tired of Pink's excuses in not completing the Earth colony, reassuring her Rose could do nothing against her, and instructing her to quash the rebellion. Shortly afterwards, news reached her that Pink was shattered by Rose. Her current behavior implies she is also aware her own callousness towards Pink may have contributed to what happened and regrets it. Confirmed in "Change Your Mind", as Steven throws her horrible behavior back in her face.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Steven questions how many times she'd hurt Pink and made her cry, Blue replies she never did... then it slowly dawns on her how many times she actually did, and she's essentially trapped herself in a cycle of hurting Pink. And is doing so again that very moment. This realization finally cements her Heel Realization, making her realize exactly why Pink decided to abandon Homeworld to live on Earth as Rose.
• Mystical White Hair: Has long white hair. Her mural, however, depicted her with black hair.
• Never My Fault: In "The Answer", she blames Ruby for not stopping Rose and Pearl when Sapphire predicted it, even though she never did a thing to stop them herself.
• Nice, Mean, and In-Between: Yellow (mean) is a short-tempered Bad Boss, Blue (in-between), while initially as bad as Yellow, seems to have Took a Level in Kindness in recent years thanks to Pink Diamond's "death", and Pink (nice) is an All-Loving Hero and a Benevolent Boss who cherishes and wishes to protect organic life.
• Nice to the Waiter: Considerably less so than Pink Diamond, but she does thank her subjects whenever they do as she says or perform something that pleases her. She even outright defends the defending Zircon, even after she accused her and Yellow Diamond of shattering Pink Diamond.
  Holly Blue Agate: And surely, Blue Diamond would want to thank you personally for this special delivery, your Grand Clarity.
  Sapphire: Yes, I suppose she will.
• Nigh-Invulnerability: On par with Yellow Diamond. She endured having a barn dropped on her, being attacked by all of the Crystal Gems, and being crushed by her own ship! When she gets back up, the only visible damage is her hair being slightly displaced. In "Change Your Mind", she resisted several seconds of sustained assault from Yellow Diamond's electrical attack and stood up not long after. The same electrical attack which instantly poofs other Gems after a quick blast.
• Noble Demon: She wants to save at least some humans to honor Pink's memory, and she's an impartial and fair judge (of Steven, who we must remind you she thinks murdered Pink).
• Non-Standard Character Design: Her appearance (particularly her long face and droopy eyes) borrows heavily from the style of Leiji Matsumoto to give her "a strange presence".
• Not Afraid to Die: She sometimes visits Pink Diamond's grave on Earth even though, as far as she knows, the Cluster could become active at any moment and wipe out the planet and everything on it, herself included.
• Oh, Crap!: Twice in "Legs From Here to Homeworld". Once she learns of what the Diamonds' combined attack had actually done to all the Gems on Earth, she reacts in disbelief and horror. She's also terrified of incurring White's wrath over the senseless destruction she and the other Diamonds had caused because they all couldn't agree on Earth's colonization, behaving like a child who just realized they had utterly screwed up in a huge way.
• Only Sane Woman:
  • Despite her grief, Blue seems to be the only Gem to have noticed that the initial stories about Pink's death didn't make any sense. Whereas Yellow is adamant Rose was responsible, going increasingly off the rails trying to shut down any line of inquiry, Blue is determined to find out the truth behind Pink Diamond's demise through using her official status as head of Homeworld's judicial system. As soon as the opportunity comes along she holds a trial and uses court procedures to gather additional testimony and evidence that explains the illogical aspects of Pink's shattering. This method leads to the Defense Zircon putting it together that the stories don't make sense because Rose couldn't have possibly shattered Pink, and puts Steven on the path to finding out the entire truth.
  • She's the first of the Diamonds who realizes the error of Homeworld's ways (aside from Pink), as well as the fact that she and the other Diamonds' treatment of Pink was wrong and outright abusive. She is also the one who personally tells White Diamond that they repaid Pink with neglect despite her desire for them to be happy, and how none of the Diamonds are actually happy with being tyrants.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Occasionally betrays hints of her voice actor Lisa Hannigan's Irish accent during her first appearances. From "Can't Go Back" onward, she speaks entirely with one.
• Parental Substitute: One possible interpretation of her relationship with Pink Diamond. Since someone had to teach Pink how to behave like a Diamond with White withdrawn into solitude in her own headship and Yellow burying herself in her work most of the time in a vain attempt to impress White, the role was left largely to Blue. This makes Blue's grieving even more tragic.
• Parting-Words Regret: Implied. The flashback in "Can't Go Back" is implied to be the last conversation she had with Pink before the latter's faked assassination. What she says to her pretty much reads as "stop whining and be a good little Puppet Queen", and she encourages Pink to dismiss Rose Quartz as a threat. No wonder she's so broken up about Pink's passing. In particular, her final sentence was "As long as you are there to rule, this colony will be completed." Ironically, Pink Diamond didn't want the colony to be completed, and took Blue Diamond's words to mean that the only way that Earth could survive was if she removed herself from the equation.
• Perpetual Frowner: Her eyes are constantly drooped, and she's barely ever seen not crying.
• Personality Powers: Blue's Signature Move is a blue aura that forces the Gems around her to feel her despair and depression against their will, a reflection on how she only thinks about herself and her own feelings and forces others to bear her burdens for her. Between her Heel–Face Turn in "Change Your Mind" and "Homeworld Bound", she eventually learned how to create clouds that induce happiness and contentment in any Gem who touches them, an ability that helps the troubled minds of others instead of hurting them.
• Pet the Dog: Like Yellow Diamond, she has quite a few.
  • In a flashback in which she is otherwise depicted as extremely cruel, she thanks Sapphire for predicting that Rose and Pearl will be defeated.
  • She is perhaps the first Homeworld Gem to quickly realize that humans are capable of empathy and feeling loss, and she lifts her veil and lowers herself to Greg's eye level to speak with him as an equal. Her abduction of Greg is because she thinks he doesn't deserve to die; at the time she did not know the Cluster was no longer going to destroy the Earth.
  • Her desire to preserve Pink Diamond's legacy includes keeping the humans in the Zoo well cared for and keeping the Earth Quartzes and other Rose Quartzes alive (even if the latter are bubbled), both of which Yellow Diamond finds absurd. She also intended to save Greg by kidnapping him and taking him to the Zoo.
  • She keeps the trial going, wanting to hear Steven and his defense Zircon out, and won't execute Steven outright when he demands to be punished for Rose's crimes.
  • When Yellow Diamond starts going ballistic on the Zircons when the Defense one implies that the Diamonds shattered Pink, Blue steps in on their behalf.
  • In spite of harshly scolding Pink Diamond for her supposed ungratefulness in a flashback in "Can't Go Back", she comforts her after seeing that her tone has upset Pink. Unfortunately, Pink didn't see this as a Pet the Dog moment, instead as a Kick the Morality Pet moment.
  • Despite taking a no-nonsense approach while facing the Crystal Gems, she ceases her hostility after she finds out that Rose/Steven is Pink Diamond.
  • She does genuinely care when she attempts to restore Nephrite.
  • Upon discovering her Pearl had an interest in art, rather than crushing this hobby outside her duties like most Gems would, Blue found a socially acceptable way for her to indulge it by making her the artist for Homeworld's trials.
  • Even before her Heel–Face Turn in "Change Your Mind", she seems genuinely concerned when telling Steven that Pink's time on Earth has warped her sense of right and wrong.
• The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: Pink's death has sapped all of her willpower to engage in Diamond duties anymore.
• Power Incontinence: Blue's Emotion Bomb powers cause any Gems around her to cry her tears, but she can't seem to turn it off. If she has even so much as tears of joy, any Gems around her will be left in various stages between weeping and uncontrollably bawling. This even extends to Pink and Yellow Diamond, to the latter's annoyance. The movie reveals that she's finally gained control over her powers, however.
• Prone to Tears: Blue Diamond is quite emotionally unstable, unintentionally harmful to those she loves (mainly Yellow Diamond), and extremely self-observed. Grieving certainly only highlighted these features in her, and at this point, the only Gem who could've opened her eyes to it (Yellow) doesn't do so because she's afraid of breaking Blue even further.
• Pronoun Trouble: In "Change Your Mind", she agrees to call Steven by his name, but still refers to him as "she". Though, this may be to the fact that Gems all have female forms and thus might not even be aware of masculine pronouns.
• Pushover Parents: Downplayed. Her younger fellow Diamond Pink was able to invent excuses for Blue to let her out of the prison tower, and Blue would cave and let her out. In "Change Your Mind", Yellow calls her out for constantly bending the rules for Pink.
• Rage Breaking Point: "Pink"/Steven defying her one time too many leads to her attacking him. However, it works against her.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Well, when compared to Yellow Diamond today, though she was just as bad around Ruby and Sapphire's time. In "The Trial", she opts to go through "Rose Quartz's" (actually Steven) trial and hear out the defendant rather than going through with Yellow Diamond's wish of a quick execution. When Yellow Diamond goes ballistic from being accused of regicide, Blue Diamond tries to get her to calm down.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni:
  • Like their respective Pearls, Blue is the... blue to Yellow's red.
  • Both she and Yellow serve as the blue to Pink's red, as they are more serious and less excitable than she is.
• Revenge Before Reason: Subverted. We're led to believe that she wants to avenge Pink in "The Trial", given she wants to do something terrible to Rose. It turns out, however, that Blue wants answers more than revenge: how did her family member die, and why is the official story full of holes?
• Rule of Symbolism: White Diamond summarizes her personality towards her relationship to the light spectrum.
  White Diamond: Ah, and Blue, her impurities soak up all the warmth in her spectrum. She thinks she needs you, Pink.
• Sadist: During "The Trial", Yellow wants to kill Steven in a quick and probably painless way, while Blue implies she wants to torture him. Also, in "Reunited", it's actually subverted. When Steven enters the Diamonds's minds, Yellow is only thinking about Pink. Blue mentions how tormenting the Crystal Gems isn't bringing her any satisfaction, and only makes her miss Pink even more.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: In "The Answer", she flees in her palanquin when Rose and Pearl show up, rather than confront them directly.
• Self-Serving Memory: She tells Greg that she and Pink Diamond were "very close", yet Blue's constant dismissal of Pink, combined with her refusal to let Pink spare the Earth, suggests that their relationship was strained at best. In fact, the only on-screen interactions between Blue and Pink when the latter was still alive have been fairly negative. "Now We're Only Falling Apart" even has Pink, as Rose, regretting leaving Garnet with Blue, implying that she sees Blue as more of a tyrant than a family member. It apparently got so bad that even thousands of years after faking her death, Pink didn't miss Blue at all.
• Shadow Archetype: To Lapis and Sapphire, who were both once part of her court.
  • Blue, like Sapphire, was close to a red gem (Pink, Ruby), though Blue and Pink are implied to not have been as close as Blue thought. Unlike Sapphire, who had friends make her see her mistakes, Blue let her position's expectations and her own arrogance influence her relationship with Pink, which both alienated her and drove her away to the point of rebelling in the form of the commander of an intergalactic war. By the time Blue realized her mistake, Pink has faked her death, and Blue wasn't the same since.
  • Blue, like Lapis, endured an equal amount of psychological trauma, which continued to affect them for thousands of years. Unlike Lapis, Blue hasn't made an effort to try move on from Pink's death, something that Yellow Diamond called her out on in "That Will Be All".
• Shout-Out: Her character design is a nod to many of the willowy female characters from Leiji Matsumoto's works.
• Silk Hiding Steel: Most of the time, Blue Diamond is a graceful and demure presence, and seems to defer to Yellow Diamond's more authoritative presence. However, it's hinted that she's got a firmer side to her, as seen by her quiet suspicion of Sapphire's presence in the Zoo at first. Then, in "The Trial", we see her suddenly standing up to Yellow and engaging her in a shouting match. And in "Reunited", the steel comes fully out as even when her "reverse empathy" power is stopped, she's still an incredibly powerful warrior who can summon weaponized beams of light and shrug off her own ship slamming into her like it's nothing. Further, in the movie, the improvement to herself that she proudly tells Steven about is that she is no longer shattering other Gems. This, along with her experience with Garnet, implies that despite being known as the most diplomatic and merciful, execution was a main go-to when judging them.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: She talks in an almost soothing manner, but is also indifferent to her followers at best. Yellow's electric energy attacks "poof" Gems instantly, but Blue's ability—forcing any Gem to become overwhelmed with grief and suffering — keeps them fully conscious and aware of every second of the pain. When she uses that very power to incapacitate the Crystal Gems in "Reunited", she softly but intensely says one line: "You deserve this." Ultimately subverted, however, as when Steven sees into her mind, she admits it doesn't make her feel any better at all. If anything it makes her feel worse.
• Someone to Remember Him By: A non-child example. Not knowing that the Cluster isn't going to destroy Earth, she kidnaps Greg as a memento of Pink Diamond.
• Suddenly Shouting: "IT WAS A SWORD!" It also applies to when Yellow Diamond starts poofing the Zircons — cue the soft-spoken Blue suddenly jumping forward to grab Yellow and shouting at her to get a hold of herself, and when she comes face-to-face with Rose's sword in "Reunited".
• Tareme Eyes: Blue Diamond has large, sad, downward-slanting eyes which fits with her perpetual mourning.
• Tears of Joy: She cries these in "Legs From Here to Homeworld" over sheer joy at seeing Pink (as Steven) again. She does it again later when they board Pink's ship together.
• This Cannot Be!:
  • A rare not-entirely-evil example. At the end of "Reunited", Steven finally manages to send a psychic message that he has Pink Diamond's Gem. Blue's response? A soft "Impossible..."
  • Also in the same episode was surprise that Lapis Lazuli appears out of nowhere and declared herself a Crystal gem but also that she had resisted her emotion powers suggesting this has never happened before or that it's a rare event.
• This Is Unforgivable!:
  • Her reaction to Ruby accidentally fusing with Sapphire is threatening to shatter Ruby's gem in "The Answer".
  • In "Reunited", she tries to murder all of the Crystal Gems for daring to thrive on the planet that belongs to Pink.
  • In "Together Alone", she is enraged at Steven when he accidentally fuses with Connie at the Era 3 ball.
• Token Good Teammate: While Pink is definitely less ruthless than her, Blue appears to be this out of the remaining three Diamonds, at least, being considerably more mellow and down-to-Earth than Yellow and White. In addition, she's the first of the three remaining diamonds to see the error of her ways and side with Steven.
• Too Important to Walk: She's a member of the Great Diamond Authority and travels by palanquin.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Yellow Diamond has been compared to a businesswoman, wears huge shoulder pads, pants and Power Hair, and isn't talented at remaining stoic. Blue Diamond herself is introduced (in a flashback) wearing a cloak and gown and sitting on a throne like a traditional queen and always speaks calmly even when she's losing her (very short) temper and ordering an execution.
• Took a Level in Cheerfulness: After she cries Tears of Joy in "Legs From Here to Homeworld" over sheer happiness at having "Pink" back, she acts far less sad from that episode on.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: To an extent in "Reunited", though it's understandable given her circumstances at the time. She goes to Earth to make the Crystal Gems suffer and takes a no-nonsense approach when facing them.
• Took a Level in Kindness:
  • She is noticeably nicer and more mature in the present day compared to her extremely callous behavior towards Ruby and Sapphire for accidentally fusing in "The Answer" and her attitude in "Can't Go Back", as she bubbled and protected all the Rose Quartzes from being shattered by Yellow Diamond, and allowed the other Quartzes such as the Amethysts to still be in service regardless of what Homeworld thought of them. Realizing her callousness towards Pink may have contributed to her apparent death may have contributed to this.
  • While she initially displays major Lack of Empathy towards organic life and the Homeworld Gems, she eventually comes to have more consideration towards both. She comes to show more Benevolent Boss tendencies towards her subjects in the present day and expresses sympathy towards Gemkind for having to suffer under Homeworld's tyrannical ways, and she is also cordial towards Greg Universe after he empathizes with her over losing a loved one, just before attempting to spare him from the Cluster.
• Tough Leader Façade:
  • She's highly revered by her Homeworld subjects, but behind closed doors she's a sad and depressed woman who's in perpetual mourning over her dead fellow Diamond Pink and wallowing in her own guilt over her failure to prevent her death.
  • In "Can't Go Back", she tried educating Pink on this, instructing her to "smile and wave" to show her subjects that the Crystal Gem rebellion was really nothing to worry about. This is what partially led to Pink rebelling in the first place.
  • She admits in "Change Your Mind" that she's been "suffering in silence for ages" from the way Homeworld does things, just like Pink was and like the Diamonds' Gems still are. In her attempt to talk to White Diamond, she admits that, while she knows that her purpose as a leader of Homeworld isn't to be happy, she nonetheless is finding it increasingly more difficult to enforce White's will when it just brings misery to herself, Yellow, and those that they rule.
• Tragic Keepsake: Blue Diamond sees anything related to her dead fellow Diamond Pink as something to preserve and keep around her. She keeps everything from Pink Diamond's empty throne room and the bubbled gems of her former Rose Quartz servants, to the Human Zoo and the Quartzes from the Earth Kindergardens. When Greg, a human from Earth, shows her compassion, Blue Diamond decides to take him, too, in order to save what she believes to be "one last piece of [Pink Diamond's] legacy" from the Cluster. Yellow Diamond derides Blue Diamond's habit of collecting anything related to Pink Diamond as useless clinging to the past. In "Reunited", when she sees the surviving Crystal Gems and "Rose Quartz" still living on Earth, she is furious, seeing it as a grave affront to Pink's memory.
• Tranquil Fury: Like her former subject, Sapphire, she usually keeps her composure even when angry, only displaying cold irritation. It is during the events of "The Trial" that she explodes, even yelling at Yellow Diamond when she goes on a rampage after being accused of killing Pink Diamond. In "Reunited", she remains remarkably soft-spoken even during a pitched battle against the Crystal Gems, despite her words making it clear she feels nothing but anger at their presence.
• True Blue Femininity: She's called Blue Diamond, and of the four Diamonds in the show, she's traditionally feminine, being a demure, soft-spoken Gem who wears gowns and cloaks to emphasize her curvy features. This seems to be a theme of her and her court since every Gem shown connected to her so far has been blue. In "Steven's Dream", she wears a simple shoulderless, figure-hugging gown underneath a cloak, reminiscent of old English mourning dress, which is a direct contrast to Yellow Diamond's more masculine military jumpsuit.
• Tsundere: Type A, though not to the extent of Yellow Diamond. While she acts condescending and strict most of the time, especially towards her subjects and Pink Diamond, she makes it clear that she cares a lot about Pink and her son Steven. After her Heel–Face Turn, she outright admits that what she's done to her own subjects was wrong.
• The Un-Favourite: Unlike Yellow who holds some resentment, Blue speaks no ill of White, yet did mention to Steven in "Familiar" that her encouragement of Pink's games and sense of humor by simply calling a group of Pyrites "Fool's Gold", backfired and enraged White Diamond.
• Unskilled, but Strong: She's as horrendously powerful as her rank suggests, and shrugs off a ridiculous amount of punishment. It must be noted however that she takes a ridiculous amount of punishment in the episode "Reunited", as she barely moves, her melee defense is rudimentary at best, she fails to land decisive hits and lacks any sort of plan to counter Steven's shield. She even has to pause to weep into her hands before her depressive aura can be sent out for the first time. Yellow by comparison turns the fight around in moments, demonstrating that she knows how to properly leverage her advantages. Justified since she is primarily a diplomat, unlike Yellow who is responsible for the military and Pink who fought in the rebellion. Also, it's entirely possible that she has never fought an enemy who could shrug off her Emotion Bomb and shield against her magic projectiles.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Tells Pink Diamond that "As long as you are there to rule, this colony will be completed." Unfortunately, Pink didn't want the colony to be completed, and this is almost certainly what led to her faking her death, and all the disastrous events that brought with it.
• Unwitting Pawn: She's unaware Pink has been playing her and Yellow like a fiddle ever since she grew to love the Earth. It gets a bit sad when you remember she genuinely loves Pink.
• Vengeance Feels Empty: When Steven sees into her mind, she admits harming the Crystal Gems doesn't bring her any joy or closure on Pink's death. If anything, it makes her feel worse by reminding her of Pink.
  Blue: What good will any of this do? The more I make these Gems suffer, the more I long to see you again, Pink.
• Villain Has a Point: While she's obviously trying to murder Steven during "The Trial", she is right that the court has to observe the formalities, like the defense lawyer and defendant being allowed to make a statement, and said lawyer providing evidence of Rose Quartz's possible innocence. The formalities in fact reveal a lot of holes in Pink's death. Blue has been sensing all is not right with the official story and prods him, demanding answers. And considering she thinks that Steven murdered her little fellow Diamond, it's actually really merciful of her to correct him on the details of the murder, angry and sad as she is.
• Villainous Breakdown: In "Change Your Mind", Blue starts losing her patience with "Pink" (actually Steven), even lamenting that "her" time on Earth had served as a bad influence on "her" moral judgement. When Steven calls her out on her condescending treatment, that's when she reaches her Rage Breaking Point and blasts him with an energy beam.
• Visual Pun:
  • When we finally see her without the veil, she's grieving, and not only is she blue, but she has a long face. And unlike the cut of Yellow Diamond's gem, Blue's is uneven by being longer at the top and shorter at the bottom, giving it a similar appearance to a teardrop — ever since Pink Diamond died, her heart has been full of grief.
  • Her emotional powers force every Gem in her vicinity to feel as sad as her. Misery loves company.
  • Unlike Yellow, whose spiky hair resembles a helmet, Blue's hair resembles cascading waterfalls. Of the Diamonds, she's more prone to uncontrollable bursts of emotion, and ever since Pink Diamond died, her head has been full of grief, too.
• Was Too Hard on Her: Her Heel Realization in "Change Your Mind" stems from this. Thanks to Steven, she realizes that her disciplinary method for Pink had been too cruel and was the reason for their estrangement.
• Water Is Womanly: Blue Diamond is associated with water, wearing blue and having water-related powers such as using her tears to affect emotions and form clouds. She's also dressed in regal robes and is compassionate, intelligent, and patient.
• We Have Reserves: More forgivable than most cases considering Gems can reform and would be good as new given a few weeks at the absolute most, but she doesn't bat an eye over 'casualties' on her side as long as the Crystal Gems get captured.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Her words to Pink Diamond in "Can't Go Back" at least try to have some encouragement inside:
  Blue: ...But this is what you wanted. You BEGGED us for a colony of your own! And now all you want to do is be rid of it. First, too many organics, then their cities were too difficult to dismantle, and now these Crystal Gems? We’re tired of your excuses, Pink! This "Rose Quartz" can’t hurt you. You can’t be swayed by a few unruly Gems. (Pink tries to say something) Enough! You must understand... you are a Diamond. Everyone on this planet is looking to you. You don’t even have to do anything. Just smile and wave. Show everyone you are unfazed by this little... uprising. Your Gems will fall into line and these Crystal Gems will be... no more. As long as you are there to rule, this colony will be completed.
• What Were You Thinking?: In a flashback in "Change Your Mind", she says this to Pink regarding an incident involving the latter letting loose a bunch of bug-like organics into the ballroom.
• What You Are in the Dark: She secretly kept visiting Pink Diamond's ruined palanquin on Earth at the site of her shattering thousands of years after the Rebellion, knowing Yellow Diamond wouldn't approve of her being in a place where their fellow Diamond was killed by a Homeworld traitor.
• When She Smiles: When she breaks out of her depression and smiles, her more elegant and regal features allow her to come off as endearing albeit a tad dorky. She also becomes more self-assertive and active whenever she isn't sad as when she found out about Pink's shattering being fake, she cried less and became motivated in helping Steven take Pink's place on Homeworld instead of neglecting her duties like she had before.
• White Hair, Black Heart: Without the veil, she's shown to have bluish-white hair, though it's played with; she was shown to be extremely callous towards Ruby and Sapphire for accidentally fusing in "The Answer", but her cruelty doesn't extend to her fellow Diamonds, who she deeply cares for, and she seems to have developed a sense of empathy for humans as opposed to Yellow's outright contempt for organic life.
• White Sheep: She's the first of the remaining Diamonds to realize the abuse Pink had to suffer through, rebel against Homeworld's tyrannical ways (which she had to enforce), and seek to restore the bond between herself and the other Diamonds.
• Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds: When we see her in the present day, she is obsessed with her grief over Pink Diamond, trying to gain closure from looking for answers on how exactly her family member died and who did it.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Her speech to Pink Diamond was probably intended to be this, as she encourages Pink to stand strong in the face of the rebellion and tells her that she can complete the colony she begged for. Shame that what she mistook for being an Ungrateful Bastard was actually Pink having had a Heel Realization...
• You Have Failed Me: Responds to Ruby screwing up Sapphire's visions and fusing with her by ordering Ruby's gem broken.
• You Will Be Spared: She takes Greg with her back to Homeworld to be preserved in the Human Zoo after he shows her compassion, believing she's saving him from being killed by the Cluster (or so she thinks).

White Diamond (Unmarked Spoilers!)

White Diamond

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

Voiced by: Christine Ebersole

^{Click here to see her mural.}

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

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

---

• Abusive Mom: She's the oldest of the Diamonds and the one in charge of the group. Blue and Yellow seem terrified of her, and it's implied they try to limit their interaction with her to avoid getting on her bad side; Yellow Diamond specifically mentions her poofing and bubbling the other Diamonds as a punishment. As shown in "Change Your Mind", she readily employs physical violence and even brainwashing to keep the Diamonds in order. She finally grows out of this at the end of the episode, however. Given the primary theme of the show is interpersonal relationships, it's little surprise its apparent ultimate villain embodies one of the most toxic of relationships.
• Affably Evil: While greeting Steven, White speaks to him in a friendly motherly tone, but the fact that she does so with an undertone of talking down to him and doesn't even let Steven speak may suggest otherwise. She delves into Faux Affably Evil territory in "Change Your Mind", but is proven to be a genuine example of this trope after her Heel–Face Turn.
• Affectionate Nickname: Has called Pink "Starlight" in the past and uses it again when she meets Steven.
• All There in the Manual: Her body makes it too bright for her gemstone to be seen until "Change Your Mind", but art drawn by Rebecca Sugar◊ as well as a Hot Topic t-shirt revealed that her forehead-placed diamond is shaped exactly like Pink's brilliant cut, but rotated to be right-side-up.
• All Your Colors Combined: Part of White's justification for her supposed perfection is how, unlike with the other Diamonds, whose impurities prevent them from reflecting all colors back, she's composed of every color of the light. This is also a hint that she's not as perfect as she thinks she is, since truly flawless diamonds (or as close as they get in real life) are clear.
• All Your Powers Combined: White's main ability is a blend of Yellow (dominion over the physical form of a Gem), Blue (emotional control), and Pink (astral projection) into a single, effective ability. She uses it to turn Gems into People Puppets, making others into literal extensions of herself. When her Pearl speaks, it isn't the Pearl talking... it's her.
• Ambiguously Evil: She casually welcomes "Pink" back to Homeworld and speaks to him with motherly affection, but as Yellow and Blue explained she tends to have terrible mood swings and as the leader of Homeworld, she is likely responsible for the oppression of "off color" Gems and the rigid caste system. It turns out that out of all the Diamonds, she is indeed the most genuinely malevolent, and has to be forced to realize her justification for being so, her believed perfection, is a farce to finally be forced to change.
• Ambiguous Situation: When the Crystal Gems land Pink Diamond's ship on Homeworld, crowds from all four courts greet them, and White Diamond already knows Pink is alive and identifies Steven as her without being told. It's unclear if she knew Pink Diamond faked her shattering and was Rose Quartz all along from the start, figured it out along the way, or found out when Blue and Yellow did because she was somehow monitoring them. Then there's the fact that when Steven tries to protest he's his own person and that White Diamond is insulting his mother, White reacts as if she knows what a "mom" is and brings up that Steven has been dreaming about Pink's memories. She uses this knowledge to make Steven think that he's just a vessel for Pink.
• Anatomy Anomaly: She is the only character in the entire series with visible fingernails or toenails.
• Anti-Villain: Despite how the other Gems perceive her and how she presents herself, she is just trying to be the perfect example of a model Gem that her Homeworld subjects can take after, since all of her ridiculously perfect standards are a result of her genuine, yet deluded belief that she is perfect above all others.
• Arc Villainess: Of the Diamond Days arc at the end of season five, culminating in the finale, "Change Your Mind".
• Assimilation Plot: Zig-zagged; White Diamond is capable of outright overwriting others Gems' personalities with her own, but does so conservatively, least she "spread [her] uninhibited self so thin". She instead favors a culture of absolute conformity, saving the "bleaching" as a last resort for aberrant gems she doesn't want outright shattered for whatever reason. And since White Diamond created the Gem Empire, her "plot" isn't making it that way, it's keeping it that way.
• The Assimilator: As indicated by her page quote, White Diamond is able to forcefully remove what she considers to be "imperfections" from other gems and make them into her puppets. This is reflected by the Gems losing their coloring and turning a contrasting black, white and grey color scheme. She did this to Pink Pearl in the past, and in the finale does it to Blue and Yellow Diamond, as well as Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl.
• Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever:
  • Exaggerated. Blue and Yellow are about eighty feet tall, and she's a head taller than them, making her around a hundred and ten feet tall.
  • Whenever White moves, the ground rumbles beneath her feet. This is used to humorous effect in The Movie.
• Badass Cape: It's lined with diamond and star designs.
• Believing Their Own Lies: Unlike the other Diamonds who seem to know they're imperfect and have to live up to their image as such, White genuinely believes that she's perfect and it's the motivation for the callous way she treats everyone else. When she realizes that she is off-colored (in the form of a pink blush), she is surprised and appalled, either mortified that people can see it or is surprised by it herself, having been hiding it for so long that she forgot about it.
• Berserk Button:
  • According to Yellow and Blue, being embarrassed, or at least political embarrassment for her empire. Yellow notes they would be lucky if she ever talked to the other Diamonds again after "recovering" Pink. Considering how she blushes when Steven points out she's acting like a child after her temper tantrum leading to her Heel–Face Turn and her violent reaction earlier to Blue and Yellow defying her out in the open, it's safe to say it's any form of it.
  • Suggesting the idea anything is wrong with her design or she's made a wrong decision. This is the reason the other Diamonds largely ignored their realizations Homeworld's system is immoral and broken: to fix it they'd have to admit to White it was broken, something she'd never tolerate until Steven finally shatters her pride.
• Big Bad: She is undoubtedly the true main antagonist and the ultimate source of all Gem-involved external conflict in the original Steven Universe series. Her supreme authority over Homeworld is why their empire is so rigidly conformist, expands at the expense of any other form of life, and fought a war on Earth against several Gems who turned against her, which resulted in many Gems either being shattered or corrupted into monsters.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: Subverted. Of all the Diamonds, White is the most alien in her mannerisms and goals; Yellow is loud and violent, Blue is depressed, but White is at once domineering and cold, never really seeming like she's all there. The Empire operates through conquest and resource gathering, but to her, it's less about domination and more about spreading a rigid ideal of perfection as far as she can. She seems to see other Gems as extensions of herself and her will rather than as their own entities. However, as her conflict with Steven shows, White's goals really aren't as alien as they first appeared. She's basically a domineering parent wanting to control her "children" rather than see them make their own decisions and mistakes. She acts out of what she thinks is best for them even as her methods become abusive and at the end of the day she isn't unfeeling so much as trying to present the image that she's unfeeling.
• Boomerang Bigot:
  • White Diamond sees herself as the most perfect being above all others, and thus she does not seem to possess much respect for her fellow diamonds, bleaching Yellow and Blue when they begin to question her and seeing Pink as her polar opposite as both a Gem and a person. This gets better when she realizes that she is not as perfect as she thinks she is.
    White: Poor Yellow. Her impurities absorb all the blue in her light. She's so strong... but so weak when it comes to Blue. Ah, and Blue — her impurities soak up all of the warmth in her spectrum. She thinks she needs you, Pink. As for me, I'm certain I don't need you.
  • White Diamond possesses a dislike towards off-colors Gems much like Yellow and Blue and is clearly uncomfortable when she is forced to play nice with the Off-Colors on Earth. Considering all of Homeworld's hierarchy and the laws that governs it all come from her, it is safe to say that discrimination of off-color Gems are all her doing. What makes this ironic is at the end of "Change Your Mind", it is revealed that she secretly has a flaw (in her case, a pink blush) that makes her off-colored.
• Break the Haughty: The only way she can be reasoned with at all is by making her finally realize that she's not nearly as perfect as she thinks she is, causing her to have a complete meltdown. In the end, her pride is so fully shattered that she's left questioning her entire worldview, as her own perfection was the linchpin.
• Break Them by Talking: She uses her ability to read the minds of other Gems to figure out their insecurities and pick at their flaws. When she confronts Steven she plays on his fears, first by claiming that he only keeps the Crystal Gems around because their imperfections make him feel superior by comparison. Second, she claims that Steven never existed in the first place and that Pink Diamond simply deluded herself into believing that she was a different person. The appearance of Pink Steven instantly disproves this.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • Ironically, it's doing this to her to herself that makes her finally possible to be reasoned with at all, as realizing she's not as perfect as she thinks she is forces her to talk to Steven like a normal person instead of being so secure in her perfection she'll never consider anyone else as worth listening to.
  • To a lesser extent, this also applies to Blue and Yellow Diamond, who lose both their fear and respect for her when they discover that she's off-color. Yellow reacts with disgust, and Blue seems like she's about to throw up. Nonetheless, they seem willing to make amends with her when they cure Corruption together.
• Bright Is Not Good: If she were any bigger, she could legally pass as a star in outer space with the level of light she emits. Also, she's not the most mentally stable being.
• Brightness Shadows: Seems to have this as an active superpower she can intensify at will.
• The Caligula: White is the supreme ruler of Homeworld, and more than a little off her rocker.
• Cloudcuckoolander: Some of her behavior when she appears seems a little... off, to say the least.
• Condescending Compassion: Her "conversation" with Steven is just oozing with this, being motherly yet very patronizing. It's implied that this is also how she treated Pink, which is probably why Pink never mentioned her.
• Control Freak: Everything in her Empire has to be run how she wants — just look at how her representative White Pearl (her Meat Puppet) is pleased with a dance floor where the gems literally spin like cogs, then scowls when Steven and Connie dance together — even before this leads to them fusing. She's willing to even force Yellow and Blue to behave if she has to. She has a complete meltdown when Steven turns out to not be Pink, and no matter what she does, she can't get the outcome she wants.
• Costume Evolution: At some point during the two-year time skip between the end of Season 5 and The Movie the grey in her dress changed to a subtle shade of pink. Whether this is a result of White intentionally changing her form or a side effect of her no longer repressing the aspect of her being she created Pink Diamond from is unknown.
• Defrosting Ice Queen: At first, she attempts to berate Steven, his friends and the other Diamonds by saying Pink brings out the worst in others by encouraging their deficiencies. She turns the other Gems into zombified puppets, and extracts Steven's gem from his navel. After Steven re-unites his body and gem, she throws a childish tantrum, accusing Pink of acting like a child, which prompts Steven to say that he is a child (with a contrastingly pure and innocent maturity), which permeates her with a blushing pink light, which restores the Gems to their natural colors. After she is shown to not be as flawless as she thought she was, Steven tells her that she can make a change for the better by letting everyone on Homeworld, including White Diamond, be themselves.
• Demiurge Archetype: While the Diamond Authority is billed as four matriarchs working together to lead the Gem Homeworld, White is the defacto God Empress of all gemkind. Her power easily surpasses that of Blue and Yellow Diamond, let alone lesser gems. She claims to be the perfect being, with all other gems, even the other Diamonds, merely being flawed reflections of herself. She refuses to listen to others or admit that she is wrong, and the end result of her plans would be the annihilation of all other life in the universe in order to fuel the creation of more gems- more subjects for her to rule. She demands that her subjects be perfect in their actions, thoughts, and desires at all times, and destroys everything that is "off-color". The only one shown to be able to stand up to her is Steven.
• Depopulation Bomb: She gave the final push to Yellow and Blue's attack on Earth to, ostensibly, wipe the planet clean of all Gems. But instead this resulted in their corruption.
• Diabolus ex Nihilo: Played with; White Diamond has a defined personality and goal, and isn't purely antagonistic. She still created a dystopic empire that threatens all other life in the universe, and we're given little reason why and no idea whatsoever how.
• Dissonant Serenity: She appears quite calm and understanding in the face of seemingly learning one of her fellow Diamonds staged a rebellion against her empire, faked her own assassination, hid away under an assumed identity for 6,000 years, and then up and walked back into her throne room as a half-organic, no less. Almost too calm and understanding. When she finally loses her temper, it's explosive.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?:
  • White Diamond takes pride in the fact that she is white and free of "impurities", lording it over "colored gems" (including her fellow Diamonds) as something that makes her superior to them, and is devastated when she discovers that she has a bit of color in her too. It also does not help that she is the oldest and most stubborn, making her something of a Racist Grandma for Steven.
  • Her idea of making other Gems "perfect" is to take away the color and personalities that makes a Gem unique, literally taking away their voice and their capacity to disagree and replacing them with her own voice mindlessly giving her praise for doing a good job.
• Doting Grandparent: By the time of The Movie, she acts as this role to Steven, along with Blue and Yellow as his Cool Aunts. All of them beg for him to stay with them on Homeworld so that they could shower him with affection to the point where Steven (who is famous for being a Cuddle Bug) finds it too much. White in particular turns up the ham in order to guilt-trip when he tries getting out of it.
• Drama Queen: She is shown to possess Large Ham tendencies, if her Star-Spangled Spandex, Anime Hair and perpetual glow did not tip you off. In The Movie, this is Played for Laughs when she tries guilt-tripping Steven into letting them stay on Earth with him, punctuating it with literal ground-shaking steps, something she's learned to do since she won't just mind-control people when she doesn't get her way anymore.
  White: But Steven! It's been soooo boring since you've left! [sobs] I guess we'll just waiiiit for you to visit us wheneeeeever you'reeeee reeeeady~.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: In "Change Your Mind", when Yellow and Blue voice their grievances towards the system that she had established, White reacts by using her Eye Beams and assimilating both of them. Later in the episode, she explains how this is her way of purging people's "flaws" and how she "makes things better", so it is very likely she actually did hear them and this was her way of "helping".
• The Dreaded: When Yellow finally says her name, all the Crystal Gems (sans Amethyst, who presumably didn't know who she was) have expressions of shock and fear. Even Yellow and Blue are scared of her, at least until they find out that she's off-color.
• Easily Forgiven: Steven, Blue and Yellow don't hold it against her despite everything she's done to them. However, "Homeworld Bound" shows that Steven still has a lot of suppressed anger towards her for all the trauma that she put him through, which surfaces when White allows Steven to control her body, even attempting to shatter the gem on her head by smashing it through a pillar as revenge, only for Steven to snap out of it at the very last moment and exit White's body.
• Emotion Suppression: She reveals to Steven she's not just white but all of the colors of the Gem race (or at least that's what she thinks), and has to work especially hard to suppress the aspects of pink in her. Hence her Hair-Trigger Temper whenever someone threatens to cause her embarrassment. When she embarrasses herself, she can't help but blush pink, revealing she's an off-color.
• The Empress: The highest authority of the Gem Empire, and although formally they're a council of four, she seems to be far beyond the others in scope, power, and authority. "Together Alone" demonstrates that all Gemkind must present their best selves to the Diamonds, but in turn the Diamonds too must present their best selves to White Diamond, making her the Diamond of all Diamonds.
• Entertainingly Wrong: A very dark example; she believes that "Steven" is just a human vessel that Pink created to play a new game and improve herself against her "flawed" friends. Considering that Pink Diamond was once a Spoiled Brat who would engage in numerous mischievous behaviors to get her older family members to pay attention or give her respect, a static Homeworld Gem could reach that conclusion. Rose Quartz did once believe that dating humans was a game, as Pearl and Greg recounted... but the difference was that Pink knew she was flawed and wanted to become a better person than what a Gem form could allow, and she wanted people to call her out when she made mistakes while respecting her. Thus, Pearl was able to motivate her to fight for the Earth and form the Crystal Gems, while Greg told her that she was worth loving despite her flaws. And as Steven realized in "Storm in the Room", Rose wasn't lying when she said that she was so excited to make Steven and give birth to him. It wasn't all about using an innocent child for her fun, but inspiring her son to rise above her flaws and become a better person.
• Establishing Character Moment: White Diamond is first mentioned in "Legs From Here to Homeworld", Blue Diamond and Yellow Diamond (who intimidate all other regular gems) visibly afraid to involve her in anything, Pearl describing her as though she's as much of an alien to gems as gems are to humans. We are introduced to White Diamond abruptly spiriting away Steven away from the others. She towers over Steven within her Headship and acts as though everything that has happened for the past 6,000 years was just a childish game Pink Diamond was playing, not even allowing Steven to get a word in edgewise, all with a condescending tone. This establishes her as a Control Freak who sees the problems of other people — the Gem War, the profoundly negative effect it had on the other Diamonds, Steven and his mission to uncorrupt the Earth gems — as beneath her in every way and not even worth taking seriously.
• Evil Cannot Comprehend Good:
  • Her assumption that Pink/Steven surround themselves with "imperfect" beings to feel good about themselves is incredibly skewed to say the least.
  • She believes she's a perfect, completely flawless entity, and thus her design is also perfect and flawless. The concept her design needs fixing (which would imply it is flawed) is a major Berserk Button. As Gemkind is part of her design, the very idea of Character Development is beyond her ability to understand, and much of her assessment of others fails to account for it. This is also the reason Gems on Homeworld are expected to be Static Characters.
• Evil Counterpart:
  • To Pink Diamond. Both have problems with empathy, but while Pink is Innocently Insensitive, White seems to have an extreme Lack of Empathy. Both have a problematic relationship with Blue and Yellow, but while Pink would constantly feel overruled by them and the rebellion was basically one huge Calling the Old Woman Out to them, White is feared by them and they're overruled by her. Both also have a tendency to lie and project the image of being "perfect" to their followers. Pink assumes the identity of the wise and kindhearted Rose Quartz in an effort to outgrow her Immortal Immaturity and escape the crushing pressure of her life on Homeworld, while in White's case she uses the persona of being the perfect Diamond to justify her actions and demand all of Homeworld to live up to her impossible "perfect" standards. The key difference is that White Diamond seems to genuinely believe her own lies, while most evidence in the show seems to suggest that Rose at least felt some genuine remorse for deceiving her friends. Last but not least, both have Small Role, Big Impact-like roles in the series, but while Pink is the Big Good, White seems to be the Greater-Scope Villain.
  • To Garnet. Both are the leaders of their respective four-member teams, the tallest with hairstyles that dwarf their heads with personalities that alternate between cold and aloof and a thunderclap of rage.
  • To Steven. She genuinely believes that she is helping other Gems overcome their flaws, except her idea of "helping" amounts to forcing gems to comply to her impossibly high standards and brainwashing those who can't live up to them. Her People Puppets ability is essentially a stronger version of Steven's Demonic Possession power that allows her to control multiple beings at the same time. Finally, she shares Steven's distaste for physical violence and greatly prefers Talking the Monster to Death, however instead of trying to help the other person see her point of view she picks at her enemy's fears and insecurities until their spirits are utterly broken.
• The Evils of Free Will: When White takes control of Yellow, Blue, Garnet, Amethyst and Pearl, she remarks that it is only then that they are flawless, the various "flaws" that she used to describe each of them merely being summaries of their personalities.
• Evil Matriarch: The leader of the Diamond Authority and technical "mother" of the other three Diamonds. And with The Reveal of Steven being the son of Pink Diamond, makes him White Diamonds' grandson.
• Exotic Eye Designs: Her pupils are white rather than black, and diamond-shaped like the other Diamonds'.
• Eye Beams: How she takes control of other Gems.
• The Faceless: Our first glimpse at her personally occurs in a flashback in "Your Mother and Mine", but all we see are her hand (which is much larger than Yellow or Blue's) and silhouette. The light that radiates from her gem is so bright it actually obscures most of her face, save for her eyes and mouth.
• Fantastically Indifferent: Doesn't show much emotion about the fact that Pink started a rebellion and faked her death, which led to the corruption of thousands of Gems. That said, she is apparently known for her temper problems.
• Fatal Flaw:
  • Her infamous temper turns out to be hers: while she starts off in Sugary Malice, when she finally encounters something she can't control (that Pink Diamond is truly dead and never coming back no matter what she does), it devolves into rage before becoming a temper tantrum. Notably, this flaw being forced into the light is what finally forces her to realize she's not as perfect as she thinks she is.
  • Perfectionism. She holds everyone to an impossible standard that no one is capable of meeting, at least without serious psychological effects. In the end, even she can't meet her own standards and has a Villainous BSoD upon realizing she's not as perfect as she thought she was.
  • Pride. White Diamond thinks of herself as a completely flawless, perfect being, devoid of all impurities. As such, she thinks she can never be wrong. Everything must be as she commands it, and all dissenters must be turned into her puppets. She lives in a giant monument to herself, all of Homeworld must worship her and the other Diamonds, and woe betide someone who thinks she isn't perfect. Notably, it's only after her pride is completely shattered that she's possible to be reasoned with at all.
  • Her belief that other Gems are incapable of change. This is especially true of Pink Diamond, who she continues to treat like a misbehaving child even after she leads a planetary rebellion, successfully fakes her own assassination, and created a new form of life in Steven. When Pink is proven to be truly gone White has an Villainous Breakdown.
• Femme Fatalons: She has long, black fingernails that are clawed at the tips, as opposed to the smooth tips of the others.
• Final Boss: After serving as The Ghost for most of the series she finally appears in season 5 and becomes the main, and final, antagonist of the Diamond Days arc and the last obstacle Steven has to overcome to end Homeworld's tyranny and cure the corrupted Gems on Earth.
• Five Stages of Grief: While Blue and Yellow represent Depression and Anger respectively, White Diamond displays Denial about Pink Diamond's death. She's correct that Pink faked her shattering during the war, but wrong that Pink just used a human child as a vessel for her new form. When she finds out that Pink and Rose are really gone, and no amount of force will bring "Starlight" back, she doesn't react well.
• Foil:
  • Her personality contrasts perfectly with Pink/Rose/Steven; the latter is an extroverted people-lover, and the former is a shut-in who doesn't even realize that empathy exists.
  • Unlike Yellow, who constantly looks irritated and ready to snap at a moment's notice, White has enough self-control to act calm and loving even when angry, which makes the experience of bearing her wrath even more terrifying.
• For Your Own Good: Is so madly delusional about her own perfection, that she genuinely believes "bleaching" Gems, making them a part of her and removing their "flaws" is making them "better", because now they're an extension of herself, and thus "perfect". Made even more clear when she says this line to Pink Steven before attempting to use her "bleaching" beams on them after they continue to resist her.
  White Diamond: I only want you to be yourself!! If you can't do that, I'll do it FOR YOU!!!
• Freudian Slip: The movie has her blurt "lower lifeforms" before Steven reminds her that it's "equal lifeforms".
• Galactic Conqueror: Is the leader of the Gem Empire. It's implied that her need to spread her own perceived perfection across the universe is the driving force behind their conquests in the first place.
• The Ghost: She is conspicuously scarce in both sight and speech, even compared to the other Diamonds, to the point it's not even clear just what her relationship to them is like. For multiple seasons, her existence was only implied by her mural and the presence of the white shape on the Diamond Authority sigils. Even in the Wanted arc, which took place on Homeworld, she's not even referenced by the other Diamonds, though a structure that strongly resembles her mural is seen at the end of "The Trial". She then briefly appears in a flashback in "Your Mother and Mine" (or, more precisely, her silhouette and her arm), but was still not directly mentioned. Even when Yellow and Blue personally invade Earth with the intent of awakening the Cluster and getting their revenge, White seemingly still can't be bothered to even send a representative. She finally makes her physical debut in "Legs From Here to Homeworld".
• A God Am I: Even when compared to Yellow and Blue, White seems to think highly of herself. She goes on about how she is a perfect being, and uses basic science about the light spectrum as a fundamental law of the universe to justify it. Even her method of "perfecting" Gems is simply draining the color from another gem, imbuing them with her voice and controlling their minds.
• Got the Whole World in My Hand: Her mural in the moon base depicts her with a large orb (presumably Homeworld) in her hands.
• Greater-Scope Villain: She is the head of the Diamond Authority, and ruler of Homeworld and the Gem race as a whole. The placement of her color at the top of both the Era 1 and Era 2 Homeworld sigils, and the fact that her mural depicts the largest number of claimed colonies and is the only one displaying Homeworld itself, attests to this. It gets even more blatant when on Homeworld itself: the largest structure on the planet is her palace/flagship which is crafted in her image. Blue and Yellow appear to handle the day-to-day operations of the Empire while White simply lords over them, not even bothering to inform them when she senses Pink is alive. "Change Your Mind" conclusively establishes all of Homeworld's misery goes back to her literal perfect standards, but White herself only appears in full toward the tail end of the fifth season. In "I Am My Monster" she lampshades this as an admission of guilt.
  White Diamond: Everyone knows that all of this is because of me!
  Spinel: No, it's me! I tried to wipe his friend's memories so he would die alone on a barren world!
  White Diamond: That was because you were angry with Pink! And if Pink hurt you it was because I hurt her, like I hurt Yellow and Blue and Steven and everyone in the entire universe! This is all my fault!
• Greyscale of Evil: She is entirely monochrome and serves as the Greater-Scope Villain of the first five seasons. In addition, the chamber she appears in in season 5 is also monochrome, as are the Gems she assimilates and controls. Noticeably, when she's made to realize she's not perfect, the greyscale breaks as she blushes bright pink. In the movie, two years later, looking at her closely reveals she now has a slight pink tinge in parts of her clothing, indicating that she is slowly getting better as a person.
• Hair-Trigger Temper: Her temper is enough to frighten Yellow Diamond. And if Yellow's comments are to go by, it's not the first time she acted in a rage.
• Hartman Hips: "Change Your Mind" reveals that she has these to further highlight her womanly, goddess demeanor.
• Heel–Face Turn: After eons of ignorance and deluding herself that she is perfect above all other life-forms, even her fellow Diamonds, Steven finally manages to get through to her to realize that she isn't perfect, causing her to have a Villainous Breakdown at first, before finally realizing how awful she had been to Pink Diamond and the rest of her empire, and eventually agrees to help cure all the corrupted Gems back on Earth.
  • Whether it's a complete turn or just a Hazy-Feel Turn is up for debate at the moment, as she still exhibits a lot of her more troubling traits even post-"reformation". And the intro to Steven Universe: Future features her both as an ally and a potential enemy. Fully reformed or not, she's at least willing to try and meet Steven half-way (or whatever she interprets as being half-way) because she loves him and wants to honor Pink's memory.
  • The episode "Homeworld Bound" in the events of Future show that she has pretty much changed completely for the better. All the Diamonds are actively using their once-destructive powers for good: Yellow restoring previously shattered Gems, Blue using her emotion-based powers to spread happiness, and White is helping other Gems regain their self-worth by allowing them to channel themselves through her by reversing her mind-control powers, literally lending her voice to gems who used to go unheard. Her dialogue also implies that her job doesn't include just the Gems on Homeworld, but every Gem, including the ones on other planets. Unlike the seeming Hazy-Feel Turn in the movie where she Wants a Prize for Basic Decency, she takes genuine pleasure in doing her new job and is exceedingly gracious when speaking to others. When Steven goes to see her, she has no problem responding to Steven's needs in what amounts to a therapy session. Even after it takes a terrible turn where her powers reveal Steven's disturbing vengeful thoughts towards his trauma done by her, she shows nothing but concern for Steven and a sincere wish to help him.
• High-Heel Power: She wears extremely stylish high heels upon her Feet-First Introduction, and she asserts her dominance over Steven, or in her mind, Pink Diamond, by sending him to Pink's room before he can even barely speak. It's a thing that all Gemkind, especially the bosslike Yellow, fear White Diamond.
• Hikikomori: She spends all her time locked up in her room, to the point where her Pearl comes to the ball for her under the claim that "White Diamond... has more important things to attend to".
• Hive Queen: She can control her subjects, even the other Diamonds, like puppets.
• Hoist by Her Own Petard:
  • Her ripping out Steven's gemstone causes Pink Steven to appear and knock the crap out of her.
  • She imposes her hatred for off-color Gems on Blue and Yellow Diamond. When she's revealed to be off-colored herself, Blue and Yellow are disgusted.
• Hufflepuff House: We don't see any of White Diamond's followers except for her Pearl (who originally belonged to Pink Diamond) and some Faceless Masses from all four courts in "Legs From Here to Homeworld". In "Your Mother and Mine", she's not among Pink Diamond's "Diamond allies" called in to fight the Crystal Gems, but is shown to have her own colonies. These suggest she was only dragged in out of desperation to corrupt all the Gems on Earth, and otherwise doesn't care about the conflict there (or its aftermath).
• Humanoid Abomination: Everything about her appearance is unsettling and eerie, like some kind of ethereal statue made of light that has facial features floating around, attached to nothing. Though she speaks more or less normally, White Diamond shows a bizarre disconnect with her surroundings and even the people she's supposed to be talking to. Pearl emphasizes that she's fundamentally different than any other Gem, or even the other Diamonds. Her confrontation with Steven in "Change Your Mind" takes this further, with her Assimilator powers on full display — with an added dose of Voice of the Legion — and her facial features distorting nightmarishly.
• Hypocritical Humor: When Steven's gem and body are reunited, White Diamond throws a temper tantrum, accusing Steven/Pink of acting like a child:
  Connie: Steven, ohh! Are you back together, are you you?
  Steven: Yeah, I'm me. I've always been me.
  White Diamond: [pounding the floor in a temper tantrum] No! You are Pink Diamond! That is Pink Diamond's gem! You do not look like this! You do not sound like this! You are not half-human, you're just... acting like a child!
  Steven: I am a child. What's your excuse?
• Hypocrite:
  • Holds everyone up to an impossibly high standard to be completely flawless, but isn't flawless herself. White is completely oblivious to this fact... until Steven forces her to realize that she's as flawed as anyone else, and she has a complete Villainous Breakdown as a result.
  • In her "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Steven, she says "Pink" chooses to surround herself with flawed, inferior beings so she can feel like "The best of the worst." All this after she brainwashed and surrounded herself with Gems whom she continues to deride as inferior as well, only in her case she justifies it by claiming she's now made them "Perfect".
  • When describing the Crystal Gems flaws, White Diamond calls Pearl "obsessed". Obsessed, however, can be used to describe White, who is indeed obsessed with living up to her self-imposed expectations of being the perfect Diamond and has a breakdown when she realizes she's not.
  • She rants about "Pink" trying to deceive herself, yet spent eons deluding herself into thinking she's flawless and that Pink Diamond is still alive.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: It is revealed that under all of that A God Am I gravitas lies a lonely Gem that is only able to keep herself together through her perceived superiority, unable to handle the fact that she isn't the model of perfection that everyone (including herself) thinks she is. What makes this especially ironic is that before her mask slips, this is exactly what she accuses Pink of doing, surrounding herself with imperfect Gems below their station and encouraging their flaws as a means of making her seem superior to them.
• Inexplicably Awesome: All other Gems, even the Diamonds, are most likely the direct and indirect creations of White Diamond. How she could do such things or what kind of being that makes her is not addressed at all.
• In Their Own Image: Her ultimate goal is basically this, as she wishes to take over the universe so she can remake it about herself.
• Ironic Name: White diamonds symbolize purity and clarity, but White Diamond embodies madness and corruption. White Diamond is known for her terrifying anger, comes across to viewers as decidedly off, and participated in a corruption blast that mutated countless Gems. White diamonds also symbolize love, given that they are traditional components of women's wedding rings. White Diamond implies herself to be devoid of love or empathy. Of course, she sees herself as the embodiment of purity and clarity, and perhaps even love (as she sees "freeing" others from being flawed as being for their own good).
• Irony:
  • The head of the Diamond Authority and Homeworld, who strives for perfection in everything, is actually off-colored herself, and blushes pink (instead of gray or bright white) whenever feeling self-conscious or embarrassed.
  • For all her big show about not needing anyone, she almost immediately reaches out to Blue and Yellow in her Moment of Weakness.
• It's All About Me: She views the entirety of the Gem Empire as a direct reflection of herself and has mandated every Gem live up to her set of standards, which prove impossible for anyone to actually hold themselves to, including White herself, it turns out. Although only in extreme cases does she step in and forcibly make a Gem live up to her standards. As it turns out, White is deluding even herself, as that perfect version of herself she is forcing everyone to live up to exists only in her own head and is nothing but a toxic fallacy. It's only when she realizes this that she begins to understand the harm she's done to everyone she was supposed to nurture and protect.
• It's All My Fault: In "I Am My Monster", everyone starts having a breakdown about how Steven turned into a monster because of all of them. In White's case, she cites the fact that everything bad that has ever happened in the series - from creating the Empire's oppressive system, all the way to Pink defecting and the harm that drove Steven unto this state - was all because of her.
• Kick the Dog:
  • Yellow and Blue's attempt to talk to White results in her mind-controlling them.
  • Despite apparently knowing what Steven and Connie have been through together, White Diamond still views Connie as just Steven's pet.
• Knight of Cerebus: According to the creators, she is the ultimate challenge to the show's "problems can be solved by communicating your feelings" mentality. That's because she doesn't have any problems other than the belief that she's flawless, and it's not her feelings that she needs to search, it's her flaws.
• Lack of Empathy: While this is basically Homeworld's hat, White takes this further than any other Gem, including the other Diamonds. She refers the entire Crystal Gem rebellion and everything both sides fought for as just a "little game" of Pink's. It's also implied that she figured out that Pink faked her shattering and was Rose Quartz all along, but never bothered to tell the obviously still grieving Blue and Yellow. It's implied that this was the result of perceiving herself as the Ultimate Lifeform and thus all other beings being lesser than herself. It isn't until Steven forces her to see she's not that she finally starts seeing anyone else as worth listening to let alone caring about.
• Large and in Charge: She's the Diamond Authority's highest (or at least most senior) figure, and Yellow Diamond and Blue Diamond's hands are only as big as her palm.
• Laser-Guided Karma: After spending millennia ruling everyone in fear and tyranny, White finally gets what's coming to her when Pink Steven proves to be more powerful than her and completely demolishes everything she throws at him.
• Lean and Mean: Even more so than the others; she is far thinner than Yellow or Blue.
• Leitmotif: Befitting the leader of the Diamond Authority, her leitmotif is primarily based around the first, highest synth tone from the Diamonds' collective theme, but it's continuously overlaid by an atonal, reverberant electronic ambiance that renders it a far more sterile and unsettling theme than any of the others. It carries over to her Pearl, too, though in her case the overlay is of a noticeably warmer timbre.
• Light 'em Up: During what very little we see of her in "Your Mother and Mine" during the Diamonds' attack, the Diamonds show off their abilities as they charge it with Yellow's electricity, and Blue's emotion-based power, and when White's hand shows up? Burning bright, white light, and it massively overshadows the abilities of the other two. Her power is later found to be Mind Control, sucking the color from Gems and putting them under her direct control and thus free of "flaws".
• Light Is Not Good: She is strongly associated with light and even glows, as well as being the supreme leader of the Gem Empire. However, like Blue and Yellow, she eventually makes a Heel–Face Turn and cures Corruption alongside the Crystal Gems.
• Literal Metaphor: She's secluded herself for eons in her Faceship mecha, cutting herself off from everyone else, even her fellow Diamonds, left to sink deeper and deeper into her unhealthy perfectionist mindset - she's quite literally stuck inside her own head.
• Literal Split Personality: Implied to be the case in "Change Your Mind", where after encountering White inside of her head after assimilating Yellow and Blue into her Hive Mind, she implies that she had created the other Diamonds in a bid to rid herself of her perceived flaws; but that the process when creating Pink Diamond had seemingly been a flawed as she insists that Pink's "The part I always have to suppress".
• Living Statue: Much like her Pearl, the only features on White Diamond's body that appear to move are her eyes and mouth. The rest of her body appears to be frozen in place in its current crucifixion-like posture. She is also drawn in the same style as the show's static background to emphasize that immobility. She finally moves in "Change Your Mind".
• Luminescent Blush:
  • "Change Your Mind" reveals that she blushes bright pink, making her technically off-color and underscoring that even she doesn't live up to her own impossibly high standards. The blush is implied to be literally luminescent, too: the entire previously white room turned pink as well.
  • In the book The Tale of Steven, she visibly blushes upon realizing that she had been wrong for the whole story, figuratively (the book being a tie-in with "Change Your Mind") and literally (by having the text upside-down).
• Mad God: She's a Physical God like her fellows and implied to be on another level than even them... but seems just off and not quite right. She believes her unnatural behavior is a sign of her perfection and would like nothing more than to see the rest of the universe like herself.
• Manipulative Bitch: She tries to convince Steven that the Crystal Gems are simple crutches to Pink, as they are less perfect than her, making Pink feel better by comparison, which is untrue in every sense of the word.
• Marionette Master: When the Diamonds and Gems enter White Diamond's chamber, she turns Garnet, Amethyst, Pearl, Blue & Yellow Diamond into zombified puppets, removing their free will and "impurities".
• Marionette Motion: Victims of her power exhibit this at first, including Abnormal Limb Rotation Range. It's creepy as hell.
• Mark of Shame: When White blushes pink, Blue and Yellow are visibly disturbed by it, Yellow commenting that she is "off-color". Whether or not White is just blushing and is embarrassed by it or if the pink in her cheeks is an actual flaw in her gem, literally making her an off-color Gem (something she implies earlier) and that she simply has been hiding it all this time is up for debate.
• Mistaken Identity: Most Homeworld Gems think Steven is Rose Quartz or Pink Diamond, but White Diamond's view is a bit different. Rather than just thinking Pink has taken a very different-looking form (again), White knows Steven has a human body and believes himself a different person. However, White still thinks Pink just stuck herself in that body, took it over, and deluded herself into thinking she was Steven. This conclusion actually has enough physical evidence to worry Steven himself but is disproven when pulling his gemstone out just makes a full-Gem version of Steven.
• Mirror Character:
  • Her appearing in public as White Pearl brings into mind how Pink Diamond led a double life as Rose Quartz.
  • Like Steven, she has a tendency for Condescending Compassion, and both of their Character Developments involve them becoming more mature. Steven possessing Lars in "The New Lars" to make him a better person also mirrors White Diamond's ability to forcefully remove what she considers to be "imperfections" from other gems and make them into her puppets.
  • Like Pearl, she has an unhealthy obsession with Pink Diamond. Both of them are also perfectionists who seek to maintain order, both of them have made attempts to rip out Steven's gemstone (with White Diamond actually pulling it out at one point), and ultimately both of them accept that Steven is not Pink and come to love him for himself.
  • Like Garnet. Design-wise, they are the tallest of their respective teams as well as their leader, their hair dwarves the rest of their head and their moods swing between calm and calculated and Unstoppable Rage. They both inspire a level of fear in the rest of their team (though Garnet is only as hard as she is to inspire strength in the others while in White's case, it's unambiguously abusive) and have a soft spot for their youngest (but while Steven and Garnet are close, Pink, like Yellow and Blue, did everything to avoid White).
  • To Spinel; both of them had been waiting in silence for thousands of years for Pink Diamond's return, only to find out they gave up their physical form to create human life, even breaking down dramatically upon discovering the truth.
• Monster Progenitor: She claims that Pink Diamond is "a part of me, a part I always have to repress." If the Diamonds truly are aspects of her, that means she indirectly created the entire Gem race.
• Mundane Utility: After the Movie, she eventually learned how to allow others to possess her instead of the other way around. By the time Steven meets with her in "Homeworld Bound", she has since used it as a tool to help the self-worth of other gems in the same vein as a therapist or self-help guru.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Notably, she does ultimately get to the point she feels genuine guilt over what she's done and understands every awful thing to happen was ultimately her fault.
• Mysterious Past: Where exactly she (as well as the other Diamonds) came from is a complete and utter mystery so far.
• Narcissist: Just like any other narcissist, White Diamond truly believes she is perfect. She also gaslights Steven, which is another feature of narcissists: manipulation. However, when she finds out she is not perfect, she breaks down and has her Heel–Face Turn.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: The Crystal Gem Pearl doing what she was made to do led to her suggesting to Pink Diamond that she explore the Earth under the guise of a Rose Quartz, which led to Pink realizing the damage Earth's colonization is doing to the planet, which in turn led to her leading a rebellion against Homeworld to save Earth, and subsequently faking her death, as well as the circumstances that followed, including Steven's conception, the person who would convince White, Blue, and Yellow to turn over a new leaf and end their tyrannical ways. Absolutely none of this would've happened if White hadn't taken Pink Pearl from Pink Diamond and given her a replacement Pearl.
• Non-Standard Character Design: In "Legs From Here to Homeworld", Pearl explicitly describes White Diamond as being different from other Gems, even from the other Diamonds. And when we meet her in person, we see that Pearl wasn't exaggerating as her appearance alone waves a red flag that there is clearly something off about her. Her body is mostly obscured by the light emanating from her gem, making it look like her entire body is made of light (to the point that her head looks almost like it's two-dimensional from some angles). She also stands completely motionless with her arms outstretched in a crucifixion pose which, when combined with her dissonant, monotone voice, makes her seem almost robotic. The only part of her body that makes any movement is her face, making it seem disconnected from the rest of her body. Moreover, she is drawn in the style of the show's background art, as if to further emphasize her rigidity and immobility. Her design is specifically based on the works of American artist Nell Brinkley, while the other three Diamonds curb influence from three Japanese manga and anime artists (Hirohiko Araki, Leiji Matsumoto, and Chiho Saito for Yellow, Blue, and Pink, respectively). And when she does start moving in "Change Your Mind", the animation only adds to her unsettling nature as her face and fingers constantly distort, resulting in some unnerving facial expressions. She's also the only Gem to have eyebrows at all times (the others only have them in close-up shots), and the only one at all to have fingernails, giving her a disturbingly more human-like quality than the other Gems.
• No Social Skills: After her Heel–Face Turn, she has zero social skills and is clearly completely out of her element interacting with other beings in a social capacity.
• Nothing Nice About Sugar and Spice: Per the creators, White, unlike other Gems, was given markers of an old-fashioned, stratifying femininity to emphasize her alien nature even when compared to the other Diamonds.
• Not Me This Time: Future reveals that while she did turn Pink Pearl into a Meat Puppet, she had nothing to do with said Pearl's cracked eye and face as was previously implied. Pink Pearl came damaged that way courtesy of one of Pink Diamond's tantrums.
• Not So Omniscient After All: White Diamond somehow has an intimate knowledge of Steven's life, and that of many others, even if her perspective is very warped. However, she proves herself flat out wrong about Steven's true nature. Even without his organic body, Steven's gem takes his form, not Pink Diamond's — because "she's gone".
• Obliviously Evil:
  • Sort of. She is the most genuinely malevolent of the Diamonds, but she seems so obsessed with her own perfection that she genuinely can't comprehend that other beings matter as much as she does and believes that everything else would be more perfect if her empire and her subjects did exactly what she said. When she's forced to realize she's as flawed as anyone else, she more or less completely shuts down and has no idea what to do with herself.
  • White rips the gemstone out of Steven's body because she sincerely thought each was a separate person. Although in actuality, she was tearing him in half, from her perspective, she was simply making Pink Diamond stop using Steven as a puppet.
• Oh, Crap!: The moment that Pink Steven appears instead of Pink Diamond after Steven's gem is removed is the first time White Diamond's expectations are broken down, leaving her confused. Pink Steven's powerful shout then disrupts her footing, causing a true moment of this and kick-starting her Villainous Breakdown as her emotions start running rampant.
• The Older Immortal: Implied. Going by the pre-Rebellion-era murals depicting the Diamonds surrounded by their colonies, she's conquered the most planets and moons of all (35 planetoids in total, more than the other Diamonds put together), and if the large planet in her mural's hands is in fact Homeworld, it might be meant to symbolize she was the first Gem.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business: How other characters react to her speaks volumes of her status and power. Yellow Diamond is scared of her temper, and her Pearl denied Yellow's request to see her without as much a complaint from Yellow.
• Orcus on His Throne: It has been stated that she never leaves her head these days and couldn't be bothered to attend the first royal ball in a millennium. Deconstructed, as her refusal to leave her throne is a big part of the unhealthy, isolationist mindset that's made her the Greater-Scope Villain in the first place.
• Outliving One's Offspring: Is horrified to discover that her younger fellow Diamond Pink truly is gone and that there's no way to bring her back.
• Parental Favoritism: She is implied to have treated Pink Diamond well in the past, yet two of her other fellow Diamonds, Blue and Yellow, are afraid of her temper. In a twist of events, it's Yellow who's scared for Steven when White finds out what Pink did, showing that she is unaware of White's apparent favoritism of Pink over her. "Familiar" confirms that White favored Pink over Yellow.
• Parental Neglect: For as much as she qualifies as Pink Diamond's "mother", White Diamond is notably absent from nearly all scenes with the Authority, including the trial of Pink's alleged murderer; the other Diamonds themselves never acknowledge her to the point that when Pink was pleading with her fellow Diamonds to spare the Earth through long-distance communication, White doesn't even show up and no mention is made of what she thinks of Pink's desire. The only time she intervened at all was to help Yellow and Blue unleash the Corrupting Light on Earth after Pink's alleged shattering. The reason for this deadbeat behavior has yet to be seen. She reacts to "Pink"'s homecoming in "Legs From Here to Homeworld" with a mixture of patronization and nonchalance, showing concern for Steven without actually caring or listening when he tries to speak. Presumably this was how she treated Pink as well. It is not until she gets a firm reality check and realize that she isn't as perfect as she thinks she is does she decide to be an active participant with Yellow, Blue and Steven, and by the time of The Movie, the three of them lay it on thick to Steven just how much he means to them.
• Parental Obliviousness: Played with. White somehow has a pervasive knowledge of Pink and Steven's lives, even when they were on Earth, but doesn't understand either's character, or that they're even two different people.
• Parents Know Their Children: She is Pink's "mother", and instantly recognizes Steven as her the second he steps into the throne room, despite his gem being covered by his shirt. Even Blue and Yellow Diamond didn't recognize Steven as Pink until he was able to project her aura during their fight in "Reunited". "Change Your Mind" implies that she also knew that Rose Quartz and Pink were the same person. Subverted in that she was wrong and Steven was never Rose, much to her shock.
• People Puppets: "Change Your Mind" reveals that she can control other Gems and even speak through them, turning them monochrome in the process. Not even Blue and Yellow are immune.
• The Perfectionist: Taken to an insane and unhealthy degree. Everything on Homeworld, or the galactic empire, has to conform to her "perfect" caste system. Everyone has to look their best for her, constantly. Fusions and Off-Colors enrage her and are punishable by death. Seeing herself as the Ultimate Life Form, White has now isolated herself away from other gems, even the other Diamonds, to limit contact with them. In "Change Your Mind" she elaborates upon this and explains that all Gems, even the other Diamonds, are essentially inferior copies of her. She has a Villainous Breakdown when she realizes that she isn't flawless.
• Perpetual Smiler: Surprisingly, she's seen smiling the entirety of her meeting with Steven, though her smiles aren't sincere until her Heel–Face Turn.
• Personality Powers: White's Signature Move is the ability to assimilate other gems with her Eye Beams to act as extensions of herself, a literal form of Psychological Projection reflecting her Control Freak tendencies, her god complex and her inability to comprehend the thoughts and feelings of other people. Between her Heel–Face Turn in "Change Your Mind" and "Homeworld Bound", she eventually learned how to use this power in reverse and allows others to possess her instead, a power that compliments her newly-acquired humility.
• Pet the Dog:
  • White Diamond does seem to genuinely want to be a good parent to her fellow Diamonds, despite her perfectionism and reclusive nature straining their relationship, and gives them a lot of leeway and autonomy, insofar as their actions don't significantly clash with her agenda:
    • The fact that she figured out Pink's scheme at some point, at least to some extent, and didn't immediately haul her back to Homeworld shows she was willing to let Pink "get [her rebelliousness] out of her system" and take all the time she wanted to do so. Not informing Yellow and Blue of the same, while cruel, can probably be attributed to her massive disconnect with their feelings rather than genuine malice.
    • When Steven and the Crystal Gems confront her in her ship, she asks whether Pink "wants her legs and planet back" in a gentle and seemingly complaisant tone, although it carries a level of condescension. While White emphasized she wouldn't let Pink leave Homeworld, she seemed to be willing to give Pink her colony and ship back, much like a parent offering a fussy toddler a toy to stop their tantrum.
    • While her attempt to rip out Steven's gemstone comes off as creepy, she seems to genuinely want her littlest fellow Diamond Pink back.
  • With regard to lesser, "imperfect" Gems, she at least tries to be nice to the Off-Colors when Steven introduces her to them. In The Movie, Steven has been trying to get her out of this mindset much more — insisting on calling others "equal lifeforms" instead of "lower lifeforms", though how sincere she is in this is up for debate.
  • Steven Universe: Future shows how much she and the other Diamonds have changed, as they've developed new powers that contrast their Signature Moves, with White, in particular, allowing other Gems to control her instead of her controlling other Gems, allowing them to help rediscover their self-worth.
• Power Glows: She's the most ancient and powerful of a race of aliens made primarily of light, and it shows. Her body is so luminous when she appears in person that all of her features except her lips, eyeliner, eyebrows, and nail polish (which are all black) are concealed. You can't even see her gem until "Change Your Mind", because it's glowing just as bright as her skin and hair. Not until she is given a reality check does it stop.
• Psychological Projection:
  • White Diamond assumes Pink Diamond is still alive, and Steven's organic body is just a human child she's used as a Meat Puppet for his whole life. That's something Pink would never do to any living thing, but White does constantly.
  • She also assumes that "Pink" surrounds herself with flawed Gems to make herself look better, something that describes her rather well.
• Psychopathic Womanchild: She may act like she's above everyone else, but when her attempts at getting Pink Diamond to turn back to her old self fail, she hammers at the floor like a fussy toddler in contrast to the creepy matriarch she has been portrayed as before.
  White Diamond: You are not half-human, you're just... a-acting like a child!
  Steven: I am a child; what's your excuse?
• Psychic Powers: Despite remaining in her palace, White has a great knowledge of the facts (if not the meaning) of Pink/Rose and Steven's lives — up to knowing what the latter was dreaming. It strongly suggests White Diamond has either clairvoyance or telepathy.
• Pure Is Not Good:
  • White diamonds are considered the purest form (technically, colorless diamonds are, but this is as close as we'll get here) of diamond. White Diamond the character knows this, giving her a massive superiority complex toward the other Gems, even with her fellow Diamonds. This purity possibly came from casting off her emotions into the other Diamonds, and Steven points out this leaves her devoid of happiness. White pointing out that she consists of all the various colors of light instead of just a partial spectrum like Blue and Yellow is also a hint that she's not as devoid of flaws as she believes that she is...
  • Power-wise, she can purify other gems and make it possible to restore them from Corruption. But taken the other way, this also allows her to purify them of their personality, turning them into another extension of herself.
• Racist Grandma: A dark example; because she is Pink's "mother", Steven is technically her grandson. She tends to think the Diamonds are above... pretty much any and every being in the universe, and even then only started treating Yellow, Blue, and Steven as beings equal to herself recently, and that's not even to mention her zero tolerance for off-colors. This is apparently something Steven has been working on with her by the time of the movie.
  White Diamond: I've been saying "Please" and "Thank You", even to lower lifeforms!
  Steven: What did we talk about?
  White Diamond: Ugh, equal lifeforms.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Lays out a vicious one to Steven in "Change Your Mind".
  White: It's a pity the way you bring out the worst in others. See how you've encouraged their deficiencies? It's written all over their gems. [about Amethyst] Insecure... [about Garnet] dependent... [about Pearl] obsessed...
  Steven: No! No no! Guys! Come on! Snap out of it!
  White: Please stop "helping" them! You'll only make things worse. That's what you do. I make things better. Here... [snaps fingers and starts speaking through Amethyst] "Oh thank you, White Diamond! I feel excellent now! Oh thank you, how generous of you!" [speaking through Garnet] "Thank you, White Diamond! We feel so much better now!" [speaking through Pearl] "I feel excellent!" There we are! I've removed their flaws! Now there is nothing to hinder my white light from sparkling through them! I'd rather not spread my uninhibited self so thin, you know, but you've made it absolutely necessary. Now all the impurities you've encouraged in them are gone! Now they are brilliant! Now they are perfect! Now, they are ME!
  Steven: You're wrong! [White gives him a Death Glare] Please, just listen to me! My friends don't need to be fixed! They're fine the way they are! Flaws and all!
  White: There you go again. Do you understand why you defend their flaws? I know why, Pink. [speaks through ALL of Steven's friends] You LIKE surrounding yourself with inferior Gems!
  Steven: What!?
  White: You enable their terrible behavior, so you can be the best of the worst!
  Steven: That's not true! [losing steam] And even if it is... even if it was...you're talking about my mom! You're not talking about me!
  [White, the Crystal Gems, White Pearl, and the Diamonds all start cackling like madmen]
  White: AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! YOUR "MOM"? AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
• Red Herring:
  • Despite the abusive air around her suggesting that she cracked Pink Pearl's eye, "Volleyball" reveals that it was Pink Diamond herself who damaged her Pearl in a fit of rage.
  • The opening of Future shows an enraged, pink-shaded version of White among the villains. It turns out that's her being controlled by Steven.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: The blue to the other three Diamonds' red, being much more reserved and antisocial than them.
• Secret Secret-Keeper: In her first meeting with Steven, her dialog suggests she knew Rose Quartz was Pink Diamond all along but kept it to herself because she thought Pink was going through some extended temper tantrum and needed to get it out of her system.
• Shadow Archetype: To Pink Diamond. Both are very feminine Chessmasters who play millennia-long games with each other, to the point that White assumes that Pink Faking the Dead and staging a rebellion was just her latest "game" with her. Both also tend to be insensitive and dismissive of other gems, but while Pink is Innocently Insensitive, White's condescension is both intentional and from a genuine belief she is perfect. Even their gems are perfect mirrors to one another — White's gem is the exact same shape and cut as Pink's gem, only facing in the opposite direction. White Diamond even acknowledges this in "Change Your Mind", White describing Pink as a "flaw" that she has to suppress, how Pink "corrupts" as she herself "perfects", and then realizing that she herself has a flaw when she blushes pink.
• Shadow Dictator: She's the highest authority in an intergalactic empire, but seemingly secludes herself in a single room and only lets people in when completely necessary. Even the other Diamonds barely ever see her, and her Pearl leaves her ship as soon as she brings Steven to White Diamond.
• Shoulders of Doom: Her mural depicts her with these. "Your Mother and Mine" implies it may be part of a cape she wears similar to Jasper's cape. Her shoulders aren't as large when she actually appears.
• The Shut-In: "Legs From Here to Homeworld" reveals that she hasn't left Homeworld in eons. How she apparently still manages to have more colonies than the other Diamonds is a mystery, although she most likely just stopped colonizing planets at some point. Either way, she finally leaves Homeworld at the end of "Change Your Mind".
• Significant Double Casting: She shares a voice actor with her Pearl, making Christine Ebersole the only actor on the show to voice two different types of gems, and White Pearl thus far the only Pearl not voiced by Deedee Magno-Hall. This is because she's using her as a puppet, and the same ends up applying when she controls others.
• Sinister Surveillance: She is aware of many things that neither she nor her subjects could have witnessed in person, such as the truth about Pink Diamond's "shattering", the exact time and place that Blue and Yellow would return to Homeworld, the Crystal Gems' deep-seated insecurities, and the fact that Steven has been experiencing his mother's memories. However, she is also clearly not The Omniscient, as her assumption that Pink was using Steven as a Meat Puppet proved to be incorrect.
• Skull for a Head: The way her hair shapes her head mixed with the prominent cheekbones some perspectives give her makes her head look like it is shaped like a skull.
• Soft-Spoken Sadist: She took Pink Pearl from Pink Diamond — and then used her mind control powers on said Pearl, turning her into White Pearl and leaving her nothing but an Empty Shell for White to use as her Meat Puppet; the other Diamonds either poof or shatter lower Gems that displease them, so this makes White especially cruel. And given who White is, she probably didn't see it as any different as confiscating a toy from Pink.
• Spiky Hair: Her murals are identifiable in part by her unmistakable flower-like hairstyle. Her actual hair is somehow even more pointy than the murals depict.
• Star-Spangled Spandex: She wears a cape patterned with white diamonds on a black-and-grey background which resembles a night sky.
• Sugary Malice: In "Change Your Mind", one of her lines is: "Now Starlight, this has gone on long enough" and making it clear that she is absolutely furious at Steven, though you wouldn't know that by her voice. This line she says right before she "bleaches" Amethyst as punishment for calling what she's saying nonsense is also absolutely dripping with venom.
  White Diamond: Oh! Hello there! Your new friends are so funny. Is that what they're supposed to be? Funny?
• Tautological Templar: White Diamond's entire worldview turns out to be based around the idea that she is a perfect and flawless being, which means that she knows best and justifies her enforcement of a caste system that ultimately just makes everyone miserable, and even her taking control of other Gems to remove what she sees as their flaws. It's only when she realizes that she isn't perfect that Steven is able to reason with her.
• Third-Person Person: When she speaks through White Pearl, she refers to herself as if they were distinct entities.
• Time Abyss: She is truly an ancient being, this attribute together with her insane powers makes her Fantastically Indifferent to other Gems, even other Diamonds.
• Time Dissonance: She refers to Pink's Faking the Dead and the consequences that followed as her game, and it's likely that to her, bubbling the other Diamonds for the next few millennia is equivalent to grounding them (especially since there are pink bubbles in Pink Diamond's room, and Yellow implies that it has been done to her before).
• Top God: Blue and Yellow fear her authority, or at least her temper. Pearl explicitly states that she's different from all other Gems, even her fellow Diamonds.
• Transformation of the Possessed: White Diamond using her powers to control other gems make them turn monochrome like her and speak in her voice.
• Troll: While masquerading as White Pearl, she puts on a big show about White Diamond being about to show up, including a spotlight and drum-roll, only to immediately say she isn't coming and dash everyone's hopes, seemingly just to be a jerk.
• Ultimate Lifeform: While all the Diamonds are seen as this, Yellow and Blue seem to be aware it's only a façade, while White genuinely believes she's a perfect, completely flawless entity and thus all other beings are only worth anything if she is controlling them. This also means that she's impossible to reason with due to her believing no one else is worth listening to at all. It's only when Steven shows her she's not as perfect as she believes she is that it's possible to reason with her at all.
• The Unfettered: While Blue and Yellow can appreciate the heavy casualties from the Gem civil war (at least as a loss of resources), White describes Pink Faking the Dead and starting a civil war with heavy casualties on both sides as her playing a "game". She even uses the same tone of voice that a parent might if their teenager took the family car for a joyride.
• The Unfought: The most direct harm done to her is when Pink Steven knocks her off her balance with his primal scream of "She's GOOOOOOOOONE!" and bringing her to her knees by reflecting her control beams back at her. Otherwise, she fights through proxies like the Diamond mecha and mind-controlled Pearl and is only actually defeated though talking and non-violent action.
• Unseen No More: White Diamond is alluded to in various Homeworld iconography, from murals depicting her likeness to the appearance of the color white on the Diamond Authority's Era 1 and Era 2 symbols. It is not until her debut episode "Legs From Here to Homeworld" is she ever even mentioned by name five seasons in.
• Used to Be More Social: She used to attend Pink's balls to celebrate the Diamonds' conquests, even playing games, but all of that stopped when Pink went to manage her own colony. Not speaking to Blue or Yellow, she has effectively isolated herself away from everyone else in her ship, though this is usually a good thing due to her Hair-Trigger Temper. By the end of the fifth season, she's on her way to "coming out of her head" and interacting with others again.
• Villain Forgot to Level Grind: White Diamond believes she's a completely perfect being, and thus remains a Static Character, and encourages the entire Gem Empire to do the same. According to Rebecca Sugar in the Steven Universe Podcast, this was ultimately the reason Pink Steven outclassed her: while White remained the same and has never meaningfully changed at all, Steven has had to grow and earn his power, "nurturing" it and resulting in its full untapped power having gone from the weakest of the Diamonds to being able to outmatch White herself.
• Villainous Breakdown: When she's forced to face the fact that Steven really isn't Pink, she has a complete breakdown, which only worsens when she realizes she did so and thus is flawed.
• Villainous BSoD: After discovering she's flawed, she just kind of... shuts down, questioning literally everything, and finally being able to be talked down.
• Voice of the Legion: She's able to speak directly through the Gems she controls, no matter how many there are. This is demonstrated by her Pearl, and the climax of "Change Your Mind" has her doing this through five other characters. Normally she speaks through them one at a time, except at a key point when she laughs.
• Voices Are Mental: Whether White Diamond is possessing someone or channeling their light, the one controlled speaks with the voice of the controller. Justified given Gem bodies are are made of Hard Light.
• Walking Spoiler: Although her existence had been implied for a while, she isn't even mentioned by name until "Legs From Here to Homeworld". Once she appears in person, she implies she may have known about Pink Diamond's Secret Identity all along and sends Steven off to Pink's chambers in a cliffhanger ending.
• Well-Intentioned Extremist: Due to her genuine belief that she's flawless and better amongst all other life forms, even her fellow Diamonds, White Diamond honestly thinks that everything would be better if her empire and her subjects did exactly what she said.
• We Used to Be Friends: As stated by Blue, White was once close to her fellow Diamonds, frequently playing games with them and attending Pink's balls. However, after Pink's alleged shattering, White secluded herself in her own ship and never personally interacted with Yellow and Blue for six millennia. It's not until the climax of "Change Your Mind" that White finally makes amends with Blue and Yellow, but she can never truly apologize to Pink for what she had done.
• When She Smiles: One of Pink's drawings in "Familiar" depicts her with a genuinely happy smile. She gives a small but sincere smile at the very end of "Change Your Mind", and it's adorable.
  • The Movie has gone even further with the beauty of White's genuine smile, especially when she and the other Diamonds invite Spinel to live with them on Homeworld. Compare her expression when she and the other Diamonds sing the first line of their "Let Us Adore You" reprise to her expression in her debut appearance, it's hard to believe these two are the same character.
  • Future continues this, showing that White is clearly enjoying the help she's giving to other Gems.
• White Hair, Black Heart: Naturally has white hair and is the most twisted of the Diamonds.
• Willing Channeler: In Era 3 she discovers that by reversing her powers she can allow other gems to control her, literally lending her voice to gems who used to go unheard.
• The Worf Effect: Not even the supreme leader of the Gem race could lay a finger on Pink Steven.
• You Are What You Hate: Everything she throws at Steven during her "The Reason You Suck" Speech, how "Pink" deludes herself, hides her face, makes things worse, surrounds herself with Gems with flaws that make her look better, is perfectly applicable to White herself.

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