[hider=MASSIVE WIP][b]Full Name:[/b] Diabelle Freye Gardes

[b]Titles:[/b] Lady Diabelle, sometimes insultingly referred to as Lady Diabelle the Cursed.

[b]Nicknames:[/b] None in the game world, as there was no one close enough to her to call her by anything so intimate as a pet name. Out of game, the fandom tended to shorten her overly long name to just "Dia."

[b]Age:[/b] 16-18. (Was born at the same time as Arthur, so whatever our heroine's age is, hers is the same.)

[b]Gender:[/b] Female

[b]Birthplace:[/b] Caerleon. Her family, however, controls several smaller Caers and villages in proximity to the capital, being one of the most powerful aristocratic families in the kingdom. It was in one such territory - Caergwn - where she spent most of her life thus far, due to being concealed from the public eye within one of House Gardes' manors in that city.

[b]Legacy:[/b] Successor of Mordred. Unlike most Successors, who only receive periodic guidance from their patrons, Diabelle's relationship with Sir Mordred is an extremely close one - allowing her to speak to or consult with him almost any time she's unconscious, and sometimes even when she's awake as well (usually when she's particularly agitated). She possesses almost all of his memories - not just those from the time when he was alive, but also from his experiences contracting with the previous Successor.

As far as abilities she has inherited, she possesses somewhat heightened strength and speed - particularly noticeable due to how much these traits clash with her frail, dainty appearance and build. Nevertheless, compared to most other Successors, and even some normal Humans, her abilities aren't particularly remarkable due to not being cultivated - as a proper lady's upbringing would never include something so crude as strength training, and even if she wanted to indulge in such an exercise, no one would be likely to humor or assist her in so doing. Where she excels, on the other hand, is in the manipulation of shadows.

Split off from an incomplete imitation of Arthur's own holy powers, Sir Mordred's ability allows Dia to shape any area of darkness within a truly massive radius of herself, covering pretty much any battlefield featured in the game - expanding them, making them tangible, and altering their form as she sees fit. In particular, she's skilled at creating gates between two areas of shadow and stepping between them - her almost imperceptible presence lurking behind her targets within their own shadows, and in so doing representing Mordred's underhandedness, dishonor, and treachery. Most often, she uses this ability for transportation, or for listening in on people's conversations, making her a naturally talented spy or assassin were she inclined to such pursuits.

However, her physical stats are fairly low unless augmented by coating her body in shadows, which generally requires such immense concentration that it precludes her from doing anything else. Furthermore, though her magic attacks and summons are one of the most devastating sources of damage in the game - as befits a final boss - they're hard countered by Arthur's Light attribute, which can banish them, remove areas of darkness to prevent her from teleporting, and inflicts massive damage to Dia herself on a successful hit. Support-specialized Arthur can generally beat her just by spamming healing and buffing effects to protect her party, while a more offense-oriented Arthur could tear through her defenses, strip away her buffs, and nuke her. But, on the other hand, she's also one of the hardest fights in the game simply because she's so hard to pin down, and has an annoying tendency to teleport behind your party members and strike them with their own shadows for massive damage - and can even take out hard-hitters in one or two shots with a lucky crit, or if you haven't leveled them enough.

Although she's capable of summoning Mordred's stolen sword Clarent and a full suit of his armor, she doesn't often do so, as the weight of both armor and weapon require her to use all her power just to support them with shadows to achieve any worthwhile results. This is generally "Phase 1" of her bossfights, before she retreats to a distance and resorts to her more powerful magic-based attacks, at the cost of most of her defenses.

[b]Appearance:[/b] The most obvious thing about Dia is that her appearance isn't just completely different from that of her parents, but also from pretty much every other character in the game. In a setting where pretty much everybody else is a fair-skinned, usually blonde-haired cliche courtesy of Japanese stereotypes of what westerners should look like, she has dark skin, jet black hair, and ruby-red eyes. In the setting, this is handwaved as the effects of her "Mark of Infidelity" setting her apart from her family and countrymen as a permanent and indelible sign of Mordred's treachery, but the design also might have just been because the game's artist got tired of drawing such similar-looking characters and decided he'd go a little wild for the final boss.

Her character design also has a lot of effort put into it, with many of her different sprites in the game having a great deal of shading and background effects. Now that the game has become a reality, however, this translates to a significantly more creepy effect, where the shadows in her surroundings seem to stretch toward and wrap around her wherever she goes. This, combined with her scarlet eyes and tendency to appear out of nowhere using her shadow-walking powers, tends to make her look at times more like a vengeful spirit that just stepped out of a horror movie than a rival character in a romance game.

Another notable detail is that, despite her family's status, most of the outfits she wears are fairly simplistic and modest by aristocratic standards. Rather than elegant layer-upon-layer of rich silks and the like, she usually just wears attire cut from normal cloth, with only the occasional frill or bit of lace to accent it, which rather undercuts the whole "villainess noble girl" aesthetic, given that she often looks more common than the actual commoner heroine. Perhaps to compensate for this, though, Dia is very fond of hats, headbands, fans, and parasols - the one thing these various fanciful accessories have in common being that they can help cover or otherwise obscure her face. Given the stares she tends to get due to her unusual appearance, it's only really natural that she would take measures to block out unwanted gazes.

Despite often taking measures to hide her face, though, she never walks with her head down. Rather, she carries herself with a surprisingly queenly bearing, with her head held high, a steady gait, meeting the gazes of those who look upon her with firmness and tranquility. Perhaps, if she showed signs of weakness more overtly, she wouldn't be so intimidating... but unfortunately, she seems set on carrying herself only with the utmost dignity, regardless of how other people view her. While her unwavering spirit is praiseworthy in its own way, it's also probably part of the reason why so many people fear or dislike her. Despite bearing the Mark of Infidelity and bathing in the scorn of everyone around her, she still moves and acts as though the concept of shame is entirely alien to her - a behavior that is certainly unlikely to earn her any sympathy.

[b]Personality:[/b] Contrary to the personality one might expect of the rebellious Knight of Treachery's chosen heir, Lady Diabelle is far from the boisterous, dishonorable, or irreverent sort of character one might expect. Perpetually calm and quiet, she does her best to act the part of a proper lady at all times, almost never losing her composure or so much as raising her voice. She seldom speaks unless doing so is warranted, and when she does, she is always calm and polite, even when, by all rights, she should be upset.

For those who have played the game before, the reason behind this becomes obvious. Since people have been afraid of her since childhood, she does everything in her power not to aggravate them, not wanting to display any sign of emotion for fear that, fearing some kind of outburst, the people around her would run away. However, in practice, her almost disturbingly placid demeanor ends up making her unintentionally frightening in its own right, since hearing her reacting to [i]everything[/i] with the same level of affected ease makes it seem like she's toying with those around her. And, even if she never loses her temper, she also never smiles or shows signs of happiness, which tends to make everything she says feel unsettlingly serious, even if she were to try to make a joke.

These issues are also only exacerbated by her lack of emotional awareness. While she has honed her social skills to the point of perfection, her isolated and lonely upbringing has meant that the only "person" she's really had any deep sort of connection to is the voice of Sir Mordred within her head. Because of this, Dia is very bad at reading the mood, and has effectively zero emotional awareness, even if she tries to observe the rules of tact which she has done her level best to learn. She never opens up to anyone, and even if someone else opened their heart to her, she wouldn't know how to respond.

The only real exception to this general rule is her fiancee, who, with her usual bluntness, she in the game confronted immediately on his resentment of her, but offered to be of use to him to compensate for the inconvenience of having to marry her. Being relied on - even grudgingly - was a feeling closer to love than she had ever experienced before, and Dia quickly, without realizing it, became dependent on the notion that at least one person needed her. Needless to say, though, because of these dependency issues and her underlying depression and repressed anger at the unfairness of her situation, she's very bad with rejection, and her mental breakdowns in the endings of certain routes are often genuinely terrifying precisely because she never once even hinted at losing her cool before.

[b]Synopsis:[/b] A cursed child, feared from birth. The game didn't really go into much detail on her backstory, making it somewhat difficult to piece together what happened to her in the past. Nevertheless, from her completely tranquil, passive personality, and from some of the lines she delivers in her various breakdowns in different endings, one can get a general idea of the underlying cause of her issues.

From the very beginning, the only cause of celebration in her birth was the certainty that if Mordred's Successor had appeared, then surely, somewhere, Arthur's Successor had been born. Even her own family viewed the birth of a child somewhere they didn't know as the "silver lining" in the tragedy that their own daughter had come into the world. The constant reminders from others as she grew up that Arthur was the one who everyone was waiting and hoping for only made this worse, causing her to almost immediately resent and envy the protagonist. This is reflected most prominently in the angry tirade she delivers at the end of her bossfight at the end of her fiancee's route, where she begins screaming at the heroine and her love interest, delivering such lines as "Was I born only for your sake? Did I live just to prove that you were precious?!"

Though she wasn't abused, and was well provided for, Diabelle's parents are shown in the game to be rather obviously neglectful. If the player gets certain optional events near to the ending when she turns on the kingdom and her family, Duke Gardes excuses his behavior by saying that he and his wife never interacted with her because they feared for their own safety. As a child with unspeakable magical powers, if she were to ever throw a tantrum or lash out in rebellion against her parents - which they feared she was almost certain to do, given she was evidently chosen by [i]Mordred[/i] as a Successor - there would be no telling what kind of damage she could cause. And, of course, as this dialogue only happens in the ending where she turns on the kingdom in despair and rage because the man she loved turned his back on her, pretty much everyone involved agrees that their fear was entirely justified.

But this fear was also contagious, and spread to the unlucky maids and servants tasked with tending to the locked-up girl's needs in her parents' stead. Because of this, even the slightest sign of distemper on her part would usually send everyone around her running and panicking, which in turn is the probable cause of her incredible level of self-control in the present. She couldn't allow herself to show even the faintest sign of anger or passion for fear of scaring others off, and thus learned to be obediently stoic as a necessity.

Because of this, even by the time she meets her fiancee-to-be as children before the game even starts, she's already disturbingly calm and composed - partly due to her own isolated upbringing, and partly because of the advice of Mordred on how to cope with her situation. As such, she almost immediately sets him on edge by asking a rather blunt question before they get any further than first introducing themselves.

"You find me disgusting, don't you?"

Rather than being offended when he confirms her suspicions, however, Lady Diabelle merely accepts his answer as inevitable, and apologizes for being so unpleasant. However, as neither of them could act against their family's will, the engagement would be set regardless of such hard feelings on either side. So, honestly wanting to make reparations for simply being who she is, Dia proposes that she use her powers, unsightly though they may be, to accomplish whatever he desires, serving as his faithful right hand in the hopes of not being hated by him.

This "contract" forms the basis of her entire character. Desperate to be "needed" even if she can't be loved, Dia does everything in her power to make her fiancee's royal ambitions a reality. From the very beginning, whenever they're alone, she refers to him as "your majesty" rather than "your highness" (-[i]heika[/i] vs. -[i]sama[/i] in the original Japanese) as if he is already king. And, once her powers are more developed, she begins serving as his spy, eavesdropping on the conversations of nobles by lurking in their shadows, and providing him information of who supports him as heir, and who does not, allowing him to make the alliances that lead to the formation of the Aristocratic Faction.
[hider=Gawain Route]In the First Prince's route, this naturally leads to both her and her fiancee serving as antagonists, since, with Arthur on his enemy's side, he has no choice but to rely on Dia's support to back up his claim to the throne by force. Ultimately, this leads to a civil war where it's the forces of the traitors against the kingdom's loyal knights and foreign reinforcements called up by the Queen, led by Yvain.

With Arthur against them, the coup forces are obviously defeated, and at the end of the day, Dia has her powers sealed by the heroine, and she and her ill-fated fiancee are locked up together for life in the tallest tower of the palace. This is actually the best ending for her, since the route ends with her beloved reconciling with her, telling her that she tried her best, and revealing that he no longer fears her. It was a sweet scene to the point that many fans angrily lamented that the villains got a better ending than the heroes, since the First Prince continued to be an insufferable ore-sama type character right up until the very end, and despite ostensibly being the game's main male lead, was also the most widely disliked by the playerbase.[/hider]
In all other routes, however, Dia's relationship with her fiancee ends up significantly worse. As he desperately pursues the heroine as his stepping stone to kingship, she fears she'll be thrown away as useless to him, since, far from helping fulfill his royal ambitions, it's her engagement to him that serves as his greatest stumbling block. In order to prove her usefulness, she tries all manner of devices. One which generally happens in every route involves Dia disguising herself as a man and entering the Royal Academy's tournament as a mysterious black knight which serves as a preview for the final boss battle on most routes. Though she does well, the heroine eventually deduces that she's using Shadow Magic to enhance her own body, and comes to the mistaken conclusion that Lady Diabelle is using her powers on this mysterious contestant to help him cheat. So, using her holy light, the Heroine shatters the shadows surrounding Dia's body, in the process knocking off her helmet and revealing her true identity.

This serves to infuriate her beloved, who is angry to have been outperformed in a martial contest by his own fiancee, and yells at her for acting on her own, asking what she thought she was doing. She gives what might have been an honest answer - "I wanted to see what it felt like to be praised" - but dismisses this as a joke when pressed on it, ultimately refusing to explain herself.

From this point onward, her ending varies based on whose route the player chooses.
[hider=Gareth Route]On her fiancee's route, Dia repeatedly rebuffs the heroine's advances on him, calling her out for seducing another woman's fiancee. But, as the person in question defies this, this low-level harassment does little more than reveal exactly how little he thinks of Dia. Eventually, the Royalists try to have him assassinated, fearing his closeness to Arthur's Successor, but the heroine saves him in the nick of time. So, taking advantage of the situation, they frame Diabelle as the culprit, and she flees the country. When the Royalists eventually call in the neighboring Caer to help invade Caerleon, Diabelle returns at the head of their armies. 

Even after the enemy's commanders (Yvain and Gawain) are defeated in the field battle section, Diabelle begins ruthlessly carving a swathe of destruction into the city so that she can confront the heroine and her former fiancee herself, and leading to the earlier-mentioned breakdown - a scene which became rather infamous as leaving a rather bad taste in players' mouths as she screams and cries about the heroine taking everything from her. 

If the player loses the fight, she tries to kill the heroine, only for her beloved to interpose himself in a desperate attempt to protect his new fiancee from his old one. She accidentally kills him, and then, distraught by what she has done, has her own shadows devour her, committing suicide out of grief, and leaving the heroine alone, cradling the corpse of her love interest in the ruins of what was to be their home.

If the player wins, on the other hand, Arthur defeats her and tries to spare her. However, taking advantage of this moment, Yvain - who made no appearance in the bad ending for some reason - reveals himself to be still alive and tries to strike down the Second Prince while his attention is on Dia. This time it's Dia who throws herself in the way, and dies protecting her unrequited love from the man who held an unrequited interest in her, who promptly gives up after killing her accidentally, much as she herself does in the bad ending (though he doesn't commit suicide).[/hider]
[hider=Lancelot Route]On this route, her fate is a little different. Since the Second Prince doesn't win Arthur's favor, he isn't targeted by assassins, and thus Dia isn't framed. Instead, out of an increasing desperation to prove herself not only to him but to the country as a whole, she ends up disappearing from the plot for a while, only to show up at the very end as a surprise final bossfight in the middle of the war between Caerleon and the Successor of Lancelot's kingdom. Bertilak, the sole survivor of Dagonet's posse, shows up and explains what apparently happened offscreen. Egged on by Dagonet (who was trying to earn glory as a hero without actually doing anything), and hoping to be recognized as an asset to the kingdom and "just as good as Arthur," Dia began using her shadows to devour the curses afflicting the lands overrun by monsters. In so doing, however, she became corrupted by them, and eventually turned into the greatest of all monsters herself - an enormous Black Dragon. Leading an army of demons and other assorted creatures, she attacks while the kingdom is in the midst of fighting Arthur, and forces everyone to set aside their differences to face this new threat.

In the end, the Successor of Lancelot becomes the country's savior, as he is the only knight skilled enough to slay the mighty beast, killing Dia and destroying Mordred's spirit for all time. In this route, she's mostly painted an unfortunate casualty by everyone involved, and suddenly everybody sympathizes with her, in complete contradiction of their earlier attitude towards her. Mostly, the fans agree she's basically just there to serve as a plot device for why the Successor of Lancelot is forgiven and allowed to become king alongside the heroine, and ends up as a necessary sacrifice for them to achieve their happy ending.[/hider]
[hider=Merlin Route]TBD. Waiting on Rai to decide on the details of Merlin's route for this one. The ending has Gareth presumably dead or having abandoned her, and a defeated and despairing Dia married off instead to Dagonet as a punishment for her betrayal of the kingdom.[/hider]
[hider=Yvain Route]TBD. Waiting on Asura for this one. Probably mostly echoes her fate in the Gawain Route, though.[/hider]
[hider=Galahad Route]TBD. Waiting on Olive for this one.[/hider]
[hider=Bors Route]TBD. Waiting on Xiro for this one.[/hider]

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