Victorique de Blois

Victorique de Blois is the main heroine from the Gosick anime and light novels.

Victorique is a 15 year-old girl who studies at Saint Marguerite Academy, although she usually stays in the library of the school. She is portrayed as a girl who lives her entire life as an enigma, which Kazuya Kujo began to uncover and solve as he develops his feelings for her.

Appearance
Victorique is a small, almost doll-like girl with long blonde hair and emerald eyes. However, she possesses a voice and articulation in speaking that makes her sound like a mature woman, but only in dub. In sub, she sounds exactly like who she is, a stubborn, immature, young girl. Despite being a student in Saint Marguerite Academy, she usually wears a black Victorian dress and Black Hairband which is full of lace and frills; she also possesses a wardrobe consisting of dresses of a variety of colors. As a child, her appearance is no different except for the lack of emotion she shows on her face. This can be seen when she speaks to Grevil de Blois, especially on the topic of love and affection.

Another important part of Victorique's appearance is that she sometimes appears to be smoking a white and blue porcelain pipe that she uses when thinking (à la Sherlock Holmes). Although, she does not really smoke, but she only pretends to, as it makes her feel like a real detective.

At the end of the anime, her hair turn silver. Supernatural beings usually die if they leave the old continent, Victorique however survives because she's a mixed blood. Still, her hair completely lose the golden color due to Marie Antoinette Syndrome.

Personality
Victorique personifies the classic tsundere character type. However, that is not all there is to her personality. Despite her sharp tongue, abusive bluntness, and eccentric attitude, she possess an odd supernatural, overwhelming charisma, and flawless eloquence. She uses these skills to manipulate people into doing what she wants with ease.

Victorique often puts on a show of being harsh or sarcastic, but she has other sides to her personality. She is often depicted as being bored by normal life, and asks Kujo to bring her things to distract or entertain her. Often, he brings things to her of his own accord, and Victorique is shown as having a range of reactions, depending on the gift. These gifts range from mysteries, to candy, to a beautiful kimono from Japan.

Victorique also has some rather child-like parts of her personality. She can be impetuous, stubborn, cheerful, and sweet, just like a small child might be.

Another big part of her personality is that she seems to have some sort of social anxiety. This is shown in how she tends to hide in a large cubbord, or stay perfectly still so that people think she's a large doll when strangers come into the botanical gardens where she spends much of her time. She is frightened and nervous when Kujo finds her after the stranger(s) leave, but his presence calms her down quickly.

Her experience in the dungeons of the de Blois mansion, along with the absence of her mother, Cordelia, has caused her to develop a nihilistic attitude. In spite of possessing a brilliant mind, she did not have any knowledge when it comes to love and affection which her brother would often use to hurt her. This gradually changed when she begins spending time in the library tower of Saint Marguerite Academy, and this change is hastened by her interactions with Kujo.

She initially treats Kujo as an entertainer of sorts, usually being dependent on him to cure her boredom by either bringing her something interesting (which at times fails to meet its purpose) or telling her a mystery to solve. The latter eventually puts them into situations that improve their relationship with each other to the point they soon became good friends, such as in episode 3 of the anime. When it was apparent that Kujo was in danger, she worried about him, and pleaded Kujo to stay with her because she wanted to return home with him. Victorique soon shows a more sincere side to showing her emotions to Kujo than to others, even asking him to protect her.

Abilities
Victorique possesses perfect, superhumanly keen observational skills, and can notice even the smallest details. She possess superhuman senses, intuition, comprehension, adaptability, perception, and superhuman detective/investigation skills, deductive/inductive reasoning skills, strategic/tactical skills, analytical skills, problem-solving skills, logic skills, and calculating skills. She can easily and perfectly analyze multiple streams of information simultaneously, and perform an infinite amount of calculations and simulations (from simple to unimaginably complex) simultaneously in her head without any outside aid, without stress or problems on her part. This allows her to practically predict the future to a very accurate degree, quickly solve any puzzle or problem, work any situation into her favor by instantly coming up with perfect plans (adjusting if necessary) and always knowing the right move needed for success. She usually describes these abilities as "reconstructing the fragments of chaos using the wellspring of wisdom". She also possess superhuman learning capabilities, such as easily and perfectly memorizing and recalling limitless amount of complex information. She easily understands whatever she learns, and never forgets it (perfect eidetic memory ). This doesn't put any stress or give any problems on her physically or mentally. She can perfectly and easily memorize whatever she reads, as shown in how easily she showed Kujo the exact book and page he described, in the huge library, despite seemingly reading it once years before meeting Kujo. Victorique can quickly and perfectly recall whatever information she desires from her wellspring. She learned minutiae, languages, and complex information quickly without need for repetition. She can also read extremely quickly, and can easily read multiple books in multiple languages simultaneously. Kujo once saw her read a book in advanced French while also reading a book in advanced German, understanding both with no trouble. She can also perfectly apply whatever knowledge she learns to real life, immediately after learning it (such as mastering shooting a gun with pinpoint accuracy after only reading about the process once).

Trivia

 * Victorique's height is mentioned to be 140cm (about 4'6) in the novel (and manga). However, she seems to be taller in the anime, estimated to be 152.4 cm (about 5' 0") and 155cm (5'1") with heels. She weighs 40 kg (88.18 lb). Both numbers are quite small compared to other women/girls in her time period.


 * Victorique's birthday is December 25, 1908.


 * In spite of the fashion trends in the 1920s, Victorique still wears outfits reminiscent of the decades of the 19th Century. It is assumed that the de Blois family provided Victorique with hand-me-downs.


 * Among Victorique's favorite food are French delicacies called macarons.


 * Due to ethical issues in portraying young-looking characters which practice smoking, Victorique is instead portrayed in the anime series as using her pipe as a mannerism.


 * The proper romanization of Victorique's name has brought confusion amongst fans due to disparity between its pronunciation and spelling. The only accepted spellings for Victorique's name are Victorique and Victorica. The former has been written in the anime series, and has been referenced in the light novels as a boy's name; on the other hand, the latter is the released romanization of her name in the released drama CD for Gosick. **Although, because this is supposed to be a French name, it should be only pronounced as Victorique and not Victorica. Although, if you watch in Japanese, you will notice that they pronounce Victorique as Victorica, but of course that is only because that is how you would pronounce it in Japanese.


 * In the latter part of the series, a possible explanation for Victorique's sudden change of hair color is Marie Antoinette Syndrome, a sudden whitening of the hair caused by abrupt events that cause stress and depression. The phenomena was named after the observation that the hair of unhappy and ill-fated Queen Marie Antoinette of France turned stark white the night before her execution in the French Revolution. Another possible explanation (rumored) is that she bleached her hair on purpose to hide from the people searching for her. However the true reason is the fact (as explained in the Light Novels) that she's a mixed blood supernatural being. Leaving the old continent caused her hair to turn silver and to fall into coma. Those were listed rumors of the Light Novels, but in the anime, she never falls into a coma and her hair changed color because of Marie Antoinette Syndrome. She was stressed from the loss of her mother, and the loss of Brian, as well as depressed from being separated from Kujo for so long.