Brauner

is the main antagonist of Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin. In 1944, he resurrected Dracula's Castle and attempted to usurp Count Dracula's place as its owner, and with it carry out his own campaign against Humanity.
In his past life, he was an artist prior to his vampirism. He is the one who created the many portraits which the player must travel through to get to different areas.
==History==
Brauner was a human artist whose beloved daughters were killed during World War I. The rage and grief from this event awakened his hidden powers, which he used to become a vampire, seeking revenge and the destruction of Humankind. 30 years later, in 1944, he recreated Dracula's Castle using the souls of the dead from World War II in order to achieve this goal. Unlike most other vampires in the series, Brauner had no loyalty to Dracula, due to his repeated failures from the past, and separated him from the castle using his portraits, where a portion of the monsters he took control of resided.
The vampire hunter, Eric Lecarde, went to investigate the castle alone, but he was ultimately defeated and gravely injured by Brauner. Eric's daughters, Loretta and Stella, later entered the castle looking for their father's whereabouts and successfully located him within the vampire's atelier. They found Eric lying on the floor, when Brauner suddenly appeared behind them and, believing they were the reincarnations of his deceased daughters, vampirized them both and put them under a spell to make them love him as their own father right in front of the helpless Eric. Eric was presumably killed afterward, but not before binding his ghost to the castle, in the hope that someday someone would come to get rid of Brauner.
Death was resurrected along with the castle as well, though, and retained full loyalty to Dracula. Upon hearing about Brauner from Jonathan Morris and Charlotte Aulin when they entered the castle, Death started planning for the usurper's removal.
Jonathan and Charlotte first met Brauner, alongside Loretta and Stella, in the Sandy Grave. Stella was about to attack the young hunters, but Brauner told her to calm down. Jonathan asked Brauner if he was planning to resurrect Dracula, to which the vampire replied that he alleged no loyalty to Dracula due to his many prior failures, and that he would wipe out mankind by himself using his castle. He also told Charlotte that he sealed Dracula using his paintings. Jonathan and the vampire sisters then started to antagonize each other, until Brauner stopped them by telling them that taking out Death should be their priority. He then teleported his "daughters" away and fled via another painting.
If the duo defeats the Lecarde sisters without casting Sanctuary, Brauner will arrive to interfere with Jonathan's attempt at finishing them off and spirit them away alongside himself while begging him to have mercy on them. When Charlotte points out that he and his "daughters" aren't actually blood related, he infers that their familial ties actually lie in their souls, not merely their blood. The castle crumbles with all three vampires escaping, resulting in a bad ending followed by the game over screen.
However, if the duo successfully casts Sanctuary on the Lecarde sisters and clears the remaining four of Brauner's portraits, they will be able to confront him within his painting study. He believes that Stella and Loretta have returned, but finds out that Jonathan and Charlotte have successfully intruded into his chamber and are about to stop him. Even after being informed by Charlotte that the Lecardes had already regained their senses, Brauner still clings onto his delusions while Johnathan calls him out as "sad", heavily angering him and commencing their fight.
Once the duo defeat him, he curses Humankind for starting the World Wars and tells them that he just wanted to protect his family, before Death arrives and kills him, successfully unsealing Dracula and reinstating him as the castle's proper ruler. This forces Jonathan and Charlotte to one final mission: tie up loose ends by defeating Dracula and Death.
==Appearance==
Brauner was like most vampires, an abnormally tall humanoid with ghostly pale skin, crimson red eyes and long purple nails. Similarly to Olrox, Brauner was also bald. He donned a set of refined clothing consisting of a thick buttoned coat with long wide sleeves, featuring white sections with an intricate black pattern. He also dons a pair long purple pants and a pair of classic shoes. Interestingly, Brauner is seen with a golden cane with a skull design. During his appearances, Brauner is never seen walking and mostly relies on his paintings for transportation. This might suggest a potential disability, although he can use his legs in battle.
==Personality==
Brauner was a deeply sociopathically misanthropic individual who had a very passionate hatred for humanity and sought to carry out his own genocidal plans against it by utilizing Dracula's castle and his army for himself. He was considerably arrogant and looked down on everyone, including Dracula himself, believing the infamous Dark Lord to be untrustworthy and useless because he had repeatedly failed on his many resurrections. When presenting himself, he tends to show an air of calmness and polite mannerisms, yet those are used as a means to show off his self-perceived superiority rather than genuine respect.
Ultimately, Brauner was like Dracula himself, a tragic villain who was severely warped after the death of his loved ones, setting him on a dark path of revenge and blood. He was notoriously insane, believing the Lecarde sisters to be his daughters, killing their father and vampirizing and mind-controlling both of them into loving him like a father. When Jonathan Morris and Charlotte Aulin released the sisters from his spell, he developed such murderous rage to the point of breaking his cane, and decided to kill the vampire hunter duo to subsequently hypnotize the Lecarde sisters into being his daughters once more.
Further traces of Brauner's insanity can be seen during his boss fight, in which he shows visibly maniacal excitement over his paintings, which bring forth hideous supernatural abominations, while deeming them masterpieces. His personal studio is also stuffed in bizarre, monstrous paintings. It is not known whether Brauner's paintings carried that horrific style prior to his vendetta, or whether they are more reflective of his spiraling to the diabolical man he became.
==Boss battle==
===Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin===
Brauner is the second-to-last boss encountered in the game (save for optional bosses). He usually starts the battle by performing his signature attack, Blood Art Technique, which consists in him painting two giant blood trails on the screen that will damage the player upon contact, but which can be destroyed by any attack or a spell (such as the Holy Lightning Dual Crush, which can clear the whole attack in a single cast and at a relatively low MP cost). He can perform three different types of trails, each of which that apparently represents a Roman numeral, either II, V or X, all drawn sideways.
He then attacks by producing many blobs of paint-like blood from his hand that are harmful to the touch and spreads them all around him, followed by him summoning monsters from a painting; these can either be avoided or attacked.
Depending on the color of the painting, the monsters and their effects will be different:
*Green: Summons two giant monsters, each with five large appendages. Each of these entities will start spinning from the center of the room toward one of its edges, one to the left and the other to the right. They inflict Poison status upon contact.
*Gray: Summons two giant ghosts, one on the ground and the other on the ceiling. These will travel to the edge of the screen, one right after the other. They inflict Curse status upon contact.
*Blue: A myriad of cycloptic heads will start flying in the heroes' direction. Making contact with any of these will inflict Petrification status to the character, lowering their defenses and leaving them open for any subsequent attacks.
Brauner can also teleport inside his portrait and fly around, damaging the player if they touch it (in an attack that is quite similar to the Captain miniboss from Rondo of Blood).
poisonpainting.jpg|Poison painting.
cursepainting.png|Curse painting.
petrificationpainting.png|Petrification painting.
===Castlevania: Harmony of Despair===
Brauner appears in the game as the boss of the fourth chapter. His attacks are same as those in Portrait of Ruin.
==Quotes==
*"Blood Art Technique!" (when performing Blood Art Technique)
*"A painting of the soul!" (when spraying out his own blood and is about to perform one of his three major attacks)
*"I'll make you my masterpiece!" (when performing one of his major attacks)
*"This is art!" (when he is about to perform his flying portrait attack)
==Item Data==
==Gallery==
PoR Web Profile Brauner.JPG|Brauner from Portrait of Ruin
PoR Intro Brauner.png|Brauner from Portrait of Ruinʼs intro cutscene
Por pic 20.jpg|Brauner's wallpaper
Koma Brauner.JPG|Brauner in the official Koma comic strips for Portrait of Ruin
PoR OST Poster Brauner.JPG|Brauner from the Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin Original Soundtrack's poster
Braunercreditsportrait.png|Brauner's portrait from ending credits
==Trivia==
*Brauner is based on real life painter Victor Brauner, a surrealist artist that often painted portraits that included signs and symbols based from a diverse range of sources, such as religion and mysticism. Eyes had been a reoccurring theme in much of his early works; in doing so, he gained a reputation of seer among the Surrealists community, also believing himself to be one. After an incident where he lost the sight of his left eye, his work became more introspective and symbols such as a prophetic cyclops eye became common. Likewise, one of the vampire Brauner's attacks in Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin involves summoning Cyclops' heads, and the big painting on the canvas in his studio has many eyes, among other macabre imagery.
*Even though Brauner is a vampire who seeks Humanity's destruction and uses the souls of those who died in World War II to revive Dracula's Castle, he does not seek to revive (nor does he intend to serve) Dracula, who he keeps under a seal, instead taking the castle's power and army for himself. The reason Brauner does not revive Dracula is because of his constant failures to destroy Humanity. Brauner is one of a handful of monsters/vampires who do not serve Dracula (such as the Frozen Half and the Time Reaper) and is opposed to Dracula's status as Dark Lord (similar to Galamoth).
**Ironically, Dracula is partially responsible for the deaths of Brauner's two daughters (which fueled Brauner's hatred for Humanity), as Dracula's niece, Elizabeth Bartley, had the Crown Prince of Austria assassinated, leading Europe into the chaos of World War I (which took the lives of Brauner's two daughters) in order to revive her uncle, only for both to be defeated by John Morris and Eric Lecarde (the same man Brauner would later murder). Brauner, however, apparently held Humanity responsible for the war (it is unknown if he was aware of Bartley's role in starting the war or not) that led to the deaths of his beloved daughters.
***In a further level of irony, Brauner's English voice actor, Jamieson Price, voiced Walter Bernhard, who ended up being manipulated by Mathias Cronqvist into allowing him to become Dracula, with Death even playing a major role in his final defeat.
***In addition, both Brauner and Dracula became vampires for the exact same reason: Both did so due to sadness over the loss of loved ones (as Mathias became Dracula due to the death of Elisabetha, while Brauner became a vampire because of his daughters' deaths during World War I), and both even developed genocidal views against Humanity for similar reasons (although in Brauner's case, it was the same reason he became a vampire, while with Dracula, it was the death of his second wife Lisa at the hands of humans that resulted in his genocidal actions against Humanity).
**Despite being enemies, both Brauner and Eric Lecarde have lost loved ones due to the actions of Elizabeth Bartley. She turned Eric's lover, Lucy Seward, into a vampire who Eric was forced to destroy, and started the war which took the lives of Brauner's daughters (whose souls Brauner believed had been reincarnated into Eric's two daughters, Stella and Loretta).
*Brauner's overall design seems to be based on both Count Orlok, the main antagonist of the 1922 Gothic horror film Nosferatu, and Count Olrox from Castlevania: Symphony of the Night. While in fact Olrox was primarily inspired by the film's character, Brauner only wears a purple-colored Victorian apparel similar to Olrox's; the rest of his physical features (face, pointy ears and thin hands with long nails) along with the design of his suit (which now portrays a larger collar) are more reminiscent to those of Count Orlok.
**These similarities are highlighted in Castlevania: Harmony of Despair, as defeating Brauner while playing as either Soma Cruz or Alucard sometimes has the Olrox's Suit appear as an enemy drop.
**The similarities were also given a nod in Castlevania: Grimoire of Souls, where after Lucy alludes to Brauner sealing Dracula's Castle in a painting to take advantage of its magic, Genya Arikado mentions he was familiar with Olrox, yet not Brauner.
**Coincidentally, both Brauner and Olrox were vampires who restored Dracula's Castle without actually serving Dracula, usurped his authority, and even ended up killed by Death with the unwitting aid of a vampire hunter.
*His internal files give names to his three invocations. This is actually the Japanese phonetic pronunciation of the damage type they inflict:
**Doku (毒, "poison") for the green star-shaped monster.
**Noroi (呪い, "curse") for the gray ghosts.
**Sekika (石化, "petrification") for the cyclops' heads.
*Brauner's method of attack when he enters a painting and swoops down on the player is reminiscent of the Captain, a miniboss from Castlevania: Rondo of Blood.
*Brauner is the first person to think of separating Dracula from his castle as a way of subduing him, with Genya Arikado and Julius Belmont doing something similar later on during the Demon Castle War, as Arikado commented on.
==See also==
*Lieutenant Brauner
*Olrox
*Stella and Loretta Lecarde
==External links==
*Brauner at the Villains Wiki
de:Brauner
pt-br:Brauner
Category:Antagonists
Category:Curse Bosses
Category:Dark Bosses
Category:Deceased Characters
Category:Film Based Characters
Category:Film Based Monsters
Category:Flying Bosses
Category:Male Characters
Category:Poison Bosses
Category:Real Life Based Characters
Category:Stone Bosses
Category:Vampire Masters
Category:Vampires
Category:Harmony of Despair Bosses
Category:Portrait of Ruin Bosses
Category:Portrait of Ruin Characters