Marinette Dupain-Cheng

Marinette Dupain-Cheng (aka Ladybug) is a character from Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir. She is a student in Miss Bustier's class at Collège Françoise Dupont in Paris, France, and a budding fashion designer who wants to have her own brand one day. With the Ladybug Miraculous, when inhabited by Tikki, Marinette transforms into the superheroine Ladybug, gaining the power of creation to stop Hawk Moth and his akumatized villains. She is the leader of the French Miraculous superhero team.

## Personality

Marinette is a sweet, outgoing, and joyful girl who loves fashion, her friends, family, and Adrien Agreste (her crush), where Adrien describes her as honest, kind, fair, and the type not to cheat. She is very helpful as she was willing to help those who have insecurities, such as; Juleka Couffaine, who thought she had a "class photo curse," and Marc Anciel, who was too afraid to share his creative writing. According to Clara Nightingale, Marinette has a pure heart. She cares deeply for other people, usually putting their feelings and interests even before her own, in some cases at a personal cost. Despite being genuinely kind, she has her limits, such as when she gets irritated with Chloé Bourgeois to the point that she refuses to continue guarding her against the Evillustrator as Ladybug.

Despite her outgoing and empathetic personality, Marinette struggles with self-confidence and self-esteem. She used to be even more nervous and didn't oppose others, but her confidence grew considerably since she became Ladybug. In a situation she deems urgent, she becomes very nervous, clumsy, a bit awkward, and quick to panic. These situations include approaching her crush, trouble-choosing between her love interests, when in contact with a really big celebrity if she thinks others do greater success compared to herself, or losing something that will expose her secret identity. Thanks to her confidence as Ladybug, though, Marinette has gotten more calm and comfortable around Adrien as herself, as seen when she helps him get away from a swarm of fans and talks to him more fluently.

Marinette can act impulsively and irrationally at times, as shown when she tried to deflect the false accusation of "stealing" Chloé's bracelet onto others who are also innocent. She is willing to do several risky tasks in order to protect her image, like stealing Adrien's phone to erase an embarrassing message she accidentally left on it. She also expresses jealousy whenever other girls such as Chloé or Lila Rossi flirt with Adrien, sometimes causing her to act irrationally, even abusing her powers as Ladybug to keep them away or forget to detransform in the first place. However, Marinette tends to learn from her mistakes and become a more open-minded, understanding person. She also takes advice from others very well, whether it is family or friends, as seen throughout the series. According to Marinette in "Family", as her civilian self-personality wise, she takes after her father as well as having her great uncle's creative side.

As Ladybug, Marinette retains many of her alter ego's characteristics, but she is much stronger. Her confidence and bravery come out more prominently.According to Cat Noir, she can be stubborn at times, especially when she isn't easily convinced. While almost all of Ladybug's plans are effective, they tend to be complex and rather bizarre. She is more cautious and careful than Cat Noir, sometimes needing to restrain or stop him from doing hasty acts seen in several episodes. Only during rare occasions she can act hasty, especially if she is in a rush to do something or multiple things at one time. She usually follows her head, saying that a great superhero always listens to her head, meaning that she isn't easily fooled or swayed by deceptions and lies.

As Ladybug, Marinette strives to rescue everyone, including those akumatized by Hawk Moth. She usually tries to persuade the supervillains to calm down and stop their rampage when she is able to do so. Ladybug is aware that there is a line between justice and revenge. She thinks that honesty and justice don't mean anything if you're pressured into doing it, like as she didn't pressure Bob to tell the truth about him stealing everything from Kitty Section but waited until he admitted everything himself across the TV. Ladybug acknowledges that good things come by doing good actions and that not all problems can be solved by wishing them away like Hawk Mothhopes, especially at the expense of hurting the innocent. She also values the lives of others more than material possessions. Similar to her partner, through her lifestyle, she isn't tempted by power because Marinette understood that her life could be great without it.

Marinette takes her image and Miraculous powers as Ladybug very seriously. She has a more serious side when fighting against Hawk Moth's villains, as opposed to Cat Noir's laid back and goofy personality. She got angry at Chloé as Ladybug for using her powers to create a fake accident, which could have led to a serious one. Given these traits, Adrien claims that her civilian form is funnier than Ladybug. Marinette can be sensitive about her image, getting annoyed at Chloé playing her alter ego in Clara Nightingale’s music video, becoming a little angered when Nora doubted her abilities, or even attacking impulsively to Sabrina Raincomprix (as Miraculer) after the latter tauntingly mimicked her. Although she can get exasperated with Cat Noir if he jokes too much, she handles joking calmly at times and enjoys teasing him or others. Similar to Cat Noir, she is clever with her words and occasionally enjoys making puns. According to Marinette in "Family", as her alter ego personality-wise, she takes after her mother along with her grandmother Gina's adventurous spirit.

As her alter ego, Marinette strives to keep her personal and superhero lives separate to protect herself, the people she knows or is close to. Still, she aims to be honest with others in other ways, like her honesty with Cat Noir about not having romantic feelings for him and seeking advice from others. No matter the difficulty of her tasks, Marinette does everything in her power to set things right as Ladybug while keeping up with her everyday responsibilities, like studying, designing something, babysitting, or working in the bakery. There are exceptions to the rule as well, such as when she mixed her duties to her former Master and her personal plans, like her letter to Adrien. She also has occasional problems at inventing excuses about her absences to her friends, teachers, and parents.

Despite enjoying being Ladybug had allowed her to meet Tikki and save people, Marinette admits that she is growing tired and stressed about keeping her lives separate and having to lie to everyone she loves, causing her to break down and cry to Luka about her problems. While on occasion, it is rare that she breaks down as Ladybug, she often voices her doubts and mistakes to Cat Noir during their hardest times. She began to feel more of the strain in her civilian life as she took the mantle of the guardian, causing her to break down, even more, realizing she can't have a love life, be honest with anyone being condemned to a cage of lies until Hawk Moth is gone.

Speaking of her tasks as the Guardian, Marinette worked relentlessly to decode the grimoire and was very determined to stop Hawk Moth from reakumatizing people. After gaining help from Alya in "Mr. Pigeon 72", she has deeper understanding of her powers and when using it she can take pleasure in protecting people even further. Also through it, she has relaxed and calmed down a bit starting to see the flaws in others. Unlike Hawk Moth, Marinette started to learn to let go of the mistakes of past as seen in "Furious Fu" as she didn't blame herself for her former master's condition as she knew that Master Fu wouldn't want her to do such a thing when others needed her more.

While working with other Miraculous holders as team leader, Ladybug doesn't see them as sidekicks but as friends and extremely values their support and help. She is also great at giving advice to others when they need it. Thus, she is saddened about suspending those who do a great job but at the cost of having their identities revealed to Hawk Moth like Chloé and Kagami, but she does it in a caring and considerate way, letting them know she does it to protect them and their loved ones. When she is off duty like Cat Noir, Ladybug had learned to relax and have fun. As a leader, she learned to take suggestions, ideas and to follow the lead of others when the situation calls for it. Most of the time, as a leader, she is cool, calm, and levelheaded, but sometimes Ladybug does let her anger get the better of her as she voiced her frustrations at Cat Noir during a fight which led to her impulsively telling him about her doubts in trusting him during the "New York Special", which led to an accident.

As Lady Noire, Marinette retains most of her personality as Ladybug, like her cautiousness and creativity. She takes after her partner's sense of humor, cunning, and charm, with Mister Bug believing that she is the one wearing the clown suit.

Like Adrien when he was Aspik as Multimouse while trying to protect her identity as Ladybug, Marinette is trustworthy, faithful, and clever. However, she pretends to be a klutz and "reveals" her identity in front of Cat Noir.

As her adult alter ego, according to Bunnyx, Marinette will grow into a wise, calm, strong, and confident leader, meaning that she isn't impulsive and irrational. Such as when she comforted Bunnyx, telling her that their fight wasn't over, easily figuring out she had a message from her younger self, and after Timetagger's defeat, she confidently told her younger self that they'll always be able to save the day.