Rosaline Pyra/Background

"*She's the only one with a normal life before she came here.*"
―Ash on Rosaline's least traumatic childhood[src]

### The Unstable Psychic

Rosaline was born to her parents, Franklin and Kristine Sanders as Connie Sanders, and grew up in an apartment in Hearthome City, alongside her younger sister Colette who was born 3 years after her. The Sanders were a loving and close-knit family, with Franklin and Kristine being generally supportive and encouraging of their children’s decisions. Rosaline shared a close relationship with her sister growing up, and almost never felt any animosity towards her. Around the age of 5, Rosaline’s psychic powers began to manifest. Initially she had trouble controlling her powers, causing much havoc and subjecting her to bullying from the neighbourhood children. Luckily, thanks to encouragement from her parents, she gradually began to control them.

In spite of that, Rosaline continued to be a designated victim of bullying from the neighbourhood children, with many calling her a “freak” and isolating her. In one instance, one of them told Rosaline she was never going to succeed in life because of her uncontrollable psychic powers and no one would accept a freak in their society, much less someone who couldn't control their psychic powers. This made Rosaline vow to work hard as a Pokémon trainer so as to prove them wrong.

At the age of 10 as per normal, Rosaline began her journey as a Pokémon trainer. She chose Chimchar as her starter and went on to collect badges in her home region. After a while, she felt that she didn’t want to challenge the Elite Four and instead wanted to explore another region. As such, she journeyed to Johto and Hoenn and collected badges from there.

### The (Sinister?) Plan

At some point, she had found out about the legend of the Chosen One and the Phoenix and wishing to get the powers of the Phoenix of her own, decided to force her prophetic abilities out to find out who was holding the power. After months of attempts, she found out the name and location, and plotted an attack on Flamma, the host of the Phoenix power at the time, in an attempt to steal her power. After a fierce and protracted battle, Flamma is defeated. Rosaline then uses a mysterious glove to steal Flamma's Phoenix powers, but is interrupted by Shiki, the then Dragon Prince, who cut off the connection before Rosaline is able to steal all of Flamma's power. Though she managed to escape, she swore that she would one day be the new Phoenix. At this point, she changed her name to Rosaline Pyra, hating her birth name and wishing to sound more sophisticated and meaningful.

On one of her visits back home, she encountered Amethyst, who was attacked by a Team Rocket member (FS). She tried to fight him off thinking Amethyst was in distress, much to the latter’s chagrin. She then proceeded to accompany Amethyst on the latter’s journey. Around that time, she also began to develop some fire-based abilities, thanks to the half of the Phoenix powers she had stolen. After travelling to PAL in the intention of challenging their Pokémon League and winning the Trainer's Tournament, she went on to try for the last spot as a PAL Elite member (she knew about the last spot as Amethyst told her about it in FS). In the AV, Rosaline only met Amethyst once, and that was when she was attacked by a Team Rocket member, which subsequently lead Amethyst to challenge her to a battle, and left after defeating her Espeon badly, which Rosaline was forced to make a detour to the Pokémon Center.

In both versions, due to the fact that she possessed little psychic powers despite being born with them, she developed a deep envy towards Amethyst, as she had the authority that she had longed for to get back at her childhood bullies and was able to overpower her even though she held half the Phoenix powers. She was also envious of her great psychic powers despite Amethyst not being born with them like she was. After seeing Jude and Phillip battle in an exhibition match and hearing about the final Elite position through a newspaper advertisement, this culminated in a plan to get the last spot in order to be able to prove her childhood peers wrong and that she was better than them.

Furthermore, she knew she would be able to use that position to find out where the body of Flamma was so she can take all her powers for good, not knowing that half of Flamma's Phoenix powers had already been transferred by Shiki. Franklin and Kristine were initially hesitant of her choice because it meant she would take her first step into bloodshed, as PAL region was well known for their questionable dealings, but after assurance that she would remain their “sweet little girl”, they relented.

She set her plan into motion by choosing her type specialties stating that she would like to apply for the last spot, promoting Amethyst to pit her against Jude. Unfortunately, she was unable to defeat Jude due to a double type disadvantage (she was also later criticized for depending on her Gardevoir to win the match for her). When she blamed the type disadvantages, this prompted Amethyst to battle her herself, with her type disadvantage. Ahe still lost badly mainly due to Amethyst's power as a Pokemon Trainer.

### The Stubborn Applicant

This did not deter Rosaline however, and she begged Amethyst to give her another chance in order to succeed in her plan, which lead Amethyst to reveal that she needed to be a Hunter in order to be able to apply for the Elite position, much to Rosaline's horror. This is because she had overlooked this fact when reading the advertisement. Still, Rosaline wanted the last spot, and begged the other three for another chance to prove herself worthy.

She annoyed Amethyst enough to give her another chance, and only gave her three weeks to pass the Hunter Exam, the Entrance Exam for the Hunter's Association, and the Exam set by the Head of her chosen Department. Because she had succeeded, and had met the other requirements, she let Rosaline in (although in extreme reluctance), and even let her be second member in the condition that Jude still has a say over her in terms of authority. As such, Rosaline became a Crime Hunter.

### Facade

Despite having acquired the final spot for herself and having some authority over the region, Rosaline knew her exposure of how she got it and the fact that Amethyst was the more powerful psychic would result in her quickly being deposed (as she was the Psychic specialist, she was supposedly the strongest psychic in the region). Furthermore, she was unhappy with the the relative lack of power she had compared to the other Elite members and retained her envy of Amethyst as she was still the lowest ranking member.

In the AV, having learnt of the legend of the Princess' Orb and that it could give the greatest power known to its bearer, she became interested in using it to make herself a more powerful psychic to overwrite the Dragon Duo's legacy of being the strongest psychics in the region. Unfortunately for her, Amethyst learned of her plan, and having never even liked Rosaline, started to plan for her removal.

Rosaline got along with all her Elite members somewhat after she joined wished to become a clairvoyant in truth to surpass Amethyst, whom she knew had superior psychic powers and can easily usurp her Psychic specialty from her, while occasionally training as she spent more of her time as an artist and author (AV only). This was until their new manager, Benzene Von Karma, came along and disrupted their lives. As a result, she got her memory wiped alongside Jude and Phillip, and as she did not remember that Amethyst was a psychic, she had temporarily paused her plans, thinking she was the strongest psychic in the region.

After Benzene’s death, she used her position to recommend her childhood friend, Phlox DeLaurentis, to be their new manager. With the tournament, Rosaline might realise her memories are not as they seem and unknown to her, Amethyst had planned for her downfall, having been aware of her plans from the beginning and the fact that her powers were actually stolen, where she would be forced to realize what is the most important in life, and what it really meant to be a true PAL Elite.