Isabella

## Voices

**Isabella** (イザベラ, *Izabera*), also known as **Mama** (ママ, *****Mama*****), is a major character of *The Promised Neverland* and the main antagonist in the Introduction and Jailbreak Arc.

## Appearance

Isabella is a white, fair-skinned, tall woman with a pair of deep purple eyes. Her dark brown hair is tied into a bun that hangs down onto the back of her head and goes past her shoulders if let down. She wears an attire which consists of a black dress with a white blouse underneath it and a white apron over it. Her identification number, "73584", was tattooed on the left side of her neck.

During her childhood, Isabella wore the standard Grace Field uniform- a plain white long sleeved button-up shirt and a white skirt along with brown boots, with a long braid that streams down her back. she has two locks of hair in the front of her face as a child, and has large, purple, eyes.

## Personality

During her childhood, Isabella was shown to be an optimistic, out-spoken, free-spirited, and fun-loving little girl, who was very attached to her friend Leslie. She had a comedic nature during her childhood, which was displayed when she scared Leslie by popping out of the tree. But ever since she lost Leslie and realized the true motive behind the orphanage's purpose of raising them; to raise them as livestock for the demons, Isabella's personality went through a drastic change. From there on, everything she did; including becoming a Mama, giving birth to Ray, and sending off the orphans to become demon food, was the sake of prolonging her own survival to spite the demons from eating her.

The present Isabella is a sharp-witted, ruthless, cold, manipulative, and deceiving woman. But in her Mama persona, Isabella is capable in putting on a motherly, selfless, and kind-hearted facade whenever she is around the orphans in Grace Field House, and hence was able to earn the trust and love from her foster children. Isabella's behavior is very mercurial, capable of switching between seemingly true affection for the orphans to extreme loathing and threat of violence towards those who defy her. Isabella was unhesitant in taking down those who stand in her way and root out the children that knew of Conny's death, both emotionally, verbally, and even physically.

Another few of Isabella's prominent traits are her high cunning, dominance, and intelligence. As being one of the top Mamas, Isabella uses her intelligence in foiling and sabotaging the orphans' escape plan. She is always shown to be three steps ahead of the orphans' plan and was shown to be quite resourceful, as she depended on her transmitter to track down the orphans. Isabella was unafraid of using her intelligence and position as a Mama to threaten her enemies, as she openly threatens Emma despite knowing it as a reckless and risky move when she seeks to gather information on how Emma and the others are going to escape.

However, beneath everything, she genuinely does love her children, albeit in an extremely twisted way. Due to her own experiences with being an orphan in one of the farms, she reached the conclusion that escape was impossible. So rather than fight what she deemed to be impossible, she instead opted to ensure that the children would at least be able to live happy lives until they were eventually shipped out. The extreme lengths she would go to in order "protect" them and prevent them from escaping is demonstrated when she nonchalantly and violently breaks Emma’s leg, and would then comfort her in her motherly facade as if nothing had just happened. But when the children manage to escape, Isabella gracefully admits her loss and genuinely wishes Emma, Ray, and the other escapees nothing but the best, even covering for their escape while devoting herself to caring for Phil and the other children in the meantime. This shows that becoming a Mama was not solely a means of survival to her - she did genuinely love the time that she spent taking care of the orphans as their mother.

## Etymology

* **Isabella** is the Spanish and Italian variation of Elizabeth, which is derived from the Hebrew name Elisheba.
* Its meaning translates to "pledged" or "devoted to God."
* **Isabella** and Elizabeth have been interchanged in England since the 13th century.

## Trivia

* According to Kaiu Shirai, he made the main protagonist a female because Isabella is the first antagonist to be a female too, hence thinking that the mother-daughter relationship between the two would make the story "more interesting".
* In an interview, Posuka Demizu mentioned that she enjoys drawing Isabella, and thinks that she is a character that should be drawn beautifully.
* Kaiu Shirai discussed about Isabella's character design in an interview which was published in Volume 13 Special Edition. The following is what the author said.
	+ "*I requested "a woman who is poised and dignified, like a soldier and like a ballerina" and "make her a mom, not a teacher or a maid." Demizu-sensei adds idiosyncratic features to the designs depending on their characteristics, so that you can distinguish them by their silhouettes, but it turned out that if she did that for Isabella, it would look wrong. So it ended up that "Isabella's lack of distinguishing characteristics is her distinguishing characteristic." Because of that, she has basically the same kind of design as in my makeshift drawings from the original breakdowns. That turned out to look dignified and refined because it's Demizu-sensei's version of Isabella. Since her design didn't change much, it's easy for me to draw when I'm signing autographs.*"
* Isabella is not only the youngest to ever reach the position of Mama, being appointed in her early-twenties, but her farm has the best track record of shipping quality children.
* Her name means "devoted to God" in Hebrew, which may relate to her being a servant to the demons.