Diana Cavendish

**Diana Cavendish** (ダイアナ・キャベンディッシュ, *Daiana Kyabendisshu*?) is one of the main characters in *Little Witch Academia*. She comes from an ancient family of magic users in Britain and is a famous student at Luna Nova Magical Academy.

## Appearance

Diana is a young witch with pale skin, light blue eyes, and platinum blonde hair with side-swept bangs and tea-green highlights. She is considered very beautiful.

Her Luna Nova uniform consists of the standard tunic, witch hat, shoes, and stockings. The band on her hat and shoes are colored blue, along with her sash.

Concept artwork reveals that Diana originally had yellow blonde hair with pale yellow highlights.

## Personality

Diana is serious, composed, and erudite. Being descended from a prestigious line of witches back to ancient times, she is exceptionally devoted to her magical studies and to the tradition and history of magic. Her status as Luna Nova's best student cannot be solely attributed to heredity — she has a self-disciplined and maturity far surpassing the average teenage girl.

She is confident in the superiority of her philosophy of magic where it differs from Akko's, one of the reasons Akko considers her to be her rival (although Diana never did). Like most students, she claims Shiny Chariot to be a fraud, but in actuality is hinted to have been a fan of her. This was confirmed in "A New Beginning" where she was in the midst of the crowd in the flashback and in "Cavendish". In "Intelligence and Sensibility", as Akko expresses her feelings of hope that Diana will be able to achieve her goal for her mother's wish and love her and the academy with all her heart, Diana starts to feel comforted and understood at that moment. In the following end, she and Akko became friends at that moment.

Despite appearing to be callous and condescending, Diana is not heartless nor arrogant: when she chastises other students it is not out of malice but frustration, she cares about the success of others studies and not just her own. This concern contributes to her dependability, she is willing to help out other students to her best ability whenever they ask.

Due to her pride in her own abilities and a strong sense of responsibility, she refuses to take credit for other's doing and always admits her mistakes, although she's unable to speak up to teachers due to the trust they have in her (such as being unable to tell Ursula that she was the one to free the dragon in the first OVA, and being unable to tell the teachers that it was Akko who awoke the Pappiliodya in the second episode of the TV series).

The extent of Cavendish's selfless sense of duty is revealed in the eponymous episode — she is ready to leave her beloved Luna Nova Magical Academy and give up the remainder of her childhood to preserve her family's legacy. She holds no contempt for Akko for being chosen for the role she sought to fulfill all her life and wishes her nothing but success. Her behavior at Luna Nova is seen in a more noble light — she didn't brag about being descended from one of the Nine Olde Witches and kept her orphanhood secret, wanting neither unearned respect nor pity. Despite her seeming to be very prideful, she has insecurities: even with her prestige and high social standing at school, she is too embarrassed to admit anything less than contempt for Shiny Chariot. This could explain why she surrounds herself with sycophants, although she does not let Hannah and Barbara praise her excessively.

## Abilities

Diana was born from a 1,500-year-old family of witches that both have a large influence in the magical world and access to knowledge even the faculty of Luna Nova does not know. Due to her origins, she was born with "talent in her veins". While this remained true in the anime series, she was unable to perform magic during her childhood as the result of Chariot's use of Dream Fuel Spirit which in turn, part of Croix's decade of Noir Fuel Spirit plan. Even so, through her extreme dedication to magic from her early childhood, she becomes the most skillful witch in her class, and according to some, in modern times.

Diana can perform the extremely complicated Nullification Spell to negate any kind of magic which is part of the powerful Fusion Magic, which can enhance the user's power on her spells. She also can create very powerful illusions and determine who is affected by the illusion and who does not, as well as perform the plant rejuvenation ritual invented by her family and outstanding water summoning magic. By using her wand, Diana can project beams, powerful energy blasts or even conjuring protective energy barriers. She also can animate and control a statue, an advanced technique not even taught to senior students. She has advanced in transformations to turn a mouse into a strong and beautiful white horse and reverse any damage by altering matter's flow of time. She is very skilled at astrology as she can see the future usually accurately, has shown a high skill at Object Control Magic and displays a vast knowledge of the history of magic and in different magic languages. Her abilities in riding Magic Broom are also better than the majority of the students in Luna Nova as well, even surpassing to Amanda O'Neill when it comes to speed.

Being hailed from a family of accomplished healers, Diana is well-versed in the field of health and healing which allowed her to perform Revitalization Magic more efficiently.

## Etymology

* "Diana" is probably derived from an old Indo-European root meaning "heavenly, divine".
	+ Diana is also the name of a goddess in Roman and Hellenistic religion, primarily considered a patroness of the countryside and nature, hunters, wildlife, childbirth, crossroads, the night, and the Moon, as well as equivalent to Artemis in Greek Mythology.
* The meaning of the name "Cavendish" is "Cafna's pasture", derived from the Old English pre-7th-century personal name "Cafna", itself from "Caf", meaning "bold, daring", plus "edisc", meaning "enclosure or pasture".
	+ "Cavendish" can also be interpreted as a joke on her characteristic blonde and green hair, as Cavendish is a common strain of bananas that were popularized in Britain.
	+ Cavendish is a British noble family that has been one of the richest and most influential aristocratic families in England since the 16th century.

## Trivia

* Despite being British, in the English dub, she lacks an actual British accent, having more of a mixed accent instead. This is because her voice actress, Laura Post, is not of British descent.
	+ Laura Post also voices Ragyō Kiryūin from *Kill la Kill*, another Trigger production. Similarly, Akko and Lotte's English voice actress, Erica Mendez and Stephanie Sheh, also voices Ryūko Matoi and Nui Harime respectively in the same series.
* Diana's birthday of April 30th coincides with the Germanic festival of Walpurgisnacht, or Walpurgis Night, which celebrates the start of summer. In German folklore, it was when the German Christians prayed to God through Saint Walpurgia to protect them from witchcraft.
* It was Masaru Sakamoto's idea of including young Diana among audience of Shiny Chariot show, something that later repeated in TV Series adaptation.
* Diana's personality in first and second short films contrasted to what later established in anime, as she shown more snobbish and arrogant. In fact, she called Akko names and belittled her for being Chariot's fan and even made fun of her alongside Hannah and Barbara while in the series she was more reserved and merely criticized Akko from a genuine point of view. Though not confirmed, said change is likely done to so she and Akko can gradually become close friends, making the character' anime iteration much more likable.
	+ On a related note, during the short film's development, Diana was originally intended to be a downright bully as bad as, if not worse than Hannah and Barbara and therefore and not a top student as in final versions.
	+ That being said, Yoshinari regretted toning down unpleasant and immature aspects in Diana's character for her TV Series iteration as he had unwittingly overdone it thus making too perfect than intended. He also wanted both Akko and Diana arguing more often up until the two eventually sorted out their differences.
		- This could be attributed to her portrayal in Keisuke Satō manga adaptation of the series and The Nonsensical Witch and the Country of Fairies where she is shown more antagonistic towards Akko albeit not to the same extent as with in short films.
	+ Lastly, the friendship Diana had with Hannah and Barbara was originally intended not as genuine as what eventually established not unlike Draco Malfoy with Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle from *Harry Potter* series the three friends often compared with (see Little Witch Academia misconceptions for more information) where in this case, latter two cared little about their roommate's brief drop out and ended up competing over Diana's position at Luna Nova.
* According to Tatsuru Tatemoto, Yoshinari has worked on Diana's background as far as during the development of *Enchanted Parade* film.
* Diana's legs are depicted slightly longer than those of girls around her age, explaining how her skirt and the bottom of her Luna Nova-issued tunic looked a bit shorter despite consistently presenting herself in prim and proper manner — a contrast to Akko who deliberately both wore her skirt and customized the bottom of her own tunic so more of her legs are exposed not unlike Shiny Chariot in her stage costume.
* According to Yōko Hikasa during Studio TRIGGER's promotional livestream of *Chamber of Time* when inquired about Diana's future after Luna Nova, she proposes that Diana would embrace her childhood dream and then combine it with her current dream and become a traveling performer dedicated to sharing her family's magic around the world.
* Two short comics revolving drawn by Shiori Miyazaki which she originally posted at her Twitter account before it was no longer online (one about Diana mildly envious by improvement on Barbara and Lotte's friendship, and another revolving the heiress preparing cakes for everyone prior to Akko's first flight) impressed Yoshihiro Miyajima that he decided to make them canon to the anime TV series in his Twitter post in 28 June, 2017.
* In November 12, 2020, Yusuke Yoshigaki posted an image depicting Diana in her iteration of Shiny Chariot costume in his Twitter account which, unlike Akko's that featured in *Enchanted Parade* movie, sports elements found in typical phantom thieves, most notably the red domino mask.
* Despite their initially contrasting nature, the fact that Akko and Diana being not dissimilar more than they let on (both being inspired by Shiny Chariot, familiar with everything related to their said idol and, in anime TV series canon, having their magical capabilities unwittingly drained via the latter's Dream Fuel Spirit as part of Croix's Noir Fuel Spirit plan) has inspired fans to ship both characters, something which didn't go unnoticed by animators of the series. Some of them such as Shiori Miyazaki prefers to address the ship in question as DiAkko while others AkkoDia.
	+ On a related note, two artworks which coincided the airing of "Cavendish" and "Intelligence and Sensibility" further inspired aforementioned ship; one featuring Diana pleasantly surprised by how Akko perfectly fit with one of her outfit sets while another featuring Diana who curiously blushes upon Akko's compliments.

## References

1. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20130710121232/http://littlewitchacademia.com/characters\_diana.html
2. ↑ Behind the Name: Meaning, origin and history of the name Diana at Behind the Name
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Little Witch Academia Chronicles, Chapter 2, page 56
5. ↑ Surname Database: Cavendish Last Name Origin
8. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20220108110331/https://twitter.com/poriyama\_san/status/888741616759865344
9. ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20210527132126/https://twitter.com/gomi\_dame332/status/867033174404087810
11. ↑ Little Witch Academia Chronicles, Chapter 2, page 22
13. ↑ Q&A With Voice Actresses About Their Characters' Future, Studio TRIGGER's *Little Witch Academia: Chamber of Time* Promotional Livestream, 2017.
16. ↑ https://twitter.com/miyazima1987/status/880041542743871489
19. ↑ https://twitter.com/sana0827/status/895297919452037120
20. ↑ https://twitter.com/sana0827/status/895296547465723904
21. ↑ https://twitter.com/nanamaru/status/895305692755533825

## External links

### Essays

* ATELIER EMILY
	+ On Studio Trigger and Inspiration: Yoh Yoshinari’s Little Witch Apprentices by ajthefourth January 16, 2017
	+ Becoming Diana Cavendish — perception and visual framing in Little Witch Academia by ajthefourth April 4, 2017
* Through the Frozen Glass
	+ Little Witch Academia: The Dreams of Our Past by Myst April 26, 2013