Marinette Dupain-Cheng

**Marinette Dupain-Cheng** is one of the main protagonists of *Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & 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 also the leader of the French Miraculous superhero team. At one point, after being expelled from school, she was akumatized into **Princess Justice**, but the transformation wasn't complete.

## Appearance

Marinette is half-French and half-Chinese. She has light blue eyes, freckles, and black hair with blue highlights that she usually wears back in two pigtails with red bands.

She wears a dark gray overshirt with sleeves and a collar that are white with pink polka dots and outlined with black. Underneath, she wears a white t-shirt with a black collar and sleeve line and a design below the collar with black leaves and pink flowers. Also, she has pink jeans and light pink dress shoes with dark red soles. She wears the earrings, which are silver when not holding Tikki.

As Ladybug, she wears a red suit with a black collar and black spots. Above her hips, she wears her yo-yo around them with the string, and she wears a red mask with black spots. Her earrings become red with five black spots, and the bands holding her hair back become red ribbons. Her hair and her eyes become slightly blue.

## Personality

Marinette is a sweet, outgoing and joyful girl who loves fashion, her friends, family and Adrien Agreste (Marinette's 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 very 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 destransform 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.

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 Moth hopes, especially at the expense of hurting the innocent. She also values the lives of others more than material possessions.

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 to 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.

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, Ladybug is saddened that she has to suspend 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.

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 as 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 cries 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.

As Lady Noir, 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, 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 but also a bit klutzy as she pretended to unveil herself as Multimouse.

As her adult alterego, not much is known about her personality except 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 younger self and after Timetagger's defeat she confidently told her younger self that they'll always be able to save the day.

## Abilities

Marinette knows how to be a fashion designer. She sketches ideas in a notebook, and she can sew by hand or with a machine. Her skills in this field are exceptional for an amateur, such as when it was shown that the bowler hat she made is good enough to be recognized by a professional designer, Gabriel, despite the fact that she has never made one before. Marinette also appears to have high stamina and endurance even in her civilian form, as she was seen running long distances without stopping in several episodes.

As Ladybug, she has enhanced skills, such as speed, agility, strength, and observation. She has remarkable talent with wielding her yo-yo, like using it as a grappling hook, rope, and attack. Her special power, Lucky Charm, helps her by summoning an object that'll help her achieve her objective, it often being to stop a villain. However, it drains her power and reverts her back to Marinette shortly afterwards, so she has to use it wisely. After the akuma is released from its corrupted object, she can open her yo-yo and throw it to grab it, remove the energy that Hawk Moth charged it with, and release it as a normal butterfly. Once the akuma is dealt with, Ladybug can throw her Lucky Charm object into the air, which will make it revert back to energy and fix all of the damage done since the villain was created.

### Aqua Form

When accessing her aqua powers, Ladybug has the ability to breathe underwater and has enhanced swimming capabilities due to the fins on her feet.

### Ice Form

When accessing her ice powers, Ladybug has the ability to handle extremely low temperatures, as well as move freely and quickly on the ice with her ice skates.

### As Lady Noir

Lady Noir has the same abilities as her partner, such as more enhanced skills; like speed, agility, and strength that she is almost invulnerable to physical damage. She has enhanced senses such as hearing, smell, night vision, and super stealth like a cat.

Like Cat Noir, Lady Noir can use her staff efficiently, wielding it as a sword, being able to spin it at high speeds to form a shield, and taking advantage of its length-changing features. To travel long distances, she uses her staff and its variety in length to vault over obstacles.

Her special power, Cataclysm, allows her to negatively affect anything that she touches with her ring hand. However, using Cataclysm drains her Miraculous' power, causing her to revert back to Marinette five minutes afterwards, so she has to use it wisely.

### As Multimouse

Multimouse has much more enhanced skills, such as speed, agility, and strength, and she is almost invulnerable to physical damage.

Her special power, **Multitude**, allows her to turn into a number of tiny clones of herself. The clones are small, a lot smaller compared to the Kwamis. In order to activate her power, Multimouse takes several jumps using her jump rope (her tool), which makes her bottom section of her legs shine and, her tiny clones were created and starts to appear. As the original size starts to shrink down and decrease, Multimouse has the ability to divide herself into smaller clones. All of them have the same costume, including the miraculous, but the original one wore all of the miraculouses, creating a difference between the rest of them.

### As Multifox

Besides the powers she has as Multimouse, Multifox possesses the power **Mirage**. She divided herself into tiny clones and gave the fox miraculous to one of the clones. By playing her flute, she produces an orange ball of energy at the far end of it and then throws it to create a hyper-realistic illusion. This illusion can disappear when touched or when Multifox undoes it by shouting out "Reality".

### As Multinoir

Besides the powers she has as Multimouse, Multinoir possesses the power **Cataclysm**. As Cat Noir gave her the miraculous, she wore it around her waist. It allows her to negatively affect anything that she touches with her ring hand. While it is usually used to destroy objects, it can be used for a variety of different effects.

### As Multibug

Besides the powers she has as Multimouse, Multibug possesses the power Lucky Charm. Still wearing her earrings after being set free, she used her powers to trap the akuma and purify it.

### As Dragon Bug

Besides the powers she has as Ladybug, Dragon Bug possesses the powers of the Dragon Miraculous Superpower. It allows her to use the power of the Water, Wind and Lightning elements and even combine them with her yo-yo to make a shield.