Arcueid Brunestud

**Arcueid Brunestud** is the main heroine of the *Tsukihime* anime and games.

Often called the Princess of the True Ancestors or White Princess, Arcueid is a vampire born as a living weapon to hunt down and destroy the True Ancestors who went rogue and the Dead Apostles, other formerly human vampires created by her kind. Shiki meets her the day after he cuts her to pieces, at which point she introduces herself in an oddly cheerful manner. Due to Shiki nearly killing her, she's temporarily vulnerable but still strong enough to kill him, so she strongarms him into helping her destroy the vampire she is hunting. Over the course of their temporary relationship, Arcueid gets the chance to really see the world for the first time due to sleeping almost all of her very long life.

She has a strange relationship with Ciel and is hated by Akiha. As the most powerful True Ancestor ever, she possesses super speed, strength, durability and resistance to attacks she has experienced before, higher power during the night and an extremely flexible ability called the Marble Phantasm.

In the AWA fics, Arcueid is a student at the AWA Academy.

## **Appearance**

Arcueid is a woman with short blonde hair down to her neck, and bright red eyes. Her traditional outfit consists of a long sleeve white shirt, long purple skirt, and black boots.

## **Personality**

Arcueid is shown to be a whimsical individual who, although knowing the basics of the modern era, does not seem to know about social norms. Both Nasu and Takeuchi think of her "image color" as white because she is pure in terms of appearance and personality. Once, she shows up at Shiki's school and waves to him from the school rear courtyard, luckily for Shiki only Ciel spots her. Her behaviour is almost childlike, due to the lonely nature of her upbringing, although she is over 800 years old, she spent most of it asleep and knows nearly nothing about the world or how to interact with others. As she works together with Shiki to stop Roa, she gradually begins to enjoy life and starts to like Shiki as more than just a friend.

Arcueid does everything in her power not to drink Shiki's blood, which nearly occurs several times in game as he is practically the only human at night with her, and she has problems controlling her **Vampiric Impulses** (*Kyūketsu Shōdō*) after being drastically weakened by Shiki's attack. She doesn't want to drink blood, as she doesn't want to become a monster that feeds on humans in order to survive.

Arcueid seems to thoroughly enjoy when Shiki cooks breakfast for her. In *Melty Blood*, Shiki threatens to stop doing this for her if she doesn't meet him in the park that night. When Sion questions whether such a threat would ever have any sort of effect on a True Ancestor, Shiki recounts to her a time that he managed to get Arcueid to immediately apologize to Akiha when she and her were arguing by making the same threat. Later that night, Arcueid does, in fact, meet Shiki and Sion in the park. She apparently cannot stand garlic. In a scene in *Kagetsu Tohya*, Arcueid eats instant noodles cooked by Shiki that had garlic in them, and becomes sick.

She was originally a being without emotions who never spoke. She only focused on her duties and then returned to sleep in an endless cycle. Shiki, by killing her, made her interested in something on her own for the first time and essentially "broke" her. The "airhead" version of her is something that shouldn't exist alongside her purpose as a weapon, but it was present in her foundation. She is not truly an airhead, but more childish and honest.

She has a constant flow of income in the form of gold, so she has no issues with obtaining money. There is a special gold exchange shop for fugitives in the Mage's Association, and the owner of the shop gives her gold because he is a fan of her. She can be called rich, but she doesn't dress like it because she has no interest in clothing. She later changes to make Shiki happy. She also receives help from Merem Solomon, who reveres her as a "Princess." He helps her travel around the world without much trouble, booking plane tickets and trading gold for money, but she does not know what to do with his unconditional affection.

Arcueid shows up as Neco-Arc in Ciel-Sensei's lessons in *Tsukihime* and she randomly switches to that persona in some comedy scenes in *Kagetsu Tohya*, though Neco-Arc seems to be her own existence brought forth by Zelretch in the *Melty Blood* series.

When she lose control of her Vampiric Impulses, she is known as Red Arcueid. When made aware of Dust of Orisis' plans, she mentioned that it was the same delusional idea that Goetia had.

## **Abilities**

Arcueid was developed with the purpose of becoming the strongest True Ancestor. While there are different levels of power in the True Ancestor hierarchy, Arcueid, as a sublimation on the level of the First True Ancestor, Crimson Moon, is beyond all of the other True Ancestors. She is much like a God, a spirit in flesh. She is considered as one of the top 3 strongest characters excluding Servants in the Nasuverse.

### **Combat**

Arcueid's most potent weapon is her Marble Phantasm, and she is very capable in close combat. She can move at tremendous speeds, and her physical strength is easily able to overwhelm opponents. She can form her hands into claws like other vampires, allowing her to easily shred opponents. Alongside the normal regeneration granted by her race, she has developed a resistance to most Conceptual Weapons and magecraft like Runes and Kabbalah. She states that she will only be vulnerable to those she has yet to experience, which she believes to be limited to the ancient Shinto magecraft of Japan and treasures from South America.

She is hard to kill during the day, and she is almost invulnerable at night, her power reaching its peak during the full moon. During the night, she technically "has no death", so all of her lines and points of death disappear. It is possible to see them if she is weakened, and removing her connection with the planet by killing part of the world around her allows for Shiki to view them clearly even at night. She can regenerate most wounds rapidly, but her time during *Tsukihime* leaves her unable to do so while trying to hold back her bloodlust. She can normally even regain her form after being cut into pieces, but the Mystic Eyes of Death Perception leave her unable to regenerate. She can bypass it by creating an entirely new body, but the act costs eighty percent of her available energy and leaves her close to death unless she returns to her castle to rest.

She has Mystic Eyes that enable limited control over others, such as the ability to plant suggestions. The color of her eyes changes to gold when they are active, thus revealing her as possessing the Mystic Eyes of Enchantment.

**Shall We Play Around Some?** is Arcueid's Last Arc. For just a second, it is possible to catch a glimpse of the vampire princess Arcueid's true power. The phantom that appears behind her back is her original form. Its appearance, abilities, and very thoughts could be called the Crimson Moon. The inspiration for this technique comes from Kagetsu Tohya. Specifically, the episode where Shiki strayed off into Arcueid's dream and received proper retribution for killing her. Because of that, when this technique is used on Shiki it hits eighteen times.

#### **Marble Phantasm**

With her Marble Phantasm, which can literally change reality to create any naturally occurring effect and summon the Millennium Castle Brunestud, the ancestral home of the True Ancestors. The power of Marble Phantasm is such that even in her extreme weakened state, she was able to turn layers of the atmosphere into vacuum, slicing Roa's latest host body until reducing it to just the ankles.

Without her limiter, she can likely materialize something the size of a small village in the mountains. She cannot do so normally in modern towns built up by the work of many people, so she would have to destroy in order to create anything there. It would require more time, so the Church would have enough time to locate her and start a battle with her. It is very hard to directly help humans utilizing the ability, but it is viable with other creatures.

#### **Backup**

Arcueid receives backup from the planet as part of the Counter Force. She has the ability to increase her fighting power to one level above those she faces while drawing upon it, and it is said to be virtually unlimited. Overall, the strength available to her as of *Tsukihime*, thirty percent of her strength, is around that of four Servants. She will very likely win when only faced with one Servant-level opponent in this state, but even with her power, she would still potentially be overwhelmed when faced with two opponents of that level. Due to an absolute order from her backup, the planet itself, her "output changes according to her opponent", so she is only allowed an output slightly stronger than her opponent like how the Counter Force deals with its problems. Against a Servant, the level of output would be approximately that of two Servants.

Her ability to deal with single opponents, "single entity ability", is roughly on the same level as Servants, so she has bad compatibility against those like Gilgamesh. Servants utilize Noble Phantasms, while she utilizes her backup, leading to differences depending on affinity. She can be called a "simple-is-best" fighter and an all rounder with high chances in most fights, but doesn't go well with those of high versatility. Gilgamesh has the "firepower" of over five Servants, but Arcueid is only able to draw strength based on "single entity ability." He has roughly the same statistics as her, but a large amount of weaponry to utilize against her, making her have horrible compatibility in such a fight.

It is possible to cut her off from this power by killing the land around her or sealing her off from the world through a powerful Bounded Field that rewrites the world by switching the terrain effect with a different terrain effect or a Reality Marble that overwrites the current world. While her connection to nature can be interrupted by any such barrier, the ability to actually cut her off from the supply depends on what is being used as energy to hold up the barrier because the overwritten world generally has an even more colossal world seeping up from underneath it to return it to normal. She complains about White Len cutting off her backup with her dream barrier, but Arcueid could easily get serious, request backup from the planet, and blow away White Len along with the entire barrier if she so wished. Some form of alien deploying a Reality Marble may be able to cut her off from her energy source completely.

### **Vampire**

#### **Bloodlust**

She is the only True Ancestor able to suppress her Vampiric Impulses with pure willpower. As she drank Roa's blood in the past, Ciel states that, no longer how long she holds out, it is inevitable that she will drink it again.

#### **Restriction**

Before Shiki killed her, she was using 70% of her power to suppress her vampiric impulses at the beginning of *Tsukihime*, when she still had a portion of her power stolen by Roa who stored it inside his soul and he always used this portion in order to be reincarnated in other bodies. But even then she was more than strong enough to destroy almost any Dead Apostle that got in her way. After Shiki Tohno killed Roa and its 'existence' at the end of Tsukihime, that portion of power stolen by Roa returned to Arcueid's soul and she used it to be able to revive herself. Believes that she is now using far less of its powers to suppress her vampiric impulses now as demonstrated in *Kagetsu Tohya* and *Melty Blood Series*, more or less about 50% of all her power is used for it now.

Unlike Arcueid, Archetype：Earth has full access to Arcueid's full power and more authority over the planet than she normally possesses. She is called an Ultimate One in this state, taking on her original appearance before losing her hair to Altrouge Brunestud, and the part of her in control is the subconscious Crimson Moon side of her. Normally limited to the Millennium Castle in their "dreams", this form is her awakening to experience the human world for the first time in *Melty Blood Actress Again Current Code*. Ciel believes that Arcueid managed to awaken her Origin, but Archetype denies this, declaring that they are intrinsically a single being. She simply has a very long waking period, as the basis of life for her is far too vast compared to the living organisms that live on the surface.

Shiki Ryougi recognizes an overwhelming aura flowing from her during their conversation, stating that she cannot see her death, going as far to say that she does not have a death, and that she is a monster. She is able to directly affect the entire planet. Ciel mentions the possibility of her melting the ice of the North and South poles, or even disrupting the axis of the earth.

#### **Crimson Moon**

Arcueid is one of two possible successors to the original Crimson Moon. The other is her "sister" Altrouge Brunestud, but she is generally considered too "unstable". Arcueid didn't cut her hair on her own, but it was taken away during a battle against Altrouge, and until she recovers it, it won't grow back. At her full power, her form, power, and even thinking can be said to be that of Crimson Moon. Her Last Arc in *Melty Blood* involves the ability used on Shiki in Kagetsu Touya, where she gives him payback for killing Arcueid when he stumbles into her dream. It is sure to hit eighteen times when used against Shiki to one up cutting her into seventeen pieces.

## **Trivia**

* During the original draft of the basis for Tsukihime, Arcueid was a cold stereotypical vampire compared to her cheerful self in Tsukihime. The tone of the story lacked any sort of loving tone, and not much of it remained in Tsukihime. Upon developing the story for Tsukihime, they pictured Arcueid as a cool and princess-like "Noble Vampire", but thought that it overlapped with Akiha's "Lady" character. All of the heroines spoke politely to the main character, so they figured that the only character who could fit the role of someone who didn't speak politely would be Arcueid. They eventually came up with the idea of a "pure white" vampire that developed her character very differently from the original version.
* While the name bears a resemblance to "Alucard", a common name in vampire stories created by reversing Dracula's name, "Arcueid" is actually just a name they had planned to give to a different character in a different story. They used a model when creating her design. During college, Takeuchi Takashi saw a foreign model in a fashion magazine who left an impression on him. He wished to work her into one of his characters no matter how much trial and error even with only the one vague image.