All about Celestia Ludenberg in the Danganronpa universe

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Celestia Ludenberg, also known by her real name of Taeko Yasuhiro, is a student at Hope’s Peak Academy, known as the Ultimate Gambler in the Academy’s 78th class. As one of the students who was a master of their field, she looked down upon the ordinary students that entered the Academy in hopes of gaining titles to move them up the ranks. Not much is revealed about her before the Despair Event occurred, but as more and more information from the game is revealed, she had been locked in the school for close to two years, along with her other classmates. Due to the memory wipe, she and the rest of her classmates don’t realize this.



Celestia Ludenberg’s biggest strength is her ability to lie, which gave her another moniker as “The Queen of Lies” among the other students. Any story she tells is blown out of proportion in order to make the experience sound far more thrilling or exciting than it actually was. She is able to fool the rest of the students about her lineage, portraying herself as someone who came from a mainly European background, even though she was born and raised in Japan. Her vaguely European accent and western-style clothing are also used to deter others from gleaning her true identity.

As a gambler, she prides herself in having never lost in the games she’s played, including some where she didn’t understand the rules. She shows her attention to detail and cool-headedness during the trials, able to reveal just enough information so that the guilty party can reveal their misdeeds on their own. She is also a master manipulator, adapting to whatever is thrown at her in order to utilize those situations to her advantage.

Celestia Lundenberg

Celestia Ludenberg’s ultimate goal is to leave Hope’s Peak Academy and, once she has enough money, buy a European castle with hundreds of male servants from all over the world who would dress up as vampires. Monokuma’s incentive of ten-million dollars to anyone who graduated from Hope’s Peak was her tipping point that lead her down the path of conspiracy and murder, as even though she was a skilled gambler, the amount she had wasn’t enough to fulfil her dream.

Personality and Relationships

Celestia Ludenberg is quite distant and acts coldly towards the other students in the school, mostly because she believes that they are beneath her. She is shown to be a stickler for the Academy’s rules when the killing game is first introduced, quickly taking the lead to insist on a new rule of not going out of the dorms at night in order to prevent any more murders. However, her main reasoning behind these thoughts is due to her belief on adaptation; anyone who refuses to adapt to their new situation deserves whatever misfortune comes to them. When new rules and new areas of the school are opened to the students, she keeps a level head and leads the search for a way out of the building.

The lies that she tells others are only matched by the lies that she tells herself. Although the skills she had as a gambler are unmatched, her true name is enough to bring her shame. She changed it as soon as she could and crafted an elaborate backstory for herself and her family, one that she seems to believe in wholeheartedly. The cracks in her facade seem to only come out if she wants them to be seen, such as when she discusses parts of her past with Makoto, but other than that, she remains guarded and doesn’t let anyone see her true intentions.

Celestia Lundenberg

When the students were shown that their friends or family would be in danger if they didn’t participate in the mutual killing game, Celestia is shown her cat, Grand Bois Chéri Ludenberg. She loves her cat more than anyone human, including the members of her own family, and it’s explored that she didn’t have very many friends at the Academy.

One of the only humans she’s seen to interact with on a regular basis is Hifumi Yamada, who she treats as more of a servant than anything close to a friend. She is constantly belittling him and uses her power over him to manipulate him to murder. She had him frame his own death in order to further her goals and when things were going according to plan, she murdered Hifumi to make sure that he wouldn’t spill her plan to anyone else. Even during the trial, she insists that Hifumi’s last words were framing another student, showing just how far she’s willing to manipulate his life and death into making sure she’s not fingered for the crime.

However, her demeanor shifts into something a bit less cold when she’s speaking to Makoto Naegi, which could be due to her curiosity regarding his title as the Ultimate Lucky Student and how it matches up to her title as the Ultimate Gambler. Celestia Ludenburg opens up to him a bit more about her past, revealing that she’s originally from Japan and her favorite food is gyoza, which reveals to Makoto that Celestia might not be telling the truth about where she grew up and her family life. Because of her constant lies, it’s hard for others to fully perceive what Celestia is thinking or feeling, but Makoto was the one to realize that even though she was smiling before her execution, she was afraid.

Death

Celestia Ludenberg is put to death after being found guilty for the murder Hifumi Yamada and conspiricy for the murder of Kiyotaka Ishimaru. Her execution is known as The Burning of the Versailles Witch. Unlike some of the other members of the Academy, she went to her execution willingly and didn’t make any attempt to escape her fate.

Celestia Ludenberg is tied to a wooden pole atop a pile of wood. A crowd of Monokuma surrounded her and set fire to the wood. Again, Celestia doesn’t fight the flames, but just as they engulf her fully, a large fire truck barrels onto the scene and hits Celestia full force, killing her on impact. It’s heavily implied that her execution set-up was too close to the things she enjoyed during her life, as it was in a more Gothic setting, so Monokuma made sure to ruin it at the last second with an unexpected cause of death.

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