Bernadetta is a playable character in Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Fire Emblem Warriors: Three Hopes. She is a student of the Officers Academy who hails from the Adrestian Empire, and is therefore a member of the Black Eagles. She is also of noble birth and a member of House Varley. Bernadetta possesses a minor Crest of Saint Indech. At the start of the game, she is 17 years old. Bernadetta is the eldest daughter and heir of the son of the Count of Varley. She is extremely shy towards strangers; the only place she feels at ease while far away from home is her room in the dormitory. Bernadetta is a constantly anxious and paranoid young girl. She has a reclusive nature that partly emerged due to treatment she experienced in her childhood. Count Varley personally groomed her to try and match his ideals of a good wife, at times subjecting her to gruelling punishment such as tying her to a chair. These attempts backfired and she became extremely reclusive. Bernadetta would dread any attempts to make her "behave", often kicking and screaming to avoid them. She found respite only in her solitude. Her father forbade her from socializing with commoners. Bernadetta once met a commoner boy, whom she quickly befriended. Her father caught wind of the situation and quickly brought her home. The next day, she received news that the boy had been found by her father's men and was beaten nearly to death, exacerbating her fear of social interaction and of her father. The boy was later revealed to be Yuri, who had been hired by a third party to assassinate Bernadetta due to her Crest of Indech. Yuri acquired a job as an assistant gardener for House Varley, and he befriended her in order to gain her trust. The two played around the gardens, with Bernadetta believing him to be her first true friend. One day, Yuri snuck into her room to assassinate her, but due to their friendship, he could not bring himself to do so. Count Varley soon burst in and caught him in the treacherous act, having his men beat him to half death. Though she knew that her father despised commoners, he did not reveal to her that her "friend" had tried to assassinate her. She never heard or saw Yuri again, causing her to believe that he had died and that it was her fault. Bernadetta was sent to Garreg Mach Monastery Officers Academy in Imperial Year 1180. In her case, she was essentially kidnapped under her mother's orders and sent to the academy for her safety. She joined the Black Eagles as a result. When not attending lectures, she spends her time hiding in her room, absorbed in her hobbies. Bernadetta is a skittish, timid, and reclusive girl, a result mostly because of the suffering she endured at the hands of her father for years. Her father, obsessed with money, only saw Bernadetta as Crest-bearing bait for a rich husband instead of his daughter. To that end, he subjected her to years of "training", which included tying her to a chair and leaving her there all day, challenging her to stay quiet. This sustained mental torture badly affected Bernadetta, developing an intense fear of her father, almost everyone in general, and essentially everything in existence. Bernadetta suffers from a persecution complex: false beliefs or perceptions in which a person believes that they are treated with malicious intent, hostility, or harassment, hence the name of her personal skill, and she suffers from a compulsive need to run and hide whenever possible. She deeply fears other people and it is extremely difficult for her to trust them, even if they show her patience and kindness. It is common for her to fall into extreme panic and anxiety just by having someone approach her to talk, as she often thinks that people want to kill her. She can be so absorbed by her fears that she can freeze on the spot, lose all sense of her surroundings, and in extreme cases, faint, as shown with Hubert. She often jumps to delusional conclusions about what people think of her, and can even be suspicious of honest compliments, such as when Linhardt complimented her lifestyle. As her outbursts usually only serve to annoy the other person, combined with her low self-esteem, it often results in her apologizing for things she did not do and insulting herself in the process. As a result of her deep fear of people, Bernadetta spends nearly all of her time in her room, pursuing her hobbies and interests while protecting herself from the outside world. If something requires her attention, she will usually speak through her door rather than opening it as a measure of self-protection. She can even feign illness when she doesn't want to talk with other people. She is also noticeably defensive about her lifestyle and how no one else understands her motives, though she acknowledges that she does need to go outside every once in a while, as shown with Ferdinand. Bernadetta suffers from severely low self-esteem, a result of constant scorn from her father. She often insults and berates herself in third-person when she messes up something, and commonly calls herself useless, stupid, and unmarriageable. In addition, she has trouble accepting help from those who offer it to her, because of both her persecution complex and her being convinced that she is a lost cause and not worth it, as shown with Ingrid. Ironically, she's actually quite talented in various things such as drawing, playing an instrument and sewing, as shown with Linhardt, Raphael and Leonie. She also greatly admires her classmates, whom she views as fearless warriors compared to herself, as shown with Edelgard. Despite her innate fears and paranoia, Bernadetta does truly want to make friends, though she often does so in very socially clumsy ways, a result of her constant self-imposed isolation, as shown with Petra. Surprisingly however, Bernadetta has a playful side to her, especially around flowers, carnivorous plants and typically intimidating certain people such as Felix. And when she isn't panicking, shutting herself away or wallowing in self-depreciation, she can actually be quite gentle, sweet, even confident, and extremely easy to get along with. She is also fond of flowers, and particularly of carnivorous plants, as they are able to live in one place and wait for their meals to come to them, which she describes as her dream life. While on the battlefield, Bernadetta often acts on compulsion, running and hiding whenever she possibly can rather than fighting. If she does have to fight, she prefers to do so from the backline, and can be very surprised and shocked when she actually defeats an enemy. Bernadetta is notably at ease around people that remind her of her uncle, the only adult in her life that treated her with genuine warmth. Alois is one such individual, and he was so surprised that she spoke to him without a hint of panic that he mistook her for someone else. In addition, she is also able to settle down around Byleth, although she does not know the reason why. In Three Hopes, Bernadetta is able to get along with Marianne very well, with their supports mentioning how comfortable they are talking to each other as opposed to recusing themselves when dealing with everyone else, in part due to both having many shared interests and personality traits, and even keep trying to overcome their shared reclusiveness while trying to converse with one another. Her Brave variation in Heroes also has her talking positively about her mother. By the time the war has rolled around, Bernadetta has improved significantly, even if she hasn't completely gotten over her fear of strangers or her compulsive need to run and hide. On the battlefield, she no longer runs and cowers but instead accepts her duty to fight, even if she doesn't necessarily enjoy it. Socially, her panic attacks have subsided in quantity and severity, and in Crimson Flower, she makes attempts to finally be outside of her room. In addition, her self-esteem has also gradually improved, leaving her more confident in herself than before. She even goes to actively encourage herself to do better. Bernadetta likes reading, drawing, music, embroidery, unusual creatures, stuffed animals, and solitude. She dislikes speaking to people, imposing figures, and overbearing fathers. Bernadetta is shown to have pale skin, grey eyes, short little messy purple hair, black traditional officers academy uniform with a blue skirt while wearing a hoodie underneath.