Colette

Colette’s decisive significance lies in the gap between Celeste’s official family and her biological one. Public documents identify Celeste as the daughter of Jack Tanjihiro Chae-wong and Selfia Cordelica, and Selfia presents her as the First Princess Celeste Cordelica. Yet the concealed truth is that Colette is Celeste’s birth mother. Colette’s choice to place her daughter in the care of Selfia and the Selfian Empire makes her an absent parent whose sacrifice sustains both a child’s safety and a royal succession, while also forcing Jack, Selfia, and Leona to perform a carefully maintained family identity.

Identity and Hidden Background

Colette is described as a knight serving the enemy and as a woman who had formerly been Victoria’s bodyguard. When Jack sees an aerial image of her in red armor, his reaction reveals the depth of their separation: four years have passed since he last saw or spoke to her. Her military position places her on the opposite side of the conflict from Jack and the Selfian Empire, but the narrative does not reduce her loyalty to a simple allegiance to the enemy. She remains attached to the family she adopted, even while that family belongs to the collapsing Roland Empire.

That divided position defines Colette’s identity. She is at once an enemy-aligned knight, a former protector, and Celeste’s biological mother. Her connection to the Roland side is therefore not presented as a rejection of her child. Instead, her continued presence on the sinking imperial ship is linked to loyalty toward her adopted family. Colette’s personal commitments cross the boundaries that the war attempts to make absolute: political affiliation separates her from Jack’s household, while kinship gives her a reason to preserve the child’s future within it.

Celeste’s Motherhood and the Royal Fiction

The birth certificate shown to Jack bears Celeste’s name together with Jack’s and Selfia’s. Its immediate political effect is to establish Celeste’s place within the royal family and to prepare the public announcement of the heir. The document is materially simple but constitutionally consequential: it converts a concealed and unstable family history into an official lineage that can be displayed to the empire.

The public performance of that lineage is reinforced when Selfia prepares Celeste for a formal appearance and asks whether the child knows her lines. Celeste calls Selfia “Mommy,” and Selfia responds with affection, while Leona struggles with the emotional consequence of hearing the child address another woman as her mother. The scene makes clear that the title is not merely a private nickname. It is part of a family arrangement being rehearsed for both the child and the surrounding political world.

Colette’s maternity is the fact that the arrangement conceals. During a nationwide attack, Jack tells Celeste that Selfia is her mother and that Leona is only her aunt, insisting that the child promise to call Selfia “mom.” He feels guilt because the statement is false: Celeste’s real mother is Colette. The lie protects the royal household and preserves the child’s accepted identity, but it also converts Colette’s motherhood into a secret that must be actively enforced through repetition, instruction, and fear of disclosure.

Separation, War, and the Choice to Protect

Colette’s separation from Celeste is not described as abandonment. She entrusted the child to Selfia and the Selfian Empire because she believed that they might be the only people and state capable of keeping Celeste safe. The choice is especially grave because Colette remains a knight serving the enemy while the Roland Empire is described as a sinking ship. Her position prevents a straightforward return to domestic life and makes the transfer of custody an act of protection performed through absence.

This decision also explains why Celeste’s royal identity carries such unusual weight. Selfia is not simply raising a child who happens to live at court; she is assuming a public maternal role that stabilizes the succession. Jack becomes the child’s father in the official story, Selfia becomes her mother, and Colette’s biological claim disappears from the visible record. The arrangement therefore joins private sacrifice to statecraft: Colette safeguards Celeste by surrendering recognition, while the Selfian court safeguards the child by replacing biological truth with an institutionally useful family structure.

Return to the Household

Colette eventually reappears in the orbit of Jack’s family, but her reunion is marked by disorder rather than ceremonial restoration. In a cave, she rushes through a tunnel and grabs Ada for support, visibly affected by a Hoshido smoke bomb. Her panic centers on Ito, who has crawled into an unsecured section with Celeste. Colette worries that the tunnel may collapse or contain demons, asbestos, or brain-eating amoebas. The exaggerated list is comic, but the underlying behavior is unmistakably protective: she reacts as someone responsible for the children’s safety, not as a distant political figure.

The scene places Colette alongside Ada, Selfia, Leona, Kamila, Celeste, and Ito within a crowded, improvised family network. Ada treats the situation with laughter after noting that Colette has also been hit by the smoke, while Colette remains consumed by the danger to the children. Her anxiety reveals how rapidly the hidden mother can become visible through action. Even when official names and roles suppress her maternity, her attention is drawn instinctively toward the children and toward the physical conditions that might threaten them.

That protective reunion is complicated by another secret. When Ada confronts the children about setting off a smoke bomb in their aunt’s face, Ito declares that Daddy told them to do it. The revelation creates an uncomfortable silence and redirects suspicion toward Jack. Colette is therefore reintroduced not through a revelation of her birth status, but through a chaotic domestic incident in which her fear for the children intersects with the household’s games, secrecy, and adult misdirection.

Narrative and Thematic Role

Colette embodies the difference between biological kinship and socially recognized parenthood. Celeste’s birth certificate gives Jack and Selfia the official place of parents, while the hidden account identifies Colette as the biological mother. The contradiction is not resolved by choosing one definition of family over the other. Colette gives birth and makes the protective decision that determines Celeste’s survival; Selfia publicly mothers the child and provides the political shelter that Colette believes is necessary; Jack participates in maintaining the false account while experiencing guilt over it.

Her role also exposes the disciplinary force of the royal household. Celeste is coached in her lines, taught whom to call mother, and positioned as an heir through paperwork and public appearances. The family is consequently produced through documents, rehearsals, titles, and repeated instructions as much as through affection. Colette’s hidden maternity becomes dangerous precisely because it could disrupt that carefully legible arrangement.

Colette’s trajectory is built on a paradox rather than a conventional return. She remains physically and politically separated from Celeste, yet her choice makes the child’s protected life possible; she is aligned with the enemy, yet her central loyalty is directed toward family; she is absent from the official lineage, yet her motherhood is the concealed cause behind it. When she later panics over Celeste and Ito in the unsecured tunnel, that paradox takes bodily form. Colette cannot reclaim motherhood through public recognition, but she continues to enact it through vigilance, fear, and the instinct to protect the children entrusted to someone else.