Lady Beat will be pleased when I return the data drive you stole. And when I hand you over to Lil' Miss Malachite, I'll make sure she gets Hei off our backs once and for all. With him out of the picture, the Dust trade will be up for grabs, and Jimmy will rally the council to give him emergency power over the Dust imports, distribution, and sales. But we know who'll really be in charge, don't we?Carmel, to a presumably paralyzed Roman Torchwick
Carmel Vanille was Neopolitan (formerly known as Trivia Vanille)'s mother and Jimmy Vanille's wife.
She was a top graduate at Lady Browning's Preparatory Academy For Girls, in reality a top spy and assassin.
During a gang war between Spider and the Xiong Family at the Vanille Estate, Carmel was rendered unconscious by Roman Torchwick and tied up by the criminal. She was later killed when an explosion completely destroyed the estate while she was still inside.
Appearance
Carmel was a pale-skinned woman with brown eyes who wore her light brown hair in a bun. She frequently wore a white dress with a matching white pearl necklace and a triskelion pin.
Personality
Like her husband, Carmel presented herself as a high-class socialite. Beneath her quiet but pleasant exterior, however, Carmel was a manipulative and ambitious woman who, much like her husband, was obsessed with appearances.
The appearance of a normal daughter was more important to Carmel and Jimmy than raising a healthy one. While Carmel seemed more accepting of her daughter's muteness than her husband, Trivia's mismatched eyes were an early source of resentment. When speaking to her daughter Carmel would avoid making direct eye contact; on the rare instances that Carmel would take Trivia shopping she forced the young girl to wear a colored contact lens that made her pink eye appear brown; the family portrait was painted with both of Trivia's eyes brown.
In order to keep the façade of an ordinary family, Carmel and Jimmy kept Trivia largely confined to their private estate and out of public view. When hosting parties or entertaining guests, they ordered Trivia to remain in her bedroom. During one such party Trivia snuck out, and Carmel did not notice until her daughter was brought back by the police.
Carmel seems to have a distaste for Semblances, or at least the "Overactive Imagination" of her daughter. After Trivia used her Semblance to ruin a party that Carmel and Jimmy were hosting, they eventually hired a former Combat School Professor as a personal tutor; this was done so that they could keep Trivia out of a public school and right where they could keep a watchful eye on her. When Jimmy became increasingly afraid of Trivia's capabilities, Carmel did not intervene and allowed him to install increasingly complex locks on their daughter's bedroom door, which eventually resulted in Trivia setting the estate on fire. Instead of recognizing how their actions as parents had led Trivia to doing this, Carmel blamed Trivia's Semblance and attacked Neo's image, which broke Trivia's Aura. Realizing that they would not be able to contain Trivia anymore, Carmel had her sent to Lady Browning's Preparatory Academy for Girls in hopes that they could turn her into the kind of person Carmel was, and teach her how to "control" her Semblance.
Carmel was a skilled manipulator, which can be attributed to her time at Lady Browning's, the teachings of which she has taken to heart. She married Jimmy so that she could take advantage of his political power. Carmel assisted with Lady Beat's spy network in the hopes that the Xiong Family would be ousted, allowing her husband to take control of all the Dust trade in the city of Vale. She never told him of this plan, and Carmel intended to manipulate Jimmy to control Vale's criminal underworld through him, creating an empire for herself and her daughter.
While it was not obvious to Trivia, Carmel still cared deeply for her daughter. When Trivia was young, Carmel and Jimmy hired a psychiatrist in an attempt to diagnose and understand her condition, though they would ultimately ignore the doctor's advice. She was frustrated with Jimmy's incompetence as a father and was greatly displeased with the effects Roman Torchwick had had on Trivia. She never intervened, however, due to her training and her manipulative nature.
Despite all of her best efforts, Carmel proved to be rather unstable at her core. When she believed that she had overpowered Roman Torchwick she explained her plans and aired her frustrations to her enemy, entirely unprompted and against her best interests. She had lost touch with reality, which is likely the result of her years at Lady Browning's and the decade she spent obsessing with appearances after that.
Powers and Abilities
As a top graduate of Lady Browning's Preparatory Academy for Girls' secret program, Carmel was a capable spy and assassin. She was charismatic and able to subtly manipulate others, as she kept her affiliation with Beatrix Browning's spy program a secret from her husband. Carmel intended to set up the Vanille family as the head of Vale's criminal underworld and control it from the shadows by puppeting her husband.
She was proficient with poisons, as is demonstrated when she drugged Neopolitan using tea laced with paralysis powder. It is unknown if she was a capable fighter, or if she had unlocked her Aura or Semblance. Despite her training, she was susceptible to being taken by surprise as Roman Torchwick, who she believed had been paralyzed, was easily able to overpower and restrain her before knocking her unconscious through suffocation.
History
Carmel originally went to Lady Browning's Preparatory Academy for Girls' and became a top graduate of the school. During her years there however, she was a part of the Academy's secret program that trained its students to be spies and assassins for Spider.
Some time after this, Carmel married Jimmy Vanille and planned to use his political power and connection to the Xiong Family in order to take control of Vale's criminal underworld. Eventually, they had a daughter named Trivia Vanille.
Throughout Trivia's childhood, Carmel was a largely unavailable presence, marginally showing care for her daughter beyond concern. However, she and Jimmy had still made an effort to provide her with therapists and doctors to understand their daughter where they couldn't, and provided teachers for her. After an incident where Trivia nearly burns down the Vanille Estate, she decides to send her 18-year old daughter to the Lady Browning's Preparatory Academy For Girls, where hopefully, she would learn to control her problematic Semblance and find friends, and secretly wishing she'd join the secret program.
When Trivia - now going as Neopolitan - meets with Roman and the two are hunted by the Xiong Family and Spider about a hard drive with information about the latter's plans, Carmel and Jimmy receive the two at the Estate again, the thug's mother delighted at seeing their daughter again. She secretly drugs Neo's drink, and it is then revealed she is a member of Browning's academy, but had decided to betray it in order to establish the Vanille family (Neo included) as the criminal syndicate of Vale.
During the ensuing conflict, she was knocked unconscious and tied up by Roman Torchwick. Neo later finds her with Beatrix Browning and Hei Xiong, still tied up, but leaves Carmel to her fate. She is killed after Neo provokes Lil' Miss Malachite to open fire on the Dust stockpile in the mansion, triggering a massive explosion that flattens the estate.
Trivia
Color Naming Rule
- Carmel is a Hebrew name meaning “garden”, and also the American pronunciation of “Caramel”. "Vanille" is a French name meaning "vanilla" bringing a creamy white color mind. Both connect to the family's ice cream theme.