Marinette Dupain-Cheng

Marinette Dupain-Cheng is the main protagonist of Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir. Marinette is a school student in Paris. With her magical earrings, inhabited by a kwami named Tikki, she has the power of good luck and can transform into the superhero Ladybug.

Appearance
Marinette is half-French and half-Chinese. She has light blue eyes, freckles, and black hair with blue highlights that she usually wears back in two pigtails with red bands.

She wears a dark gray overshirt with sleeves and a collar that are white with pink polka dots and outlined with black. Underneath, she wears a white t-shirt with a black collar and sleeve line and a design below the collar with black leaves and pink flowers. Also, she has pink jeans and light pink dress shoes with dark red soles. She wears the earrings, which are silver when not holding Tikki.

As Ladybug, she wears a red suit with a black collar and black spots. Above her hips, she wears her yo-yo around them with the string, and she wears a red mask with black spots. Her earrings become red with five black spots, and the bands holding her hair back become red ribbons. Her hair and her eyes become slightly bluer.

Personality
A kind and clumsy girl, Marinette is happy, cheerful, and generous. She loves fashion, her friends and family, and her crush Adrien. But she does struggle with self-confidence and self-esteem. If a situation she deems dangerous, like doing something for Adrien or losing a book that will expose her secret identity, she becomes very nervous and awkward, failing to keep calm and being quick to panic. She deeply cares for other people, and she usually puts their feelings and interests before her own, in some cases being at a personal cost. Despite being genuinely kind, she does have her limits, such as in "The Evillustrator", when she gets irritated with Chloé to the point that, as Ladybug, she refuses to continue watching her to protect her. She can also act impulsively and irrationally at times, as shown when she tries to deflect the false accusation of "stealing" Chloé's bracelet onto others who are also innocent. Although she is absent-minded and acts before thinking at times, mostly if Adrien is involved or she's panicking about a dilemma, she is clever, like hiding her signature in her bowler hat design that exposes Chloé for stealing her design.

As Ladybug, she retains many of the ways she normally acts as Marinette, but she is much stronger and more confident. Her quick-thinking, resourcefulness, and wit comes out a lot more, especially when she is figuring out how to utilize her Lucky Charm. Her superhero job a very serious business to her, she strives to rescue everyone, including the people who became akumatized supervillains. Ladybug, highly aware of how popular and loved she is, is firm in not telling anyone her secret identity, including her partner, Cat Noir, in fear of dissatisfying everyone with her plain, less amazing alter ego. No matter how hard the tasks before her are, she will do everything in her power to set things right and bring peace back to those in trouble.

Adrien/Cat Noir
Marinette has a secret crush on Adrien. She longs to win his heart, but her shyness and awkwardness around him makes it a great challenge for her. Always struggling to get enough courage to talk to him, let alone hang out with him, she is often very afraid that he might think she is a weirdo not worth any second glance. However, Marinette mainly just wants to see him happy over herself. On Adrien's birthday, she accepts that he thinks that her gift is from his father because he is so pleased to have gotten such a cool gift from him.

When it comes to Cat Noir, however, while seeing him as a worthy partner in fighting crime and caring a lot about him, she doesn't have any romantic feelings for him. She gets annoyed whenever Cat Noir tries to woo her, partially due to thinking he is just flirtatious to everyone in general. In "The Evillustrator", when he comes to help her (as Marinette) stop the Evillustrator, she mockingly mouths his words with her hands and expresses irritation at his flirting when she is looking away from him. In whatever they face together, though, she has a lot of faith and trust in him, aware that he will always be there for her to help her. She often teases him, and they both cooperate well when fighting villains or forming plans. While aware that he wants to know her secret identity, she admits that it's better that he doesn't know, not wanting to disappoint him with her alter ego being plain old Marinette. Together, the two are an excellent team in stopping Hawk Moth from stealing their Miraculous or creating chaos with his akumas.

Tikki
Marinette's kwami, Tikki, helps her transform into Ladybug. They have a good relationship as partners and friends, and Marinette appreciates whenever Tikki helps her or cheers her up about things, including her failures to win Adrien or her occasional incompetence as Ladybug. She thinks Tikki is very adorable, and she learns a lot from her.

Hawk Moth
Marinette is fully aware that Hawk Moth is the culprit for the akumas and supervillains, but it's unknown if she has ever officially met him. She always works hard to stop him, not wanting him to win by taking her Miraculous.

Alya
Marinette enjoys spending time with Alya, her best friend. Although often frozen with fear whenever Alya assists her with doing something with or for Adrien, Marinette is thankful for her pushing her forward. Alya's desire to find out more about Ladybug and her secret identity has caused many problems for Marinette, who wants to let Alya know but realizing it's not the best idea. She panics when Alya discovers a history book that she dropped as Ladybug in one episode, and she is utterly astounded when Alya leaves her a note saying she believes Chloé is Ladybug in another episode. Alya's adventure for the truth about Ladybug can be exasperating for Marinette, but she does her best to conceal her identity from her. Both find Chloé awful, and both support each other in any way that they can.

Tom Dupain and Sabine Cheng
Whenever she is with her parents, Marinette is shown to love them and support them, just like they do. When the Bubbler's bubbles take her parents away, Marinette deeply desires to save them and all of the parents.

Chloé Bourgeois
Marinette strongly despises Chloé. She hates how Chloé mistreats everyone, including her "best friend" Sabrina. As Chloé's main target, she constantly deals with Chloé's despicable attitude towards her. Chloé being a big fan on Ladybug doesn't change anything, only peeving Marinette as she has to save her or sometimes be stuck watching over her. Considering Chloé to be her rival for Adrien's affection, she doesn't like how she is always throwing herself at him, at one time using her Lucky Charm out of jealousy to prevent her from kissing Adrien while slow dancing. Marinette especially dislikes it when people accuse her of being just like Chloé, yet she is sadly aware sometimes that it might be true to some extent. Nevertheless, Marinette reluctantly deals with Chloé with occasional thrilling success, like when she reveals that Chloé stole her bowler hat design by revealing a special design on that hat that is actually hers.

Sabrina
Marinette isn't close to Sabrina, but she feels bad that Chloé abuses her so unfairly. In "The Evillustrator", when she stands up for Sabrina, she is surprised that Sabrina immediately tries to befriend her, including doing her geography homework for her, much to her discomfort. Because she agrees to go to a party with the Evillustrator in order to defeat him, she sadly tells Sabrina that working on the presentation later at night won't work, which greatly upsets Sabrina, and she is hurt when Sabrina accuses her of being just like Chloé.

Nathanaël
Marinette likes Nathanaël and thinks he is an excellent artist, but she never expected him to have a crush on her until Chloé reveals it to everyone in "The Evillustrator". She agrees with him (while he is Evillustrator) that Chloé is egotistical and nasty, and she gets frustrated when he, similar to Sabrina earlier, accuses her of being just like Chloé after she reveals that she is teamed up with Cat Noir to stop him.

Manon
Manon, being a child with an energetic personality, is tiring for Marinette, who doesn't have experience with having siblings or skill with bonding with younger children. No matter how exhausting it is to take care of Manon, Marinette does care for her and her safety, promising to her as Ladybug that she'll save her and Alya from the ice shield they're trapped in.

Abilities
Marinette knows how to be a fashion designer. She sketches ideas in a notebook, and she can sew by hand or with a machine.

As Ladybug, she has enhanced skills, such as speed, agility, strength, and observation. She has remarkable talent with wielding her yo-yo, like using it as a grappling hook, rope, and attack. Her special power, Lucky Charm, helps her by summoning an object that'll help her achieve her objective, it often being to stop a villain. However, it drains her power and reverts her back to Marinette shortly afterwards, so she has to use it wisely. After the akuma is released from its corrupted object, she can open her yo-yo and throw it to grab it, remove the energy that Hawk Moth charged it with, and release it as a normal butterfly. Once the akuma is dealt with, Ladybug can throw her Lucky Charm object into the air, which will make it revert back to energy and fix all of the damage done since the villain was created.

Trivia

 * In France, ladybugs are known as symbols of good luck.
 * Marinette's design changed from the Ladybug PV version. Her anime design included jean shorts, and as Ladybug, she had a red-orange face mask without black spots and two long red-orange ribbons attached to each pigtail.
 * In the PV, Marinette's earrings were always red with five spots, no matter if she was Ladybug or Marinette.
 * PV Ladybug's costume differs from the CGI Ladybug as well with PV Ladybug's spots being found only on her torso (her legs and feet were completely red) and with the yoyo having a beaded chain. PV Ladybug's hair and hair ribbons are also significantly longer than the current version of Ladybug.
 * Marinette's CGI design seems to have gone through a change, as well. Earlier footage and images of Marinette included dark blueish-black hair, red tips of hair at the end of her pigtails, and blueish-gray eyes.
 * Due to Bandai having difficulty attaching red tips to the hair of Marinette dolls, the red tips were removed.
 * Her anime version is less shy around her crush, as she's able to be very close to Félix without panicking or being nervous. She even asks him out while slightly blushing and looking right at him, although Félix coldly refuses.
 * During the earlier stages of development, Ladybug wasn't allowed to abuse her powers of good luck, or else something bad would happen to her. As of now, it is unknown if Ladybug still has this issue, especially as seen in one episode, when she uses her powers for selfish reasons, all that happens is that she runs out of power and loses her transformation.
 * In the English version, the pronunciation of the name Marinette with "mer" as in "marinade" is used, and in French and other countries, the pronunciation with "mar" as in "market" is used.
 * The first part of her last name, "Dupain", comes from the French words "du pain" that mean "of the bread". This is a reference to her father's job as a baker.