Touhou Character of the day: Alice Margatroid

Facts from Touhou wiki (http://touhou.wikia.com/wiki/Alice_Margatroid)

• Alice appears on the cover of Mystic Square.

• The name Alice is a reference to the main protagonist in Lewis Carroll's famous novel Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, as the majority of enemies in Mystic Square's extra stage are card soldiers of the same type seen in the Walt Disney animated movie version of the novel. The title of the BGM used in that stage also directly translates to "Alice in Wonderland".

• Alice's last name is based on the character Miss Murgatroyd from Agatha Christie's book "A Murder is Announced".

• Because of Shinki's dialog in which she mentions that everything in Makai is her creation, it is thought that Alice is Shinki's daughter (although this definition would also extend to the other Makai residents). However, there's been no further mention of this since then, and Perfect Memento states that Alice was once a human who became a youkai magician. It is unknown whether this is a retroactive change of continuity, merely a mistake by Akyu, or if fans were mistaken from the beginning when thinking Alice was Shinki's daughter. The doujin entitled The Grimoire of Alice by Ear House attempts to reconcile this by portraying Alice as a human baby abandoned near or inside of Makai, adopted by Shinki, and turned into a youkai by her grimoire during the Mystic Square EX battle. But since there has yet to be any official statement by ZUN, this is merely speculation. However, it is interesting to note that her title is "Witch of Death." In John Milton's Paradise Lost, Death is the son of Satan.

• Two of the dolls she carries are called Shanghai and Hourai. Shanghai has appeared with several different outfits, but is always depicted with a red ribbon tied in a bow in its hair. No official artwork of Hourai exists (it appeared only as Alice's final spellcard), and thus all fan depictions of Hourai are original. In Imperishable Night, Alice uses Shanghai to assist firing her shots. Both dolls are used as weapons by Alice in Immaterial and Missing Power in spellcards; their sprites appear to be identical. However, in Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, while both Shanghai and Hourai are still spellcards, the Hourai Spellcard summons multiple dolls at the same time, all with the same sprite as Shanghai. The treatment of Shanghai and Hourai as unique dolls is strangely at odds with Perfect Cherry Blossom, where there were many copies of the dolls, used in the spell cards Curse: Eerily Luminous Shanghai Dolls and Curse: Hanged Hourai Dolls. It is almost certain that the dolls were originally not meant to have names, and that "Shanghai" and "Hourai" are references to countries where the dolls were made, much like Alice's other dolls, such as the "Foggy London Dolls" or "Red-Haired Dutch Dolls".

• Alice is often portrayed in fanon as having an obsession for dolls. In some doujin, she is depicted as playing with dolls, making dolls, and in a 4koma series, trying to deliver a handmade doll to Sakuya, Santa-style. It is also widely assumed that she makes dolls of other characters for fun (such as putting on a puppet show with them). This might be somewhat official, as she has at least made dolls representing the Three Mischievous Fairies and used those to mock them in Strange and Bright Nature Deity. She has also used them, in some doujin, like voodoo dolls in a more sadistic manner.

• Despite being mistreated often in fanworks (or perhaps because of it), Alice is one of the most popular characters, similar to Meiling.

• Likewise in fanworks, because of her perceived cold exterior and cowardly true persona, she is frequently depicted as a down-on-her-luck tsundere (alternately hostile and lovesick) girl, especially when Marisa is involved (although recently the Patchouli X Alice pairing is gaining popularity).

• Being known as the "Seven-Colored Puppeteer" or "Rainbow Puppeteer", Alice apparently believes in a correlation between color and power level. During her dialogue with Reimu, she asserts Reimu's powers are only equal to 28.5714% (or 2/7) of her own powers, due to Reimu's outfit only consisting of two colors. This appears to be a recurring theme in Perfect Cherry Blossom, as Yukari, Ran and Chen are all named after colors and have relative power levels equivalent to their colors' place on the visual spectrum.

• According to Aya Shameimaru during her interview with Eirin Yagokoro, Alice has been a recurring customer of Eirin's, coming to see her to buy a medicine she developed called Kochoumugan (Butterfly Dream Pill). The medicine guarantees its imbiber to have pleasant dreams once they fall asleep, and was even featured in an article in Aya's newspaper. The reason for purchasing this medicine or even what kinds of dreams Alice is trying to have were never revealed, but instead are left purely to speculation. However, this might be a reference to "Alice in Wonderland", from which the concept of her character is derived.

• In some official material, like Imperishable Night's Prologue and Strange and Bright Nature Deity #5, Alice's dolls appear to be able to act and talk independently, but according to her Perfect Memento article, she hasn't yet succeeded in creating an independent doll, and a conversation between Marisa and Rinnosuke in CoLA #15 suggests that Alice just controls the dolls and pretends they are alive for her own amusement and for showing off.

• Alice's alternate palette from Scarlet Weather Rhapsody resembles Hina-Ichigo, a doll from the manga series Rozen Maiden. In Touhou Hisoutensoku she has palettes resembling the other Rozen Maiden dolls: Suiseiseki, Souseiseki, Suigintou, Shinku, Kanaria, and Kirakishou. Add the fact that, in Rozen Maiden, the aforementioned dolls are battling for the title of "Alice", the perfect doll.

• Alice is the only boss who appears 3 times in a single stage (2 times as midboss and 3rd as actual boss in her Perfect Cherry Blossom appearance).

• If you look closely at Alice's book in her character portrait for Imperishable Night you are able to see writing possibly spelling Grimoire. This further proves the theory of it possibly being the same Grimoire which Alice used back in the Mystic Square Extra Stage.

• The use of the name Alice, and her use of the "Eerily Luminous Shanghai Dolls" is likely a sort of recursive reference to Team Shanghai Alice.

• Her dolls are filled with gunpowder, as said in many of the games she appeared in.