Celestia Ludenberg

Celestia Ludenberg (セレスティア・ルーデンベルク Seresutia Rūdenberuku), real name Taeko Yasuhiro (安広多恵子 Yasuhiro Taeko), is one of the characters featured in Dangan Ronpa: Academy of Hope and High School Students of Despair. She has the title Super High-School Level Gambler (超高校級の「ギャンブラー」Chō Kōkō Kyū no "Gyanburā") She was a renowned gambler who managed to rob everyone of all their money whenever she played a game with them. Due to her nature, she was given the title "Queen of Liars". In the third trial, she was found out as the culprit and executed by Monobear.

Appearance
Celestia has a slim figure and pale skin. She has black hair (in the video it is shown as a dark deep blue) in two large twin-drill pigtails, (which are apparently clip-ons as mentioned in the art book) red eyes, golden heart earrings, and black nail polish. Celestia wears gothic lolita style clothing with a red tie and high heels (which resembles a maid's outfit but is more stylish).

Personality
An experienced gambler, Celestia appears collected and cunning by nature. She possesses the ability to manipulate others into her bidding and can lie with a straight face. She makes use of these abilities by tricking Yamada into killing Ishimaru and deceiving the other students for the most part of Chapter 3.

Celestia is shown to be fairly intelligent, referencing several aspects of game theory such as Prisonner's Dilemma or Zero Sum Game, but her short-temperedness surfaces when something fails to go as well as she expects it to.

Pre-Despair Incident
Little is known about Celestia's life prior to being trapped within Hope's Peak Academy. However, from Naegi's interactions with her during Free Time periods, one can discover that Celestia has been gambling for the most part of her life, and that she has not heard the term "lose" for a long while. She tells how she has won countless games, even ones at the stake of her own life, but was able to win regardless. Celes also reveals that she used to visit a cafe (with an owner that somewhat resembled Yamada), where she would enjoy her preferred royal milk tea.

High School Life of Mutual Killing
Much like the other students, Celestia awakens to find herself trapped inside the school grounds, to her annoyance. She appears to adapt quickly to the new conditions, claiming that it is the only way to survive, and suggests the others do the same.

When Monobear introduces the first "motive" to each of the students through individualized footage on CDs, Celestia is horrified at what her CD shows (but refuses to say what exactly she saw, which is never revealed). She aids the students in solving the first case after the deaths of Maizono and Ikusaba (disguised as Enoshima).

The Secret of Mondo Oowada
Celestia plays a key part in Chapter 2, having encountered Fujisaki in the storage room prior the latter's death. During this encounter, Celestia notices Fujisaki's blue jersey partially hanging out from his bag, which he then stuffs back inside before going off in a hurry. This later proves to be a major factor in figuring out who murdered Fujisaki.

The Queen of Liars's Greed Re-Rise and Fall
After Oowada's execution, Celestia is among the students who witness Monobear present a ton of cash (10 billion yen) for whoever "graduates" from the academy. Succumbed to her own greed, Celes plans to commit a murder herself so she can get these cash just to escape the nightmare while ignoring her own comrade's survival. To initiate her plan, Celes takes Alter Ego, the AI developed by Fujisaki before his death, and hides it to cause confusion and upsets both Yamada and Ishimaru. Using their conflict for Alter Ego as her first step of her plan, Celes enlists Yamada as her accomplice (and tells him that she will act as his) by saying that Ishimaru took Alter Ego, and that he plans to kill him (Yamada). Yamada believes her and the two begin to conspire. They frame Hagakure by knocking him out and stuffing him into a robot suit. Celestia organizes Yamada's "death" after Ishimaru is killed, managing to trick the others into looking for the suspicious person wearing a robot suit. After Yamada relocates himself and Ishimaru's body to the Art Room, Celestia turns against him and kills him, as she planned to do from the beginning.

During the school trial, Celestia urges the students to declare Hagakure (Yamada's last clue before his real death) as the culprit to both murder since the robot costume matched his height. However, Togami, Naegi, and Kirigiri sees past her lies and manage to prove Hagakure's innocence. Even with evidence having her cornered, Celes refuses to admit (changes her polite personality into her unusual rude mannerism), and would repeatedly deny Naegi's question over her real name and kept claiming that Hagakure is the culprit of the third trial, since she never revealed her real name since their first encounter. In the end however, her last stand is proven futile as Naegi mentions her ElectroID (real name displayed in every student's ID) and would let her guard down and that evidence alone would lead to her downfall. As she finally goes to the gallows and Monokuma reveals her real name as Taeko Yasuhiro, Celes finally tells them and admits to her crimes before facing her execution, stating that she wants to go out "gracefully". She gives Kirigiri the key to the locker Alter Ego is stashed in, bidding her classmates farewell and having Monobear drag her off to her execution afterwards.

Execution
Versailles-style Witch Burning - Celes is meant to be burnt at the stake, the kind of romanticised, gothic death she would have wanted. However, a fire truck appears and crashes into her, ending her execution in an ironic fashion.

Relationships
(none).

Quotes

 * "Delighted to meet you. My name is Celestia Ludenberg."
 * “Heh heh..., I’m afraid I can’t give you that. Celestia Ludenberg is the name I go by.”
 * “It’s a little…, troubling for us. Spending the rest of our lives in this school…”
 * "My lies must never be too extravagant..."
 * "Your heart really is made out of stone, I hope your body at least gets some good minerals out of it."

Trivia

 * It is revealed that Celestia's dream is to own and live in a castle with a large number of servants (all dressed as vampires) waiting on her. It is unknown, however, whether this is another lie of hers or otherwise.
 * Celestia admits that she once managed to accumulate over ten billion yen through gambling.
 * Despite wanting to be a cultured person, Celestia admits that she likes gyoza.
 * In the class pictures from Alter Ego's database, it was shown that Celes never changed her gothic lolita garb, wearing it even in the sports event (although she did not participate). Despite this fact, there was another group picture where Celes appeared without her gothic garb and sported short hair without her pigtails. This was speculated as her old self, Taeko Yasuhiro.
 * In a Free Time Event, she states that she played Mahjong against a "Demon-Looking Old Man" and a "Young Silver-Haired Boy", referencing the Manga/Anime of Akagi.
 * The manga expanded Celes' characteristics that implicates that in the past, Taeko was a victim of ostracization due to how plain she was, and adopted the persona 'Celestia Ludenberg' to appear and make herself feel special (although she was unable to hide her liking towards gyoza). It becomes a reason why she adopted such greed and grand dream of living in a mansion full of servants and insisting to keep the charade as long as possible, to the point of (this is also in the game) claiming that there's no way she would have a 'ridiculous' and 'plain' name like 'Yasuhiro'.