Violet Baudelaire

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Violet Baudelaire
A Series of Unfortunate Events character

Gender	Female
Hair color	Novel: Black Illustrations: Black Film: Auburn
Age	14 at the beginning of the series, 15 in The Grim Grotto, and 16 at the series's end
Film actor	Emily Browning
First appearance	The Bad Beginning
V.F.D. alliance	Volunteer side of the schism

Violet Baudelaire is one of the main characters in the popular children's book series, A Series of Unfortunate Events by Lemony Snicket. Violet is the eldest child of the Baudelaire orphans. Her first name is possibly derived from Violet a character in the movie Pretty Baby directed by Louis Malle,^{[citation needed]} a drama about a young girl living in a brothel, who marries at the age of 12(kind of like Violet Baudelaire in The Bad Beginning)She has a younger brother named Klaus and a baby sister named Sunny. Violet mentioned in The Bad Beginning that she can not cook anything except toast (and she sometimes burns the toast). When Violet was five years old, she won her first invention contest with an automatic rolling pin she made from a broken window shade and six pairs of roller skates, thus winning her a gold medal and a compliment from the judge, who bet that Violet could invent something with both her hands tied behind her back, even with substantial interference. Prior to the demise of her parents, she liked to visit the Verne Invention Museum and liked many of its exhibits there, including the one of the mechanical demonstrations that had inspired her to be an inventor when she was just two years old. When Violet is of age (eighteen years old), she will inherit the Baudelaire fortune.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

At the beginning of the series, Violet loses her parents in a fire which consumes their house. From this point onwards, the villainous Count Olaf tries to steal the enormous Baudelaire fortune from the orphans, using various nefarious schemes. Violet and Olaf almost get married in his play, The Marvelous Marriage, but Violet signs the marriage document with her left hand, and as she is right-handed, the ceremony is declared to be invalid. After this, Olaf and his associates go on the run as fugitives.

In The Austere Academy, Violet and her siblings meet Duncan and Isadora Quagmire. A close friendship between Violet and Duncan develops. In the tenth book, The Slippery Slope, she meets Quigley Quagmire, and they form a strong relationship. What will become of these relationships is still unknown, as Duncan and Quigley both disappeared into the "Great Unknown", referenced in The End.

In The End, Violet and her siblings adopt Kit Snicket's child, Beatrice, after Count Olaf dies, but the fate of her and her siblings is ambiguous. As mentioned in The Hostile Hospital and The End, despite all of Lemony's research and hard work, even he still does not known the current location, position and status of the Baudelaire children, including Violet, though it is implied that she was killed in the wreckage of the boat named after her mother, as her ribbon is shown among the wreckage.

In the later books, Lemony Snicket mentions that Violet Baudelaire is pretty. Violet's favorite book is The Life of Nikola Tesla, and she has a strong allergy to peppermints, which she gets from her mother, as revealed in The Beatrice Letters.

While Klaus is the researcher, Sunny is the biter (and later chef), Violet is the inventor. The theme of children each having a particular skill that they are good at is also shown with other characters in the series. For example, with the Quagmire triplets, Isadora is a poet, Duncan is a journalist, and Quigley is a cartographer. The Baudelaires' volatile friend Fiona is a mycologist.

[edit] Violet's inventions

Violet is depicted as being extremely skilled at inventing devices. She often invents devices to help herself and her siblings in dangerous situations, using only simple objects such as rubber bands and tin cans. Whenever Violet invents something, she ties her hair up with her ribbon.

In The Bad Beginning, Violet makes a grappling hook, from metal rods and torn clothing.
In The Reptile Room, she makes a lockpick, from two prongs from an electrical socket, a thumbtack, and some soap.
In The Wide Window, she makes a signaling device, from a piece of cloth, fishing pole, a metal bucket, and a burning hairnet.
In The Austere Academy, she makes a staple-making device, using a small crab, a potato, metal rods, creamed spinach, and a fork. She also makes a few pairs of tap shoes by attaching pieces of metal to the soles of normal shoes.
In The Ersatz Elevator, she makes rope out of extension cords, curtains, and neckties. She also makes welding torches, from heated fire tongs, and crowbars, from bent fire tongs.
In The Vile Village, she makes a battering ram, using a wooden plank, water, and spongy bread. She also assists Hector in constructing a Self-Sustaining Hot Air Mobile Home using various mechanical devices.
In The Hostile Hospital, she makes an intercom system, using an empty soup can with a hole. She also makes an escape device, from rubber bands.
In The Carnivorous Carnival, she tries to make a cart as an escape vehicle, using vines, roller coaster parts and a piece of rubber.
In The Slippery Slope, she makes a drag chute, using hammocks and a mixture of sticky condiments, and a brake, using a wooden table. She also makes climbing shoes using forks, fake fingernails, ukulele strings, and a candelabra.
In The Penultimate Peril she makes a drag chute using dirty laundry sheets.
In The End, Violet invents a water filter in order to make salt water drinkable. She also makes a sling for her and her siblings to use to carry baby Beatrice.
In Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (video game), Violet invents various things, such as the Smasher, the Lobber, the Lockpick, the Sprayer, the Lever Yanker, the Reptile Retriever, a Grappling Hook, the Brilliant Bopper (Klaus's weapon), the Fruit Flinger (her own weapon), the Baby Booster (which helps Sunny jump), the Steady Stilts (so that Violet can reach high places) and the Levitating Loafers (which can make Klaus fly).
In The Dismal Dinner, Violet invents a very cold, very hard device made from a silver pie server and the ear of the snowman ice sculpture to lessen Sunny's pain from "teething" as soon as Sunny stopped looking out the window and sucked on it.

[edit] Disguises

A recurring theme in the series is the Baudelaire children's disguises. At the end of The Vile Village, they are falsely accused of murder. From this point on, they have no more guardians, and are on the run from the police. While running from the police, Violet assumes the following disguises:

In The Hostile Hospital, Count Olaf disguises her as a patient so that he can conduct a fake operation and cut her head off.
In The Carnivorous Carnival, Violet and her brother dress as a two-headed freak.
In The Slippery Slope, Violet poses both as a Snow Scout and as a Volunteer.
In The Penultimate Peril, Violet disguises herself as a hotel concierge.