Character: Laharl
Series: Disgaea: Hour of Darkness
Age: 1313
History: http://disgaea.wikia.com/wiki/Disgaea:_Hour_of_Darkness

Canon Point: Post Disgaea, before all the cameos. (I also play him mostly using game canon, but do borrow a little from the anime, mangas, novels and his many other cameos, not to mention Disgaea Infinite (a visual novel psp game). ...Extensive canon is extensive.) Also using the good ending which later games do seem to indicate is the canon ending.

Personality:

One's first impression of the young Overlord is rarely a good one. He's arrogant, rude, selfish, uncaring, impatient, bossy, stubborn and even sometimes rather bratty; he'll take half of those as compliments! There is, however, a lot more to him than first impression usually presents, but it can be hard to see it sometimes.

Laharl really isn't a bad person and he's come along way since Flonne first met him. Near the beginning of the game, he was burned by a pendant belonging to Flonne, which would burn anyone who touches it who has a wicked heart, but by the end of the game her pendant no longer burns him. He goes a long way to try to hide the fact he can actually be nice, putting up a facade of what he thinks is how a demon/overlord should act. Though there are times when he really is a jerk; he can be terribly insensitive and won't hesitate to make fun of someone or laugh at another's expense. So, though he's come a long way when it comes to learning about kindness and love, he still has a very long way to go.

The boy is pretty much a textbook tsundere; he'll make up any excuse that can keep him from seeming "nice" and won't admit to things, like being friends with someone, despite it being usually painfully obvious. Sometimes it can seem like he's not just trying to convince others, but even himself. Laharl often seems to be in a state of denial about many things. He has a hard time conveying anything he'd consider 'being nice', such as apologizing for something, even when he tries to, such as the great difficulty he has in Disgaea Infinite when he tries to congratulate Flonne on passing her first angel examination.

He doesn't believe in having friends, much less believe in things like love, or at least that's what he says, and he says a LOT of things, but his actions very often betray his real feelings. The truth of the matter is he does care about those who manage to get close to him a great deal. He's fiercely protective of his friends vassals and can even seem almost possessive at times, particularly of Flonne and Etna. He might even, deep down, harbor feelings for Flonne, given the events in Celestia, though, like everything else he would deny it.

He's extremely proud of his title of Overlord and does actually take his job quite seriously, perhaps most highlighted when he fought against an unrestful spirit of a defender of Earth from the past. Flonne thinks he's being cruel to fight him, but Laharl feels it's his duty to fight the man, and even though the spirit loses, his soul is put to rest by Laharl's actions. He does actually want to succeed as being a great ruler, with a goal of surpassing his father.

Surprisingly perhaps, amongst his friends and vassals, Laharl often plays the straight man. Often he's left feeling like the only sane one in the whole castle. Exasperation seems to be an emotion he displays a lot. There are also times when he actually seems to be the one with the most common sense of the three of them, although, given how Etna and Flonne are, perhaps it's not so surprising.

He is extremely confident in his abilities and strength, a fact he won't hesitate to boast. Unfortunately, people often don't believe him, given his looks and behaviour, but the thing is, he never really lies or over-exaggerates the extent of his power. While he'll lie about many things, that just usually isn't one of them, and he will even admit when a situation might be even too much for him to handle--at least if he's keeping a cool head. During Celestia the Archangel, Vulcanus summons a large number of greater demons, Laharl admits even he can't take care of so many all at once. If the stakes are high, however, he'll face a situation with no lack of earnest and would put his life on the line without thought to save someone he cares for, even if he is outmatched. He won't back down from anything he feels is a challenge he can rise to meet, but will withdraw if he feels like he's wasting his time. He doesn't generally make a habit of picking on the weak, prinnies being really the only exception to this rule.

Unfortunately, he isn't known for always taking the smartest approach to things, but occasionally he can be surprising. He can be shockingly mature and thoughtful about some situations, and really is quite intelligent. He can even be clever, when he puts his mind to it, such as when he released a challenge offering to forfeit the throne to any demon who could take the deed to the throne from him--an item that didn't even exist. Entirely a trap, it was designed to lure all his possible challengers to him in one go so he could deal with them all at once. He can sometimes even be rather witty and able to snark just as well as Etna can. The problem is he has an extremely explosive (sometimes literally) temper, with one hell of a short fuse, that'll get the best of him more often than not. When enraged he becomes extremely brash and impulsive, often taking the 'act now, ask questions later' approach to things. All these things, combined with his vast amounts of stubbornness, can lead to bad decisions on his part, but he'll go through with them even if, deep down, he does realize anger fuelled his decision. He can't admit he was wrong, after all; he's too arrogant, proud and tsundere to do that.

Much of Laharl's behaviour all goes back to one defining event that happened early in his life. His mother was a human, who believed strongly that demons had love in their hearts as much as anyone else. She wanted Laharl to grow up a kind, loving boy, but this wasn't to be. He grew sick with a disease that no one could find any cure for, so his mother sacrificed her life in an act of love to save his. To him, love was all to blame; love took his mother away from him, so the young demon turned his back on love and all his mother's teachings. Only recently, when he was faced with a similar choice--the chance to save someone he had found he cared about by giving up his own life, did he begin to understand and begin come to terms with his mother's death.

His mother's departure also served to leave him with a rather large abandonment issue. Etna leaves? He goes chasing after her. The very idea Flonne might go back to Celestia? The very notion upsets him more than he even will begin to admit. Even the prinnies leaving to reincarnate upsets him more than it should. Being abandoned or losing those he cares about are probably his greatest fears.

As for his father, their relationship seemed distant, Laharl having adopted the stance of most young demons, claiming to hate his father. Truthfully while Laharl has mixed feelings in regards to his father, he certainly doesn't hate him. As he says in a cameo in Disgaea 4, "Well, he's still my dad."

Skills and Abilities:

Laharl isn't the Overlord because he was the son of the previous Overlord. In the Netherworld, the Overlord is the most powerful demon to gain and hold onto the throne; this wasn't a problem for Laharl, as he has an immense amount of power. Able to destroy a two million spaceship armada solo, defeats the Seraph Lamington, the leader of the angels, and defeats Baal, a demon his father was only able to seal away.

His own demon power is dark in nature, but many of his special abilities are fire based; all are generally powerful, large and explosive. He also does have some skill with magic as he does have a great deal of mana at his disposal, but he rarely makes use of it. He does know a fire spell or two in a pinch, however. More often than not he relies on drawing from his own strength. His three main special abilities are:

Blazing Knuckle - He amasses power to his fist, usually leaping upwards, then slamming his fist to the ground, creating a huge AOE type explosion of fiery. This attack can certainly be used more directly on a target too.

Overlord's Wrath - Probably his most signature move, he creates a large number of energy orbs high in the air, then fires them down at his targets, all converging to the same spot, in a huge explosion.

Meteor Impact - His most powerful and devastating ability: he summons a meteor, which he usually will launch himself up to, lands on it and rides it down (laughing on the way) as it crashes into his victims.

(Special abilities are noted to be separate from magic and mana use. The Disgaea world book says: "There are special abilities that have effects similar to magic. But these special effects are different from magic because they use the spiritual force within the person's body and demon power increases their usability. Thus it is impossible for others to learn the ability, so it is called a special ability.")

He's very talented with almost any weapon you place in his hands, his weakest being staff and gun. He's fully capable of using many of the special attacks one can do with these weapons. Rarely will you ever see him use anything outside of a sword or his own fist, however. He's very agile also is able to leap great heights and is very good at dodging attacks, even from bullets. His scarf is also worth noting, as it seems to move with a life of it's own, but also able to move at his command, such as to shield against an attack or to form a pair of wings to fly with. It also acts as a dimensional pocket, his sword usually tucked away in it.

Laharl's basically harder to kill off than a cockroach, being extremely resilient and also having a high resistance against poison that would normally be fatal. He can even sleep off a point-blank gunshot to the head and has no problems with hopping into lava to rescue a fallen object. ...I'm not making this up. Even in his sleep he seems to keep up his strength against attacks or certain vassals named Etna trying to wake him up.

He could be vulnerable if caught off guard, but you have to be pretty good to do that. Laharl has very keen senses, and is able to pick up on power and presences very well. He'll congratulate anyone able to get close without him noticing.

However, he IS a demon; in theory holy power/light magic/other such things designed to hurt demons could cause him more troubles. (In the game only Flonne's pendant, an item from Celestia, is shown to give him problems; it burning him for having a wicked heart at the start. In the anime there is a holy weapon used on him, which he does struggle to fight against.) His personality problems, however, are probably his largest weaknesses. Anger his greatest one, as he can lose all rational when angered--AND YET, in some situations this is also a great strength to him. Like many protagonists, in a moment of great emotion he can push the boundaries of his limits. This is only triggered however by things like thinking someone has killed someone he cares for.

Laharl does have two unusual crippling weaknesses:

1. Sexy Bodies - Any female who's somewhat curvy will make him uncomfortable, but those especially curvy will be told to keep their distance, especially those with a large chest size. Too close and he quickly loses composure; he is literally weakened by close proximity and contact is liable to make him pass out. So, yes, if someone busty was to hug him, they could one-hit KO him right there. Closing his eyes helps--but it's a little hard to fight that way. The source of this fear is unfortunately never explained in the game's canon, but seems too severe to be simply a case of adolescent feelings. In the novels he has an aunt to blame for his issue.

2. Positive phrases - While not as much an issue as it once was, probably from hanging around Flonne so much, uttering "Eternal Love" will likely still make him stagger. For some reason he just can't stomach positive phrases. Plugging his ears is a work around, but that has the same problem as closing one's eyes. And even then, how how much it actually helps is questionable as he has very good hearing.

As for mundane skills, well, Laharl is an accomplished gamer! He'll can sit in front of a TV for hours on end with a controller in his hand. However, he's not terribly good with electronics; he struggles with programming a VCR and his idea of fixing them when they go wrong is a good smack. He's actually quite literate, with a surprisingly large vocabulary and will proudly point out how he has pretty good penmanship. These are skills, however, he doesn't use often and no one would guess he has them given how informally he speaks, swearing often.

He's actually is a pretty good leader; he's confident and able to take command without hesitation--whether those around him listens to him is another matter.

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