Byakuya Kuchiki

A striking, seemingly young nobleman, Byakuya cuts a tall and slender figure with fair skin and cool gray eyes. His long black hair is bound up in ornate white ornaments called kenseikan, a badge of his rank as clan head; three crown the top of his head while two more rest at the right side. Over the standard black Shinigami robes and a sleeveless captain's haori he drapes a prized white scarf, a woven family heirloom handed down the Kuchiki line and said to be worth ten of Seireitei's mansions, and he covers only the backs of his hands with fingerless white guards.

In the months following Sōsuke Aizen's fall he sets the scarf aside and exchanges his old kenseikan and haori for updated pieces, adopting a high collar edged and tasseled in pale gold. A decade after Yhwach's defeat he goes back to wearing only the three original headpieces, leaving off the pair once worn at his right. His looks make him a favorite among the Gotei 13's women, who once voted him the captain they most wanted a photo book of.

Grave and formal to the point of seeming cold, Byakuya carries himself with the dignity his station demands and rarely lets a feeling surface, staying just as unshaken in a duel as in conversation. He treats most opponents as beneath his notice and bristles when addressed without proper respect, more than once correcting Ichigo Kurosaki for using his given name while he himself always speaks the boy's name in full. Sharp and self-aware, he seldom overstates his own strength, and even against foes he plainly outclasses he keeps to formal speech. In his youth he was famously hot-tempered, a flaw his grandfather noticed and one Yoruichi Shihōin loved to provoke; the grudge lingered so long that he came to resent leaning on any technique she had taught him.

Above all he reveres law, order, and obligation, reasoning that if a man of his standing ignores the rules, no one else can be expected to obey them, so every wrongdoer must answer even when his heart wishes otherwise. That creed collides with his devotion to those he holds dear, chief among them Rukia, whom he names his pride. Having loved his late wife Hisana, he swore to shield her lost sister, and he quietly stunted Rukia's career to keep her clear of the deadliest assignments. Aizen's treachery shakes his absolutism; afterward he still honors the law but will bend its loopholes, grows more openly protective, and even shows flashes of dry humor. Away from battle he favors cherry blossoms, nighttime walks, spicy food, and bananas, cares nothing for sweets, and has a gift for calligraphy.

Raised within Kuchiki Manor in the Seireitei, Byakuya trained tirelessly from boyhood to one day lead his house. In his teens, roughly one hundred and ten years before the present, he endured the frequent visits of Yoruichi Shihōin, who dropped in for games of tag, needled him at every turn, and once snatched his hair tie before vanishing with Shunpo, leaving the proud youth fuming and vowing to teach her a lesson.

About fifty-five years ago he broke clan law by marrying Hisana, a commoner from Rukongai. When sickness brought her near death five years later, she begged him to seek out and take in the baby sister she had once abandoned, on the condition that Rukia never learn the truth. He honored the wish, adopting Rukia from the Shin'ō Academy, then swore over his parents' graves never to violate his clan's rules again. Not long before Rukia entered the Gotei 13, he rose to captain of the Sixth Division, around the same time Gin Ichimaru took command of the Third.

Years on, that vow traps him when Rukia is condemned to die, and he stands against Ichigo to uphold the sentence before finally turning to help save her. He later cuts down the Espada Zommari Rureaux in Hueco Mundo, and during the war with the Wandenreich he is gravely wounded and has his Bankai stolen by Äs Nödt, only to recover, deepen his command of his Shikai, and stand at Rukia's side as she finishes the Quincy who had once beaten him.