Hiashi Hyūga

Because he and Hizashi were identical, Hiashi looks almost exactly like his late twin, the one telling difference being a forehead left free of the branch house seal. He keeps his black hair long, sometimes rendered brown in the anime, and his eyes carry the pale, pupilless white shared by every member of his clan. Loose, old-fashioned robes and a long-sleeved brown haori make up his usual dress; during the great war he traded these for the Allied Shinobi Forces uniform and a dark Alliance headband. As the years pass his hair thins and greys around the temples, his frame grows leaner, and creases settle across his brow and around his mouth.

For most of his life Hiashi wore a hard, exacting face. He drove both daughters through punishing training, seldom praised them, and did not hesitate to trigger the branch house seal to punish his brother and nephew. His coldness fell heaviest on Hinata, whom he once dismissed as a successor the clan had no use for if she proved weak. Beneath the severity, though, he loved his family, hesitating when his brother's life was demanded and later begging that the Moon not be destroyed for fear his daughters were on it. Fiercely proud of the Hyuga name, he was also honest enough to admit Hizashi's son outshone his own children, and his brother's sacrifice planted lasting doubts about the clan's rigid divide between main and branch houses. He eventually bowed to Neji in apology and passed down techniques once withheld from the branch family. In his later years the stern mask fell away entirely, revealing the warm, playful man Kurenai insisted had always been there, buried under grief; he spoiled his grandchildren Boruto and Himawari, came to prize peace over fighting, and grew close enough to Naruto to wave off any formality between them.

Hiashi entered the world only seconds before his twin, and that slim margin made him head of the Hyuga while Hizashi was bound to the branch house that serves the main line. He branded the family's cursed seal onto his nephew Neji, deepening a rift with his embittered brother. That divide turned tragic when a Kumogakure envoy tried to abduct the young Hinata; Hiashi killed the man to save her, only for Kumo to demand his life in payment. Hizashi volunteered to die in his brother's place, asking that Neji one day learn the truth. Hiashi first raised Hinata to inherit the clan, then shifted his hopes to her sister Hanabi when he judged her too unsure of herself.

As clan head he ranks among Konoha's strongest, versed in every Hyuga secret and a true master of the Gentle Fist. A single strike to the heart's chakra network let him fell the Kumo head ninja unharmed, and during the Konoha Crush he swept aside a ring of Suna and Oto attackers with the Eight Trigrams Palms Revolving Heaven. In the Fourth Shinobi World War his Byakugan and rotating defence helped hold back the Ten-Tails itself, even batting away its tails alongside Neji. On the battlefield he was forced to face a reincarnated Hizashi, telling his brother there was no cursed fate binding them and pointing to Neji and Hinata fighting side by side as living proof. He grieved anew when Neji died shielding Naruto and Hinata.

Years earlier he had reconciled with Neji during the Chunin Exams, revealing Hizashi's sacrifice and bowing for forgiveness. Two years after the war, Toneri Otsutsuki ambushed and defeated him outside Konoha, leaving him for Sasuke to rescue; when the Kage resolved to destroy the Moon, Hiashi pleaded with Kakashi to spare it while his daughters were trapped there. In the era that followed he settled into the role of an indulgent grandfather to Boruto and Himawari, still regarded as the mightiest of his clan even as age caught up with him.