Ren Sohma

Ren is a striking beauty who looks to be somewhere in her early to mid forties. Raven-black hair falls to her calves against porcelain skin, and her tall, full figure is matched by sharp grey eyes carrying a faint purple tint. Her rank in the family shows in a wardrobe of elegant, close-fitting gowns; through the anime's third season she is mostly seen in a long-sleeved black dress with a plunging neckline, draped in a crimson shawl, her nails painted the same deep red. Shigure observes that, had Akito been raised as the woman she is, she would look almost exactly like her mother.

Ren ranks among the most complicated and damaged figures in the story. In company she wields an elegant, composed manner that fools onlookers into never suspecting what lies beneath, yet her true nature is haughty, cruel, manipulative, and profoundly unstable. She is also shrewd, running her schemes through other people without remorse for the consequences they face. She exploits Shigure's love for Akito to lure him into her bed, and she deceives Isuzu into stealing a box from Akito's keeping, a ploy that ends with the girl imprisoned and her hair shorn.

At the root of it all sits an obsessive fixation on her dead husband and a bitter jealousy of her own daughter, jealousy so early and so deep that, upon learning she would bear a girl, she threatened to abort the child unless it was raised as a man. In a real sense it is Ren who molds Akito into the tormented figure she becomes.

Little is known of Ren's origins, which the author left deliberately vague, but she once served as a maid in the Sohma household. When word spread that the ailing family head Akira Sohma needed an heir, Ren approached him and, weeping over how deeply she understood his loneliness, made him feel seen as a person rather than a title. He named her his personal maid, their bond grew into love, and despite the eldest maid's fierce objections they married and soon expected a child. Ren was repulsed when the young Sohma children sensed their reborn God within her, and she was more disturbed still to learn she carried a daughter rather than the son she wanted. She threatened to abort the baby unless it was raised as a boy, and a reluctant Akira agreed.

After Akito's birth Ren seethed at being upstaged by the child, and Akira's eventual death shattered her further, for she blamed her daughter for being at his side when she herself was not. The two settle into open, lifelong hostility, even wagering over which of them the zodiac will ultimately abandon. Kept confined to her room to keep the peace, Ren surfaces only briefly at first, once nearly discovering Tohru during the girl's search for Kureno. In the third year she steps out to trade barbs with Akito, provoking her daughter into strangling her, and later manipulates Isuzu into trying to steal a box she claims holds the secret to breaking the curse, though she knows nothing of the sort.

She also attempts to seduce Shigure again and is refused; he admits he had only slept with her because she so resembles Akito, and warns that her obsession with her late husband will haunt her to the grave. Ren finally storms into Akito's room brandishing a knife and demanding the box, only to find it empty, and Akito nearly kills her before the sensation of Hiro's curse breaking stays her hand. In Fruits Basket Another she remains isolated, her mental state worse than ever, making an exception only for her grandson Shiki, until a New Year's gathering pushes her to try to stab the boy; Akito takes the blade instead and is scarred across the face. Left under heavy watch as too dangerous to be near others, Ren later crosses paths with a young Hajime and sneers at his ignorance of the curse before vanishing from the story.