Queen Nehelenia

Three silver crescents, one of them gilded, hang at her ears and headpiece above a dark circular gem that serves as her crown. Her gown is a deep green cut to bare the shoulders, its puffed upper sleeves giving way to tight cuffs at the wrist and a beige overskirt draped across the front, all finished by a lavender cloak that pools on the floor and hides a spiderweb motif on its back. Dark blue hair falls in long waves, gathered into a pair of buns that trail their own ponytails, framing a fringe sharper than Usagi's and narrow, slit-pupiled eyes of pale blue over pointed ears. Reputed to be the fairest creature in the Dead Moon, she once wore this same finery while she was still good, only then with ordinary human coloring and rounder, brighter eyes.

Her childlike form shrinks that same silhouette, swapping the floor-length mane for two short ponytails much like Chibiusa's and paring the jewelry down to a plain gold choker, simple studs, and a stripped-back crown. That youthful shape survives only because she clings to her mirror seal; when the glass finally breaks late in SuperS, her real self surfaces as a stooped, white-haired hag with wrinkled, sickly purple skin, a shape all but identical to Zirconia, the servant her own dread of ugliness gave birth to.

Vanity rules her. She prizes her youth, beauty, and charm above all and dreads growing old, lonely, and eclipsed by Sailor Moon. That terror runs so deep that she harvested the dreams of her own devoted subjects to keep herself from aging, and her fear of becoming hideous literally took shape as the crone Zirconia. Envy toward the Silver Millennium and its queen fuels her ambition to usurp the Moon throne. Yet the anime grants her a softness its other final foes never had: pushed to her lowest point she can still be reached, and Usagi's refusal to hate her eventually thaws her into longing for nothing grander than a fresh start and a few friends.

Once a ruler called Queen Helenia, she governed a serene kingdom whose people worshipped her looks. Craving endless youth, she consulted her mirror for a glimpse of things to come and instead met the image of a withered old woman, an omen that hardened into obsession. To hold age at bay she tore the dream mirrors from her subjects and warped them into Lemures, while her horror of ugliness spawned the servant Zirconia. She built the Dead Moon Circus, coveted Queen Serenity's throne over the Silver Millennium and its future Crystal Tokyo, and reached for the Golden Crystal guarded by Helios; her wicked intent kept it beyond her, and Serenity sealed her within a mirror of darkness. She stirred again only when Elysion weakened as people abandoned their good dreams, and she caged Helios, whose spirit slipped free as Pegasus through the pure light of Chibiusa's dreaming.

The Amazoness Quartet found her inside a dream mirror and pledged themselves to her in exchange for orbs that promised lasting youth, and under a solar eclipse the circus reached Earth to hunt the child hiding Pegasus. Nehelenia eventually smothered the world in darkness and spidery threads, forced the captured Pegasus back into Helios, and claimed the Golden Crystal, which let her leave the mirror and destroyed Zirconia in the act. She overpowered the Super Sailor Guardians until the Amazoness Quartet slipped the true crystal to Sailor Moon, swapping in a pineapple, and the combined strength of everyone on Earth let Sailor Moon and Chibi Moon fire the Golden Crystal's full power through her and level the tent. She endured even that, hauling the wreckage toward the Dark Moon with an unconscious Chibi Moon in tow, but the battle had drained her youth into that of a bent old crone. When she flung Chibi Moon from the height and Sailor Moon leapt after with Pegasus's help, Nehelenia retreated into her mirror and sealed herself away once more to preserve her beauty on the dark moon within.

Her second run opens in Sailor Stars, where Sailor Galaxia, not the heroes, pries her loose from the seal to exploit her venom toward the Silver Millennium, all as a ruse to wake Sailor Saturn inside Hotaru. Goaded into believing the Guardians mocked her, Nehelenia expels a dream mirror of her own that holds only rage, then shatters it so the shards scatter across Japan and lodge in unsuspecting eyes, Mamoru's among them. She snatches Mamoru into her mirror world and traps the pursuing Senshi in nightmares and phantom duplicates of herself, until only Usagi presses on unharmed. Learning Nehelenia's history, Usagi answers cruelty with forgiveness and offers to shoulder everyone's pain alone, and that mercy finally reaches the queen. As Eternal Sailor Moon she grants Nehelenia's deepest wish, to begin life anew as a child surrounded by friends, and the reborn girl wakes among her subjects, asks for a lullaby, and drifts off smiling. Throughout, her arsenal ran to waves of shadow, binding threads, and painful bursts of dark energy along with land-wide curses; only Super Sailor Saturn's power could truly wound her, and the Golden Crystal multiplied everything she could do.