Character Analysis: Blue Diamond

I kept trying to make the juxtaposition post between Blue and Yellow Diamond work, but I really needed a foundation before I started comparing their characters. It was turning into a huge section for each character and less like certain aspects of them were being analysed. It never turned out acceptable enough to me, and I was taking longer and longer to write just one post. So I decided to break it down (again) into a character analysis post for each character, and I’ll be following up with their juxtaposition before talking about PD’s shattering.



I want to start with Blue Diamond first, if only because I’ve touched a little on Yellow Diamond before . Blue Diamond is a relatively new character in the show, in that her presence hadn’t been confirmed until Steven’s Dream. Before that, all we had to go on were the Ziggurat and Moon Base murals and Garnet’s story in The Answer.

BD is a very complex character. On the surface, she appears as a victim, a foil to the “harshness” of Yellow Diamond (more on her in the next post). She is a very visible and obvious embodiment of Homeworld’s humanity, that they too have been hurt by the war and the conflict that underlay it. At the same time, though, there is a feeling of guilt about her that reveals she wasn’t totally ignorant of the said conflict going on. Moreover, by her own words, she has not only been dwelling in grief, but also has been searching for answers.

Blue Diamond then, is not a helpless mourner in distress and under duress. She is a capable and intelligent ruler, trying—and failing—to put aside personal pain in order to continue ruling. And that makes her similar to Yellow Diamond in more ways than one. Like their civilisation, she is trying to heal but a focal point of her healing is finding out what really happened the day PD was shattered. The way she deals with her stress and sadness, as well as the way she interacts with the gems around her, reveals a lot about her character. Let’s get to that.

1. BD dances the line between power and helplessness

What is striking about BD is how she looks like the quintessential ruler, a cross between the archetypes of mother goddess and queen. She is altogether very regal and dignified. She speaks deliberately, slowly compared to some of the other dialogue on the show. Combined with her crisp diction, her words always feel weighty. One of my favourite instances is her reply to Yellow Diamond in the Trial. YD almost annoyed asks whether examining Blue’s palanquin is necessary and Blue quietly but firmly says, “Isn’t it?” In that line, it was as if the room collectively held its breath, and even YD paused for a moment.



Blue Diamond possesses all of the attributes that we would normally associate with a leader. Her presence, from her first appearance in The Answer, spoke of someone who literally stood above others. Even while crying or angry she manages to look elegant and composed. Like the classical leader, she is introduced not with her generals but her Sapphire, analogous to leading with wisdom rather than brute force.

This picture of BD reaffirms the concept of a Diamond. In What’s The Use of Feeling (Blue), Yellow Diamond reminds Blue how each gem has a role, and when she gets to BD, she says the needs to be a leader. This is a very telling line, because we begin to understand how the socio-political hierarchy is understood on Homeworld. It isn’t a lie told by the Diamonds to placate lower-ranking gems in society. They themselves fully believe in their role as rulers. They honestly feel that “every gem in her place” is the only way for their civilisation to function properly.

That “truth” becomes a huge limiter of the supposed power that comes from being the unquestioned ruler of an empire. The Diamonds can technically do anything, but they are situated in a particular context, embedded in particular social roles, like any other character in the story. In the rigid social structure of Homeworld, they are expected to lead. So they can do anything, in so much as they do as leaders do. This explains why YD had to drop everything and run after Blue in The Zoo and That Will Be All. Ideally, they can’t just do anything they want because they are fully aware of the huge waves the ripples of their actions will cause around them.

The operative word here “ideal.” One thing to note is that all these rules are enforced by a social structure. That means social roles and expectations do blur and how to act within this structure is largely informal. There probably aren’t written rules that say how far behind a Diamond one should walk, when exactly a Pearl should speak, or how much shoulder-punching is too much shoulder-punching among soldiers.

Much like ours, their society is governed by these informal rules as much as the formal written laws. The Diamonds may have a formal set of responsibilities, but so many other social factors intervene in the way they are perceived. Things like power, class, and even height difference factor into how they are perceived by other gems. This means that a structure in which everyone is supposed to have a place, may not be as easily enforced, especially as gems go higher up the social ladder. Discipline, particularly at the Diamond-level is largely self-enforced.

So it doesn’t mean they don’t break these unspoken rules—we’ve seen them arbitrarily use their power when they’re upset or stressed. It so happens though, that in the show so far, all we’ve seen them feeling is indeed upset and stressed.

The idea that Blue is a powerful, at times unquestioned leader, is countered by how crippled and paralysed she feels in the face of Pink Diamond’s shattering. Blue has so much to offer gem-kind, not only as their leader, but also, as Peridot pointed out in Message Received, someone with abilities that surpass those of any other gem.

Yet she is unable to fulfil her role. In her most vulnerable, while she’s on Earth, she entrusted her safety to only her Pearl. For emphasis, Blue touched down on a Homeworld-hostile planet with no guards, and no Sapphires. The only gem with her was her Pearl. Given my old theory on PD’s shattering, and even the theories floating around now, that whoever shattered PD would’ve had to be close to her, it shows how exposed she is right now.

Blue is a force, but she’s also presented as a character who is flowy, flexible, rounded, and very sad. Were she the same size as the average gem, she would appear weak, not a fighter, and unable to defend herself.

BD seems very much like the archetypal leader, the only Diamond we’ve seen hold court and carry with her the formalities traditionally associated with leaders. But she’s also immobilised by grief. There is a paradox in her looking so willowy and bendable but deeply emphatic and firm about her beliefs, in this case, her search for answers.

In Blue we have a character seemingly transparent, showing everyone her tears and her breakdowns, but at the same time so opaque, as she makes decisions behind closed doors (or closed palanquin, as in The Answer) and has been searching for answers with a resolve YD didn’t even know about.

2. Leadership style

In the past, I’d mentioned how BD thematically puts literal barriers between herself and others. Her hair, her veil, her palanquin, all play some part in obscuring her from view. I feel this look extends to her personality.

As noted in the previous section, BD made her decisions between her and her Sapphire, in the presence of her Pearl. As an ordinary Quartz soldier or Agate, it would be impossible to read BD’s face for tension or anxiety in the impending moments of a battle; it would be impossible to know her thought process and how she comes up with decisions, whether she questioned herself at any time or was always certain this was the way to go.

When we see her in Steven’s Dream, she travelled with no entourage and only a ship and her Pearl. This stands in contrast to her full court in The Answer, in which soldiers and nobility alike were present. From this, it can be said that BD knows what it takes to be a leader, and she executes the full package when she needs to.

At the same time, though, she’s not one to micromanage. The Zoo, which is clearly a space she’s taken up as her own, is something she leaves to a lone Holly Blue Agate. She also doesn’t give a lot of orders for how things should be run. Instead, Holly Blue has taken it upon herself to make the Zoo suit BD’s preferences, whether they be voiced or not.

Given her tendency to visit the Zoo and Earth without YD’s knowledge, she doesn’t seem like the micro-managing type of leader. She seems, instead, to have general guidelines and goals, and it trickles down to those close to her. It is then their job to delegate tasks.

This is further reinforced by the airy look BD gets when faced with those who work for her. There’s a good chance she’s never met them personally and doesn’t know who they are. Particularly the BD post-PD’s shattering, I would add that there doesn’t seem to be much moving-forward in BD’s camp.

Blue has been dwelling in remorse and grief and the top-down way she manages has made it such that I don’t think there have been many gains in say, acquiring new territory and developing old acquired territory. This is likely why YD was so determined to find Blue. It may have been that the effects of her absence were so great that it was causing stops in gem society, and they needed to be addressed as soon as possible.

What we can then glean is that the detached style of leadership could work, but it’s very output-based. Blue doesn’t see the systems and the gems in them that bring her plans eventually to execution. For those who feel that Blue seems to empathetic to perpetuate such a harmful rigid social structure, this may be the reason for it. She’s never taken a good, close look at how that system has affected everyone, including herself.

And this ties in with the next section.

3. Attitude towards Earth

I will say immediately that Blue Diamond doesn’t like Earth. I would go as far as to say she’s given many indicators that she hates it as much as Yellow Diamond does. The difference is that YD’s response to Earth is to destroy it so she doesn’t have to think about the painful memories associated with it. On the other hand, BD is determined to preserve and store everything PD was once associated with.

It’s evidenced in much of her demeanour in The Trial. She’s frowning most of the time. Her brows are furrowed, with eyes narrowed. Her posture is stiff and she’s listening intently to every word being said. She’s not fond of the idea of Rose Quartz being in her presence, and she does want retribution, but not as much as she wants answers. That’s why she doesn’t immediately jump to having “Rose” shattered or worse.

BD doesn’t continue to visit Earth because she likes it. She’s searching for answers, some clues as to how PD was shattered. At the same time, though, the moment she sets foot on the planet, she’s paralysed and is overcome with emotion. She keeps crying and she’s unable to really do any of the things she set out to do. It seems then like BD stores everything PD once had as some sort of evidence locker, that maybe staring at the things long enough will put all the pieces together in the right way.

She also wants to keep everything associated with Pink because it’s all she has left of her friend. Something I want to point out is that she keeps all the humans she found the first time around, the Famethyst, the bubbled Rose Quartzes, but she never interacts with them. This is very interesting to me. Rather than keeping PD’s memory alive, it seems more like she wants to keep PD’s memory trapped in time. Rather than living in the spirit of her friend, she reminds herself over and over again of her loss.

Moreover, there’s an element of self-punishment. Both she and Yellow concede that thinking of Earth and the events that transpired there, is painful and very unpleasant. But Blue continues to go there and reopen the wounds that haven’t even had the chance to heal.

Blue doesn’t like Earth for all the things she’d lost there: Pink Diamond, her gems, her pride. How she views human beings and the other living things on Earth is another thing, though. She clearly doesn’t understand them. Based on her interactions with Greg in Steven’s Dream, it is apparent that her concept of “human” doesn’t extend beyond our concept of “non-human animal.”

In her own words, Earth is untamed place. She views human beings like animals whose civilisation is so far behind her own that they appear wild and savage in comparison. She’s coming from a context in which interplanetary travel was discovered thousands and thousands of years ago, where bodies can be taken apart and transported elsewhere, where its citizens can pop out as fully-functioning adults with no vulnerable period. She is surprised that human beings (Greg) are capable of comprehending the feeling of loss and regret, of longing and sadness.

The idea that Blue is just hoarding everything once associated with PD instead of engaging with it, would explain why despite having unfettered access to human beings for so long, she’s never learned about an ability that makes up our simplified definition of sentience.

It is no surprise then that Blue still marvels at how a species so soft, on a planet so fragile (think of our various ecosystems and what a few degrees increase in global temperature could do), could destroy the strongest of the gems. And why a fellow gem thought any of it was worth it.

This sentiment is shared by many of the Homeworld gems, reinforcing the idea that their first impression of humanity is that of a less developed species. Peridot, Pearl and even Rose had very vocally expressed this of people. There are times when the underlying bias the Crystal Gems have in their view of humanity slips out, such as when Garnet tells Peridot about how Greg is soft, hence, different from gems in Log Date 7 15 2.

Towards human beings, BD is more puzzled than angry. She cannot understand how their society works the way it does and why Rose Quartz thought it was worth protecting. In line with the theme, Blue is searching for answers. And in her interactions with human beings, she’s been most enlightened after a brief conversation with Greg. Only in that conversation did she realise that people were complex, that they could feel loss and regret, joy and a desire to move on. Blue is searching for answers but she doesn’t know how to find them, and that detachment, her approach to leadership and management, is shown to translate into her personal life.

4. Feeling things as a chest gem

What we know of BD’s gem abilities so far is that she’s able to push empathy onto others. She can send out waves of feeling that cause other people to feel the same way. So far, the strength of her emotion has been in sadness. I think, much like other gem abilities, it is something that can be directed and controlled. There are instances though, such as when Ruby and Sapphire are upset, that gem abilities can betray the gem. It speaks volumes of how emotionally fragile BD is.

My own theory on Gem Abilities is that they are suited to the role a gem is meant to play. Or rather, a gem’s role is determined by its abilities. Many gems have more than one gem ability, such as Sapphire, who has cryokinesis, and these abilities don’t seem to add up with the gems’ intended role. It really drives home how the gems’ rigid social hierarchy (and all of our conceptions of social hierarcy) is constructed, more an optimistic idea of how things should be than a plan given to Gem-kind with all the details.

This is no different for the Diamonds. From The Trial, we see BD has the ability to project her emotions on to other people. She is an influencer in the most literal sense. And, functionally, from the Gems’ utilitarian perspective, it would make perfect sense that she would take on a leader role.

There’s more than that, though, because that would be an ability present in all the Diamonds, such as how all Sapphires are able to predict events. Unique to Blue’s being a chest gem is how she interacts with the world. It is my theory that gem placement doesn’t determine personality per se. Rather, one’s gem placement acts similar to a sensory organ. It gives us a hint as to how gems interact with the world around them.

For instance, we see Garnet as very action-oriented, and she shows a lot of her feelings through touch and hand gestures, such as ruffling Steven’s hair or holding her hands together, looking at her hands. Eyeball is very sceptical, and so far she’s decided to believe in things only after she’s seen them, because she herself has seen some things. Steven goes with his gut a lot of the time. Of course there are moments when Garnet verbally expresses herself in those deep quotes, or Eyeball just up and believes the Crystal Gems and assents to go to Neptune, or Steven takes a lot of time to think up what to say to Connie in Bubble Buddies. Gem placement is a predisposition but it’s not the be-all end-all indicator.

A chest gem would interact chiefly through emotions. That is, the most vivid parts of Blue’s memories, for instance, would be how she felt in the situation. Even when thrust into a particular situation, as she was when interrogating Steven in The Trial, the strongest, most visceral things running through her mind would be how she felt about Pink Diamond, about Earth, about Rose Quartz in front of her.

And those feelings were not pleasant. The reason she reacted so strongly to Steven’s incorrect account was because she felt his dismissal of such an important and contested moment in her life. Similar to how some people vividly remember exactly where they were and what they were doing when an important historical or personal event occurred (the news someone passed away or gave birth to a child, for instance), it seems PD’s shattering is a flashbulb memory in Blue’s mind. It wasn’t just that he didn’t know the details, it was that, in his flippant answering, she didn’t feel he cared.

I’d like to point out here that emotions refer to the entire spectrum of feelings, not just sadness. Blue probably feels things a little more strongly than do other gems. For instance, in The Answer, Ruby and Sapphire’s lasting impression of BD is that she was very angry, to the point that her decision to have Ruby shattered seemed irrational in response to their accidental fusion. And there’s a good chance it was.

So Blue is more than just a sad, pretty face. We’ve yet to see her at her best. Even in The Answer, she was stressed over the possible rebel attack and she was anxious to know how the battle would turn out. We know that her approach to leadership is not to micromanage, and that does add to things seeming normal now that she’s isolated herself from her role even further while mourning. Nonetheless, a lot of it ties back to how Blue perceives the world, primarily through emotions. At present, those emotions are overwhelming, taking precedence over what she knows are her duties, and also her relationships with gems around her. More on those relationships in the posts of this series.



With all the things that have been happening, this post really took a while, but it feels great starting off another series of posts. As always I’ll link to the other post after they’ve been published. I’m looking forward to getting to analyse YD and comparing her with BD in The Trial.

Happy reading!