Melinda Desmond [Spy x Family]

Melinda Desmond (メリンダ・デズモンド, Merinda Dezumondo?) is the wife of Donovan Desmond and mother of Demetrius and Damian Desmond. She is also the chairwoman of the Lady Patriots Society.

Appearance

Melinda is a beautiful and fairly tall woman with long, dark brown hair, hazel eyes, and fair skin, marked a beauty mark below the right corner of her mouth. Her hair is styled in a short, wavy bob gathered into a low bun, with a few loose strands and short bangs framing her face. Similar to her son Damian, her eyes are narrowed and slightly drooping, complemented by long lower lashes and short, thin eyebrows. Melinda's usual attire includes gold, triangular-shaped dangling earrings inscribed with a circle and a small dot at the center. She wears a ring on the ring finger of her left hand and another on the middle finger of her right, both engraved with the same triangle and circle symbol. When appearing in public, Melinda often disguises herself by wearing a headscarf and sunglasses to conceal her identity. As the chairwoman of the Lady Patriots Society, Melinda is notably active, demonstrating athletic ability in activities such as volleyball games. However, due to the stress from her family situation, she often carries a tired expression. While dressed as the fortune teller Lunaluna☽Selena, Melinda lets her hair down while donning an indigo fortune teller's outfit, complete with a face veil and a masquerade mask to hide her face.

Personality

Melinda is an energetic and cheerful lady who hides a dark, conflicting nature. While with others inside her circle, she is kind and sociable. When Melinda first meets Yor and witnesses her amazing physical skills, she immediately takes a liking to Yor and wants to befriend her. While spending time together, Melinda treats Yor kindly, patiently teaching her to work with a team and encouraging her to enjoy herself. As she does not have a lot of friends she can be herself around, Melinda does not appear to worry too much about status and wants those around her to be themselves. As such, when she first talks with Yor, Melinda deliberately hides her identity from her, as she genuinely wanted to be friends with Yor without any preconceptions. Melinda also seems to be a little naive, as she believed that she would get kicked when Yor mentioned that Loid practices "concussive therapy," to the point of refusing to be treated by him if he ever performs it on her, and even trying to defend herself from him when they first meet. As a member of the Desmond family and the former First Lady of Ostania, Melinda acts with grace and maturity, as she is aware of who she represents and seeks to uphold the duties those roles have. She also shows an empathetic side, as seen when Yor's co-worker, Millie Myers, who lost her father to the second war against Westalis, accuses Donovan of starting the war and associates Melinda with him. In response, Melinda apologizes to Millie and empathizes with her feelings, sharing that she also has her own family and would resent someone if she lost any of them. Afterward, she kindly thanks Millie for helping at the event, and her respect is returned as Millie apologizes for her words. Additionally, as the chairwoman of the Lady Patriots Society, Melinda wants a good reputation for the group, discouraging her members from making unsightly displays of themselves and policing others' behaviors. Similar to Donovan, Melinda also has a small and exclusive circle around her. Following the National Unity Party's loss of power, Melinda stopped involving herself in politics, mainly communicating with her household staff and the few close friends whom she knew before she became the First Lady. She also stopped making public appearances, but when she goes outside for outings or helps at city events with the Lady Patriots Society, Melinda always wears a disguise. One of Melinda's closely kept secrets is her hobby of practicing divination as a fortune teller. She believes in destiny and mysticism, and, likely due to her suspicions about her husband, keeps an open mind about the existence of supernatural things like ghosts, UFOs, telepathy, and so on. Melinda genuinely enjoys her hobby and admits that it is one of the few things that brings her comfort. However, she keeps this secret as it could negatively affect Donovan and others around them, as well as out of embarrassment, believing a woman of her age and status should not like those sorts of things. In private, however, Melinda is a much different person, filled with anxiety and paranoia. Following Donovan's sudden change into becoming a quiet recluse after losing power, Melinda became wary of her husband's shift in personality, which eventually grew into an intense fear of him as she became convinced that he could read minds. This later developed into Melinda believing that Donovan was taken away by an alien who assumed his identity. Unsure of what her husband has become, Melinda has tried to protect herself from him, which takes all she has and leaves no room to protect their two sons as well. As such, whenever Donovan randomly decides to engage with the boys or ignore them completely, Melinda willingly follows along, even though she has never been ordered to do so. For example, when Yor tried apologizing for Anya punching Damian during their school orientation, Melinda brushed it off with a laugh, citing that Donovan did the same, then shut down Yor with an unexpectedly cold expression when she insisted further. As a result of this distancing, the Desmonds have become estranged from each other. This greatly pains Melinda, who wishes to be more of a mother to her sons, especially her youngest, Damian. Although Melinda genuinely loves Damian and hopes the best for him, for reasons currently unknown, her fear of Donovan seems to have distorted her view of him, as she views him as a curse that she often wishes would go away. Melinda's suffering from this has reached the point that she, at Yor's recommendation, visits Loid for a consultation to discuss her problems with him.