Envy

About Envy

Envy is the most cruel of Father's Homunculi, a shape-shifter who can become anyone, a gift used to start wars and ruin lives, including the spark that ignited the Ishval conflict. Envy mocks human feelings, yet burns with jealousy of the humans it despises, a truth Edward forces into the open. Behind the many faces hides a small, wretched true form, both hateable and pitiful.

Appearance

Envy's preferred form is a lean, androgynous teenager with long, wild dark-green hair like palm fronds, violet eyes and a wide, mocking grin, dressed in a black cropped top and shorts with the Ouroboros tattoo on the thigh. That form is a costume: Envy can reshape into any person perfectly, voice included. The truth underneath is something Envy cannot bear to have seen, a small, wretched creature, and beyond it a monstrous true shape of enormous size, covered in the tormented faces of the souls inside its Philosopher's Stone.

Personality

Envy is cruelty with a grin: spiteful, teasing and addicted to watching humans suffer, betray and kill each other. Of all the Homunculi, Envy does the most to start human conflicts, and brags about it, including igniting the Ishval war. Yet the sin Envy embodies is aimed at Envy itself: beneath the mockery is a burning jealousy of human beings, of their bonds and their ability to stand back up. Edward is the one who finally says this out loud, and Envy's reaction to being pitied by a human is one of the most revealing moments any Homunculus gets.

Background & Story

Envy is one of the seven Homunculi Father created by separating his own sins into artificial children, each built around a Philosopher's Stone. As Father's most flexible agent, Envy works above ground among humans, infiltrating the military in borrowed faces, delivering orders, and sparking the conflicts the design requires. It was Envy, disguised as an Amestrian officer, who fired the shot that ignited the Ishval civil war. In the story's present, Envy crosses the Elric brothers' path repeatedly: watching them, taunting them, and guarding the secrets of the Homunculi with gleeful violence whenever the boys get too close.

Powers & Abilities

• Shapeshifting: Envy can take any human form perfectly (face, voice and build) making it the Homunculi's finest infiltrator and the spark of more than one war.
• Regeneration: Built around a Philosopher's Stone, Envy's body heals from wounds that would kill anyone else, as long as the Stone's power lasts.
• True Form: Envy's real shape is a gigantic beast formed from countless souls, immense strength at the cost of everything Envy pretends to be.

Key Relationships

• Father: Envy's creator, whose orders it carries out with relish, one of the seven sins Father cut out of himself and set to work on Amestris.
• Edward Elric: The human Envy loves tormenting most, and the one who eventually understands Envy better than it can stand.
• Maes Hughes: The investigator whose sharp eyes got too close to the Homunculi's secrets, a collision Envy personally arranges.

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