Grell Sutcliff

About Grell Sutcliff

Grell Sutcliff is the flamboyant Grim Reaper of Black Butler, a soul collector with a custom chainsaw Death Scythe, a wardrobe built around red and a hopeless, dramatic crush on Sebastian. Introduced as a suspect's useless butler in the Jack the Ripper case, Grell quickly became one of the franchise's most popular characters, equal parts comic relief and genuine danger.

Appearance

Grell is impossible to miss: waist length crimson hair, yellow green reaper eyes behind red framed glasses on a chain, and a mouthful of sharp, shark like teeth. On duty Grell wears a black suit softened by a striped ribbon tie and, famously, the red coat taken from Madam Red, worn draped off the shoulders. Every movement is a pose, entrances are treated as stage cues, and even Grell's chainsaw shaped Death Scythe is customised to personal taste rather than regulation issue.

Personality

Grell is theatre all the way down: melodramatic, flirtatious, vain about appearance and incapable of entering a room quietly. Moods swing in seconds from swooning over Sebastian to cheerfully threatening murder, and complaints about overtime can interrupt a death scene. It is easy to mistake this for harmless comedy, but Grell is a reaper who joined a murder spree for fun and fights Sebastian as an equal at full power. The flamboyance and the danger are the same person, and everyone who forgets the second half regrets it. Overtime, in Grell's book, remains the true enemy.

Background & Story

Grell Sutcliff works for the Grim Reaper Dispatch, the organisation that collects souls and reviews the dying through their Cinematic Records. Reapers are former humans serving out a kind of sentence, equipped with glasses, a Death Scythe and a mountain of paperwork, and Grell chafes under every rule of the job, especially supervisor William T. Spears' endless overtime. Grell enters the story disguised as the clumsy butler of Angelina Dalles, Ciel's aunt, better known as Madam Red. The Jack the Ripper investigation exposes the truth: Grell had been helping Madam Red carry out the murders, joining in personally, which a reaper is strictly forbidden to do. Caught by Sebastian and stripped of the beloved chainsaw as punishment, Grell returns in later arcs back on duty, turning up wherever death is busy, at the circus, aboard the Campania and beyond, always torn between collecting souls, chasing Sebastian and stealing the scene. Undertaker, the legendary retired reaper, is one of the few beings Grell genuinely admires, which says a lot about Grell's taste in role models.

Powers & Abilities

• Chainsaw Death Scythe: A modified scythe that lets Grell cut into a dying person's Cinematic Record, playing back their memories as film. It also cuts through almost anything physical.
• Reaper strength: Grell matches Sebastian in open combat more than once, with the speed, strength and durability expected of a Grim Reaper.
• Soul collection: As a working reaper, Grell judges and collects the souls of the dying using the Cinematic Record, deciding with the Dispatch whether a life ends or continues.

Key Relationships

• Sebastian Michaelis: The object of Grell's extravagant affection. Sebastian returns none of it, which has never slowed Grell down for a second.
• Madam Red: Angelina Dalles, Ciel's aunt, was Grell's partner in the Jack the Ripper murders. Grell admired her devotion to red and to revenge, in that order.
• William T. Spears: Grell's strict supervisor at the Dispatch, who hands out punishments and overtime. Grell flirts, complains and disobeys, and William keeps assigning work anyway.
• Undertaker: A retired reaper legend Grell openly admires. Their shared scenes hint at how much of the reaper world sits outside the Dispatch's rules.

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