Raven (Teen Titans 2003)

"You may have created me, but you were never my father. Fathers are kind. Fathers protect you. Fathers raise you. I was protected by the monks of Azarath. I was raised by my friends. They are my family, this is my home, and you are NOT welcome here! Azarath Metrion ZINTHOS!"

- Raven, as she denounces Trigon as her father while proceeding to completely destroy him.

Raven is the secondary female protagonist of the 2003 animated series Teen Titans. She is a half-demon, half-human hybrid from the inter-dimensional world Azarath, one of the five founding members of the Teen Titans, and the daughter of Trigon the Terrible. Initially she is an aloof ally to the Ttians, only with them because she has nowhere else to go. Overtime, however, she starts to open up to them, especially Starfire and Beast Boy, being lifelong best friends with the former and having an implied crush on the latter.

She is voiced by Tara Strong, who also voices Talwyn Apogee and Juliet Starling.

Character History
Arella, Raven's mother, was chosen to become the bride of the demonic Trigon. Abandoned by the demon rather than her becoming his queen, Arella was bent on suicide (while carrying Raven) when she was taken in by the pacifistic disciples of Temple Azarath, a group who had centuries earlier forsaken life on Earth to pursue their own nonviolent lifestyle.

In their inter-dimensional world, Raven, Arella's daughter by Trigon, was born. Fearing that the child would bring evil among them, Juris, a magistrate of Azarath, attempted to cast the infant Raven into Limbo, only to be destroyed himself. Azar, the spiritual leader of the temple, then took the young Raven under her personal tutelage, instructing her in the truth of her parentage, and in pacifism, meditation, and the submergence of her emotions to resist Trigon's influence, while perfecting her powers of teleportation, astral projection, and empathic healing.

Later, after Azar's death (in which she entered another plane of existence), when Raven was plagued by prophetic dreams of Trigon and, defying her teachers, she confronted her demon father in Limbo at his bidding. Trigon spared her and Arella after satisfying himself that, upon his return when she reached adulthood, he could seduce Raven into becoming his ally. When Raven turned fourteen, she sensed Trigon's power returning and fled to Earth.

She arrived at Jump City, where she met several super-powered youths fighting a rampaging alien girl. Raven managed to discern the girl's true reason for her demolition work and convinced the others into a more peaceful approach, which won them the alien's friendship. Despite Raven's obvious insecurity, the others invited her to join them in defeating the truly hostile aliens the Gordanians, who had attempted to enslave the girl and her presence proved ultimately essential to the motley crew's triumph over the Gordanians. Afterwards, the group decided to stay together and formed the original Teen Titans.

Though Raven, still feeling alienated from her new friends, remained distant to them, the other Titans soon came to learn more about her origins. First, Beast Boy and Cyborg inadvertently ended up stranded inside Raven's own mind, where they met the personifications of her separated emotional aspects and also encountered and fought the manifestation of Trigon's heritage inside her. Soon afterward, a backfired plot by the Puppet King left Raven and Starfire stuck in each other's body, creating a new sense of empathy between the girls. Finally, when Robin was haunted by a drug-induced hallucination of his enemy Slade, Raven linked with his mind and saw glimpses of Robin's past, including his initiation by Batman and the death of his parents.

Raven helped the Titans for years, working alongside the other four to protect Jump City from villainous menaces. She was consistently invaluable to their success. Eventually, however, Raven's past caught up with her: On her birthday, Slade (who had been presumed dead) reappeared, wielding new powers and marked with a symbol which Raven could not fail to recognize. Slade deliberately led the Titans to the place where Raven's true destiny was to be fulfilled to serve as a living portal for Trigon to conquer Earth. Seeing no other choice, Raven finally told her teammates the truth about her past — but instead of being rejected, the other Titans remained with her and took the greatest pains to prevent this from happening.

Slade and an army of Trigon's fire demons attacked Titans Tower to fetch Raven. The Titans decided to fight him, but Raven, unwilling to see her dearest friends hurt on her behalf, knocked them out of the fight and secretly imbued them with some of her powers to protect them from the apocalypse to come. When the portal was opened with her powers, Raven was apparently consumed, but in fact her human half remained alive in Trigon's domain, regressed to childhood and left powerless. Left in a world turned into a living horror, the Titans still refused to give up without a fight. With some help from Slade, (who had been betrayed by Trigon) Robin made his way to Trigon's underworld, found Raven and took her back to the surface, even though she was spiritually shattered by her role in the shaping of events. Finally, the Titans and Slade faced Trigon in a final onslaught. But even as they were struck down, Raven realized that all was not hopeless, and this realization sparked a new hope within her soul, allowing her to regain full maturity along with her powers. Under a righteous wrath, she used the sum of her powers to destroy Trigon, reverting Earth back to the way it was and finally ridding herself from the last vestiges of her dreaded heritage.

Personality
Raven obviously wishes to do good but cannot deny the dark power within her and has spent her entire life fighting her destiny; to bring Trigon to Earth and end humanity. It's only when she does accept her fate in "The End", Raven was able to find peace of mind.

Raven is emotionally unattached, apathetic and anti-social but is heroic and selfless like all Teen Titans. She displays no emotion; knowing when she does it causes her power to go crazy and is normally very serious which counteracts with people like Beast Boy and Cyborg's upbeat and energetic demenour however Raven isn't just completely stuffy and does possess a sense humour but is normally deadpan, sarcastic and dry. One of Raven's defining traits is her constant broodiness and her tendency to almost never smile. She much more prefers to meditate in silence and can be cold to people like Terra or even her fellow Titans nor does she divulge about her past which makes her appear "creepy" however in later seasons she becomes more open with people she trusts such as Robin. Because of her purpose to bring her father to Earth, Raven can be intensely self-loathing and more than often isolates herself from the rest of the Titans. She also opens up to people whom she thinks understand her such as Malachi, a character from an enchanted book who was in reality corrupting her with dark magic.

Though Raven doesn't give in to emotion easily she is not emotionless. She also makes it perfectly clear she has a bad side, and whenever this occurs her cloak rises in height and only her mouth can be seen whereas her eyes turn into four and become red with her voice matched with an echo wrapped in a sinister undertone. Raven becomes considerably darker after this transformation, actually coming close to killing Doctor Light once she was provoked by the latter. In the same episode, Cyborg and Beast Boy discover that Raven's emotions are fractured, her rage is personified by the form of her father, Trigon. She also became extremly emotionally enraged while fighting Terra. Raven also sees herself above fear and is normally extremely brave and courageous however she was obviously terrified after watching a horror movie which actually manifested into her subconscious, making her have nightmares which manifested other Titans making them believe they were being attacked by a monster.

So far the only people Raven shows affection for is Beast Boy, whom she hugged after he comforted her after she was betrayed by Malachi and Robin whom she hugged after she was able to defeat Trigon.

Physical Appearance
Raven's appearance is seen as dark and mysterious throughout the series. Her superhero outfit is mostly made up of her favorite color, dark blue/indigo. She usually wears a blue cloak with a hood, with matching blue ruffled ankle-boots with blackish-gray soles, with a leotard-like long-sleeved shirt that is blueish-black with cuffs at her wrists of the same blue of her cloak. On her cloak, she has a circular black/red jewel set in a gold plate that attaches the whole thing together; it covers her T-communicator and it's fixed to beep/glow when there is trouble as seen in some episodes. The jewel also sometimes has a raven head shape in the jewel. Around her waist she has a red and gold belt with the same jewels around it, while her legs are exposed. The belt ties at the back like a cord. Her hair and eyes are violet, and as seen in the episode "Birthmark", Raven cuts off the extra hair that she had grown. In "Switched", Raven despises Starfire's long hair, which may conclude why she likes to keep it short. She has a red and black bindi on her forehead, that she was born with. She has very pale, almost gray skin, which makes her appearance somewhat demonic.

Raven, being half-demon, has used her demonic appearances on several occasions, though often the use of her demon form causes her to lose control. Raven's demonic form has proven effective in getting results, such as bringing about Doctor Light's swift surrender (twice), and scaring Gizmo in Crash to get him to repair a virus-contaminated Cyborg.

When Raven wears Robin's uniform in The Quest, she fits it just fine, as she is the closest to Robin's height and build.. When Mother Mae-Eye infiltrates the Tower and puts the Titans under her control, she turns Raven's blue cloak into a yellow Shirley Temple dress with matching bows in her hair, but her boots remain blue in color. Mother Mae-Eye then says "Just because you're evil on the inside doesn't mean you can't look pretty on the outside." This outfit puts her at a disadvantage fighting Jinx, contributing to the team's defeat by the H.I.V.E. Five. However, despite her demonic appearance, she is shown to be quite attractive and beautiful, as Adonis took a liking to her, and in the Teen Titans Go! issue "The Great Race", Kid Flash considers her pretty and stops in the middle of the race to flirt with her. When she is in 'demonic' state a second pair of eyes appear where her eyebrows are.

Cloaked White Raven
White Raven is a special form that Raven has assumed under unique circumstances, four times throughout the series for multiple reasons. White Raven is Raven's most primal, significant and powerful version of herself, mostly shown as a symbol of her highest hidden power and her inner purity to fight, and thus free herself of the consuming evil influenced by her interdimensional-demon father.

The first instance occurs within the multidimensional realm of Raven's own mind, an ethereal place where Raven's separate emotional forms are capable of independently existing. Ravens emotions unbalanced and her rage unleashed from within during the Titans' brief but powerful clash with Doctor Light. The second when she was being tutored by Malchior, unknowingly being taught dark magic. The third instance occurred whilst and after she defeated her father and freed herself from his control. The fourth time actually occurred in the Titans Go! comics wherein Beast Boy (whilst babysitting Melvin, Timmy and Teether) breaks her mirror and causes the several aspects of her personality to manifest in the real world; for a time Red Raven (who represents her father's influence and her own anger) is separate from the rest of Raven, and to symbolise her cheerfulness she dons a white cloak and leotard instead.