Alice Margatroid

Template:InfoboxAlice Margatroid is a heroic female youkai from Touhou who is known primarily for her skillful manipulation of many miniature dolls, most notably Shanghai and Hourai. One of a few known people to live in the Forest of Magic, she's a skillful magician who is also known for being a loner. She gets in many fights with Marisa Kirisame but nevertheless the two of them are acquaintances, sharing many of the same interests and even teaming up during Imperishable Night and Subterranean Animism as well as such non-canon titles as MegaMari. Alice always holds back even if it means losing due to the fact that she, unlike Marisa, is much more interested in strategy and hates having to win a fight from sheer overwhelming power.

Appearance

Alice has short blonde hair, orange (or blue or green depending on game appearance) eyes, and carries a black book and is accompanied by a small red-clothed doll. She wears black boots and a light blue dress with white sleeves, a white capelet and pink ribbons and a red ribbon in her hair.

Relationships

Marisa Kirisame (Neighbor/Friend)
Shanghai (Doll)
Hourai (Doll)
Goliath Doll (Doll)

Trivia

According to the Omake Notes for Mystic Square, the inspiration for Alice's grimoire came from the game Asura Blade, which features a young necromancer girl also named Alice who controls the dead with a book.
Strange and Bright Nature Deity chapter 6 has Sunny Milk attempting to lie to Alice, but accidentally blurting out the truth instead. Among her ramblings, she mentions that she's looking for a magician with a grimoire that "shines wonderfully with all the seven colors of the light". Alice does not deny this to be false. It is possible this is the in-universe explanation for her title, "Seven-Colored Puppeteer".
Being known as the "Seven-Colored Puppeteer" or "Rainbow Puppeteer", Alice apparently believes in a correlation between color and power level. During her dialogue with Reimu Hakurei in Perfect Cherry Blossom, she asserts Reimu's powers are only equal to 28.5714% (or 2/7) of her own powers, due to Reimu's outfit only consisting of two colors. This appears to be a recurring theme in Perfect Cherry Blossom, as Yukari Yakumo, Ran Yakumo and Chen are all named after colors and have relative power levels equivalent to their colors' place on the visual spectrum.
This has not be referenced in recent games though some fanart references this.
In some official material, like Imperishable Night's Prologue and Strange and Bright Nature Deity chapter 5, Alice's dolls appear to be able to act and talk independently, but according to her Perfect Memento in Strict Sense article, she hasn't yet succeeded in creating an independent doll, and a conversation between Marisa and Rinnosuke Morichika in Curiosities of Lotus Asia chapter 16 suggests that Alice just controls the dolls and pretends they are alive for her own amusement and for showing off.
Alice's alternate palette from Scarlet Weather Rhapsody resembles Hina-Ichigo, a doll from the manga series Rozen Maiden. In Touhou Hisoutensoku, she has palettes resembling the other Rozen Maiden dolls: Suiseiseki, Souseiseki, Suigintou, Shinku, Kanaria, and Kirakishou. Add the fact that, in Rozen Maiden, the aforementioned dolls are battling for the title of "Alice", the perfect doll.
Alice is the only boss who appears 3 times in a single stage: Twice as a midboss and the third as the actual boss of stage 3 in Perfect Cherry Blossom.
According to Aya Shameimaru during her interview with Eirin Yagokoro, Alice has been a recurring customer of Eirin's, coming to see her to buy a medicine she developed called Kochoumugan (Butterfly Dream Pill). The medicine guarantees its imbiber to have pleasant dreams once they fall asleep, and was even featured in an article in Aya's newspaper. The reason for purchasing this medicine or even what kinds of dreams Alice is trying to have were never revealed, but instead are left purely to speculation. However, this might be a reference to "Alice in Wonderland", from which the concept of her character is derived.
Because Alice, unlike Marisa, is much more interested in strategy and hates having to win a fight from sheer overwhelming power, she always holds back even if it means losing.
Her Mystic Square stage 3 title "Girl of Death" may be a Megami Tensei reference as there is a demon in the game known as Alice based on the Alice in Wonderland story that is known by the same title.
Alice may be related to the story of Dolls in Pseudo Paradise. A big connection between the two involve how one of the honest men died from being "nailed to a tree" despite being inside, relating to Alice's article in Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red about her nailing straw effigies to trees. Other connections include how the men stumble upon a "Western-style building deep within the forest" and how the culprit was a "beautiful blonde girl", both of which relate to Alice.