| “ | If I gave apologies, I would give you one right now. | „ |
| ~ Cleo de Nile |
Cleo de Nile is one of the main protagonists in Monster High. She is the daughter of the Mummy and the sister of Nefera de Nile. She has a boyfriend named Deuce Gorgon.
She is voiced by Aya Saitō in the Japanese version, and by Salli Saffioti in the English version, who voiced Clawdeen Wolf. In the music video for the Monster High Fright Song, there are several character analogues who received creative interpretation by the video crew. The mummy girl is portrayed by Megan Mackenzi.
Personality[]
Cleo's royalty, and expects everyone to treat her like it. Usually, her attitude is selfish, spoiled, arrogant, and unkind; she can't be entirely blamed for her behavior, because it's shown that she was raised to be like this. She is extremely competitive with other ghouls, especially Toralei Stripe. But deep down, Cleo's a very caring, kind and thoughtful ghoul with a sweet hearted boyfriend.
Although Cleo has been known to take advantage of her friendship with Ghoulia Yelps by using her as a personal assistant or cheating off of her, she's very kind to her and helping her to overcome her shyness, showing that she really does care about Ghoulia and their friendship.
She can work well with the others if they share a common goal, like trying to avoid the gym teacher or helping Draculaura find her "perfect guy", in which case she becomes the de facto leader of the ghouls. She's a highly effective organizer and leader.
In the first half of the season webisodes, Cleo is primarily played as an antagonist, and has a rivalry with Clawdeen Wolf. But she becomes nicer to the ghouls, and in the second season she's finally confronted with her own uncompromising, overbearing nature when all the fearleaders except for Frankie Stein quit the fearleading squad, and gets along much better with the ghouls.
Appearance[]
Cleo de Nile is a mummy in the possession of long black hair with brown and gold highlights. Her skin is mocha colored, smooth and flawless. She has turquoise eyes (sometimes green). Many parts about her points to her regal heritage, such as her ever-present burial wrappings, which she has to wear lest she disappear into dust, and a crystal birthmark under her right eye.
Relationships[]
Family[]
Cleo lives with her father and older sister Nefera de Nile "in this palace that looks like a movie set with servants and all.... they're like rockstars or something. In the books, her dad's name is Ramses de Nile, and he's an antiques dealer. There's so far no mention of Mr. de Nile's wife, Cleo and Nefera's mom. In The Ghoul Next Door, Nefertiti is said to be the girls' aunt.
In the webisode "Miss Information", Cleo mentions having an older sister called Nefera de Nile, who's out of the country with their father. Clawd's School's Out diary also mentions Nefera being the previous fear squad captain. Nefera is said to be a model in Cleo's School's Out diary. Based on both the and the webisodes, Cleo and Nefera do not get along very well.
In Generation 2, she has three younger siblings named Pharrah, Lux and Sandy.
Friends[]
At the beginning of the series, Clawdeen is angry with Cleo for dumping her brother Clawd, but now Cleo and Clawdeen are best friends and on the fear squad together. She is friends with Ghoulia Yelps, and they even plan their school schedules together. Ghoulia often serves as Cleo's personal assistant ("Copy Canine", "Mad Science Fair"), but also shows her great kindness as well. She is sometimes bossy and demanding to the other ghouls, but she's also shown to be afraid of opening herself up to deeper friendships and making herself seem vulnerable. As the series has progressed, she has mellowed out and become much nicer and BFFs with the other ghouls.
Pet[]
Cleo de Nile's pet is a snake named Hissette, whose attitude reflects Cleo's. In the Monster High books, Deuce gave Hissette to Cleo as a gift, saying she was his mom's 'first gray hair', yet in her diary, it was stated thet it was given to her as a gift from Egypt. In the books, Cleo also has seven cats named Chisisi, Bastet, Akins, Ebonee, Ufa, Usi, and Miu-Miu. This is a reference to how cats were worshipped in Ancient Egypt.
She has a pet kitten that was included with her 'Ghoul's Beast Pet' doll.
Romance[]
Cleo's dating Deuce Gorgon. She used to date Clawdeen Wolf's older brother Clawd, but according to Ghoulia it ended badly. She said that it doesn't help that Cleo started dating Deuce the next day. Even if Deuce occasionally gets tired of her competitive personality, his feelings for her are true.
Books[]
In the books, Cleo is much nicer to the other girls, even Clawdeen (mostly due to their status as RADs), with whom she made her first appearance. Apparently she was one of the most popular girls at Merston High, despite being a RAD.
In Monster High, Bekka hates her because she kissed Brett, who was Bekka's boyfriend at the time. Cleo and Melody have a constant feud, which started with Melody accidentally bumping into Cleo in the school cafeteria. Cleo kisses Jackson, turning him into DJ, and Melody eventually starts using Deuce against her.
Cleo helps out with Frankie trying to get the RADs out of hiding when she learns Deuce is going to the Monster Mash with Melody. Cleo also calls Melody "Melodork" in the first and second books, although they eventually end up trusting each other.
In The Ghoul Next Door, Cleo is one of the few monsters who are against the idea of human-monster equality. When she is offered a photoshoot for Teen Vogue, she does everything in her power to get her friends involved. When Brett's idea of a video is introduced, she hates it, mostly because it's the same day as her photoshoot; she tries to put an end to it, losing her friends in the process. When all hope seems lost, she forms an alliance with Bekka, which backfires when the uncensored video is aired and all her friends believe it was her doing.
In Where There's a Wolf, There's a Way, Cleo clears her name during a big R.I.P and is one of the few RADs who stay in town, due to her not being shown in the video. She and Melody become good friends after discovering a common hatred of Bekka. Later on, she, Melody, and her servants set up Clawdeen's sassy sweet 16th, where she flaunts her RAD status.
She competes with Frankie in Back and Deader Than Ever in a competition that will pick a couple from Merston to represent the school as the it couple in a nation-wide contest that will sponsor a school and give a million dollars to the winning school. Here she shows her competitive side and her ruthlessness; her relationship with Frankie is more strained in this book. However, at the end, she and Frankie make-up and salvage their friendship.
Gallery[]
Videos[]
Trivia[]
- Cleo has the ability to charm snakes, but refuses to do this to manipulate Deuce.
- We learn in "Daydream of the Dead" that Cleo has at least 10,000 servants.
- In the "School's Out" line, Cleo was voted "Most Likely to Command Attention", and in an official Facebook photo, she was voted "Most Likely to Leave a Legacy".
- We learn in "Hiss-teria" that Cleo is afraid of spiders. This comes up again in "Escape From Skull Shores".
- The hieroglyphs on Cleo's vanity translate to Klio, the first part of how the real-life Cleopatra's name was spelled. In Ancient Egyptian, there is no letter representing an "e"-sound and phonetically the "e" in "Cleopatra" was and is treated as an "i". Meanwhile, Ancient Egyptian had three letters for "k", one for the "c/k" sound, one for the "kh" sound, and one for the "q/k" sound. Cleopatra's name was spelled with the latter "k".
- Cleo is nyctophobic, or afraid of the dark after being entombed for millenia.
- Cleo's catchphrase is "Oh, my Ra!" as a replacement for "Oh, my God!"
- In the books, Cleo uses the word "Ka". Although Ka means "soul" in terms of the Ancient Egyptian religion, it is also the Egyptian word for "Bull". When Cleo uses the word "Ka" in the Monster High books, she uses the latter meaning, for example: "Take the ka by the horns".
- Cleo was the main antagonist of "New Ghoul @ School", one of the main protagonists in the later films, and the main protagonist in "Boo York, Boo York", in which her sister Nefera was the main antagonist.
