Yor Forger

"I don't need to be at peace. I don't care if I have to bloody my hands. Even if it means living a life that could end at any moment... Even if it means having to leave the Forger family... I think Loid would respect that. He would understand. That's why I won't give up this fight!"

- Yor Forger in Chapter 53

Yor Forger (ヨル・フォージャー), née Briar (ブライア) is the tritagonist of the SPY x FAMILY series. While she works as an ordinary office clerk at Berlint City Hall, she also leads a secret life as a Garden assassin under the code name "Thorn Princess" (〈いばら姫〉).

Needing a cover to continue her job as an assassin, Yor enters a fake marriage with Loid Forger with the intention of fulfilling both of their respective goals and subsequently becomes the adoptive mother of Anya Forger.

Appearance
Yor is a very beautiful, graceful, and fairly tall young woman with a slender, curvaceous frame. She has long, straight, black hair reaching her mid-back with short bangs framing her forehead and upturned red eyes.

At home, Yor generally wears a semi-backless red off-shoulder sweater with black tights, a red skirt, and brown-heeled ankle boots. She wears a white headband and a pair of dangling gold earrings in the shape of small spikes. When going outside, she typically wears a long beige coat with black buttons over her clothes. She splits her hair into two parts and crosses it over her head, securing it with a headband and forming two thick locks of hair that reach below her chest.

At Berlint City Hall, she wears the standard work uniform, consisting of a long-sleeved white shirt with a sleeveless green vest over it, a knee-length green office skirt, and black heels.

As an assassin, Yor wears a form-fitting halter-style black dress that shows off her shoulders and cleavage, with a rose choker and a red rose pattern on the inside of her skirt. The front of the skirt is mid-thigh length, while the back reaches below her knees. She also wears a pair of black thigh-high boots with a rose symbol at the bottom of their sole and black fingerless gloves. The headband she wears is gold colored with a rose and two spikes on each side. Her weapons are of the same color as well. She wears a hairstyle similar to the one she wears as a civilian but in a more elaborate updo formed from braids wrapping around her head. This outfit was the only good dress she had before marrying Loid, after which she purchased more formal wear to better present herself for Eden Academy's interview.

As a child, Yor had shorter hair that reached just below chin-length. As she grew up, she gradually grew out her hair to her current length.

Personality
Yor lacks social skills and initially comes across as a somewhat aloof individual, interacting minimally with her co-workers and being rather straightforward, described as robotic by Camilla. Similarly, Yor is remarkably collected and able to keep her composure during combat. She is incredibly polite, to the point of asking her assassination targets for "the honor of taking their lives". Despite her job, Yor is a genuinely kind person with strong maternal and big sister instincts. After becoming a family with Loid and Anya, Yor becomes more expressive and opens up to her co-workers, asking for help on being a better wife or cooking. On one occasion after getting drunk with her co-workers, she is described in thought by several, including Camilla, as being "adorable" and "pure." She is protective of her faux family, especially towards Anya, whom she has no trouble defending with extreme violence. By contrast, however, she appears not to be bothered in the slightest by the almost comically brutal acts of murder she commits on a regular basis. Although she seems to believe that all her targets deserve their fate, she tries to kill everyone quickly so as not to provide unnecessary torment. She has similarly little regard for her own life, and noted at least once that if someone managed to kill her on a job, she would view it as entirely fair.

Due to spending most of her life as an assassin, Yor's ways of thinking are often highly deviant. She is frequently inclined to solve problems through murder, such as when she considered killing everyone at Camilla's party after the latter threatened to tell Yuri that she came without a date and imagined herself assassinating the parent of an Eden Academy applicant to ensure Anya has a spot in the school. She also briefly considered killing Fiona when she believed Fiona to be competition for Loid's romantic affections. She is, however, well aware that these thoughts are not to be acted upon, and is always seen chiding herself for having them afterward. She appears to have a deep aesthetic appreciation of bladed implements and was seen to be captivated at one point by a painting of a guillotine, and at another by a table knife.

Somewhat counterintuitively, Yor is extremely gullible and naive and is easily fooled by the ridiculous lies Loid tells her to hide his identity. Despite her professional competence, Yor has a startling lack of common sense, at one point for instance asking Camilla if boogers made coffee taste better in response to her suggestion that they put one in their superior's coffee. On another occasion, she answered Loid's question about Anya passing an exam by talking about causes of death, having apparently confused passing [an exam] for passing away. At another point, Loid mentioned to Anya that dogs do not discern consonants well, and Yor somehow misinterpreted it as him saying that dogs do not discern between causes of death well. She then immediately proceeded to have a daydream about threatening Bond with various forms of death that he refused to choose between. What little common sense she does have disappears almost entirely under the influence of alcohol. In short, Yor is exceptionally skilled regarding the planning and execution of her job while clueless when it comes to nearly all other situations, often thinking in terms of how her assassin skills might apply to them.

As was previously alluded to, Yor is prone to having nonsensical flights of fancy, a tendency that appears to be significantly exacerbated when she is intoxicated. For instance, once after becoming drunk at a dinner with some of her female co-workers, they joked to her that wanting to kill one's husband over essentially nothing was normal. So, in an effort to appear normal, she picked up a table knife and strode to the restaurant door, all while having a daydream about asking the Shopkeeper for permission to kill Loid "for the sake of preserving her marriage." She then imagined herself facing off against Loid and telling him: "As a normal person, I need to murder you so that nobody discovers I'm really a killer," then proceeded to enter a bloody fight with him. However, she snapped back to reality after being stopped at the door by a waiter who told her that leaving with the cutlery was not allowed, at which point she rushed back to the table and tearfully proclaimed that she could not go through with it because killing was wrong. Her rather bemused friends ultimately believed that she had been simply going along with their joke, leaving Yor even more distressed about not seeming normal than before. During that same instance, she also strongly considered revealing that she was an assassin because she drunkenly thought, due to her co-workers' joking, that people normally turned into killers after marriage and that she was only unusual in that she had been a killer beforehand.

Yor is shown to be insecure about herself and her domestic abilities, believing she is not good at anything apart from killing or cleaning (which is admittedly true), and she constantly worries that she is not a good wife or mother as a result. These insecurities are exacerbated by the fact that Loid is so diligent and skilled that he takes care of all their household tasks almost incidentally. Basically, by the time Yor has even thought of some particular task that might need doing, odds are that Loid has already taken care of it and then some. This often leaves Yor feeling as though she contributes very little to their family arrangement. However, because she is painfully aware that Loid's general life skills are vastly superior to her own, she feels as though asking to take on more household tasks would be both silly and counterproductive, leading her to simply try to pitch in where she can. As Anya once rather aptly described her: "she's strong but fails at everything else." However her insecurities regarding Anya at least have largely been put to rest by Loid. During an evening out, he affirmed to her that her parenting skills, honed over many years of caring for her brother, were far important to him than her domestic skills or lack thereof. He further noted how much he valued her ability to make Anya feel safe, and her dedication to keeping Anya out of trouble. As such, he requested that she continue in her current role indefinitely, a proposal to which she happily acquiesced. In spite of her domestic ineptitude, she is determined to learn how to care for a household due to her desires to share Loid's exceedingly heavy workload and to be a better mother to Anya.

Abilities and Skills
Immense Strength: Despite her slim frame, Yor possesses monstrously superhuman physical abilities. Her punches and kicks are strong enough to generate mild but noticeable air currents. She is capable of easily piercing human skulls with her weapons, and of throwing them hard enough to break through a wooden door and impale someone on the other side. A thrust from one of her hands was once seen to destroy a pumpkin, and she possesses a grip strong enough to help her climb up sheer walls. Yor also has enough leg strength to jump an entire floor while carrying a woman and her child. Her kicks can move speeding cars, throw grown men through ceilings, and serve as her preferred method of close combat to devastating effect. They were powerful enough to knock out Loid when she reflexively kicked him in the chin, something that had not happened to him since his training days. She was even able to knock out a fellow assassin by throwing a mere button at his neck. While attempting a strength-tester game, Yor destroyed the machine with a one-handed swing. Even Yor's dodgeball throws were able to fell trees.

Yor has difficulty controlling this strength, especially when pretending to appear as a normal civilian. While taking cooking lessons from Camilla, Yor accidentally sliced up the cutting board she was chopping vegetables on. During a tennis match against Fiona Frost, she accidentally diced a tennis ball from the power of her swinging too hard. While she held back her strength on her next serve, it was still so powerful that Frost, a WISE agent with considerable strength, could barely hold back the ball until her racket snapped. Frost claimed the ball would have been sent flying a mile away if she had not tried to hit it. While playing volleyball, Yor had to hold back her strength to try playing on even grounds with everyone, to varied success. Two accidental slaps from a drunk Yor were enough to cause Yuri to bleed excessively to the point that some passersby were concerned and recommended that he should go to the hospital. By her admission, she had accidentally broken two of Yuri's ribs from a hug when she was in her teens.

It should be noted, however, that it is difficult to determine the exact parameters of Yor's strength, as oftentimes her feats are played for laughs and include physics-defying aspects. Additionally, other characters sometimes perform superhuman feats of strength or speed without the sort of consistency that Yor demonstrates, generally in a comedic manner. In more dramatic situations, her capabilities tend to be reigned to a significant degree. However, the levels of strength that she demonstrates in serious scenes are still undeniably superhuman.

Immense Speed and Reflexes: Yor is imperceptibly fast and agile. Despite moving in heels, she can jump and land from tall heights, effortlessly knocking out a raging cow, perform several parkour maneuvers while traveling to Eden Academy, and move fast enough to intercept and kill another assassin who was fast enough to evade Matthew McMahon's bullets.

She also has remarkably quick reflexes, being able to intercept a falling tray of hot food with just a motion of her leg and dodge rifle fire. Perhaps most emblematic of this was an instance where she dodged a pair of garden shears thrust at her head by another highly trained assassin, the Shopkeeper, despite having been distracted beforehand. She was also able to dodge Sickle-and-Chain Barnaby's blade, being only able to detect his bloodlust at the last minute. Yor's level of coordination is also impressive, capable of forming a sitting position without actually resting on the chair (due to the injury she sustained in her glutes) and catching multiple falling packages with her hands and feet and the previously mentioned tray of hot food, only spilling a few drops.

Yor is fast enough on foot to outrun a car, as she ran past Melinda Desmond's car on the way to pick up Anya after the bus hijacking. How fast the car was going is, however, unknown, and she has been outrun by Bond on at least one occasion.

Immense Durability and Stamina: Yor can withstand a gunshot wound to her glutes and move well enough to arrive home after treating it, though this feat caused her considerable pain and left her in a bad mood. During the fight on Princess Lorelei, she was able to kill over 22 assassins nonstop, coming away with only a jammed finger, a chest wound, and some swelling on her face. While rushing Becky Blackbell to the hospital after falsely assuming she was intoxicated, Yor was struck in the side by a car. Despite being sent rolling, Yor got up, caught Becky, and continued running with little issue, save for minor bleeding on her face.

Master Hand-to-Hand Combatant: Befitting her position as an assassin, Yor is highly trained in hand-to-hand combat, typically relying primarily on kicks when not using her trademark stilettos. Her skills are so great that she was able to keep Twilight, WISE's top spy and one of its most skilled combatants, on the defensive, despite Yor being heavily intoxicated at the time. It should be noted however that Loid was not trying to fight back, and stayed defensive so as not to harm her. Similarly, she has shown the ability to effortlessly dispatch both untrained thugs and even fellow assassins purely with her bare hands.

Cleaning: Having to clean up the aftermath of her assassinations left Yor with near-unrivaled cleaning skills, which she uses to keep the Forger home spotless.

Intuition: Despite being rather airheaded in her day-to-day thought processes, Yor is quite competent when it comes to performing genuinely serious tasks. This competence is at its peak when it comes to her job as an assassin. For instance, she appears to have extensive knowledge of pressure points and was able at one point to use this knowledge to incapacitate a rampaging cow. She has similarly extensive knowledge regarding general human anatomy, though the knowledge seems to be focused on how that anatomy might be used to most effectively kill someone. She displayed a sharp intuition at the Eden Academy interview, sensing the gazes of the faculty members but being unable to locate them. Yor can even sense the bloodlust of her enemies unless they are skilled assassins like herself. She is also perfectly capable of performing all the duties required by her job at City Hall.

Yor also possesses adequate medical knowledge to treat a gunshot wound, which healed without complications.

Poison Tolerance: Yor is highly resistant to poison. She drank a cocktail laced with the body fluids of a pufferfish, a family of fish that contains a neurotoxin that is lethal in the micrograms. Her only symptoms after ingesting the cocktail were a tingling sensation and an inhibited sense of pain which helped relieve her gunshot wound. During the fight with the assassin army on the cruise ship, she withstood inhaling a poison gas capable of taking down a bear.

Intimidation: Though unintentional in some cases, Yor has struck great fear into people on numerous occasions, even upon animals such as cats and trained dogs, usually with frightening faces. She was also able to intimidate a fellow assassin, Sickle-and-Chain Barnaby, making him freeze out of fear at the near conclusion of his fight against the Thorn Princess.

Weapons: When in combat, Yor uses two golden stiletto-type weapons. They have a handle with a thin, circular loop at the butt and a long, conical point designed for stabbing and thrusting. She has yet to be seen using them outside of her assassin work. Yor uses them to stab into an opponent's head or arteries, though she has demonstrated the ability to throw them with great speed and force. These weapons are a reference to the thorns of a wild rose. If needed, she can use her earrings as a projectile.

Teaching: Yor has shown to have decent teaching skills, specifically when it comes to physical training. She has taught Anya and Becky how to punch to become strong. She also taught Anya how to prepare to play dodgeball, explaining to her how to perform a "secret ball throwing technique."

Weaknesses
Alcohol: In line with her significant resistance to poisons, Yor capable of drinking alcohol in quantities that would incapacitate or kill a normal human. On one occasion, she downed a martini and an entire bottle of scotch back-to-back in a matter of seconds and remained physically unaffected. However, she has no such resistance to becoming intoxicated and is comically lightweight. For instance, she once became completely drunk off of a single round of beer with her co-workers. She also has a tendency to use alcohol to try to calm her nerves in situations where she feels overwhelmed, and it backfires far more often than not. Instead of relaxing her, intoxication seems to make her rather temperamental and aggressive, as she is willing to use her martial arts against Loid and barely misses throwing a fork at Yuri, grazing him. She seems to share this trait with Yuri. It also seems to significantly amplify her insecurities and her generally silly perspective on life. After getting drunk with her co-workers, for example, she was convinced by them that having no gripes about Loid as a husband was abnormal. So in an effort to appear normal, she attempted to invent gripes to tell both her friends and Loid himself. This left Loid completely flummoxed, as her gripe was essentially that she had nothing to gripe about, but she was too intoxicated to articulate that to him. After sobering up (while tailing Loid to the hospital on Yuri's completely unfounded suspicion that he was having an affair), she immediately realized how ridiculous the whole situation was and managed to explain herself to Loid later that evening.

Cooking: Due to only considering the nutrients involved and not the taste of her meals, Yor is consistently bad at cooking and usually leaves the task to Loid. When she does attempt to cook dinner, she is unaware of what ingredients to buy and opts to get one of everything instead (including random objects such as cacti), thinking that she can make something as long as there are meat and vegetables. Her attempt at cooking breakfast for the family resulted in meals consisting of messily chopped fish parts and other borderline-inedible concoctions, prompting Anya to call her a terrible cook. Even the prospect of Yor cooking or tasting her cooking is terrifying to anyone familiar with her.

Yor's dishes cause virtually any taster, even Loid, to collapse (in one case, sending Loid to the toilet for an entire day). The only individual shown to be able to withstand Yor's cooking is her brother, Yuri, but he violently throws up between bites and even recalls seeing his life flash before his eyes. Despite this, Yuri grew up with no significant health issues. Even Bond once imagined himself dying as a result of Yor's cooking, and once collapsed after tasting a small portion of a meal she had made. The only dish Yor successfully cooked was her late mother's southern stew after Camilla gave her several cooking lessons and helped her recreate it.

Her skills with bladed weapons are completely inapplicable in cooking, as while using a knife, she sliced meat razor-thin and destroyed a cutting board. On the same occasion Yor also badly injured herself using a potato peeler, prompting an exasperated Camilla to ask how such a thing was even possible. Despite all this, Yor has a strong desire to improve at cooking, regularly having Camilla teach her despite her frequent injuries, and is elated on the few occasions she manages to make something edible. While she still continues to inadvertently injure herself while cooking, her skills have begun to show improvement, although, according to Anya, only "like a teeny, tiny bit." She is also shown to make comically large messes when she cooks, the detritus of which can include tools that are completely unrelated to cooking, such as a saw or a mallet.

On a somewhat similar note, she seems to have difficulty with other domestic tasks that do not involve cleaning. For instance, Yor at one point thought to do Loid a favor by ironing one of his shirts and succeeded only in setting it on fire.

Lying: Yor is a terrible liar and the various excuses she invents to explain away things like her bizarre levels of strength tend to work only through sheer luck combined with people being aware of her generally scatterbrained personality. For instance, when introducing Yuri to Loid, Yuri asked her why she neglected to tell her own brother that not only had she gotten married, but that she had supposedly been married for an entire year. Loid had privately suggested to Yor that she simply tell Yuri the truth about their marriage of convenience, but Yor convinced him that she had a better idea. However instead of suggesting something Loid would have considered plausible, Yor simply told Yuri that she forgot. When pressed further, she elaborated that not only did she forget to tell Yuri about her marriage, but then forgot that she had forgotten. While it mildly exasperated Yuri and flabbergasted Loid to a degree, Yuri did not question her answer as it was completely in character for her. When unintentionally displaying her powerful skills around Loid and Anya, she attempts to explain it with comically unlikely excuses. In one instance she claimed to have learned about pressure points capable of paralyzing a rampaging cow through a yoga class, and in another, she attempted to explain away her strength as a consequence of having once apprenticed as a blacksmith. Loid, largely due to his own exceedingly abnormal perspective, has yet to take issue with any of these explanations, while Anya is of course aware due to her powers.

Book Smarts: Because Yor has been working as an assassin since she was a child, she appears to have not learned much from school to the point that Yuri would be teaching her more than she did when they studied. Despite this, Yor has enough basic literacy, typing, and organization skills to get a job as a clerk at city hall as an adult. She is also completely functional as an adult in the society in which she lives, and she successfully cared for her brother, alone, from the time he was a small child into adulthood. However, she had no idea what the term First Lady meant, and once when trying to solve a math problem on Anya's homework, she became distracted by imagining a gingerbread man being dismembered and failed to do so.

Insecurities: Yor's biggest weakness is her low self-esteem. Because of this, she is very insecure about herself and is often seen believing Loid is disappointed with her and feels unfit to be a wife and a mother. This makes her prone to imagining situations that are far from reality and misinterpret things, such as thinking that Loid is having an affair with Fiona, his co-worker, and is planning to abandon her. Much later, Yuri suggested to her that Loid was having an affair after he suddenly rushed off to deal with an emergency. Despite not believing that to be the case, the mere possibility was upsetting enough to distract her for the remainder of the day. Perhaps her single greatest insecurity, however, is her feelings of general abnormality. She seems to have absolutely no idea what "normal" people do or why, which leads her to have significantly overblown concerns about not sticking out. It also often results in her catastrophizing entirely benign situations. For instance, she once parkoured all the way to Anya's school to deliver her P.E. uniform, as she thought that if Anya did not have it, she would be expelled. Not only was that not the case, but Anya had deliberately left the uniform at home as she did not have P.E. that day.

Chapter Appearances

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Anime Appearances

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Trivia

 * Yor's maiden name, rose motifs, and codename hint at the inspiration for her character being drawn from Little Briar Rose, which is an alternative title for the fairytale Sleeping Beauty.
 * Yor's pointed earrings are traits that she shares with Ashe, the character of Tatsuya Endo's previous one-shot Rengoku no Ashe.
 * Yor dislikes insects, to the point she hates even looking at pictures of them.
 * Before meeting Loid, Yor had never been in a romantic relationship with a man throughout her life, even though she had an appealing appearance.
 * Yor's chair, featured on the cover of the third volume, is a La Chaise designed by Charles and Ray Eames.
 * Yor likes eating apples.
 * Yor is from Eastern Nielsberg.
 * When Yor was younger, her favorite Whistle Candy flavor was apple.
 * Yor and Yuri used to hunt rabbits in the mountains when they were children.
 * In the fanbook, when Loid, Fiona, and Yuri's combat abilities are questioned, it is always in comparison to Yor, who is a 10 in pure physical capability.
 * Yor's weapons are inspired by the stilettos that the protagonist uses in Ken Follett's spy novel Eye of the Needle.
 * During the development phase, Yor's job was originally going to be that of a janitor but was later changed to her current one at City Hall.
 * Endo has stated that making Yor into a contract killer "has been a problem from the start," as he has difficulty depicting her killings in an ethical way.
 * Endo has also stated that he created the Cruise Adventure Arc with the intention of getting readers to appreciate Yor's role as a killer, and to ponder what it means to kill people not in a battle of good versus evil, but in times of war.
 * Yor's first name - "Yoru," is a Japanese pronunciation of "Yol" which is a shortened form of an Eastern European name "Yolanda". "Yoru" is also the kana reading for the kanji for "night" (夜), but despite popular belief, Tatsuya Endo did not plan for her name to be a homophone of that.
 * Yor's name was originally romanized as "Yoru" until Chapter 10, when it was licensed by Viz Media.
 * Yor originated from Tatsuya Endo's love of fighting heroines, particularly Princess Alena from the Dragon Quest series.
 * During the original sketches, many outfits were created for Yor, from her civilian clothes to her assassin outfit. One such outfit shows Yor dressed like a nurse and another appears similar to Eden Academy's uniform, sharing its gold accents.
 * It appears that Yor was originally going to have a friend who "meddles in her business." Said friend appeared to share a characteristic with Yuri, as they suggest introducing Yor to a man.
 * Yor had several names such as "Eve" and "Nei," all with the surname "Tolliver." Her assassin code name appeared to always be intended as "Thorn Princess," though "Foil" (フルーレ) was another name considered.
 * Yor had many traits that carry over to her current design. She is described as "The Strongest Assassin," "stronger than the protagonist [Loid]," "deceived by the protagonist into playing the mother role with a daughter [Anya]," "ditzy, dumb, naive," and having "no feelings about anything." Other elements while developing her character were that Yor "sees herself as having no value to society outside of killing," and "falls in love with the protagonist and attempts to covertly kill the daughter who stands between them."
 * In Episode 2 of the anime, Yor's personnel file has the date "06 APR 63." This may be her date of employment, as neither the calendar year has been revealed nor has her birthday been disclosed.
 * According to Franky, Yor has nice handwriting.

Quotes

 * (To Vice-Minister Brennan): "I apologize for the intrusion, but... may I have the honor of taking your life?"
 * (To herself, referring to Anya): "I know that this family is just for appearances. But… I still feel like… I want to be a better mother to that girl… Maybe I'll never be like a normal mother, but I'll do my best with what I've got!"
 * (Regarding the Forger family): "It was a surprise to me too. The only attachment I've ever had was to my brother. I never imagined I'd find a place like this, that I was so unwilling to leave behind."
 * (To the Assassin Leader): "Yes, I killed them. Why wouldn't I? When you point a blade at someone, you don't get to complain when one is pointed back at you. Same goes for me."
 * (To herself, remembering her family): "The world is soiled with needless tragedies. to prevent just one of them from befalling him or anyone else... requires thorough cleaning. And that hasn't changed. In fact, it's more true now than ever."
 * (To Loid): "I know that you can do pretty much anything by yourself. And when times are hard for you, you try to spare me from it. But I don't think you need to be so perfect all the time. So when you actually asked me for help just now, it made me kind of happy."
 * (To herself): "My parents are gone, and Loid's are too. So Anya's never experienced having a grandparent before. I guess I never have either, but... You can't miss what you've never known, so I can't say I was ever sad about that. But I wonder if that's true for Anya as well?"