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theggning · 2 years

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The Ace Attorney Parenting Tier List

If there’s one thing our favorite anime lawyer series has a lot of, it’s murders. If there’s two things, then it’s murders and awful parents.

It’s harder to find a good, attentive, caring parent in these games than it is to find a well-adjusted prosecutor. But out of all the malicious schemers, child-abandoners, deadbeats and just plain dead people, who are the best and worst parents in the Ace Attorney series?

I have decided to rank them into a tier list using a highly scientific rating system.

Rampant, unmarked spoilers for the entire AA series within (including AAI1 and 2 and TGAA)

CW: child abandonment and neglect, some mentions of verbal abuse

In order to qualify for ranking on this list, characters must meet the following criteria:

They must be a named character with actual canon information about them. Offscreen or mentioned-only characters are not allowed (eg: Mia and Maya’s father, Pearl’s father, Mr. Hawthorne, other “headcanon” characters)

They must be a parent, or have taken on the role of a foster parent. No siblings raising siblings, or I’d have half the characters in the series on here. Having “big dad energy” or informally/sporadically protecting a kid doesn’t count (Sorry, Badd and Godot.)

They must be aware that they are a parent, have actually met their child, or have taken steps to do so. “Hypothetical” parenting assumptions are not allowed. (eg: That one character you’re thinking of from GAA is not here because he died before his child was born.)

Characters on this list are ranked from S through F tier, best parents at the top, taking into account the following criteria:

Absence: Is this person even available to parent their kid? Is it because they abandoned them or because they were murdered? (Being the victim of murder does not detract from parenting score, I go by what we know of them while they were alive.) Apathy: Is this person concerned for their child’s well-being? Do they take any steps to ensure their child is safe or taken care of? Do they pursue their personal goals regardless of how it affects their kids? Unpleasantness: Is this person a warm, caring, or kind parent? Or are they cold, difficult, cranky, demanding, or otherwise unpleasant to be parented by? (Parents with hard or unpleasant personalities are not necessarily mean or cruel.) Active Malice: Does this person take steps or make plans to actively harm their child? Do they knowingly partake in actions that will likely result in harm to their child? Scheming: Does this person involve their children in convoluted schemes? Are these schemes for their own personal benefit, or are they somehow meant to help the child in some way? (Almost, but not all of these schemes end up being terrible ideas.) Other Victims: Does anybody else have their lives negatively impacted by this person’s parenting choices? These actions must be related to this person’s parenting or kids, not just shitty things they do to others. This does include people who are victimized by the screwed-up kid’s later activities. Mitigating Factors: Does the parent have a good reason for their choices? Or are their decisions a result of events out of their control? Audacity Multiplier: Special consideration is given to circumstances which are over-the-top, absurd, highly unlikely in a realistic setting, or otherwise “super anime.” EG: summoning ghosts, international politics, or international politics that involve summoning ghosts.

As much as I joke about science and math, all rankings herein are heavily influenced by my own opinions. You are free to agree or disagree with my list (and I’d love to hear why!) Here are a few other factors that swayed my thinking, mostly in ranking characters within tiers:

Canon evidence is king. We all ASSUME Manfred von Karma was a rotten, awful dad in the day-to-day, but unless there is actual evidence to prove it, I don’t take headcanons into consideration.

Child abandonment is so prevalent in this series you have to dissect it further to get anywhere. I take into account why and how the kid was abandoned, how much control the parent had over the situation, and the parent’s motivations, if applicable. When you get to the very bottom of the list, I consider abandoning a kid less bad than ongoing cruelty or abuse towards them.

Actions speak louder than words. I judge these folks by what they do (or do not do,) not what they or the narrative says they think or feel.

Loving your children and being a horrible parent are not mutually exclusive. Plenty of the people on this list love their kids, but do a bad job of taking care of them.

Loving your children and being a horrible PERSON are also not mutually exclusive. Many of these characters are otherwise nice, decent people. Several are absolute bastards who do awful things. For the purposes of this list, I am only taking into account their parenting and how they treat their kids.

Without further ado, the unofficial Ace Attorney Parenting Tier List:

S Tier: SUPER Great Parents

The best of the best (admittedly, the bar is very low.) But these parents are not only great, they are alive and present in their children’s lives, and those kids are thriving.

Herlock Sholmes: Here he is, the best dad in the AA series. Sholmes gets an infant dumped in his lap by his deported bestie/boyfriend and proceeds to absolutely nail the parenting thing. Iris is safe, happy, well cared-for, and has her MD at age 10. Great DADtective is more like it.

Phoenix Wright: Our series protag also has fatherhood thrust upon him (in the middle of a massive life crisis, no less) but he takes to it with gusto. I ranked him below Sholmes both because he didn’t have to care for Trucy as an infant, and because he condones her being something of a con artist. Trucy’s doing great, though, and her New Daddy is a massive upgrade from her old one. (But Phoenix, could you please tell her about her mother and half-brother already?)

Damian Tenma: Damian’s just a big proud dad/pro wrestler willing to fake demonic possession and eat a murder conviction for his baby girl. Jinxie is a bit skittish due to growing up in a youkai-themed village, but I don’t take quirky or unusual upbringings into account if the kid is otherwise doing well. All these high tier good parents are pretty much on the same level, so the next few rankings come down to my whims.

Justine Courtney: Single career woman taking in her orphaned cousin and raising him right. In the tumultuous world of child acting, John will benefit from having a protective, strong-willed mother keeping an eye on him.

Plum and Winfed Kitaki: Yes, the literal yakuza outrank many of the other parents on this list. The Kitakis may have raised their son in the middle of a crime family, but they have now abandoned the glitz of the “family business” after the lifestyle nearly ended Wocky’s life. Winfred’s determination to pay for Wocky’s surgery with clean money is a refreshing bit of self-awareness and restraint, too. Your average AA parent would be committing sixteen murders or a couple poorly planned grand larcenies to get that money. Fun fact: the Kitakis are one of only two sets of married parents on this list.

A Tier: Good Parents with an Asterisk (Probably Dead)

The folks in this tier are also by all accounts good parents. There’s just some mitigating factor keeping them out of the S tier– mostly, that they have been murdered and are dead and no longer able to parent.

Dead parents in this tier had to have shown some sort of valiant, selfless, or just plain involved parenting before their demise.

Gregory Edgeworth: Would be a high rank in S tier were he not sadly deceased and unable to raise Miles. By all accounts, ol’ Greg Edgeworth was a fantastic, thoughtful, sensitive father who made his son’s well-being a priority at all times. This includes potentially lying to the cops when he was channeled after DL-6. RIP Greg, in Dad Heaven now.

Sister Bikini: Iris considers the delightful Bikini her mother, and believes Dahlia wouldn’t have ended up such a nightmare if Bikini raised her, too. Bikini’s asterisk is only because Iris spends much of her youth running around colluding in crimes, of which Bikini seems completely oblivious. (Where did you think Iris was going every day for eight months?)

Jeffrey Master: A nice dad who will do anything to protect his beloved foster daughter, Katherine. Her devotion to him is evidence of his excellent parenting. She’s also 16 when Jeffrey goes to prison on false charges, so his “abandonment” is negligible (and also out of his control.)

Courtney Sithe: Maria is a bit strange and has some morbid interests, but a quirky upbringing is by no means a bad thing. Courtney’s shady dealings do not extend to her daughter, who is also in possession of a medical degree at a very young age. They do, however, seriously upset and disillusion Maria onscreen, and this is what keeps Courtney out of the S tier.

Byrne Faraday: Single dad, obviously very attentive to Kay. The father-daughter promise notebook is very sweet and shows a high level of involvement. His death comes about due to unforeseen betrayal (and because he was secretly part of a three-person spy ring) but there is family available to care for Kay in his stead, which is honestly a rarity in this series. A contingency plan for your kid’s welfare? Instant A tier.

Inga Karkhuul Khura'in: Proving that personal character does not factor into parenting skill, awful bastard tyrant Minister Inga is actually a doting, caring father. He genuinely adores Rayfa (who he knows is not his blood daughter) and none of his schemes and power-grabs involve her in any way. Though he is a total prick to absolutely everyone else, he’s warm to Rayfa and she clearly prefers him over her mother. It’s especially fascinating to compare him to Dhurke (who, spoilers, is going to be way, way, way near the bottom of this list.)

Jove Justice: Alas, poor Jove. He doesn’t get much time to be a dad, but he was by all accounts a good one. Splits parenting duties fairly with Thalassa so they can both pursue their careers, and dies in the middle of saving infant Apollo from a fire (though he dies from murder, not from the fire.) I also want to give him props for getting Thalassa away from her own horrible father, albeit temporarily. Pour one out for Papa Justice, he was a real one.

Iyesa Nosa: I would normally consider a dad caring for his infant son “bare minimum” parenting and not worthy of extra praise. But given the time period and expected gender roles in Japan at the time of GAA, Iyesa taking on childcare duties when his measly salary can’t afford it otherwise is notable. Good for him.

B Tier: Bare Minimum Decent Parents

Parents who just like, do parent stuff for their kids without any wild circumstances or bizarre plots. Parents who don’t do any spectacularly negative things or whose parenting is unremarked upon either way also end up here.

Ernest Amano: The man himself is an obnoxious wealthy scuzzball. He does throw his money around for the sake of his equally obnoxious son, though, so I guess that makes him your basic decent parent. Eat the rich.

Lawrence “Moe” Curls: Moe’s daughter Larina is in the custody of her mother, who left Moe due to his failed clown career. He laments this state of affairs and worries how he’ll support her if the circus ends up closed. So Moe’s marriage is on the rocks and he pays child support, at the moment. Guy just seems to be in a rough patch, and hopefully his swap to ringmaster will help work things out.

Metis Cykes: Athena mistakes her mother’s chilly demeanor and experimental devices for a lack of caring about her, but this is a misunderstanding. Metis was trying to help her daughter and always had her best interests in mind, but was perhaps just not the warmest or most emotionally open mother to her. It happens that way sometimes. Otherwise, no reason to think Metis was anything less than decent.

Russell Berry: Regina is not the most well-adjusted teenage girl in the world, and Russell’s avoidance of conflict ends up tormenting Acro right off the rails. But apart from the recent tragedies, everyone speaks highly of Russell’s kindness, and he adopted Acro and Bat and raised them as his own sons. Good dad, if a tragically flawed one.

Genshin Asogi: Genshin dips off to London on a study trip for six years, but Kazuma is old enough at the time to understand this and exchange correspondence with him. Genshin then gets absolutely turbofucked by the entire British judicial system, which is in no way his fault. I also think the way he sent the liberating evidence proving his innocence back to Japan was pretty cool. Anyway, an unfortunate case of a good dad getting totally screwed over.

Amara Sigatar Khura’in: Amara is the victim of political machinations that make her think her own husband has betrayed her, and lives imprisoned under an alias. She raises Rayfa under this alias and seems to be a good and caring mother. However, her apparent callousness re: Nahyuta and the stunning naivety that lets her and her children get manipulated by her clearly evil sister for 20 years are worth a raised eyebrow. Getting pregnant while being actively hunted down by an oppressive regime is also pretty dumb. Amara, please learn to think for yourself and stop believing whatever the last thing that Ga’ran/Dhurke/Ga’ran told you.

C Tier: Parental Redemption Arc

These parents were not great, made some not-great choices, or were involved in not-great circumstances. They are now trying to do better. Not always successfully, but they are trying. Parents who actively take steps towards doing better are ranked higher than those who just kind of say they’re going to (or the goddamn writers haven’t let them yet.)

Yujin Mikotoba: Deep in the throes of grief, Yujin bailed on his newborn daughter and Watsoned around London for six years before being deported back into parenthood. He feels severely guilty for not existing in Susato’s life for all that time, and is now trying to make up for it by being an indulgent, supportive, feminist dad.

He still jacks it up here or there. Lying to Susato about being on his deathbed is pretty fucked up, but it is an attempt to protect her. And if we get into Kazuma and what Yujin does or does not know about that whole situation, things get even muddier. But he’s TRYING, which is more than I can say for a lot of these jerks. (I’m not counting baby you-know-who in here, because Yujin only had custody for a very short time and did indeed see the kid into capable, loving hands.)

“Twice-Fired” Mason: His wife left him, took the kid, and changed their surname to escape their miserable impoverished lifestyle. It seems Mason was more or less a deadbeat until Ashley re-established contact with him– albeit, so Mason could help him with a dangerous criminal conspiracy. Sensing trouble, Mason tries to intervene on his son’s behalf and ends up dead for it. Ashley’s proceeding actions (which I gotta say, are pretty metal) prove there was some fondness between father and son, but Mason’s life was cut short before they got the chance to fully reconcile. Bummer.

Colin Devorae: Another falsely convicted dad. Colin escapes from prison, goes into hiding working for the Amanos, and conveniently reunites with his daughter Lauren when she starts dating Lance. Colin uses this situation to watch over his daughter, but for some reason chooses not to tell Lauren who he is– info then used to blackmail him into doing crimes for Lance. Halfway through crimes, after Lauren is already involved, Colin tries to murder Lance to… prevent Lauren from doing crimes? What the hell is this timing, dude? He’s like half a bead off from actually protecting Lauren at any given moment. He also gets pointlessly shot and dies for this. C for effort, I guess.

Di-Jun Huang: Zheng-Fa President Huang was not aware he was a dad, but once he was informed about his love child he had every intention of taking responsibility. Unfortunately, he was assassinated before he ever got to do this. Huang is an edge case as far as my eligibility rules go, but his kid is actually born and he takes obvious steps showing he’s going to step up. That’s enough canon info to place him here.

Thalassa Gramarye: Thalassa holds the dubious honor of losing not one, but TWO children in spectacularly dramatic fashion, neither of which were her fault at all. It is entirely understandable how she could lose track of Apollo, given the chaos in Khura’in after the coup. It’s also not her fault that her own shitbag father chooses to use her near-fatal accident as an opportunity to be an asshole. However, it is probably about time that Thalassa comes forward to Apollo and Trucy. It’s been like three years and I’m not sure what she’s waiting for. Even the credits of SoJ think so. C’mon girl, get to it.

D Tier: Questionable/Criminal Parenting

Oh, now we’re getting spicy. These parents approach their duties with questionable or dysfunctional methods, up to and including using their children to do crimes. They are spared a lower tier by making an attempt to be decent, or at least not committing the spectacular fuckups of those below them. Yet.

Taifu Toneido: Maybe it was a quirk of being an old rakugo master, but being Taifu’s own kid seems like it was absolutely miserable. Geiru seems to think the only way to please him is to inherit his title, and she busts her ass to do so. The only acknowledgement she receives is worded like “you suck at this and you’ll never be my heir” when he allegedly means it more like “I can tell this isn’t where your passion lies and I want you to follow your own path.” He is so bad at relaying this idea that Geiru snaps and murders him quite brutally in a fit of pique. This is why it’s important for us to use our words, kids. Being cryptic gets you murdered by clown tits. EDIT/CORRECTION: Okay, can you tell I only played Turnabout Storyteller one time? I completely forgot that Taifu Toneido is not Geiru’s father, her father is dead and Taifu inherited the rights to the name “Uendo Toneido” from him. Whoops. Either way, he sounds like a really obnoxious master, so he can stay here in spirit.

Drew Misham: Drew starts off a decent dad, but chooses to use Vera’s prodigal artistic talent to create forgeries. Then he makes the quite literally fatal error of doing this for Kristoph Gavin. He is so terrified that Kristoph is going to show up and murder them that he goes full agoraphobic shut-in and cripples the already traumatized Vera’s social skills. Drew is absolutely correct to be afraid of Kristoph– but none of this would have happened if he didn’t decide to use his daughter for crimes in the first place. Womp womp.

Ga’ran Sigatar Khura’in: Ga’ran keeps Rayfa around mostly as a bargaining chip to use against her sister and nephew– it is made very clear that she’ll destroy Rayfa’s life if either of them step a foot out of line. She’s also cold, demanding, and unpleasable to the point where Rayfa clearly prefers her father.

Ga’ran does, however, put on a motherly facade and allows Rayfa to be comfortable and well cared-for, which is the only saving grace that keeps her from E tier or lower. Her lust for power and cruel actions are separate from her actual parenting ability, though they do deprive several other characters of their good parents (still doesn’t count, though.)

Notably, apart from the Kitakis, Ga’ran and Inga are the only married parents on this list. Unlike the Kitakis, they absolutely hate each other.

E Tier: Oh My God These Kids Need Therapy

Now we’re really in the dumpster. The people in this tier are either callous, cruel, spectacularly neglectful, or perform such outrageously fucked up actions that we can definitively say they are all awful parents. Some of these kids are so jacked up that they go on to victimize others– and the ones that don’t will definitely need the aid of a good therapist somewhere down the line.

This is where the audacity factor comes in. Some of these characters do such wild and dramatic things that it’s very difficult to compare them to more mundane bad parenting in the examples above.

Dane Gustavia: Gustavia’s complete and utter apathy at the disappearance of his kid is truly something to behold. Like man, this guy did not care at ALL when his son was traumatically kidnapped and vanished in the aftermath. This shocking neglect also creates one of the most fucked up monsters in the entirety of AA, who goes on to ruin the lives of multiple other people.

So why does Gustavia get to sit at the top of this tier? Because his parental carelessness is a one-time thing. He cares so little for his son that once he makes the choice to abandon him, he never gives another thought to the kid ever again. Other E tier residents screw up multiple kids, or make multiple bad decisions that I find more impressively galling. But make no mistake, the drop between Ga’ran up in D tier and Gustavia down here is MASSIVE. This guy’s an absolute prick.

Pierre Hoquet/Isaac Dover: AAI2 may as well have the subtitle “Ballad of the Bad Dads.” Pierre also screws up his son in spectacular fashion, but easily plummets down the ranks for masterminding the child kidnapping scheme. Commanding your weeping, pleading little boy to imprison his best friend and himself in a car where the two of them nearly freeze to death is certainly one way to win an episode of Top Chef. This situation is so fucked up I’m also docking Pierre for child abandonment, when he would normally be excused for that on account of being murdered. Absolute yikesburger.

Misty Fey: Perhaps a controversial position for her, but I did write an entire post about what a garbage mom Misty is. To summarize: disappears for 17 years due to perceived wound to family pride. Zero contact with daughters, even when one of them is murdered and the other goes through numerous traumatic situations which all make the news. Comes out of hiding to plan and participate in the nutty Hazakura murder prevention plot, which is a terrible idea on all fronts– but Misty agrees to it because it means she doesn’t have to face or talk to Maya (which she has no intention of doing. Ever.) The entire plot of Bridge to the Turnabout is just as much her fault as anyone else’s. There is also the bit where she tries to deal with a spirit trying to kill her daughter by BECOMING the spirit trying to kill her daughter.

Misty truly sucks at this, but I rank her worse than Hoquet and Gustavia because when they abandon their kids, it’s into the foster care system– meanwhile Misty abandons her 12 and 2-year-old daughters in the custody of the sister who openly hates her and covets her legacy. Why not just leave Mia and Maya in a snakepit? The snakes might not be venomous, but Morgan Fey definitely is.

What’s really sad is that the time and opportunity Misty had to get over herself and come back into her daughter’s lives is huge. She had 17 years and every chance in the world to do better, and she doesn’t. She never intended to. Her situation is resolvable, the tragedy is all preventable, and she lets it perpetuate for her stupid pride.

Misty claims she “never stopped thinking” about her daughters, and god damn that picture in her talisman makes me cry every time. But my tears have not blinded me to the fact that holy shit, she’s a horrible mother.

Dhurke Sahdmadhi: Another previous guest star on my blog. Dhurke is a noble person and a charming guy, and it honestly pains me to rank him below the likes of the AAI2 chef dads. Alas, the problem with Dhurke has to do with scale. The stakes in SoJ are ludicrously high, so when Dhurke fucks up his kids, it’s on like… an international level.

Being a wanted fugitive framed for a coup is not Dhurke’s fault, but again and again, he prioritizes his rebellion over the safety and well-being of his children. Note the plural, because Dhurke also screws up with ALL THREE of his kids. Because the revolution is “not his problem,” Dhurke abandons a 9-year-old Apollo in America (a country he has no memories nor cultural knowledge of.) He neglects to send Nahyuta along too, and he ends up right in the government meat grinder, breaking his spirit and turning him into a puppet of Ga’ran. He conceives Rayfa while on the lam, handing Ga’ran yet more collateral to hold over Nahyuta and Amara. And when he finally goes back to find Apollo, it’s to drag him kicking and screaming into the revolution, and a situation in which he will be executed if he fails. Apollo has every right to be pissed at him, and Nahyuta gets completely robbed of his own chance to be.

Dhurke is portrayed as a heroic and tragic figure who will do anything to protect his kids, but the latter claim falls apart with even the slightest bit of scrutiny. He means well and he may be trying his best, but good grief, Dhurke, your best absolutely blows.

Shadi Enigmar/Zak Gramarye: Abandonment of your daughter is one thing. The premeditated abandonment of your daughter that you orchestrate by tricking her into thinking it’s her first magic show is quite another. Zak is ready to ditch Trucy and peace the fuck out LONG before the tide in the courtroom turns against him, and makes no attempt to ensure she’ll be taken care of once he bounces.

The apathy alone would score him low, but Zak comes back for the malice points seven years later, aiming to destroy Phoenix’s reputation. You know, Phoenix. The man who is feeding and caring for his daughter. Why? I don’t know, pure spite? God, this guy is such a dick. I kind of don’t blame Kristoph for bashing his brains out.

Magnifi Gramarye: What the fuck is wrong with the Gramaryes? Magnifi was a world class asshole, impossible to please, and a nightmare to work for. But he wouldn’t be on this list if his shittery didn’t also include his daughter Thalassa. When she is shot in an accident during a rehearsal, Magnifi decides to take those lemons and make some lemonade– he lies about her “death” to threaten and blackmail his two apprentices, Valant and Zak (the latter of whom is also Thalassa’s husband. And also a jerk, but this is his wife, dude.) Meanwhile, he dumps his blind, amnesiac daughter off the back of the tour bus so hard she ends up a European pop star. How in the hell does that happen? Absolutely stunning.

If we counted his myriad apprentices as his kids, Magnifi would rank even lower on this list, because they’re still coming out of the woodwork pissed at him and seething for vengeance a decade after his death.

Manfred von Karma: What really makes ol’ Manny stand out from the crowd is the time and effort that goes into his bullshit. Adopting your rival’s orphaned son so you can raise him wrong as a joke and then frame him for murder twice over fifteen years later is a plan so petty, so devious, and so prolonged in its cruelty that it’s instantly a finalist for the Worst Father in Ace Attorney.

However.

After much deliberation, I can’t actually give Von Karma that title. Why? Because his sinister parenting was only targeted at Edgeworth, and did not necessarily manifest in mundane, everyday cruelty. I have no doubt that having Manfred von Karma for a dad is an intimidating and harrowing experience. He’s absolutely strict and domineering, and Franziska certainly has an inferiority complex- but there’s no canon information that Manfred was abusive to her or the unknown other VK kid at all. (One of the anime episodes even shows him being quite indulgent, if not a bit cold and stuffy.) We don’t know that he was openly mean to Edgeworth either, for that matter.

Don’t get me wrong, this is in no way a defense of him. The fifteen-year long game to ruin Edgeworth’s life because his dad got him written up at work is truly unhinged and over-the-top evil. Only on this ranking is it “better” that you only have sinister plans for one of your three kids, and Manfred is a truly magnificent example of an awful, awful father– but there is one AA Dad who’s even worse.

Also, please note that if this ranking was allowed to include all of the lives ruined by all of a character’s actions, Manfred von Karma easily takes the gold medal grand prize. I didn’t forget about DL-6, Manny, and neither did anyone else in this traumatized canon.

F Tier: The Worst of the Worst

Reserved for the absolute worst father and worst mother in the series.

Blaise Debeste: Absolute bastard, completely unpleasant in every aspect of his personality and character design. What lands Blaise down here beneath all these other atrocious dads is the explicit, onscreen verbal abuse he hurls at Sebastian at every given opportunity. Manfred von Karma makes cruel plans for his adoptive son, but we don’t see him degrading his confidence and calling him names. Other dads may abandon their kids without a thought, but at least those kids have a chance to get away from their shitty parents– Sebastian is stuck with Blaise, who is also implied to have “disappeared” his own wife, depriving him of his mother too. No other father in this series cares less and treats their kid with the same open contempt as Blaise Debeste, and that is why he gets the crown for Worst Dad.

But there’s still one parent worse than him.

Morgan Fey: With the given criteria, nobody else comes close. Morgan is bitter, spiteful, selfish, and cares nothing for her children beyond how they can help her reclaim the Kurain Master’s seat. When her twins Dahlia and Iris cannot, she gets rid of them (there’s some conflicting info whether Morgan gave them up or Mr. Hawthorne took them away from her– either way, Morgan doesn’t give a shit since neither of them have much spiritual power.) When Pearl turns out to have strong powers, the poor kid becomes the linchpin of all Morgan’s plans. She smothers Pearl and keeps her confined to Kurain Village, restricting who she talks to and what she learns (she can barely read and knows very little basic knowledge you would expect of a girl her age.) When Morgan’s first scheme to get rid of Maya fails and she’s arrested, she comes up with an even worse one.

The Hazakura murder plot is a grand culmination of Morgan’s spite, her selfish pride, and the way she views her daughters like tools– tricking an unwitting Pearl into summoning Dahlia to murder her cousin, then pinning all the blame on Iris. Sending Iris down for murder is pretty outrageous on its own, but turning her sweet, trusting 9-year-old into a murderer by proxy is whole new levels of twisted. (Dahlia also alludes that Morgan was planning to kill her– perhaps suggesting that if she had not been on death row, Morgan would off her for the sole purpose of this dumb plan.)

Every one of Morgan’s evil actions is directly tied to her children – and all of this is without including Mia and Maya, who were 12 and 2 when abandoned into Morgan’s custody. In case you need a refresher, she’s openly hostile to Maya, tries to frame her for murder and then tries to straight-up murder her.

As if all that wasn’t enough, Morgan’s monstrous parenting also gives rise to Dahlia, the second most prolific murderer in the trilogy, who ruins the lives of four additional people and almost takes out Phoenix Wright as well.

So congratulations to Morgan Fey, not only the Worst Mother in the series, but the absolute nadir in this cavalcade of bad parenting. By a long shot.

Quick Edit: One small revision, swapped two people. See if you can guess who.