Chapter Text
In this essay, I'll be reviewing all canon information about Bellatrix Black Lestrange and analyzing it for characterization details. I'll finish it with a summary of important information about her characterization, physical appearance and skills, and relationships with other characters.
I'm using information exclusively from the books for a few reasons.
The movies follow the general plot outline of the series while rearranging characterization and worldbuilding details for reasons like timing, pacing, perceived audience appeal and the directors' choices. In general I don't consider them the same "world" as the books because of all of these differences. When it comes to Bellatrix in particular, the movies portray a very different character, and trying to integrate both versions together is only going to muddy the waters.
As for extracanonical information like JKR's interviews, twitter, Pottermore, etc, details tend to change over time as JKR creates additional works and changes her opinions. Staying in compliance with extracanon is therefore a moving target requiring combing through vast quantities of information, some of which is hard to access. I don't think it's realistic to try to stay in compliance with extracanon, and I don't want to spend a lot of time trying.
Finally, I'm not subjecting CC to the same level of analysis because it was written for the stage and appears to make use of different conventions of realism* and visual effects, and many of the scenes appear in alternate universes with an unclear relationship with canon. I will occasionally reference how the basic premise affects interpretation of events of the series if accepted.
Bellatrix appears on the latter four Harry Potter novels, all for brief snippets of time. I will be going through her appearances in the order they come in the books. Generally an essay like this wouldn't quote or summarize huge chunks of text, but I'm doing it here anyway because I find it's common that memories of canon warp to accommodate or more closely reflect fanon over time. When quoting text, I indicate gaps with ellipses. In some cases I have removed superfluous dialogue tags without them. Sometimes I indicate which character is speaking in brackets.
I will also refer to her by her first name only, as there are three Death Eater Lestrange characters, while one of the characters who describes her most frequently is her cousin Sirius Black; either surname would be confusing, but there are no other Bellatrixes in canon to confuse her with. Other characters are mostly referred to in the terms Harry uses in the narrative voice, eg. Sirius, Snape, Wormtail, Tonks, except to disambiguate when necessary, eg. between Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange.
I refer to the books primarily by abbreviations of use in fandom, eg. OotP, GoF. Page numbers may vary between editions.
*ie. if I have to accept that the Hogwarts Express snack trolley has been run for more than a hundred years by a woman whose identity has been subsumed by the train to the point she no longer remembers her own name in order to take CC as strict canon, I am not going to do that.