Lucy van Pelt

Lucy van Pelt (sometimes referred to as Lucille) is a major female character in the Peanuts comic strip and the animated TV specials and movies based on it. She is the older sister of Linus and Rerun.

Lucy has the third most appearances in the TV specials, ranking below Linus, who appears in all but two specials, and Charlie Brown and Snoopy, who appear on every special and movie. Lucy is absent from What a Nightmare, Charlie Brown, What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown?, Snoopy's Reunion and It's the Girl in the Red Truck, Charlie Brown.

Personality
In the early days, Lucy was introduced as a baby who would deliberately annoy her father, asking for a drink of water at the worst times. She was shown to have a slight crush on Charlie Brown and wondered if they would ever get married, and she liked to annoy him too by asking him to read her stories among other things. In 1953, Lucy started to become known as a "fussbudget" as she fussed a lot, a name which Lucy took as a compliment. Lucy was able to complain about anything, even dumb things, for instance in the strip from October 28, 1954 she is upset when she receives a Halloween pumpkin that is not blue.

As the years went on, Lucy would become one of the most complex and commonly recurring characters. Her personality became more stubborn, crabby, vain, loud, temperamental and even violent, turning her into the most antagonistic character in the strip. Most of the strips she appears in show her threatening, complaining and/or taunting. She is easy to anger when she does not get what she wants. Occasionally, she is shown doing something selfless and caring to others when she is calmer, especially to Linus, the keyword being occasionally.

Lucy is rather creative at throwing insults that are completely uncalled for in both subtle and outright offensive ways, usually to Charlie Brown, but her general knowledge and common sense remained at the bottom of the ocean after her personality change: she is dumb enough to say things like "I hate it when I'm not around!" and "Snow comes up from the ground!". She also lost her baseball skills (she was initially a good player) and turned into the weak, terrible baseball player she would remain as for the rest of the strip's run, but would still show up for almost every game just because Schroeder does the same.

Lucy often prefers to do things in brute force ways, attempting to cure Linus' need for his security blanket by simply taking it from him, and giving nothing but brutal and obvious advice from her psychiatry booth (which she opened in March 27, 1959). Like Charlie brown, Lucy does not tend to quit, especially when it comes to her unrequited love for Schroeder, whom she is very confident and openly flirtatious around without realizing or caring much that she is rudely interrupting his piano practice.

Charles M. Schulz described Lucy as an outlet to his darker personality.

In the later years of the strip, after the birth of Rerun van Pelt, Lucy begins to soften up and become nicer, without completely abandoning her tendency to moan.