A Brief Guide to Sword Lady
As of this writing, Aurora has six main characters. But there are hints floating around that there might be one more member of the "Floof Squad" yet to be introduced. In the absence of much further information, we call her "Sword Lady", and this is everything we know and can reasonably speculate about her.
She first appeared, as did all of the comic's current protagonists, in the early videos of Red's Trope Talk series, before the comic actually launched. Her debut cameo was in the third video, "We're Not So Different", in a drawing with Kendal where he talks to her about swords. It should be noted that Red has confirmed that Trope Talk appearances aren't canon for Aurora characters, but sometimes canon characterization is still present.
In "Strong Female Characters", Red mentioned she'd originally conceived of Sword Lady as a male "warrior prince" character before deciding to "add some estrogen". This fits well with a later admission on Reddit and Discord that Sword Lady's first draft was an "incredibly blatant" clone of the titular character of Samurai Jack, an animated TV show centering on a samurai warrior prince with a magic sword who is sent through a portal to a bad future by a demon king, and seeks to find his way back home to defeat the demon once and for all.
The other most important Trope Talk appearances are her cameos in "Rule of Three" and "Time Travel", as both position her firmly alongside the other main characters of Aurora and implicitly a part of the group.
Red mentioned a character with a shapeshifting sword on an episode of the Overly Sarcastic Podcast, in response to Blue offering up an idea of a sword that takes whatever form is needed when drawn. Sword Lady's known swordswoman status and inspiration by magic sword wielder Samurai Jack suggests this is also her.
Sword Lady may also be the future left-handed character Red mentioned on Discord (as Kendal is technically ambidextrous).
One of the most prevalent sources for hints of Sword Lady have been sketches on social media:
From the since-removed sketch page on the comic website, Tess comparing biceps with Sword Lady. (source)
A "stylish princess". It's not clear if this is specifically Sword Lady, or someone connected to her, but since she's also a princess… (source)
A sketch from Red's Twitter (not linked for obvious reasons), of a "sneaky girl with a complicated outfit. It has pockets!" This appears to be Sword Lady herself, as this was also tagged "#aurora spoileralis".
The long wait for any sort of actual appearance of this character has spawned a lot of theories. I will not be listing all of them. What I will be listing is a few theories about her that logically extrapolate from what we do actually know about Sword Lady, namely that she's a warrior princess with a shapeshifting sword.
She's almost certainly from one of the four Crystal Empires, which dominate two of the major eastern continents, as they are notably the only region currently confirmed to have mortal royalty.
The speculation specifically narrows down Sword Lady as likely being from the Emerald Empire for the following reasons:
The Emerald Empire is, unsurprisingly, ruled by the Emerald Caste, who are associated with the colour green. Sword Lady is also drawn as green in almost all of her Trope Talk appearances.
The Emerald Empire is more open and welcoming to non-Crystal-Caste than the other Crystal Empires, and that might likely extend to befriending and working with the other heroes, who are very much not Crystal-Caste.
The Emerald Caste has, across Red's social media, been given more specific lore drops than the other Crystal Empires combined. One detail in particular that fans have noticed is that Red said there's one empire where the oldest female descendant of the imperial family inherits the position of spymaster and head of the secret police, and elsewhere she named the Emerald Empire's secret police as the Left Hand – leading to the possibility that Sword Lady is specifically in line to inherit that position.
We're Not So Different (7:03)
Strong Female Characters (3:41)
Paragons (several appearances)
Power of Friendship! (3:00)
Unreliable Narrators (6:32)
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