Franziska von Karma

Franziska von Karma is the daughter of veteran prosecutor Manfred von Karma, and she is Phoenix Wright's rival in Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice For All as well as the acting prosecutor for the trial of Iris of Hazakura Temple. She is known to carry a whip with her at all times, which she often uses on almost everybody she meets. Although she has a formal tone, to the point of addressing everyone by their full names, von Karma very often uses the word "fool".

Early life and career
When Franziska von Karma was two years old, her father took in an orphaned Miles Edgeworth, with whom she shared a sibling bond. However, Edgeworth tended to do his own thing, leaving von Karma behind. Feeling overwhelming pressure from her father's reputation as a "perfect" prosecutor, as well as her adoptive brother, von Karma started her prosecuting career in Germany at the age of 13, which would be around the same year in which Edgeworth started his career. Compounded with her perfect record up to her arrival in America, this earned her a reputation as "the Prodigy". Like her father and Edgeworth, she would go to great lengths to get a guilty verdict, using her father's tactics in her efforts to match his fame.

Encounters with Phoenix Wright

 * Main article: Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice For All

In 2017, von Karma learned of her father's loss to defense attorney Phoenix Wright and his subsequent conviction for the murder of Gregory Edgeworth. She also learned of Miles Edgeworth's losses to Wright and his subsequent disappearance. Von Karma traveled to Los Angeles to face Wright in court; if she won, she would have beaten a lawyer that Edgeworth could not, getting her revenge for being "left behind".

Von Karma first faced Wright in the trial of Maya Fey, accused of the murder of Turner Grey during a spirit channeling at Kurain Village. She would whip anyone who she felt was out of line, including the judge. When she was revealed to have manipulated the witness testimony, Wright quickly condemned her as being no different from her ruthless father. She proved to be a formidable opponent for Wright, even having researched the Kurain Channeling Technique to strengthen her case. In addition, she was even willing to break established evidence law to show a picture to the judge. Wright told her that winning would not bring her father back. Despite all these tactics, she could not best Wright, and she experienced her first defeat. Furious, she whipped Wright until he fell unconscious, and he never heard the not guilty verdict.

By the time of their next courtroom battle, Von Karma had concluded that her loss was a fluke. She made her intentions known to Wright, blaming him for Edgeworth's disappearance. She knew that detective Dick Gumshoe was trying to help Wright in his investigations, so she planted a tracking device on him to prevent him from doing so. She found Wright talking to and taking evidence from a witness, Acro, and took the evidence for herself. Gumshoe suggested a surprise search of Acro's room, which von Karma conducted; this ended up costing her the case as Acro, who was the real killer, was forced to hide his murder weapon under his wheelchair and take it with him to court.

Von Karma was now very determined to defeat Wright in their next trial together. Actor Juan Corrida was killed and another actor, Matt Engarde, was accused. During their investigations, however, Miles Edgeworth returned to the police station and found them fighting about whether von Karma prosecuted only to win. His appearance angered them both, with von Karma calling him a coward. Von Karma later spoke to a witness, Adrian Andrews, telling her not to testify about her involvement in tampering with the crime scene. However, before the trial, von Karma was shot in the shoulder, and Edgeworth took her place as prosecutor. In addition, telling Andrews to refuse to testify worked against the prosecution as Wright tried to pin her as the real killer. Edgeworth broke Andrews emotionally to get her to talk, delaying the verdict to the next day. Von Karma later recovered to deliver crucial evidence that clinched the guilty verdict.

After the trial, however, she was shocked to find that Wright was happy. Her shooter had kidnapped Maya Fey and had been blackmailing Wright into getting an acquittal for Engarde, who he knew was guilty of the crime. The evidence had turned the shooter against Engarde, ending Fey's imprisonment. Edgeworth explained that he had run away to find out what being a lawyer truly meant, and that his answer was simply to find the truth. Furious that Edgeworth was talking about something bigger than winning in court, and overwhelmed by her own losses, von Karma stormed out of the courtroom, leaving her whip behind. Edgeworth followed her to an airport and returned the whip. He told her that she is still a prosecutor even if she isn't a genius like her father, and that she would understand someday as well the meaning of being a lawyer, but if she quit prosecution, he would keep going forward and not wait for her. Von Karma then began to cry for the first time perhaps in a long time, and vowed to become a better prosecutor and to face Wright in court again when she came back. She left the country with that vow in mind.

Maya Fey murder plot

 * Main article: Bridge to the Turnabout

One year after Engarde's conviction, von Karma was appointed as an acting prosecutor to another case with Wright, and she returned to America for her chance to defeat Wright. The case involved the murder of a children's book illustrator, with a temple nun, Iris, accused. However, instead of Wright, she saw Edgeworth on the defense's bench. Shocked at first, she saw this as her chance to crush Edgeworth directly. The judge tried to confiscate her whip, but Edgeworth allowed her to keep it. The judge then remembered von Karma's father, but von Karma told the court that she no longer identified herself as the daughter of a genius prosecutor whose genius she had to match, but as just herself. Edgeworth and von Karma argued about the strange circumstances in which the murder victim was supposedly killed. In addition, witness Larry Butz claimed to have seen Iris flying across a burning bridge. Using a crystal that had fallen from the victim's staff far from the apparent scene of the crime, Edgeworth convinced the court that the murder had happened somewhere else, and the trial was adjourned. Von Karma was infuriated with her failure to defeat Edgeworth, and blamed Butz for this failure. Butz, meanwhile, tried to get her to model for his picture book to no avail.

Von Karma decided to follow Wright, who had been incapacitated that day and recovered after the trial, in his investigations. They met Godot, the prosecutor who was supposed to have taken the case. He treated von Karma with disdain, telling her to know her place as an acting prosecutor; the case belonged to Godot. Accompanying Wright, von Karma learned of a plot to murder Maya Fey by channeling Iris's sister Dahlia Hawthorne. Godot vowed to defeat Wright, but he lost in court, being implicated as the real killer. Wright acknowledged that without Edgeworth and von Karma, the case wouldn't have gotten anywhere.

More adventures with Edgeworth

 * Main article: Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth

After the murder plot, von Karma met Edgeworth again during at least one of his investigations.

Personality
Von Karma is very much like her father in court. She is very smug but also unrelenting and cold, going to extreme lengths to get a guilty verdict like her father. However, this is mostly due to the pressure she felt living under the shadow of her father and Miles Edgeworth. She likes to use her whip to assert her dominance over other people, including those who are supposed to be her superiors.

Von Karma believed that perfection was the only option she had. She had to be a "genius" prosecutor, though she knew she was not really capable of the genius her father displayed. She viewed trials as competitions, and considered defense attorneys her enemies. Thus, when she began to lose to Phoenix Wright, she lost what she believed was the meaning of her life. When Edgeworth began to talk about the meaningless of win records, she resisted the idea at first, but she began to understand and discarded her identity as a genius living under her father's shadow.

While von Karma is still very competitive and headstrong in court, she has developed friendlier relationships with those she had previously considered her enemies (such as Wright) and incompetent obstacles (such as Gumshoe). She has also shown a capacity to be emotionally hurt, such as when Maya Fey's cousin Pearl Fey blamed her for trying to convict the innocent Maya.

Von Karma's whip is notable for subtly revealing much of von Karma's attitudes toward others. Von Karma once commented that it seems to have a mind of its own after suddenly whipping Gumshoe. She later whipped him again, claiming that it was her "reward" to him. The whip also seems to represent her life, as she abandoned it trying to run away from her life, and her one known major emotional breakdown occurred as Edgeworth was giving it back to her. Von Karma has also befriended Adrian Andrews and taught her to use the whip.

Name

 * "Franziska" in German means "free". It was probably chosen to match the German influence of her father's name (It would mean "free of bad karma"). The kanji for Mei (冥) means "dark".