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Maggey Byrde
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Phoenix Wright
After all, the "Goddess of Misfortune" is only a name!
Maggey Byrde
You bet! I'm gonna make it! I promise! Next time we meet, I'll only be an "Unlucky Person", instead of a goddess!

Maggey Byrde was one of Phoenix Wright's clients, who is especially notable for her very bad luck. She was the defendant in two of Wright's cases and was a suspect in a third case that took place in the office of Miles Edgeworth.

Early life[]

When Byrde was six months old, she fell off the ninth floor of an apartment building. Since then, she has experienced a myriad of disasters such as getting hit by various vehicles, getting sick from all sorts of foods, failing almost every test she has ever taken, and even losing every game of tic-tac-toe. She became known as the "Goddess of Misfortune" as she grew up, and at college, people called her "Lady Luckless". She feels that this misfortune always latches on to the people around her.

In the police force[]

Main article: The Lost Turnabout
Byrd and Prince

Prince and Byrde.

During Byrde's employment in the local police force, she met Dustin Prince, a fellow officer. The two became well-known in the police force as a couple, and there were even claims of marriage talks, though according to Byrde, they "weren't 'lovers' like that." About three months later, Prince was killed during an outing at Exposé Park, and she was accused and brought to court for the crime. At first she was laughed off by the lawyers she tried to hire to help her. Luckily for her, Phoenix Wright agreed to represent her.

Unfortunately for her, just before the trial was about to begin, Richard Wellington rendered Wright unconscious and Wright lost his memory. Nonetheless, she acted as Wright's co-counsel, guiding him through the trial process, until Wright exposed Wellington as the true culprit, leading to Byrde's acquittal.

Byrde was grateful for Wright's help. She hoped to meet him again, and she vowed that she would merely be an "unlucky person" rather than a "goddess of misfortune".

Byrde was soon taken off the force for reasons never made totally clear, but presumably due to the blemish on her record.[1]

As a waitress[]

Main article: Recipe for Turnabout
KnockedOutBirdie

Unconscious.

Soon after her trial, Jean Armstrong employed Byrde as a waitress at his restaurant, Trés Bien.

On Dec. 3, 2018, during her shift, Byrde served coffee to two men, Furio Tigre and Glen Elg, at a table. She saw Tigre slip potassium cyanide into Elg's cup of coffee; when Elg drank his coffee, he collapsed and died, causing Byrde to faint. When Byrde woke up, she found that she had been accused of the crime; Tigre had Armstrong hide Byrde and Elg in the kitchen and reenact the crime to fool a witness into thinking Byrde had killed the victim. Byrde again hired Phoenix Wright to defend her, but Tigre appeared instead, disguised as Wright, and Tigre intentionally put up a poor defense against the case of prosecutor Winston Payne.

Unbeknownst to Byrde, Dick Gumshoe had developed a crush on her since she was a trainee, and would watch out for her. A month after her conviction, he visited the real Phoenix Wright and angrily demanded that he rectify the situation. The case was retried, but Gumshoe was compelled by his position to testify against Byrde, which upset her. Gumshoe tried to deliver a box of sausage weenies to her via Wright, but she said that she did not like sausage weenies. Eventually, Wright exposed Tigre as the killer, clearing Byrde's name once more. At the end of the trial, Wright gave Byrde a bigger box of weenies that Gumshoe had made, and Byrde forgave Gumshoe, admitting that she loved weenies. She later bought a new trench coat for him.

As a security guard[]

Main article: Turnabout Visitor
Maggey Pretends To Lock The Door

Tricked into opening Edgeworth's office for Portsman.

After her stint as a waitress, Byrde was hired as a security guard in the Prosecutor's Building. One night, High Prosecutor Jacques Portsman asked her to open his door for him; she did so, but later on, when she was asked to lock the door again, Byrde discovered that, in the meantime, she had lost her master key, which in truth had been stolen by a third party, so she merely pretended to lock the door.

She later found the key again, much to her confusion, back where she had previously left it, as it had been discreetly returned to its place by the thief. Much to Gumshoe's dismay, she was suspected by Portsman for the murder of detective Buddy Faith in Miles Edgeworth's office, having shortly before failed to pin the blame on Detective Gumshoe himself. Portsman initially deduced that Byrde had tried to rob the office herself, before killing Faith once he discovered her in the act, but Edgeworth refuted Portsman's claims, by pointing out Maggey's ignorance of the existence of the Secret Safe. Changing his theory around, after claiming to having himself told Faith about the prosecutor's secret safes, Portsman proposed that instead Byrde had accidentally walked in on the detective robbing the office, and then killed him in self-defence. Potsman, using his authority as lead investigator, then forced Byrde, Gumshoe, and Edgeworth to leave the room as potential suspects.

However, while in the 12th Floor Hallway, Edgeworth soon figured out that the basketball hoop outside Portsman's door had been moved to outside his own door, and that the room number plates of Edgeworth's and Portsman's doors had been switched, so that Byrde would unknowingly open Edgeworth's door instead of the correct one. This knowledge soon led to the real murderer being convicted, Portsman himself. Byrde was soon fired after her employers found out that she briefly lost her key. Gumshoe consoled her and convinced her to be more enthusiastic about her next job.

During this time, Byrde would occasionally end her sentences with "pal" in a similar way to Gumshoe's speech habits, hinting how much their relationship had developed. Miles Edgeworth also remarked on the undeniable similarities between Byrde and Gumshoe.

Personality[]

Maggey1

Maggey Byrde in 2019.

Byrde's bad luck has caused her to lead a peculiar and inconsistent life. Despite her misfortunes, Byrde is usually quite cheerful and excitable. Byrde is prone to exaggerated salutes and referring to people (even Wright) as "sir". She has a hard time trying not to meddle with other people's problems. This often causes new problems, such as helping an old lady across the road leading to them both having dinner at Byrde's house.

Byrde's enthusiasm carries over to her various jobs. As a police officer, she often watched court proceedings and, upon watching Phoenix Wright's trials, would always root for him to win. Notably, she only confided in Wright that she did not consider her and Prince "lovers," despite multiple colleagues publicly claiming otherwise in court several times. She is used to changing jobs frequently and almost finds the pursuit of a new job exciting.

Out of uniform, Byrde often wears Blue Badger-themed shirts. She wore a Blue Badger hoodie during her fated outing with Prince at Exposé Park, and she wore a Blue Badger T-shirt after her security shift around the time of Buddy Faith's murder. She also wears glasses with near-sighted lenses.

Name[]

  • Japanese - Mako Suzuki (須々木マコ ):
    • Her name comes from the phrase "make tsudzuki", which means "continues to lose" - referring to her bad luck.
      • The spelling "須々木" for her surname is a somewhat uncommon kanji writing of "Suzuki", leading Wellington to miswrite it as the more common "鈴木".
  • English - Maggey Byrde:
    • The English name comes from the magpie (hence "Maggey"), a bird (hence "Byrde") that is said to bring bad luck.
  • Chinese - Língmù Zhēnzǐ (零木 真子):
    • Her Chinese name is based on her Japanese name. However, instead of "須々木" (or equivalently "須須木"), it's "零木" (líng mù); the latter pronounced the same as the more common "鈴木" while the former does not. This is an unusual case because most characters' Chinese names adopt directly their Japanese name if written in kanji.
  • French - Maguy Loiseau:
    • "Maguy" is written as "Magui" by Richard Wellington.
    • "Loiseau" could be derived from "l'oiseau" (which means "the bird") - referring to the feathers on her outfit.

Unofficial[]

  • Brazilian Portuguese - Giseli Corval:
    • "Giseli" means "hostage". It was chosen along with "Gisele" to create a spelling confusion at the beginning of the case.
    • "Corval" is a direct reference to "corvo" (crow), often associated with bad luck. It was derived from its English name, which references the magpie, a species of crow.
    • When they are put together, her full name basically becomes "hostage to bad luck", in line with the character's ultimate bad luck.
  • Russian - Nency Worron:[citation needed]
    • "Nency" ("Ненси") is written by Richard Wellington as "Nancy" ("Нэнси").
    • "Worron" is a reference to "ворона" ("crow") that shares similar idea with Brazilian Portuguese fan-translation. Also, such surname associates with Russian idiom "белая ворона" which means "extraordinary, unusual" (likewise "a black sheep").
    • Her full name may be a slight reference to Nancy Warren, Canadian author of detective novels.

Development[]

  • In The Lost Turnabout, she appears in her police officer uniform. While working at Trés Bien in Recipe for Turnabout, she wears the restaurant's waitress outfit. In Turnabout Visitor, her security guard outfit consists of a black sweater with blue lines, a light gray shirt that has the Blue Badger on the front, dark blue shorts, a security guard cap, and black shoes.
  • The numerous red feathers on both her police uniform and her security guard outfit are meant to express Byrde's altruistic personality, in that they are indicative of her regular contributions to charity, since the Community Chest of Japan is known as "赤い羽根共同募金" (lit. "Red Feather Community Chest").[2] The feathers may also have partially inspired her avian-themed English and French surnames.
  • Her exaggerated gestures were designed to express her lively nature.[2]
  • Although her standard sprites in Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth are like those of other characters, in that left- and right-facing sprites are just flipped versions of each other, her full body sprites are different; regardless of whether she is facing left or right, her hat remains in her left hand.

References[]

  1. "Byrde: Hmph. I was fired after that... incident last year. [...] It's OK. I enjoyed being on the force, but I think it was time for me to move on." Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations. Capcom. Episode: Recipe for Turnabout (in English). 2007.
  2. 2.0 2.1 (2009). "The Art of Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney". UDON. ISBN 1-897376-19-7.
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