Klee Genshin: Witch? Clover? Unknown Facts About Klee

Nowadays, travelers have met quite a few characters in Tivat. However, do you know those details about Klee's design? Then this post will bring you travelers a character koan of Klee, and look at those details on Klee together with Klee's costume.

The name Klee is derived from the German word for clover (Klee).

And Klee's constellation is Trifolium, which means four leaves of clover, a rare variant of the clover that symbolizes luck, which is one of Klee's core design elements.

Numerous four-leaf clovers can be seen in both Klee's initial outfit and her 'Blossoming Starlight' outfit.

Klee has always been known to cause "Explosions," but Klee herself has never been hurt. Even when her first piece of work blew up in her tiny workshop, Klee was still safe and sound, so it's clear that Kori always has luck on her side.

Even when Klee and Bennett play together, she seems to get luckier.

"Bennett is the best!

I always find way more treasure if I go adventuring with Bennett!

...but he never finds any.

Why is that, anyway?"

Klee's pointy ears, on the other hand, come from the elven race, and it was made clear earlier in the event that both mother and daughter, Alice and Klee, are elves.

Klee's outfit is called "Blossoming Starlight," which means that the flowers shine like starlight. This is the exquisite costume that Klee wears when she performs in key plays. The bright colors are like a cake decorated with creamy flowers and bright red candles, bringing happiness and smiles to every corner of her adventures!

The overall dress may have its origins in the 18th century French Rococo style dresses, with a pronounced puff sleeve and relatively wide hemline, but it also used a lot of bows, ruffles, ribbons, and a four-leaf clover pattern for decoration, which was complex and exquisite.

Combined with the identity of the previous event, NPC Idyia, the style of Korie's outfit may be from Fontaine during the time of the Old Hydro Archon. The alternation of the old and new Hydro Archon may also correspond to the change of Fontaine's art style from Rococo to Neo-Classical.

The drawstring satchel behind Klee's outfit holds the Dodoco, and hanging from the side is the Kerosene lamp.The kerosene lamp, the main lighting tool before electric lighting became common, was fueled by kerosene and was invented by a Polish inventor in 1853.

And behind the default-clothed Klee is carrying a leather flap duffel bag, a type of bag that Japanese elementary school students carry to school called a ランドセル (ransel). Here one may ask, how come Klee, who is all in European design, suddenly has an Inazuma backpack?

That's because the prototype of the rucksack is a rucksack that was imported from Europe at the end of the Edo period when the Shogunate introduced the Western military system. The name of this backpack, ランドセル (ransel), was translated from Dutch into Japanese.

Then we come to Klee's three hats. The new costume, a hat often associated with witches or wizards, may be from the "Hennin," a type of hat favored by French noblewomen in the late Middle Ages and which the Church later associated with the image of witches by believing that the pointed hat was associated with the devil's horns. This witch hat of Klee's is adorned with a four-leaf clover, a symbol of good fortune, which may symbolize that Klee is a lucky little witch.

So with the hats of the new outfit out of the way, let's move on to Klee's default outfit. As mentioned in episode 3.8, Klee's default outfit has two hats, starting with the one on this hoodie, which has a pom-pom at the top, a design that first came from the French Navy's sailor's cap.

Because the internal space of the naval warships is very narrow, when sailing on the sea encountered wind and waves, the whole ship will rock up and down, accidentally hitting the ceiling, and the crew will be out of the protection of the head, so this sewing a pom-pom hat style also came into being.

In addition to this hat, the hoodie that Klee wears is a very common type of clothing in modern times, and its origins can be traced back to medieval Europe. Hoodies have been around since at least the 12th century in England, and the image below is from an 1879 book titled "An Encyclopedia of Clothing and Apparel" and depicts a 12th century English male wearing a hoodie, which was commonly worn by outdoor workers at the time, and served to protect them from moisture and cold.

And this hoodie is also a religious garment; the hoodie was the garment of choice for Catholic monks in medieval Europe.

Combined with the witch status of Klee's mother, Alice, it reminds me of the famous "Witch Hunt" of the Middle Ages. At that time, Catholic theology was the only ideology, and whenever someone violated religious rules or caused a disaster, they were considered witches or possessed by evil demons, so many people were accused of heresy and died by fire or other tortures.

The association makes me feel that Alice dressing Klee in a hoodie, the monks' preferred garment, may have been a way to protect Klee from the attention of those extremists involved in the witch hunt operation. And since the witch hunt and its corresponding extremists have no equivalent in Genshin Impact, we can look forward to the Witch Society's subsequent stories.

Then look at this one on Klee's head. Many people see this round, flat-topped hat and think it is a beret, but the author has a different way of thinking. Because the beret has a very obvious feature, that is, there is no brim.

This hat on Klee's head has a very noticeable dark brown brim visible in the front, so I think Klee's hat, which has a rounded, flat-topped appearance similar to that of a beret but is a type of hat with a brim, is supposed to be a Newsboy cap.

Newsboy caps were very popular in North America and Europe from the 1910s to the 1920s and were called such because they were often worn by a variety of outdoor workers, mainly newsboys, at the time.

Newsboys, a popular 19th- and early 20th-century occupation, usually small children in their late teens and early twenties, who were employed by newspaper companies to distribute and sell newspapers according to the streets to which they were assigned, have appeared frequently in various works around the world, and in a number of stories they are often depicted as the eyes of some intelligence organization.

And in Teyvat of Genshin Impact, when it comes to newsagents and newsboys, the first thing that comes to mind is "The Steambird Publishing House.".

As it happens, in the current version of information related to "The Steambird Publishing House," there is really such a character, perhaps related to Klee. We know that Mona is contributing to the Steambird's "All Things Astrological" section for a fee, and it's purely by accident that Mona got the opportunity to write it.

Before Mona, the last writer who contributed to "All Things Astrological" was planning to retire. While traveling around, this writer happened to hear about a strange astrologer named Mona, and as an astrology enthusiast, he paid a visit to her, and after a few conversations, he recognized Mona's knowledge and recommended Mona to the editor-in-chief of the Steambird Newspaper. He traveled, was a writer, and knew a lot about astrology.

The first thing that comes to mind is Klee's mother, Alice, who is also a traveling adventurer and author of the Teyvat Travel Guide and knows a lot about astrology. However, the description of the former author in the game uses the word "he" in a single person, so this is a male, and we also know from Klee's backstory that both of Klee's parents were well-known adventurers on the continent of Teyvat, so is it possible that the former author of the "All Things Astrological" section is Klee's father?

After all, he and Alice were both well-known adventurers in Teyvat, so it made sense that he would know the editor-in-chief of the Steambird newspaper and thus be able to come to the editor-in-chief with a recommendation for Mona, so perhaps the reason he had stopped contributing to "All Things Astrological" and was planning to retire was the same as the reason that Alice had left Mondstadt, leaving Klee behind, and the two of them were heading off together to take care of that much more important event. Both Papa and Mama were famous travelers throughout this land! Mom wrote the Teyvat Travel Guide, and so many restaurants and inns cared for its authoritative reviews!

Lastly, let's talk about Dodoco, a fluffy, long-tailed doll made by Alice for Klee that can't really be analyzed from its appearance at this point, so we can start with the name Dodoco.

In the previous event in the Golden Apple Archipelago, Alice participated as Dodo-King, so the word Dodoco should also be able to be split into a combination of Dodo and co, where Dodo is exactly the name of the Dodo bird.

The dodo, the only species of the extinct genus Dodo, was a large, plump bird with small, flightless wings and a wisp of white feathers on its tail. When we look at the feathers adorning Kori's head, also a strand of white feathers, both large and small, rather than a single one, the two may be related.

I guess the "co" in Dodoco comes from the Japanese word for child, "こ, ko", for example, in Japanese a man is "おとこ, otoko", so a boy would be called "おとこのこ, otoko no ko". So Dodoco could mean a child of the Dodo.

And as you can tell from the Inazuma chapter of the Teyvat Travel Guide, Alice has been to Inazuma before, and even had her first encounter with one of Inazuma's bosses, the Maguu Kenki, in the previous Golden Apple Island as a preview version of Inazuma. So it makes sense that the Japanese word for Inazuma is incorporated into Dodoco's name, just like the aforementioned Klee's backbag, which is the same bag that Japanese children carry to school.

Going back to Klee's mom, Alice, then since Dodoco could mean Dodo's children, and Alice is the Dodo-King, maybe Alice could be related to the Dodo in terms of her appearance.

Another interesting point is that Jumpy Dumpty, Korie's Elemental Skill, also has the appearance of Dodoco, and the name Jumpy Dumpty comes from a very famous English nursery rhyme called Humpty Dumpty, depicting an anthropomorphic egg.

The "Mr. Egg" in the nursery rhyme and the Dodo appeared together in a very famous series, and the main character of this series is also called Alice, which is the famous "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There". So it's possible that Klee's mom, Alice, is based on the Alice of the series, and is it possible that her arrival on the continent of Teyvat is also a "Trip to Wonderland" for her?

That's all there is to this installment of Klee's character textual criticism. Even so, a lot of what we know about Klee is still just speculation, and I'm sure Genshin will be adding more of Klee's backstory in the future. So what are some of your favorite features of Klee?