Character from Volume 5 by Rooster Teeth
Yang's mother, leader of a bandit tribe, and the secret Spring Maiden — Raven opened Haven's vault, fought Cinder, and then fled when Yang confronted her with the truth she couldn't face.
Raven Branwen is the most complicated figure in Volume 5 and she knows it. She is Yang's mother who abandoned her as an infant. She is Qrow's twin sister who chose banditry over duty. She is the Spring Maiden — she killed the previous Spring Maiden, a frightened girl her tribe was supposed to protect, and took the power for herself. She leads her tribe in the wilds of Anima with the philosophy that the strong survive and the weak deserve what they get. It's a convenient ideology for someone running from an immortal witch. Raven is terrified of Salem — genuinely, deeply afraid — and everything she does is shaped by that fear. The tribe, the Maiden power, the constant movement — it's all about staying hidden. At Haven, she allies temporarily with Cinder's faction to access the vault, planning to take the Relic of Knowledge for herself as leverage. She opens the vault as the Spring Maiden, fights Cinder inside it, and wins decisively — freezing Cinder and casting her into the abyss. But Yang follows her into the vault, and the confrontation that follows is not a fight. It's a reckoning. Yang tells her mother the truth: that Raven is a coward. That she killed a child for power she uses to hide. That she abandoned everyone who loved her because staying meant being brave. Raven breaks. She opens a portal and flees — without the Relic, without her daughter, without the pretense that any of this was strength. Yang takes the Relic of Knowledge and walks out of the vault alone. Her Semblance creates portals to anyone she has bonded with — she can appear beside Yang, Qrow, or her tribe members instantaneously. Her odachi has a rotating Dust blade mechanism for elemental variety.
Tall and striking with long black hair, red eyes identical to Qrow's, and a face that looks like Yang's if Yang stopped smiling permanently. Wears a red and black kimono-style outfit with armored bracers, a long red odachi sword at her hip, and a distinctive red and black Grimm mask she wears when leading her tribe. She removes the mask more often now — the disguise is failing.
Also known as: Raven Branwen, Raven, the bandit queen, the Spring Maiden