Numbers 50 - 46

50. Lady Macbeth (Macbeth)

What better way to start off this list than a woman who encourages her husband to murder people? Upon being introduced, she convinces her husband to kill his dear friend King Duncan, which pretty much sets in motion all the remaining events of the story. Lady Macbeth’s insistence on killing Duncan pushed her husband into a killing frenzy to keep the throne, which more or less led to her eventual suicide.

49. Anne Shirley (Anne of Green Gables)

Two things I like about any character: going from nothing to something, and succeeding with brains rather than beauty. Anne does both. She starts as an orphan, gets adopted by the elderly Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert (accidentally, since they wanted a boy), and very quickly excels at school (despite her education being pretty well neglected until this point). Anne adapts to pretty much any situation quickly, and manages to be well-loved by the village. That includes Gilbert Blythe, even though she openly despises him for quite a while.

48. Rogue (X-Men)

Rogue has to have one the best and worst powers of all the X-Men. I mean, she can literally have every power ever, the downside being that she has no control over her powers, and on a few occasions they all fight for dominance. Rogue’s powers first emerged during her first kiss with a boy named Cody. Cody fell into a coma, and Rogue began wearing body concealing clothes to protect others from her power. She was later adopted by Mystique, who recruited her to the Brotherhood of Mutants. Unfortunately, the more Rogue used her powers, the more psychologically screwed up she became, and eventually begged Charles Xavier for help. Rogue isn’t always at the mercy of her powers though, on a few occasions being able to control who she absorbs from.

47. Nancy Drew (Nancy Drew)

What would the Hardy Boys be like if they were girls…and there was only one of them? Nancy Drew has been one of the biggest names in literature for the last eighty five years (and is somehow the second youngest character in this post). With over a hundred and seventy books to her name, Nancy Drew is the biggest name is female crime solvers (sorry Daphne and Velma). Speaking of the Hardy Boys though, she has occasionally crossed over with them to solve mysteries, when she's not doing so with George and Bess.

46. Belle (Beauty and the Beast)

So, is this about the 1756 fairy tale by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, or the 1991 movie by Disney? Screw it, I’m doing both. It keeps my Nancy Drew fact alive if I include Beaumont’s version. They both feature Belle falling in love with a prince who was transformed into a beast until such time as he could get a woman to love him. In Disney’s version, she a bibliophile (person who loves books), and doesn’t care that the rest of her village thinks she’s weird for being so. In Beaumont’s version, her (evil) sisters guilt her into staying with them long enough for The Beast to almost die of heartbreak. Because fairy tale logic.