Summer

Summer Rose was a character in RWBY. A Huntress, She was the mother of Ruby Rose and the stepmother of Yang Xiao Long. Her weapon of choice was Sundered Rose, an axe that also functioned as a hunting rifle.

She was a former member of Team STRQ alongside Taiyang Xiao Long and the Branwen twins, Raven and Qrow Branwen, serving as their leader. After Raven's disappearance, Summer started a relationship with Taiyang, becoming the stepmother of Yang and eventually resulting in the birth of Ruby.

Ultimately, Summer went missing after a mission and was presumed dead, her gravestone being placed at a cliff in the Cliffside Forest. It was later shown in "Of Solitude and Self" that she involved Raven in said mission and were the only ones to know the true nature of it, everyone else believing it to have been a standard one.

Ruby appeared to be almost the splitting image of Summer, having the same silver eyes, fair complexion, and gradient black-into-red hair. In Volume 3, Qrow reveals an old photograph of Team STRQ, which largely obscures her, but reveals a white cloak with a black skirt.

In "Of Solitude and Self", she is seen in a flashback in a one-piece red dress with white frills under the skirt and exposed shoulders, separate black sleeves with red and black bracers and a separate black skirt that covers most of the red one underneath. She wears a less bulky version of her white cloak with a red inner liner, which is secured by a pair of black leather straps with leaf-shaped pins that attach to the cloak at the shoulders before crossing above her chest and eventually attaching to a set of thick black belts around her waist. Prior to leaving for her last mission she wore the same rose pendant that her daughter would later don where the two straps overlapped above her chest. Covering her legs is a pair of grey leggings and on her feet is a pair of black high-heeled boots with red highlights.

Yang described Summer at best as an attentive mother to both her and Ruby. Summer cared deeply for Ruby and Yang, regardless of the latter being her step-daughter. Stating that she loved both of them just the way they were, and left Ruby her emblem. In "The More the Merrier", Raven notes, in a mocking tone, that Ruby shares some ideals with Summer, believing in working together to beat Salem, stating that, "You sound just like your mother."

In "Pomp and Circumstance", when Ruby asks what her mother would've done had she learned the truth about Salem, Qrow tells her that he believes Summer would've pressed on, like her. He describes Summer as "always the best of us", but also claims that she could be a bit of a brat sometimes. The earlier notion was further proven by Salem who claimed Summer told her she would stop her despite her immortality, as Ruby spoke similar words to her image in Atlas.

In a flashback in "Of Solitude and Self", Summer reveals another side of her. Primarily, despite Ruby's thoughts of her, Summer was willing to lie to her husband Taiyang by claiming she was going on a mission for Ozpin, when in reality she was leaving with Raven for an unknown mission. This reveals Summer wasn't the perfect Huntress as Ruby assumes, as even Summer had moments of deceit. Though when Raven comments on this, Summer bitterly states the former had no moral high ground while also stating she had every intention of returning home.