Willard H Wright

Willard is a rational, practical and collected man. He is a good person, though can come across as a bit abrasive occasionally. He doesn't really have a set manner of speaking, but doesn't speak very casually nor very formally. Although he may come off as a bit antisocial, when it comes to serious topics he's willing to listen and be empathetic.

When pursuing a mystery he can get a bit too abrasive and be pushy with people to share information, which may lead him to come off as rude. During such cases, what would have typically happened is one person he worked with, Lion Ushiromiya, would have pinched his butt.

Willard H. Wright is a former Chief Inquisitor of the SSVD, enforcing Van Dine's Detective Commandments.

He was an ace Inquisitor of Heresy in his youth (basically solving myseries), feared for being both ruthless and merciless in his work.

But at some point, there was a change in his work attitude, and his previous flashy escapades became a thing of the past. His current style is often fickle, alternating between laziness and obsessive bursts of energy regarding mere trifles. By now, everyone has given up trying to understand him. However, is highly intelligent, able to combine high deductive reasoning capabilities with a decent understanding of human emotions as well.

Although he appears gruff and quick to anger, Will is genuinely good-hearted and opts to be as lenient as possible during his investigations. He is someone who "understands the heart", knowing that while it is important to solve mysteries with logical thinking, it is also important to keep in mind human emotions. While he can be occasionally insensitive when trying to approach mysteries, he tries to understand others.

Similar to Dlanor, Will is a personification of the Twenty Rules for Writing Detective Stories and uses his powers to enforce the rules of the mystery genre, by using it deny or confirm certain claims.. Will wields a black sword with which he can create red truths.

For an explanation, when a mystery is set up (such as by a game master), the opponent needs to solve it without relying on magic and determining the true culprits. The one who sets up the game will usually have to give out "red truths", which are absolute truths that must be taken as being 100% true. An example of a red truth would be "Natsuhi Ushiromiya is dead, and the death cannot commit murder". In response, the opponent can craft blue truths, which are theories that must be disproven using red truth, such as "I argue that Natsuhi Ushiromiya committed the murder and then died afterwards!" Willard can use Van Dine's rules to deny possibilities such as a servant being the culprit. He can also set up his own blue truths as well.

Some of the Twenty Van Dine rules are:

1. The reader must have equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery. ​

2. No willful tricks or deceptions may be played on the reader other than those played by the criminal on the detective himself.

3. There must be no love interest in the story.

4. The detective or one of the official investigators should never turn out to be the culprit.

5. The culprit must be determined by logical deductions--not by accident or coincidence or unmotivated confession.

6. The detective novel must have a detective in it; and must actually do his job.

7. There simply must be a corpse.

8. The problem of the crime must be solved by strictly naturalistic means, no spiritualistic shit.

9. There must be only one detective.

10. The culprit must turn out to be a person who has played a part in the story.

11. Servants like butlers/cooks must not be the culprit.

12. There must be one culprit, no matter how many murders are committed.

13. Secret societies, camorras, mafias, et al., have no place in a detective story.

14. The method of murder, and the means of detecting it, must be rational and scientific.

15. The truth of the problem must at all times be apparent--provided the reader is shrewd enough to see it.

16. A PROFESSIONAL criminal must never be shouldered guilty of the crime in a detective story.

17. A crime in a detective story must never turn out to be an accident or a suicide.

18. The motives for all crimes in detective stories should be personal.

Willard has a friendship with Lion Ushiromiya from the Ushiromiya family, as both were tasked with solving the mystery behind the Ushiromiya family that is the main topic of the visual novel Umineko: When They Cry. They were called there by the witch of miracles Bernkastel, who later tried to kill them for her own amusement. When Willard can be a bit frank and unsociable at times, it is Lion who rains him in.

He works for the same organization that Dlanor Knox from the same series did too.

His main catchphrase is "I understand the heart", where he acknowledges the importance of human emotions in discerning truth.