Nobody touches that turtle... but me!
― Penelope defending Bentley from Captain LeFwee
Penelope was a pilot who founded the ACES Competition. She flew and fought under the alias "Black Baron", during her career as whom she gained both fame and infamy. She was later exposed by the Cooper Gang, after which she joined them as their RC specialist.
Biography
ACES
Little is known about Penelope's early life, other than her apparent enormous wealth and her Dutch nationality. As her interest in plane fighting grew, she invented a disguise she called the "Black Baron" to get past competitions' strict age limits. She still identified herself online as Penelope, but no one was the wiser about her double life.
The Black Baron soon became a celebrity, and Penelope found her wearing the costume and assuming the alias more and more often. At some point, Penelope wanted a challenge to her expert skills. So, she set up a yearly international competition called ACES in an effort to attract worthy opponents. Every year she would win the competition, either by shooting down everyone else or getting her gunships to shoot down anyone who was about to win.
Joining the Cooper Gang
When the Cooper Gang met Penelope online, they expressed their interest in a specialist with remote-controlled inventions, something that Penelope was also very adept with. She gave false information, claiming to be one of the Black Baron's pilots, but told the Gang that if they wanted her on the team, they'd have to beat the Black Baron in the upcoming ACES competition. She did not anticipate them to potentially win, as she had full trust in her piloting skills as well as her tricks. The Gang accepted her challenge and traveled to Holland.
Some time before the ACES Semifinals, Bentley contacted Penelope via ham radio requesting her help to defend the Cooper's Hangar from Muggshot's team of pilots' attempt to destroy their plane. Penelope, who was extremely against any forms of cheating between teams (even as the Black Baron), fully supported the Gang in defending the hangar.
During the Finals of the competition, Sly managed to nearly destroy the Black Baron's biplane, and the latter called in his gunships and a passenger plane for backup. Bentley, having anticipated the gunships, utilized the nearby windmills to destroy them, and Sly battled the Black Baron on the left wing of the plane. The costume was destroyed and Penelope was revealed to be inside it. She later explained the purpose of the suit, and joined the Cooper Gang without hesitation.
The Cooper Vault Heist
Between her joining the Cooper Gang and the heist itself, Penelope assisted in recruiting two more members to the Gang - the Panda King and Dimitri - through her RC devices. She was captured by Captain LeFwee, who had planned to make Penelope his wife until the Gang intervened. Penelope even demonstrated her ability in sword dueling against LeFwee on his ship's mast, the latter of whom lost and fell to the ocean. She also realizes she holds strong feelings for Bentley, leading her to heroically saving him and becoming his girlfriend.
As part of the heist, Penelope was crucial to eliminating the threat of guards in Sly's path as he climbed his way towards the Cooper Vault. After the heist failed, Penelope utilized her RC car to destroy the nearby radar towers; had she not, Sly - who later used his biplane to clear the skies of enemy fire - would have been under attack by homing missiles.
Betrayal
If only Bentley hadn't been brainwashed by Cooper's "honorable thief" nonsense! We could have made billions in weapon design!
― Penelope talking to herself.
After the heist was a success (even though Sly had disappeared) and the Gang disbanded, Penelope remained with Bentley and the two formed a relationship. They worked on a number of inventions, the most notable of which was a time machine. After just finishing the time machine, Penelope just vanished, much to Bentley's dismay. Bentley later discovered that the Thievius Raccoonus was beginning to disappear right before his very eyes, so he had to put off searching for Penelope to get Sly and Murray back together to save the Cooper legacy.
As it turns out, Penelope's disappearance was somehow intentional; Cyrille Le Paradox hired her to steal Bentley's time machine plans and create a completely separate time machine. Bentley's suffers from a tragic flaw: it requires an item from the era the user wishes to travel to. Penelope's version does not - the year itself can just be input. Le Paradox also entrusted Penelope to steal Sir Galleth Cooper's cane and stand guard over Medieval England, using a new suit, The Black Knight.
Penelope's intention was to double-cross Le Paradox and convince Bentley that the two of them could be the greatest people in the world, using their intellect to gain money and power. Bentley, however heart-broken he was at Penelope's betrayal, stuck by his friends and their code of honor. He defeated Penelope and her suit with his own (made from parts of the Moat Monster), and she was sent to Paris's highest-security prison...only to escape sometime later, no doubt using her mechanical prowess to do it. But recently, Bentley has been receiving some very strange postcards, with Penelope's symbol (a pink mouse face) on the picture.
Personality
Penelope initially comes off as a nice and outgoing person. She enjoys utilizing her RC talents against enemies, and while doing so she can get a little excited. While Penelope had only been a member of the Cooper Gang for a short time, she was dedicated and loyal to her new-found friends, eagerly supporting them whenever they needed help. Unfortunately, her lack of physical prowess and abilities makes her rather timid when actually confronted by an enemy, but when someone she loves - namely Bentley - is threatened, she becomes a powerful combatant.
Unfortunately, at some point during her relationship with Bentley, despite the events that took place during Sly 3, she somehow became possessed by the belief that Bentley was being held back and controlled by Sly's morals. She began to develop a similar mindset to Dr. M, despite once being a moralist herself when she was an extremely firm opponent of cheating during the ACES competition. Of course, it's possible that her dislike for cheating and her violent reprisal against those who betrayed her Black Baron persona were a result of them going against rules she had set for the tournament, but only added to the point of her being moralistic. This is also backed up by her thinking in a way that Sly is evil and that his thieving capers are nonsense and for his own selfish gains, drawing a parallel to Carmelita. With their combined intellect, Penelope started to believe that she and Bentley could have made billions in weapon design, and they could have ruled the world. She began to use and betray anyone to get what she wanted; in some cases, drawing a parallel to Neyla. She also began showing a more aggressive and angry side of herself, prominently when trying to finish off Sly and then, after a failed attempt to reason with her, tried to waste Bentley as a means of making their breakup offical.
She also became surprisingly cruel and gained a dark sense of humor as she even went as low as to torture Sir Galleth physically and mentally by putting him in the circus, and even joking about making a rug out of what was left of Sly once the Moat Monster was done with him, or turning the Cooper Van into a clown car, even saying behind his back that she finds Bentley "cute when he's being dumb".
At this point, Penelope's true character is a mystery. She also seems to be huge on masking her identity. Whether these are her true colors that were hidden from the Cooper Gang for a period of time or that they were somehow newly-developed is unknown, and disguises like the Black Baron or the Black Knight may not have been her first. Some might even think that Penelope might not be her original name. Even how she obtained her skills is a complete mystery. Who Penelope really is may be unknown for quite some time.
Powers and Abilities
Other than boxing or sword fighting, the latter of which she probably had to self-teach quickly in order to fight LeFwee, Penelope does not have much in terms of physical abilities. This makes her a potentially easy target when out in the field, shown by her constant capture by certain enemies in Sly 3. To make up for this shortcoming, she has multiple fields in technology, including piloting, using remote-controlled devices, and machinery. She is also capable of using disguises to get through certain bumps in the road. In her debut, she mostly only utilized her RC capabilities, using the RC Car and RC Chopper. Where she acquired any of these talents is unknown.
Status
Penelope is currently a fugitive at large, and her whereabouts are as of yet unknown. Neither Bentley (occupied by searching for Sly, who has disappeared once more) nor Carmelita (occupied by her own investigation into Sly as well as other criminals) seem to be spending any time in searching for her; they may not consider her an immediate threat. However, she has spray-painted a symbol bearing similarity to her features - a calling card of sorts - in various parts of Paris. She's sent postcards with images of these calling cards to Bentley, likely to taunt him, keep him thinking about her, or to tell him that it's "not over yet".
Appearances
- Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves
- Flight Of Fancy
- A Cold Alliance
- Dead Man Tell No Tales
- Honor Among Thieves
- Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time
- Paris Prologue (cutscene)
- Turning Japanese (mentioned)
- Go West Young Raccoon (picture in Bentley's Binocucom)
- Clan of the Cave Raccoon (mentioned)
- Of Mice and Mechs
- Forty Thieves (mentioned)
- Paris Epilogue (cutscene)
Gallery
For more, read Black Baron or The Black Knight.
Trivia
- Penelope is the only female character in the series that has been flirted with and admired by more than one male character in the Cooper Gang, namely Bentley and Dimitri, though at first she only had eyes for Sly.
- Due to the lack of a tail in Sly 3, some fans were confused as to what kind of animal Penelope was. It was confirmed by Sucker Punch that she is a mouse, and this became more obvious with her tail added along with her new redesign in the next game. To be more percise, Penelope is technically a Dutch Mouse.
- Penelope's signature color is lavender. Ironically, her aliases consistently begin with the word "Black." There is a very good possiblity that these are her two favorite colors. However, it is most likely that her signature color is the way it is because it's her fur color.
- She is the only member of the Cooper Gang to later betray it. Constable Neyla was the first person to betray the Gang, but was never an official member.
- She is the only character positively known to have escaped from prison, whereas Muggshot's and Dimitri's possible escapes are unconfirmed and unknown.
- According to some concept art for Thieves in Time, Penelope was supposed to remain a protagonist at one point in development, as confirmed by the scrapped mole character and Penelope's revamped original design.
- In that same piece of concept art, there is a crazier version of the evil Penelope alongside her current design. This was scrapped because she looked too obvious, and the developers needed a design that made it hard to tell she had become a villain.
- Penelope in the Japanese version of Sly 3 is voiced by Ryouko Shiraishi.
- Annete Toutonghi, the voice of Penelope, also voices her Black Knight alter ego and the computer voice during Bentley's hacking minigames in Thieves in Time.
- In the Finnish dub of Sly Cooper-series, Penelope and Carmelita Fox has the same voice-actor, Elise Langenoja. In Penelope boss fight in Thieves In Time, it's hard to tell their voices apart. But Penelope has a softer voice, when Carmelita has a much stronger, womanly voice.
- Inside Le Paradox's blimp, to the right of Le Paradox, Penelope's emblem is on one of the pieces of the time machine.