Riza Hawkeye

Lieutenant Riza Hawkeye (リザ・ホークアイ, Riza Hōkuai) is an officer in the Amestrian State Military as well as the personal adjutant and bodyguard of Colonel Roy Mustang. A sharpshooter and weapons specialist, Lt. Hawkeye is an invaluable asset to the Colonel both in office and on the battlefield and serves as his closest and most supportive subordinate.

Appearance
Riza Hawkeye is a rather attractive woman in her mid-to-late twenties with a slender, yet muscular and curvaceous build, shoulder-length blond hair, and brown eyes. The author has stated Riza has broad shoulders from her military training and flared hips appropriate for her age.

Though she has been known to wear her hair down, while on the job Riza wears it fastened up in back with a clip barrette in a style that resembles a bird's tail. Her bangs fall in a hawk's wing pattern from right to left, occasionally partially obscuring her left eye. Though she had worn her hair short in her youth and during her tenure in Ishval, she began letting it grow out in 1910 after becoming acquainted with Winry Rockbell. Each of her ears is pierced with a silver stud. While in disguise, Riza has been known to don faux eyeglasses. Riza frequently wears a black, close-fitting turtleneck under her military uniform and often while in casual dress as well. While in civilian clothes, Riza is often seen in long skirts and boots, though she has noted (in Perfect Guidebook 2) that skirts restrict movement and therefore are not welcome in a military office.

In the manga and 2009 anime, she has a large and ornate tattoo that covers most her back with large parts completely obscured by burn scars. She always wears clothes fitted to hide the tattoo.

Personality
Riza is a quiet, collected woman, with a serious demeanor. She has a very sharp sense of humor, usually expressed by snapping back at her superior officer. Hawkeye is referred to as the model of a perfect soldier, strictly disciplined and extremely rational--she rarely relaxes when on the job and is usually tasked with keeping her colleagues on track. Though from the outside she might seem strict, rigid, and even a little mean, Hawkeye is not as cold and distant as she appears. Those close to her know that there is more to her than her no-nonsense attitude; beneath her professional aura is a deeply scarred woman with a kind soul carrying a heavy burden.

Riza's softer side tends to make itself known through her interactions with younger characters, such as the Elric brothers and Winry Rockbell. It isn't unusual to see her behaving sweetly toward her Shiba Inu, Black Hayate, while in private. Very disciplined, Riza takes her work seriously and is almost never seen “dropping formalities,” even with those who are most intimate to her. She’s not prone to public displays of affection, preferring to show her feelings through more subtle ways. Hawkeye seems to be the epitome of "tough love," demanding excellence from those she respects or considers important. Her interactions with Hayate can be seen as a metaphor for all of her significant personal relationships--a stern hand and demanding nature tempered with genuine and deep affection.

It can be implied that Riza also changed across the years, from the manga. In the scenes where she's shown in her teens, she appears to be very idealistic about the world at large. Growing up at her father's house, she probably experienced a sheltered sort of childhood. After joining the military, her experiences in Ishval destroyed her youthful idealism and transformed her into the nearly stoic Lieutenant Hawkeye. It is due to these experiences that she decides to follow Mustang and support him in his endeavor to change the country. Hawkeye emerges from the war with a tremendous will, strong enough to shoulder the heavy guilt she willingly bears, and uses this motivation to stand along side and support Mustang in the hopes that future generations will remain free of the horrors of something like Ishval. Reticient, she doesn't speak unnecessarily or express her feelings often through words, but reveals her most of her thoughts through nonverbal communication, with trademark sharp looks and rare, subtle smiles. Her character shows a mix between a tortured woman looking for redemption she feels is unreachable, and a resigned acceptance of past mistakes and their consequences. Hawkeye learns from Ishval to accept responsibilities for her actions herself, rather than placing blame or burden on another. She decides she must sacrifice her own happiness and comfort and continue to dirty her hands with blood as a soldier in order to bring peace to the people. Despite the emotional difficulties in facing her mistakes, she learns to school herself and her emotions as personal struggles, brushing off the concern of others, always bearing grief or physical pain with a stiff upper lip.

When meeting Winry Rockbell, Riza indicated that she also doesn't like the military, because she is sometimes forced to kill. However, when Alphonse Elric refers to her weapons as "a tool for destruction" later in the story, she corrects him, telling him it is a "tool for protection." Riza seems to hold the belief that a gun is simply an object, by itself unable to cause pain or suffering without a person pulling the trigger. It is not her weapons that she dislikes, but the death that she causes by using them. After Ishval, Riza tells Roy Mustang that "a gun is good. It doesn't leave the feeling of a person dying in your hands." When he counters that this mindset is self-deception, she agrees, indicating that she is willing to deceive herself and continue to do her duty as a soldier if it means assuring the safety of others. While in the 2003 anime, she's seen using her guns to intimidate her work colleagues into doing their jobs, in the manga (and 2009 anime), she is never seen taking out her gun when she doesn't mean to shoot it.

Relationships
Roy Mustang - Easily the most significant of Riza's personal relationships, her connection with Colonel Mustang goes deeper and further back than any other. The apprentice of her father, Berthold Hawkeye, Riza has known Roy through, at least, a good part of his early life and throughout his entire military career, and has a personal stake in how he chooses to live his life. In turn, Roy has entrusted Hawkeye with his life as his personal assistant and bodyguard and has deemed her as both his conscience and executioner by giving her the express authority to shoot him in the back should he ever step off the righteous path.

Many speculate that Roy and Riza have romantic feelings for each other, but their relationship--while not purely professional--has not shown any explicit signs of crossing into traditional amatory. However, they repeatedly demonstrate a deep, genuine sense of concern and devotion to each other as equals. Riza seems to enjoy dismissing and discrediting the Colonel in ways he wouldn’t allow anyone else to, and she always has smart--and somewhat teasing--rebuttals whenever he attempts to boast himself, usually referring to his alchemy not being able to be used in wet conditions and calling him “useless” or “lazy”.

Black Hayate - A very strict master, Riza trains Black Hayate to be a very well-disciplined dog. Hayate is clearly a useful and valuable companion, and they share a very deep loyal bond. Hayate has a profound love for his master, jumping to save her in dangerous situtaions. While in the presence of Hayate, we are shown a more domestic, intimate side of Riza.

Rebecca Catalina - Riza's best friend, Rebecca is the opposite of Riza in terms of temperament. She's an outgoing, smart-mouthed woman with a healthy sense of humor. They both went through the military academy together and remained friends after graduation. Rebecca is probably the only person, aside from Colonel Mustang, who knows how to push Riza's buttons and make her angry, making jokes about the coincidence of Riza working for famous womanizers and being assigned to important positions. She also pesters Riza with questions about men, boyfriends, and marriage. When the two are together, we see just how much of Riza's dry sense of humor is sharp and acidic.

Abilities
Aside from her high-level administrative and secretarial skills (keeping subordinates in line, organizing and filling out paperwork as well as preparing tea and coffee expertly), Lieutenant Hawkeye is an expert sharpshooter and firearms specialist. Whether armed with a bolt-action rifle, sniper rifle, pistol or even two handguns at once, she is well-known for never missing her mark and, in the manga, made a name for herself as the infamous "Hawk's Eye" of the Ishval Civil War. A true professional, Hawkeye is able to disassemble, properly clean and reassemble a standard issue firearm in record time and rarely goes into battle with fewer than two loaded firearms on her person. Additionally, she is quite skilled in combat tactics and covert operations, and is able to instinctively sense that Homunculi are a more of a threat than a typical human. Such sensitivity is likely due to her sharp instincts from her experiences in combat.

In the manga/2009 anime
Not much is known about Riza's life before the death of her father, aside from the death of her mother when she was a child, but it is assumed that she spent most of her early life growing up in the relative solitude of her family's old manor with her father and, possibly, a young Roy Mustang during the period of his alchemy schooling. It is known, though, she received a proper education prior to her entering the military.

At some point in the years leading up to his death, Riza's father collected his life's research, the secret of fire alchemy, into a coded sigil and tattooed it upon his daughter's back. Whether or not she was a willing participant in this procedure is currently unknown. Master Hawkeye entrusted Riza with the mission of guarding the secret of Flame Alchemy and only to reveal it to an alchemist who could prove to be a good person, who would use that tremendous and dangerous power in favor of the people.

By the time Roy finished his training and left Master Hawkeye and Riza to join the military, Master Hawkeye’s health had begun to deteriorate, culminating in his death little after Roy's graduation from military academy. Traveling back to the Hawkeye manor to tell his master of his enlistment, Roy watches Master Hawkeye die. Riza, responding to the screams of Mustang for help, comes in to find her father dead in the arms of his disciple.

With his last words, Master Hawkeye entrusted Riza’s safety to Roy. With no other known relatives to turn to, Riza accepts Roy’s help, who make all arrangements for her fathers’s funeral and burial. At his funeral, Roy tells her about his dream of a united, peaceful Amestris. She is moved and enamored with the idealistic future he paints--she decides to trust him with her father's research, significantly asking if she can entrust her back to that dream.

Soon after this, Riza decides to follow in Roy’s example and enlists in the military herself. As a result of monumental losses in the field of battle, is shipped out to the front lines in Ishval before her training is even complete. Here she is reunited with Mustang after saving both he and Maes Hughes from an ambush by a wounded Ishvalan soldier. Before learning her identity and relationship to Mustang, Hughes simply referred her as "Hawk's Eye", and states that she had become "quite a topic among us". The reunion of Hawkeye and Mustang is bittersweet at best, as Roy laments her transformation into a killer using the phrase "even this girl has gotten a killer's eyes'"''. Riza voices their shared torment concerning the life their righteous dream has lead them to:''' "Why are soldiers, who ought to protect citizens, killing them instead? Why is alchemy, which ought to bring happiness to the people, being used for murder?"

Since she bestowed upon Mustang the secrets encoded on her back Riza considers herself to be at fault for all the lives taken through the use of her father's alchemy. When Roy finds her burying an Ishvalan child at the end of the civil war, she asks him to help her prevent the birth of another Flame Alchemist by burning the tattoo on her back. Mustang vehemently objects at first, but Riza is persistent and pleads with him to destroy her bonds to her father and alchemy so that she may "become Riza Hawkeye as an individual". He reluctantly agrees and burns away only enough to make it indistinguishable, so as not to hinder her lifestyle or harm her unnecessarily.

Returning to the Eastern HQ, Mustang receives his subordinates and, surprisingly, Riza is among them. He wonders why she decided to continue in the military service after living though Ishval, to which she answers she believes she must take the burden to herself if she wishes to make the country a peaceful place for future generations.

Roy the renews their pact of building a better future, setting his sights at the top of the country this time, rather than wishing to be its foundation. Roy positions Riza as his personal aide and bodyguard, entrusting his back to her--in an echo of her entrusting the secrets on her back to him--under the agreement that she would protect him from harm and shoot him from behind if his march to power caused him to stray off of the correct path and use the knowledge she had given him with ill intentions.



While Riza does not extend far past the role of Mustang's subordinate in the first anime, she takes on a far more central role in the manga. Throughout the manga, Riza keeps Mustang in check and acts as his personal assistant. Her first appearance was in chapter 4 of the manga, where entered the office along with Colonel Mustang while the East-area military were gathering information about a hijacked train that Edward Elric was on. She was also seen while the military came to pick up Edward at the train station, ready to protect Mustang from an armed criminal until he tells her to stand down.

Later on in Tucker's case, she told the Elric brothers about both Tucker and Nina's death, and telling Ed that "it's better if you didn't see". She is shown when the military came to Ed's aid in his battle with Scar, after the military identified him as the killer of national alchemists. She saves the Colonel through untraditional means, physically knocking him to the ground and firing at Scar using two pistols, before Mustang's reckless actions could resutl in him being harm. Later when major Armstrong engaged Scar in a battle, she again aimed at Scar using a rifle, yet only one of her five shots managed to graze him. It is the only instance in which her shots do not find their intended mark.

After Hughes' death in chapter 15, a funeral was held. Riza came to Roy's side, asking him if he was to go back, eventually being the only one to witness his tears. Straight after that, Roy started his investigation on Hughes' murder case. Riza summons Major Armstrong as she is asked, and he provided important information to the pair of them.

She also appears in a flashback in chapter 24, when Ed tells Izumi their story. She accompanied Roy (ranked Lieutenant Colonel, at that time) to pay the Elric brothers a visit, intending to recruit them. She waited outside the room where Roy was having a discussion with them. Riza then has a conversation with Winry Rockbell. Winry asks if Riza has ever shot anyone, to which Riza answers she has shot many people. Winry then wonders why Riza joined the military if she doesn't agree with having to kill. Hawkeye responds that she has "someone [she needs] to protect," explaining that she pulls the trigger of her gun of her own free will, and will continue to do so until Mustang accomplishes his goal.

In chapter 25, Riza was seen practicing her aim before being asked to report to the Colonel along the others in their squad. They were told that they would be transferred to Central with Mustang. She reappears in chapter 30, on her way home after buying groceries. She then encounters and subdues Barry the Chopper and summons Mustang as Barry reveals to her that he knew about Alphonse. She was also seen while questioning Barry in a warehouse.

In chapter 35, Hawkeye was ordered by Mustang to look up documents related to 2nd lieutenant Maria Ross. She later answered Falman's call while Mustang was out meeting Maria.

Later on, Riza assists in luring out the Homunculi, acting as a sniper in the operation (using the codename "Elizabeth" while communicating in the process), only to be ambushed by Gluttony. Riza is then saved by Mustang's intervention, only for her to scold Mustang for being foolish and risking compromising their position. Despite this, Riza thanks Roy later on. Not soon after, the crew enter the Third Laboratory, where Barry's body had led them. The crew, which consists of Mustang, Hawkeye, Alphonse and Havoc, split up into two groups upon arriving at a gate. Lust appears on Mustang and Havoc's side, having just injured both of them. Lust tells Riza that she (Lust) had killed Mustang. Upon hearing this, Riza completely loses her usually calm temperament and goes on to shoot Lust until running out of bullets, and eventually breaking down into tears. She loses the will to live without Mustang, but before Lust could kill Riza, Al protects her long enough for Mustang to arrive and burn Lust to death. In the hospital after the battle with Lust, Roy harshly scolds Riza for believing the enemy's words that he was dead but asks Riza to continue watching his back.

Afterwards, Riza assists in catching Gluttony but not before she is discovered by King Bradley as she drove away with Ling and Gluttony in the back seat. Riza then takes Gluttony to a safehouse out in the forest (picking up Ran Fan on their way due to Ling's request). And upon Gluttony's escape and pursuit of Mustang, she helps take Mustang out of harm's way. Before leaving the three behind, she lent Ed her pistol, and corrected Al's saying from "It's a machine for killing" into "It's a machine for protection".

When Mustang begins to learn too much about the Homunculi, Riza is reassigned as King Bradley's personal assistant, in other terms, a hostage to be used if Mustang were to step out of line.

After their fight underground with Father, Ed went to Riza's apartment to give her gun back to her. Though they talked about living for the person which is important, burdens, and Ed even confessed a little, their conversation ended up being Riza telling their story during the Ishbal war, the annihilation of an entire race.

Though she no longer worked under Mustang, she still kept an eye out for ways to make his plans of becoming Führer come true. She discovers that King Bradley's son, Selim Bradley, is a homunculus, while she was told that Selim is related to King Bradley by blood. She was taunted by Pride/Selim right after her departure from the Fuhrer's house. She was alone in the fearsome shadows of Pride's words, yet colonel Mustang made a call in time, saying that he's got plenty of flowers, asking if Riza wants some. He noticed the uneasiness although Riza tried to deny it, and thus looked for her in the canteen the next day. Riza sends her discovery to Mustang by way of a coded conversation using the first letter of the names she mentions to spell out "Selim Bradley is Homunculus".

In chapter 83, Riza met up with her friend Rebecca, who is actually delivering a message from Lieutenant General Grumman to Roy on "The Promised Day". She later visits Havoc, taking along a pack of cigarettes which consists of the message from Grumman, which Havoc later passes on to the Colonel.

She later defects from the military to aid Mustang in the assault on Central on the "Promised Day". Riza then aids Mustang in defeating Envy, where she follows Mustang. Envy attempts to trick Riza by mimicking Mustang's appearance. Riza notices, though, and tricks Envy in turn by saying that, when she and Mustang were alone, Mustang only called her Riza. Envy easily falls for this trick, and Riza proceeds to spray Envy with bullets. Unfortunately, Riza is choked by Envy but is saved by Mustang. Just as Mustang was about to finally kill Envy, Riza points her gun at Mustang, stating that if he killed Envy, he would only be consumed by rage and revenge, thus breaking their promise, using his alchemy for selfish purposes. Mustang was still not entirely convinced, and asks her what she would do after killing him, to which she answers, "I have no desire to continue living a happy life alone. After this battle, my body will leave this world together with the Flame Alchemy that only brings insanity." Upon hearing this, Mustang does cease, sorrowfully stating that he could not lose Riza and apologizes to her for causing her pain.

Soon after, Mustang, Riza, and Scar are ambushed by the Gold-Toothed Doctor and the failed Fuhrer candidates. The doctor tells Mustang to perform human transmutation. However, Riza's neck was slit in battle as a result of Mustang's lack of cooperation to perform a human transmutation and become a sacrifice.

Mustang attempts to save Riza but is held back. Mustang then considers performing human transmutation to save Riza, but upon gazing into Riza's eyes, he gets the message from Riza not to perform human transmutation. Mustang reluctantly refuses to perform human transmutation, seemingly leaving Riza for dead. However, they are saved by the appearance of May Chang and the other chimeras. May then heals Riza's neck wound enough to stop the bleeding. Riza apologizes for worrying Mustang and states that he took her eye signal well. Mustang replies that this is only because the two of them have been together for so long. Riza then is supported by Mustang until King Bradley arrives. Riza is left in the protection of the chimeras while she can only watch as Mustang gets his hands pinned to the ground inside a transmutation circle and sent through the gate.

In Chapter 104, Riza was seen as one of the few who survived Father's Nationwide Transmutation Circle, along with the chimeras, Scar, Wrath, Mustang, Hohenheim, the Elrics, Greed/Ling, May, Izumi, and Pride.

Later, Mustang was placed under her care, where she found that he had been rendered blind by Truth as payment for going through the gate. Despite this, they ignored Greed when he told them to remain behind, choosing to go and aid in the fight against Father. Riza and Roy are shown supporting each other due to their respective injuries, and Riza directs him on where to aim his blasts.

When Father's composure snaps and a large burst of energy is released, Hawkeye shields Mustang with her body and joins in cheering on Edward as he takes advantage of the Homunculus' unstable state.

In the aftermath, she is shown being treated for her injuries while conversing with Rebecca Catalina. Later, a photo depicts her as still working with Mustang, rebuilding Ishval. It also shows on the pictures that she cut her hair like before.

Trivia

 * The relationship between Riza and Roy is a heavily implied one, and fans refer to their relationship as "Royai." Some fans were reportedly disappointed that the epilogue did not reveal much more of their relationship.
 * In Perfect Guidebook 2, it's stated that General Grumman is, in fact, Riza's grandfather on her mother side. It's not clear whether she's aware of that relationship to the General. There's an implied joke there, when the General asks Colonel Mustang if he would marry his granddaughter so she would become the future First Lady.
 * Like nearly all military personnel in the Fullmetal Alchemist series, Hawkeye is named after a military vehicle, vessel or weapon, in her case, the Grumman E-2 Hawkeye, an aircraft carrier-based tactical Airborne Early Warning (AEW) aircraft used by the US Navy. Interesting enough, her grandfather's name was also taken from the same aircraft.
 * In the Red Gaiden, aka Simple People, Riza reveals to her friend Rebecca Catalina that she let her hair grow after she met Winry at Resembool and realizing it 'might actually look good'. That reinforces a thought/phrase Arakawa occasionally brings up on the FMA manga: "The reason (why people do a particular thing) is always something simple". That exact same phrase is said by the then Captain Maes Hughes in Ishval upon the question by Major Roy Mustang: "Why do you keep on fighting?". He answers "Because I don't want to die. The reason is always something simple." In the epilogue of the last chapter she's shown with her hair cut short, once again.
 * The name "Riza" (a Hungarian version of Thereza) has as one of its meanings "Guardian". Though it's unclear whether this was intentionally put by Arakawa, it fits Riza's story, both as the guardian of her father's secret through the tattoo on her back and the guardian of Colonel Mustang and his alchemy, not allowing him to stray from his path to become the Führer and use the Flame Alchemy "for the good of the people".
 * Mustang refers to all of his subordinates as chess pieces; Riza's is "Queen". The Queen is the only "female" chess piece and is the most powerful and useful piece in the game of chess, appropriate for Riza's battle ability and closeness with Roy, who is the "King".
 * Riza is currently the most popular female character in the FMA series, having come in the 3rd place in the latest fan poll. Edward Elric and Roy Mustang came in 1st and 2nd places, respectively.