Penelope de la Rosa

"I can protect you, I'm sure. Erina, I'm sorry. Do you mind if I go? My clowns will still protect the manor even if I'm gone, and I'll come back as fast as I can."

- Penelope de la Rosa

Penelope de la Rosa (ペネロペ・デ・ラ・ロサ) is a major ally featured in the light novel JORGE JOESTAR. She is from the and helps George Joestar catch Javier Cortes, the mastermind behind fifteen locked room murders, after almost becoming one of Javier's victims. Forced to leave her home, Erina Joestar allows Penelope to live with them and Penelope starts working in the office of Erina's trading company, Star Mark Trading. While living with the Joestars, she acts as an elder sister to George and tutors him.

She has a Wound ability that allows her to create locked rooms and hang whoever is trapped within. Although she is unaware of it, Penelope is also a Stand user, with the autonomous Stand Cube House which temporarily evolves into Arrow Cross House.

Penelope later moves to the 37th universe to reunite with her Stand and marries. She becomes the stepmother of Jorge Joestar and mother of.

Appearance
Penelope is a slim woman of average height with youthful facial features. She has short wavy light hair kept up to her neck with side swept bangs. Her hair appears to grow longer when she is distressed or using her Wound ability.

She wears a striped and George says that she would sometimes also wear a light  over her shoulders. According to George, she is quite beautiful.

Personality
Penelope has a worrisome, insecure attitude and is emotionally unstable. She initially has an extreme pathological fear of clowns. When seeing Javier Cortes appear in her dreams as a clown, she would become covered in a cold sweat, her heart would rapidly beat, her breath would grow shallow, and she would be barely conscious enough to think. Sometimes her eyes would even roll back into her head and she would faint, while still asleep and dreaming. She worries about harming other people with her ability and shuts herself in her room. Penelope was loyal to her abusive boyfriend,. Despite Edvard beating her up and selling anything she owned of value, Penelope would wait for him to come back to her. She is also regretful of blaming her mom for the divorce of her parents. Penelope slowly starts becoming more confident and braver after living with the Joestar family. However, she is also very violent, aggressive, and can go berserk. Seeing her boyfriend Edvard again enrages her to the point where veins bulge on her forehead, her lips curl back, she bares her teeth, and her nose starts bleeding. She becomes willing to actually kill someone when she is in this state.

When they move to England, George describes her as seeming full of life and fun. She is protective of George and treats him like a little brother. Furious that he is still being bullied in England, Penelope threatens to summon her locked room clown ability on them.

Penelope is also intelligent, as George says she explains concepts very well to him as his tutor. Penelope tends to start trouble with other women, getting aggravated when talking to Lisa Lisa and Darlington Motorize. She doesn't hesitate to use her locked room ability even on harmless women like Darlington because she thinks it is for the sake of protecting George. Penelope admits if George had married anyone else aside from Lisa Lisa, she would feel jealous. Despite previously being at odds with Lisa Lisa, Penelope is ecstatic over the birth of George and Lisa Lisa's child and happy for their marriage.

Wound
Penelope's constant fear of Javier Cortes appearing in her dreams dressed as a clown and manipulating her to create locked rooms to kill her mother awakens her Wound ability.

Coulrophobia
"If you're not Penelope's friend, you'll have to hang yourself!"

- Clown

Penelope's Wound activates when she is enraged, distressed, or afraid, causing the creation of locked rooms that entrap anyone in the surrounding area.

At first, Penelope could not control the ability and just standing in front of a door would cause all the doors and windows of that room to slam shut, becoming a locked room. A clown made of the threads of Penelope's clothes lurks inside the room. It is short and fat, with big white hair, white makeup, puffy white clothes, a round nose, and a hat. Inside its sclerae are stars instead of irises. It appears hollow and initially also has a thread hanging from its hip as well as a few cracks on its body with frayed edges. The clown takes any object inside the room such as a large table and wedges it under the doorknob so the door remains shut. However, with enough strength and repeated hits, it is still possible for someone on the outside to break in. The clown shatters into tiny pieces if it is directly attacked, but the room remains locked.

The clown's noose drops down from the ceiling, wrapping the necks of the victims trapped inside the room and hanging them to death. As Penelope initially did not want to kill anybody, her Wound would also create a doll out of the threads of her clothes, and the doll would be hanged instead. The doll appears with no clothes, a shapeless face with white circles as eyes, and a wide open mouth stitched on. Somehow, the doll would also have blood streaming out of its mouth after being hanged. The doll could easily unravel with one tug of a loose thread hanging from its hip. Six months later, Penelope overcomes her fears with the help of George, and upgrades her ability into a frightening weapon. She is capable of transforming anything in her environment into a locked room. For example, if Penelope is outside, dirt and grass could rise up into four walls to entrap someone. She can even make the walls out of zombies. The walls have no doors or windows, making it more difficult to either break in or out. The ability also no longer requires using her clothes, as the clown is formed from her environment. The walls are living and can recover itself to fill up any gaps or holes.

It is possible to escape from the locked room by breaking the idea of it being a locked room mystery. As the point of a locked room is to make murder look like suicide, George uses a knife to carve the word "MURDER" on his stomach. After the clown reads it, the ability dissolves.

Her Wound eventually develops into having an extremely wide range, enveloping the entire world. Penelope can have clowns protect Erina and their house while she is far away from home.

Cube House
Penelope's Stand subconsciously manifested in the far future, thirty-six universes later, as a way to search for George Joestar after his body disappeared in 1920. Cube House is a tesseract made of eight square rooms that allows its occupant to move indefinitely in any direction. Falling vertically through four doors in the center of Cube House allows one to travel through time. The Stand has its own personality with its main body appearing as a young girl named Reimi Sugimoto, who controls the house's walls.

Arrow Cross House
Arrow Cross House is created around Cube House when Reimi accidentally pierces herself with the Arrow, developing its own Wound ability. Arrow Cross House appears as four arrows surrounding the north, south, east, and west walls of Cube House. Reimi could manipulate its walls and seal people beneath the building in a state between life and death for either her own safety or their protection.

Penelope also momentarily borrows the Stand U-Boat from Jorge Joestar, who loans its DISC to her so she can bring Erina to the final confrontation against Dio Brando.

Background
Penelope's parents divorced in 1900 and her mother had full custody of her. Penelope blames her mother for taking away her father and their relationship becomes strained.

Later on, Penelope would date a thug named. Edvard abused Penelope and sold her valuables while threatening to completely ruin her if Isabella interfered. Afraid to lose her daughter, Isabella gave up on Penelope, leaving her alone by herself. Because of this, clowns started appearing in Penelope's dreams which caused her pathological fear of them to grow. Despite of this, no one believed her stories, not even Edvard nor her mother.

At some point, when George Joestar and Tsukumojuku Kato were solving the case of the fifteen locked room murders, they crossed paths with Penelope, who had been one of the victims in the case. She was able to help uncover the identity of the assailant who attempted to make her kill Isabella in her nightmares while disguising himself as a clown. Because of her pathological fear of clowns, she was able to describe his appearance in full detail. These details then helped the other victims remember him, and the duo was able to trace the clown's identity to a fifteen-year-old named Javier Cortes. Javier was later beaten to death by the La Palma police and his body was disposed in the ocean. After the story of the case broke out to the public, Edvard cut ties with Penelope without her knowledge.

1904-1905
Following the disappearance of Tsukumojuku, George occupies himself by reading science novels in the house and his mother,, suggests hiring a tutor. The first person that comes into George's mind is Penelope. When he gives her a visit, the sight of George triggers Penelope's memories from his previous case with Javier Cortez and dismisses him immediately.

After George leaves, she returns to her room only to find that it is locked from the inside. She rushes to Isabella in the kitchen but an unseen force slams the door slams in her face. Behind the door, Penelope hears Isabella begging for her daughter not to kill her, confusing Penelope herself. She breaks the door down after several attempts. At the corner of the room, she sees a clown vanish quickly. Isabella, who is hiding behind a sofa, only blames her for what had happened. Penelope slowly goes to the window where the clown had been and finds a doll that has a shapeless face, eyes with no pupils, blood streaming out of its wide-open mouth, and a noose around its neck. She believes that Cortez has returned to kill her.

Later that midnight, Penelope goes to George's house asking for his help but blames him for his previous visit. George talks to her outside and reassures to her that Cortez was long dead. After Penelope narrates what had happened at home, George invites her to come in but notices that the door is locked. Inside, Erina tells the two to flee when she sees a clown in the room. Penelope starts to panic, prompting George to break the door down. There he finds a white fat clown dressed in white puffy clothes. He blindingly throws a chair towards it but it only passes through the clown's body when the latter shatters into pieces, surprising George and Erina. Erina tells her son that this must be a manifestation of Penelope's need to protect herself and intends no harm upon them.

Penelope tries to check on the two when the door suddenly slams itself shut again. While she begins to panic, the clown manifests behind the door then wedges a side table under the doorknob, trapping the mother and son inside. George slowly approaches the clown to examine it and notices that it is made out of woven threads; a single thread poking out from its hip traces to Penelope outside. He opens the door and immediately holds her in his arms to dissipate her panic. Soon, the thread from her dress snaps and the clown behind the door turns into a doll. George explains to her that she has an ability to create locked rooms by making the clown do it. Furthermore, because she did not want to kill anyone, she hangs a doll with a noose instead. However, Penelope does not believe him easily, much to his dismay. Later on, Penelope starts to live with the Joestars to work for Erina in La Palma while being George's tutor as well.

Six months later, Penelope and George encounter her ex-boyfriend, Edvard, who is in a terrified state. Edvard tells her that he is being targeted by a man with black wings whom he had seen while he was in bed with his. Penelope refuses to listen to his story but he still continues to talk. This infuriates her, summoning a mound of earth that forms a locked room around Edvard. After seeing the clown behind Edvard, George realizes that Penelope had learned how to create a locked room without using her clothes and, given the source of this power, decides to name it a "Wound". George digs a hole to save Edvard from being hanged inside, but then he is also strangled by a grass rope around his neck. He carves the words "murder" on his stomach and passes out, but not before Penelope releases the locked room.

George is then brought to a hospital where Penelope and meet for the first time. It just happens that Lisa Lisa is in the hospital while investigating about the series of delusive attacks from a Mothman lately on the island, similar to what Edvard had been telling Penelope about. Unfortunately, the girls' relationship starts off rocky; even though Penelope takes the blame for the George's scar and tries to be friendly with Lisa Lisa, the latter is jealous about her new relationship with George.

In George's home, while Erina narrates her stories about to George and Lisa Lisa, Penelope is told about about a recent mass hysteria involving seventy people inscribing drawings of the Mothman on the walls of the now-burned down church. They go to the church to investigate the site on the next morning. Deducing that these incidents happened because of their presence on the island, Erina decides that she and George must return to England with Penelope.

After arriving in England, Penelope, Erina, and George start to grow accustomed to their new lives. George befriends the Motorize siblings, Kenton, Steven, and Darlington, while Penelope goes to work for Star Mark Trading, Erina's new company. One day, on her way from work, Penelope spots George's glider that he had constructed with Kenton and Steven flying in the sky. Unaware that George had not completed its construction yet and was not the one piloting the glider, she writes a note congratulating him for his first successful flight.

Soon, Erina and Penelope are informed that Kenton Motorize was murdered on a cliff by the coast. George's airplane and a knife bearing the Joestar Family crest were found on the crime scene. This made him a prime suspect without question. At the same time, George had disappeared, though it is revealed that he was mysteriously teleported to Rome with Lisa Lisa around the time of the murder. Once George returns to England, he is subsequently jailed and is trialed by jury with Penelope being one of his only companions.

1907
Over the next two years, Penelope spends her days investigating Kenton's murder and finding her real killer. George graduates from school but remains under suspicion. One day, Darlington visits him to inform him that two witnesses' testimonies have been used as concrete evidences against him. Penelope overhears them and becomes furious at the sight of the Motorize sibling, thinking that she wanted George to plead guilty in exchange for a reduced sentence. She attempts to silence Darlington by creating a dirt locked room around her. Darlington surprisingly remains unfazed by her strange ability. She then informs George that the witnesses were her and Penelope, who both saw his glider flying on the day of the murder but chose to keep silent for his sake. Penelope's handwritten note was also found as one of the evidences against him. Unable to get George away in the locked room with Darlington, Penelope frustratingly goes back inside to cry in her room.

When Darlington leaves, George goes to Penelope's room in order to console her. He faces a dilemma whether to accept the plea bargain or not. Erina sees him nearby and gives him a word of advice. After Penelope stops crying, George sets on finding the killer and she offers to help him using the clues that she had gathered over the past two years. At the end of their trail, George hypothesizes that the murderer could have been Tsukumojuku Kato or Steven Motorize.