[1] A rag doll with a rough, antagonistic personality and an independent, anarchist behaviour, Emília is Lobato's most popular creation alongside Jeca Tatu.

Since 1951, Emília has been adapted to stage plays, theatrical films and television series, being portrayed by several actresses (eleven altogether) since its creation.

Emília is a rag doll described as "clumsy" or "ugly", resembling a "witch" that was handmade by Aunt Nastácia, the ranch's cook, for the little girl Lúcia, also known as "Little Nose".

Some day, while at the creek of a nearby stream, Lucia fell asleep and was supposedly (as the narrative initially suggests the girl could be dreaming) awaken by a tiny fish and his friend, a cockchafer, while they talked to each other on her upturned nose.

Thinking that Lúcia was a monster, the bug left, but the fish (dressed in suit and tie), stood, and introduced himself as the Scaly Prince from the Clear Waters Kingdom.

The Doctor then medicated the doll with a dose of his pills (the same Major Sticky later accidentally ingested, mistaking them with sea rocks), and Emília suddenly started talking, and would never stop henceforth.

Primally using a corn cob, Pedrinho then created the "Viscount of Sabugosa", which in an unknown form came to life and, beyond the wedding prank, would become Emília's counterpart to the boy.

As one of the guests, Miss Sardine (a pilchard), gets fried after she confuses Aunt Nastácia's boiling oil with a swimming pool, the Prince and his subjects decide to leave the Yellow Woodpecker Ranch.

In the most original volume of the series, A Chave do Tamanho ("The Size Key"), Emília commits her greatest act, after noticing that the horror of World War II is causing pain in everyone, particularly Mrs. Benta, and filling the ranch with sadness.

As the small people become used to their new life, Emília manages to visit the White House, where she interacts with the President of the United States and questions him about the War.

Other occasion was the literal reform the doll proposed to the whole nature, which ended up with earthworms, insects such like ants and centipedes, as well as microscopic beings such as fleas, having their sizes increased to the proportion of a dog (the opposite to what happened in A Chave do Tamanho).

While Mrs. Benta and Aunt Nastácia had died, Rabicó had been turned into ham after all, and Pedrinho and Lúcia became adults and "vanished", an aged Emília was still alive and defiant as always, dreaming about switching off the keys of Poverty, Unemployment and Hunger (Brazilian social issues of the present day), and about the Yellow Woodpecker farm itself, their former world of fantasy now possessed by homeless invaders (a reference to the MST).

Having a conservative and an anarchist side, Emilia demonstrates being dubious over the movement, divided between adhering and rebelling, while the most recommended person to advise her, her own creator, has already died.

It is later revealed by the Viscount that Emília was, literally, cutting of the woman's shadow with a scissor, leaving everyone to what the doll simply smiled with superiority, after spending a considerable part of the novel questioning about Nastácia's beliefs and her color.