Lucille "Lucy" Van Pelt[1] is a fictional character in the syndicated comic strip Peanuts, written and drawn by Charles Schulz.

Lucy is characterized as a "fussbudget", crabby,[2][3] bossy and opinionated girl who bullies most other characters in the strip, particularly Linus and Charlie Brown.

[5][6] Although she often torments, teases, and belittles Charlie Brown, she is genuinely fond of him, and their true friendship is obvious throughout the strip.

The last panel of the strip shows him walking away from her as she sits there with a surprised expression on her face with the bowl of popcorn dumped on her head.

Kevin Wong from the blog Kotaku wrote of the relationship: "Over the years, the reader empathized less with Schroeder and more with Lucy, even though she was the initial aggressor in this dysfunctional dynamic.

[8] Her advice ranges from street smart popular psychology to hilarious obvious truths to insightful investigation.

In A Charlie Brown Christmas, Lucy reverses the placard from displaying its "Out" side to reveal the words "Real In".

"[citation needed] The third new character in Peanuts after Violet and Schroeder, Lucy made her debut on March 3, 1952.

[10] Originally based on Schulz's adopted daughter Meredith,[11] Lucy was a goggle-eyed toddler who continually annoyed her parents and the older kids.

Her future irascibility was hinted at in a 1953 strip when she tells Charlie Brown that she'd just been expelled from nursery school.

Within a few months of her introduction, Schulz altered Lucy's eyes to have the same appearance as that of the other characters, except for small extra lines around them which were also later sported by her two siblings.

But she works, and a central comic-strip character is not only one who fills his role very well, but who will provide ideas by the very nature of his personality."

The most controversial example is in the animated special It's Your First Kiss, Charlie Brown; during an actual football game with many spectators, Lucy pulls the ball away on Charlie Brown four times keeping him from making any scoring plays and causing the team to lose the Homecoming game by one point.