Blair Waldorf

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Blair Waldorf
Gossip Girl character
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Leighton Meester as Blair Waldorf
First appearance Book Series:
Gossip Girl
TV Series:
Pilot
Last appearance Book Series:
Don't You Forget About Me
Cause/reason End of series
Created by Cecily von Ziegesar
Portrayed by Leighton Meester
Information
Nickname(s) Blair Bear (by dad)
TV Series:
B
Aliases B
Gender Female
Age 15-18(book series)
16-17 (TV series)
Date of birth November 30 (book series)
November 17 (TV series)
Specialty Book Series: Tennis, chairman of Social Services Board, and in Various Extra-curricular Activities: French Club, SAT prep, and having a fashion design course with Oscar de la Renta
Occupation Book Series:
College Student
TV Series:
High School Student
Family Book Series:
Harold Waldorf (father)
Giles (father's boyfriend)
Eleanor Rose (mother)
Tyler Waldorf (brother)
Cyrus Rose (step-father)
Aaron Rose (stepbrother)
Yale Rose (half-sister)
Ping Waldorf (adoptive half-brother)
Pong Waldorf (adoptive half-sister)
TV Series
Harold Waldorf (father)
Roman (father's boyfriend)
Eleanor Waldorf (mother)
Relatives Book Series:
Catherine (maternal aunt)
Bruce (maternal uncle)
Zo Zo (maternal aunt)
Fran (maternal aunt)
Becky (cousin)
Peter (cousin)
Willie (cousin)
Address Book Series:
Fifth Avenue, Upper East Side of Manhattan
The Plaza Hotel
Williamsburg, Brooklyn
Yale Club of New York City
Designer Bailey Winter's East Hampton summer home
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut
TV Series:
The Upper East Side

Blair Cornelia Waldorf is a main character in the best selling Gossip Girl book series. She is portrayed by Leighton Meester in the TV series.

Contents

[edit] Book Series Background

Blair Cornelia Waldorf, born November 17, was born to high society on Manhattan's exclusive Upper East Side. Her father is Harold Waldorf, Esquire, a formerly closeted gay man and successful lawyer, and her mother is Eleanor Waldorf Rose, an Upper East Side hostess. She has a younger sibling named Tyler Waldorf. After her mother's marriage to Cyrus Rose, she gained a step sibling named Aaron Rose, an alternative vegan, and a half-sister, Yale Rose. After Blair's father ran off with a man to France, he and his partner, Giles, adopted Cambodian twins, Ping and Pong. Blair grew up with uber-girl Serena van der Woodsen and future boyfriend Nate Archibald. She is described to be 5'4" and slender, with brilliant blue eyes, long brunette hair (for the first four books), and a fox-like face. Her two allies, after former best friend Serena left for her New Hampshire boarding school, are Kati Farkas and Isabel Coates. She cuts her long brunette hair to her ears and continues to cut it to look like her idol, Audrey Hepburn.

Blair's a student at the Constance Billard School for Girls, a small, elite, all-girls school located at 93rd and Madison Avenue, and suffered from bulimia. She wants to attend Yale University, notably with on/off boyfriend Nate, but in the end she goes to Yale alone. Blair, before going off to college, usually lived with her mother, step father, and full and half/step siblings in a penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue. She also lived at The Plaza Hotel, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn with Vanessa Abrams, the original apartment where Breakfast at Fred's was shot with Serena, designer Bailey Winter's East Hampton summer home, and the Yale Club of New York City.

[edit] Overview

Starting at a dinner party at the Waldorf Penthouse for future stepfather Cyrus Rose, former best friend Serena van der Woodsen, described as the most gorgeous girl in all of New York City, returns from her boarding school Hanover Academy in Hanover, New Hampshire. Blair, from the start, doesn't want to give up her spotlight as being the "most happening" girl in the room just yet. She and boyfriend Nate who have dated for about a year are in the middle of a passionate scene when Serena shows up, and entertains all the guests with stories about her wild summer adventures and what it was like to be at boarding school, shunning Blair out of the spotlight again.

Blair starts nasty rumors about Serena and turns her into a school outcast. Eventually, Blair finds out boyfriend Nate Archibald slept with Serena right after sophomore year, hence why Serena felt the need to escape to boarding school and not come back for a year before she was kicked out for returning late in the beginning of the school year. When Jenny Humphrey, a freshman with a hearty bosom steals Nate away from her on her birthday, which is also the day that her then pregnant mother marries Cyrus Rose, Serena and Blair make up once again and go back to being the best of friends, while ignoring Nate and his new girlfriend. When Blair's mom marries Cyrus Rose, she meets her new step brother, Aaron Rose (a vegan with an endless supply of herbal cigarettes and an unrequited crush on Blair), comes the day Blair has been waiting for all her life- her Yale interview.

Blair messes up her college interview at Yale by telling her interviewer about the trainwreck her life has become, and then kissing him on the cheek upon dismissal. Blair's father donates a multi-million dollar vineyard to Yale, but it is still not enough to clear her mistakes, and she is wait-listed at Yale. She's turned down by Harvard, Princeton, Brown, Wesleyan, and Vassar and is only accepted into Georgetown University, her safety, despite being one of the best girls in the senior class. However, Serena, a below-average student, was accepted into all of these schools.

She is known to move out of her home frequently, first trying to live at Serena's penthouse before they left for Sun Valley, then taking a suite at The Plaza Hotel (to the chagrin of Constance Billard's headmistress), moving into Brooklyn with her shaven-haired classmate Vanessa Abrams, living with Serena at the original apartment where Breakfast at Tiffany's was shot, and moving into designer Bailey Winter's East Hampton home as a muse. She also lived in the Yale Club of New York City for a short time, where she held her high school graduation bash.

After Nate, her relationships with other men have been quite rocky. She started a brief fling with her Yale alumni interviewer, only to end it when she finds out that he was married and has a daughter also studying at Constance. She also had a thing with Serena Van der Woodsen's older brother, Erik Van der Woodsen, while they were skiing at Sun Valley for spring break. After another messy break-up with Nate, she starts a brief affair with a British lord she met at the Yale Club, however, this was ended upon learning of his relationship with his second-cousin.

Blair is eventually accepted into Yale. She and Nate go on a month-long boat trip around the world over the summer and return a week before college starts, only to discover Serena waiting. At the end of the final book, Blair and Serena kiss and make up for good, and Nate leaves them both to sail across the world with his father's Navy mentor, Captain Chips White, to figure his life out, not wanting to choose between either girl or getting in the way of their friendship again.

[edit] TV Series Background

Wealthy and snobby, yet lovable, Blair Waldorf is the daughter of high-end fashion designer Eleanor Waldorf and Harold Waldorf. Mr. Waldorf left Mrs. Waldorf for a man named Roman, and ran off to Paris. Blair is known for her Queen Bee status at the exclusive Contance Billard School for girls. Blair's friends joke that she has dated on/off again boyfriend Nate Archibald "since kindergarten."

[edit] Season 1

In Season 1 of Gossip Girl, Blair is introduced as the Upper East Side "It Girl". When her best friend, Serena van der Woodsen, returns home from boarding school, the two try to reconcile their friendship. Blair soon learns from her boyfriend, Nate, that he and Serena slept together behind her back. Blair, infuriated, ends her friendship with Serena. However, at the end of the episode Poison Ivy, the two reconcile. Nate continually seeks out Serena, and in the process breaks Blair's heart on numerous occasions; but Blair, hanging onto him, manages to keep their relationship together until Victor/Victrola.

Blair and her fashion designer mother have a rocky relationship. Blair is convinced that Eleanor enjoys Serena's company more than her own and seems more convinced of this when Eleanor chooses Serena over Blair as a model for her clothing line. Her father left her and her mother for a man, Roman, and the two live in France. She is close to her father and is trying to have a closer relationship to her mother. It is also revealed that she has an eating disorder that she has overcome, but sometimes relapses back into when extremely distressed.

Fed up with Nate's attraction to Serena, Blair reaches her breaking point when Nate can't seem to reciprocate her love. She breaks it off with Nate and goes to Victrola, the burlesque club that Chuck Bass has recently purchased. After being challenged by Chuck to dance on stage, she loses her virginity to him in a limo in the spirit of the moment.

Regretful of her actions, Blair is focused on getting back together with Nate as soon as possible and warns Chuck to keep quiet about their affair. On the night of her birthday, however, Nate fails to make an appearance at her party, and Chuck confesses his feelings for her. He gives her a necklace as a birthday present that she had hoped Nate would get for her, and the two begin a secret affair.

She agrees to go to the Constance Billard's debutante ball with Nate, but she is distant, and in a fit of jealousy, Nate gets into a fight over her and is kicked out of the ball. Blair realizes that Chuck tricked Nate into getting into the fight and leaves Chuck to reconcile with Nate. Out of fear of losing Blair to Nate, Chuck attempts to manipulate events in his favor, but his plan back-fires and brings the two together again. Chuck sees Blair and Nate kissing and going into a room, and he leaves NYC miserably.

Chuck, driven by jealousy, threatens Blair that he'll tell Nate about the two of them. Blair ends things with Nate so that there would be no reason for Chuck to tell him. But when the three are part of a group of students threatened with suspension for breaking into the school, Nate, mistakenly thinking that Blair was responsible, takes the blame in her stead and is suspended. When Blair asks him why he confessed to something he did not do, he tells her because he loves her, and they reconcile with each other. In the next episode, Chuck reports to Gossip Girl that Blair had sex with two men in one week. Jenny confirms this to Nate when he asks her about it, Nate gets into a fight with Chuck, and he ends his relationships with Chuck and Blair.

Blair, now a social pariah, tries to flee for France - but Serena finds her at a dock for her private plane and convinces her not to leave.

After spring break, Blair returns to school to find that the student body still thinks poorly of her. She is completely ostracized by the students, Jenny Humphrey and her former friends drop yogurt in her hair as a malicious joke erupting the whole school into laughter and everyone sneers at Blair. Following Serena's advice, she tries to move forward, and put the whole event behind her. When a dinner date is set for her and the group, they stand her up. Blair then decides to enact her revenge on Jenny, and reclaim her throne as the "Queen Bee." She ultimately succeeds in embarrassing Jenny on her birthday, by inviting the group to Jenny's home for a birthday party, so that they can see she is not welathy, but is even more thrilled as Jenny exposes herself as having stolen one of the girls' mother's dresses. Blair's victory is short-lived as Jenny brings Nate to the group's dinner party that Blair is hosting and is forgiven by the other girls because one of the girls has a crush on Nate. This moment makes Blair an outcast once again and results in a full fledged war between Blair and Jenny.

A week later, Blair wants to make sure Nelly Yuki (the smartest girl in her class) cannot concentrate to her SAT studies. She plans a SAT study group with the IT girls from Constance making sure Jenny isn't a part of it. She executes a plan in which Nelly Yuki's ex-boyfriend visits her but refuses to get back together the night before the SAT, so that she won't be able to concentrate.

Later, Blair regains her throne by revealing that Jenny's boyfriend is gay, and just using her as a cover-up, but Jenny's reputation is ultimately ruined because she lied about having sex with him. The girls in the group quickly cut their ties with her and go back to being Blair's Clique.

That night, Serena van der Woodsen comes to Blair's house, desperate and in tears. After Blair tells Serena that there is nothing that she could do to make Blair let go of their friendship, Serena confides in Blair that she killed someone. Blair is dumbstruck. When she leaves Serena alone for a moment, Serena sneaks out of her apartment and spends the night drinking in a bar. Blair immediately chases after her friend and brings her back to the apartment.

Blair then enlists the help of Nate and Chuck to help her with Serena, making for a very uncomfortable atmosphere in Blair's apartment, made even worse when Serena's boyfriend, shows up looking for her. Nate, Chuck and Blair lie to him, saying that Serena does not want to see him. Dan refuses to leave until Serena comes downstairs to confront him. When Dan asks her if she cheated on him, she replies, "Yes." Dan ends their relationship and leaves Blair's apartment, heartbroken. When Blair asks her if she really cheated on Dan, Serena says no, but that she would rather have him believe that than know the truth because she thinks that Dan would never look at her again. Blair reminds her that they are all best friends and convinces Serena to tell Blair, Nate and Chuck the truth about what happened the night that she claims to have killed someone.

Later that night, at Lily van der Woodsen's rehearsal dinner, Serena tells Blair that her mother found the tape sent to her by her tormentor, Georgina Sparks, and that she is shipping her off to reformatory school. Blair corners Lily and telling her that Serena has been harboring a dark secret, is in a lot of pain and needs her mother. Lily and Serena then reconcile. Blair and Chuck decide to personally repay Georgina.

Blair and Chuck then pick up Nate, and they head to Rufus's Rolling Stone Concert. To Blair and Chuck's dismay, Georgina is nowhere to be seen, for she has already left the concert with Dan. Georgina's true identity is exposed to Dan the next morning, and Blair convinces Dan to plot against Georgina with her, and they have her sent away to boarding school. At the Bass/van der Woodsen wedding, she and Chuck reconcile when Chuck announces in his speech that "in the face of true love, you never give up- even when the object of your affection is begging you to." The two share a kiss after he apologizes for his previous cruel words. A week after the wedding, the beginning of summer, Blair and Chuck make plans to go to Tuscany together. However, Chuck reverts to his old habits for fear of becoming mature and stands Blair up at the helipad, leaving Blair to fly off to Tuscany with the man she met at the helipad.

[edit] Differences between the novels and TV series

  • Blair's mother is a wealthy hostess in the book, she is a designer in the TV series.
  • In the book Blair has blue eyes while in the TV series, Blair has brown eyes.
  • Blair has a cat named Kitty Minky in the book. It is note worthy, though, that in the TV series, Roman, her father's lover, named their cat Cat, in reference to 'Blair's favorite movie', also alluding that 'Breakfast at Tiffany's' is Blair's favorite movie.
  • Blair's mom dresses very strangely in the books, whereas in the TV series, she is a fashionable woman.
  • In the TV series, Blair loses her virginity to Chuck, but in the novels she loses it to Nate.
  • In the books, Blair's father's male lover's name is Giles whereas in the TV series his name is Roman.
  • Blair's favorite store in the books is Barney's New York, whereas in the TV series she wears various designers.
  • In the book Eleanor Waldorf is dating Cyrus Rose in the TV series Cyrus Rose isn't mentioned.
  • In the book series, Blair has a younger brother named Tyler, whereas, in the TV series, she is an only child.
  • In The TV series, Blair's mother remains single, whereas in the book series, she is married to a man called Cyrus Rose, also inheriting a stepson, around the same age as Blair.

[edit] Family

[edit] Book Series

  • Harold Waldorf (father)
  • Eleanor Waldorf-Rose (mother)
  • Tyler Waldorf (brother)
  • Cyrus Rose (step father)
  • Aaron Rose (step brother)
  • Yale Rose (half sister by Eleanor and Cyrus)
  • Ping and Pong Waldorf (adopted half siblings by Harold and his lover Giles)

[edit] TV Series

  • Harold Waldorf (father)
  • Eleanor Waldorf (mother) (dated)
  • Roman (father's boyfriend)

[edit] Flings and romantic relationships

[edit] Book Series

  • Nate Archibald (lovers/dated)
  • Serena Van Der Woodsen (fling)
  • Miles (fling)
  • Owen Wells (fling)
  • Erik van der Woodsen (fling)
  • Lord Marcus Beaton-Rhodes (dated)
  • Jason (fling)

[edit] TV Series

  • Nate Archibald
    • First Relationship:
      • Start Up: Before Pilot (101)
      • Broke Up: Victor, Victrola (107)
        • Reason: Blair doesn't feel as if Nate has strong feelings for her anymore, and he refuses to confide in her about his dad's drug problem and abuse.
    • Second Relationship:
      • Start Up: Hi Society (110)
      • Broke Up: School Lies (112)
        • Reason: Chuck tells Blair that if she has any contact with Nate, he's going to tell him about their relationship.
    • Third Relationship:
      • Start Up: School Lies (112)
      • Broke Up: The Thin Line Between Chuck and Nate (113)
        • Reason: Nate learns about Blair's secret relationship with Chuck.
  • Chuck Bass
    • First Relationship:
      • Start Up: Victor, Victrola (107)
      • Broke Up: Hi Society (110)
        • Reason: Blair learns that Chuck lied to Nate, causing a scene at her debutante ball.
    • Second Relationship:
      • Start Up: Much 'I Do' About Nothing (118)
 v • d • e  GOSSIP GIRL
Primary
characters		 Serena van der Woodsen | Blair Waldorf | Dan Humphrey | Nate Archibald
Jenny Humphrey | Chuck Bass | Vanessa Abrams
Lily van der Woodsen | Rufus Humphrey | "Gossip Girl"
Secondary
characters		 Eric van der Woodsen | Isabel Coates | Howie "The Captain" Archibald | Bart Bass
Eleanor Waldorf | Alison Humphrey | Anne Archibald | Harold Waldorf | Georgina Sparks
Locations New York City | Upper East Side, Manhattan | Williamsburg, Brooklyn | The Palace
Other Episodes | Constance Billard School for Girls
St. Jude's School for Boys | Cecily von Ziegesar's book series