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Victoire Desgraves is a Haitian student at Babel. Her defining traits include her cleverness, kindness, bravery, and strong sense of morality. Her experiences at Oxford reflect the realities of intersectionality, as she navigates the compounded challenges of both racism and sexism as a Black woman. Her principles are consistently undermined, as when a professor mocks her use of Kreyòl for a new match-pair, arguing that Kreyòl serves no use to the Empire. Her character demonstrates the trap that Oxford presents to its foreign-born translators. Both in the French household where she is enslaved, and later at Oxford, her presence is framed not as a right but a conditional privilege. She is told that she is lucky to have escaped Haiti and is expected to remain grateful, obedient, and silent in spaces that continue to marginalize her.

It is not until she meets Anthony that she begins to question the rhetoric about Haiti that she has been fed her entire life, demonstrating the idea that mainstream accounts of history are often rewritten to demonize those who step out of line. Through their conversations, she learns that the Haitian Revolution served as a beacon of hope for downtrodden communities worldwide, and she begins to take pride in her heritage. It’s this emphasis on the subjectivity of history that makes Ibrahim’s efforts to keep an accurate written record of what transpires in the tower during their strike that much more significant.

Victoire exists as a literary foil to Robin. Unlike Robin, Victoire does not allow personal tragedy nor a thirst for revenge to cloud her judgment once they launch their strike. She ultimately recognizes the need for revolutionary violence, but argues against the unnecessary sacrifice of innocent lives. She has no taste for violence, as evidenced by her discomfort after shooting Playfair. Robin and Victoire fight toward the same future, but while Robin wants to die for his cause, Victoire wants to live for hers. Through Victoire, Kuang asks us to consider if choosing to live—knowing the rest of your life will be an uphill battle for justice—is just as courageous as sacrificing yourself for a cause. Robin appears to indicate so, as he implores her to survive and “[b]e brave.” Victoire is thus one of the text's chief symbols of revolution, and at the end of the novel, the spirit of rebellion lives on in her, as she resolves to "fight until her dying breath." 

While Robin advocates for martyrdom and Letty urges them to fix the system from within, Victoire does neither; instead, she opts to work for her chance at freedom and happiness while committing to a lifetime of activism. Perhaps her choice signifies the most profound rejection yet of a country and a university that continuously tell her she will amount to nothing without them. By defying Letty's ultimatum—serve or die—she asserts her independence more than any other character in the novel.

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