Her real name is Aria Wayward - contrary to popular opinion, Ranger is not her given name. She is the daughter of the Champion Warrior of the End, Ace Wayward, and an ordinary human woman. The Ender Lord, once he found out, allowed Aria to live in the End, but made the human go back to the Overworld. Since Ranger was a Hybrid rather than a Pureblood Ender, she had to work twice as hard to prove her worth to her peers, her father, and the Ender Lord. Her father was her hero while she was growing up - she wanted to be a Champion just like him. However, Ace wasn't very fond of her. He loved the human, but Aria was technically not a legitimate child, since he and the human weren't married.

While she was in school, at the Saber Academy for Ender Beings (the Ender Lord had to personally order the administrators to let her attend due to her half-human genetics), she tried out for a combat team called Legion X. Legion X is a bit like a sports team, except it deals in hand-to-hand combat and weapon sparring. Since Enders have healing abilities, this wasn't really a problem. Aria's were adequate, but not completely developed. It was a bit of a disadvantage, but she went with it. Aria was the first Ender-Human Hybrid to be accepted into Legion X. In the team, they usually choose nicknames, a bit like how wrestlers have a tough and intimidating alias. Aria chose the name Ranger, and it stuck. The problem is, that didn't improve her social life. Most Enders already disliked her. Now she was a member of Legion X, so they had to acknowledge her fighting skills, but they thought she was only accepted because her dad was the Champion. Unfortunately for her, Captain and senior member of Legion X, Don Wilder, or The Wildman, personally disliked her. He had enough sense to at least consider her strengths as assets to the team's performance in competitions, but he thought less of her for her half-human blood, and often belittled her or caught her off guard when she was vulnerable just to remind her that he could.

After her father voted for Ranger to be exiled from the End after she attacked Don Wilder and Avea Fleetgarde in defense of a human named Amber, whom she would eventually befriend, she lost her status as a member of Legion X. She kept going by the name Ranger, so she could remind herself of what she'd achieved, even if it was taken away.

(And now, I have to at least mention Red, because their lives and stories are so entwined that not mentioning Red when talking about Ranger is nearly impossible.)

From a young age, Ranger has had a voice in her head (a.k.a: Red). It's strange - like another version of herself, but also not. She got used to referring to it as her Ender Rage because it seemed to grow stronger when she was angry or upset. She never told anyone, even Amber, because people had enough gossip ammunition as it was. Plus she isn't used to people caring enough about her to want to help rather than use her problems and insecurities against her. She never realized that the voice in her head was an entirely separate entity until it took over her mind and forced her to completely annihilate a village she and Amber had been sheltering in, called Greenvale. This is the root of her intense claustrophobia, and the association between her Ender Rage and enclosed spaces, because once she regained control, she found herself trapped in a collapsed bomb shelter that had been built underneath the town as a precaution. Ranger can do almost anything a Pureblood Ender can do, but one severe limitation is that she can't teleport through anything iron - which the shelter was constructed of. It took her three days to clear enough rubble that she could climb out by herself.

Following what happened at Greenvale, Ranger decided that there would be absolutely no chance of Red ever getting out like she wanted to, no matter how mentally taxing and physically draining it was to keep her locked down. Despite that, Red and Ranger are too psychologically linked to ever really put an end to the dynamic between them. That animosity will probably never truly go away, regardless of what happens, and if asked, they would obviously say that they'd love to see the other dead. But deep down, neither of them are sure of that. They were connected and a part of each others' psyche's for so long, that being apart from each other would probably be traumatizing and mind-numbing. If one were to die, the other likely wouldn't know what to do with themselves. The mutual hatred is the only thing that's stayed the same throughout both their existences, so it's something they always instinctively fall back on.

(And, end of Red-related discussion.)

The thing about Ranger is that she really can't fit in anywhere. In the End, she's looked down on and seen as weak and inferior no matter what she does, because she's half human. In the Overworld, she's seen as an evil freak and an overall mistake, because she's half Ender. No matter where she goes, she's always an outsider. Rather than making her bitter and cynical, this only fueled her need to outdo everyone else. This is why she can come off as attention-seeking and overly sacrificial, and why she refuses to back down from any challenge, even a stupid one that she's only doing because she's stubborn and overly competitive. She's survived this long by constantly proving herself. When she was a kid, the second she slipped up and let someone else have the spotlight or some sort of advantage, she ended up paying for it. She tends to disregard rules because rules never made any positive impact on her life, and for a while, she tried to be the poster child for rule-following and good behavior and all that got her was a reputation for weakness that she had to work hard to erase. She reacts badly to people doubting or denying her abilities, or by calling her something along the lines of coward or weakling. She likes to break the rules just because she can.

She uses humor as a default because it's better than getting caught up in whatever emotions she's feeling. She sometimes pretends to be a lot of things she's not, almost like masks. She takes on different traits and characteristics and uses them whenever they're needed, but she often ends up relying so heavily on them that she questions which traits are hers and which ones she's using to seem confident or carefree. She's quite good at acting, which was useful when she realized that the only way to survive in the Overworld by herself without her heritage being discovered and used against her was to become a thief. She didn't really think of it as being a bad thing, either. She lived on the streets, taking what she needed. Ranger considered it more of a challenge or an adventure than an actual crime. She'd often take more than she needed, or try to steal valuable things from important people, just to see if she could.

She can be very impulsive, and dramatic. She treats most things as a game to keep herself from caring too much. Because of this, whenever she gets serious, it can be pretty unsettling. She can make it very easy to forget that beneath all the snark and dramatic flair, she's powerful, dangerous, and deadly smart.