Branca Letícia de Barros Mota

Branca Leticia de Barros Mota is the main antagonist of the soap opera "For Love", broadcast by Rede Globo in 1997.

She is the mother of Marcelo, Milena and Leonardo and married to Arnaldo Mota. Her overwhelming passion for Atilio and her desire to remain in high society at any price led her to torment her family and even put an innocent man in jail.

She was portrayed by Brazilian actress Susana Vieira.

Personality
Branca is an arrogant, smug, sly, sarcastic and narcissistic woman who believes she is superior to the poorer people because she is wealthy class, and sometimes has a wry and cynical humor. It is that person who can speak the right sentences (most often, sharp) at the right time

Biography
We are introduced to Branca right in the first chapter, when she complains about her daughter-in-law Eduarda for calling her son Marcelo just to know if she was ok. From the beginning, Branca was in love with Atilio and never complied with his marrying Alice, his first wife.

Branca married Arnaldo and had three children: Marcelo, Milena and Leonardo. It turns out Branca had never loved Arnaldo and lived in a fake marriage; conjugal hypocrisy was enormous and Arnaldo could not stand it either, although both tolerated. She lived twenty-five years with her husband without forgetting Atilio, and the time passed until he became a widower. Branca thus wasted no time and began to guide her secretary Isabel (who had also been involved with Atilio) to relate to him so that she could pass on to herself

Branca never hid her fondness for Marcelo (thinking he was the son of Atilio) and always despised her other sons Milena and Leonardo, giving priority to the eldest. She even despised Leonardo even more for being a shy, quiet and kind-hearted boy (qualities she hates)

He also hated Helena, because she had made Atilio fall in love with her, and Eduarda, since he always despised her and preferred that Laura be married to her son Marcelo. When she learns that Milena intends to marry Nando, a humble helicopter pilot, she, with Rose's help, decides to put him in jail by sending his boss, Faust, to plant a drug bundle in the boy's backpack in order to see convicted him for many years for a crime he did not commit and thus see Milena and her family free from the boy.

Things start to get complicated for Branca when her children and Trajan start investigating, she is forced to blackmail Faust so that he takes the blame in place of Nando and thus gets rid of any responsibility for the crime.

The biggest blow to Branca comes at the end: Atilio decides to do a DNA test and finds that Leonardo is his son with her; just the same Leonardo whom she so despised and hated was the son of Atilius. And yet she was unhappy and refused to accept the reality of the facts. She ends the soap opera abandoned by her family, completely bankrupt and only with the company of her maid Zilá (who was being humiliated too)