Elisabetta D’Orfeo is one of the three protagonists of Eternal, with the novel being framed as her own novel Eternal. She is an aspiring author when the novel opens, and finds the Fascist control of Rome’s newspapers intolerable. The daughter of former painter Ludovico and Serafina, she lives in Trastevere, an artistic neighborhood separated from the rest of Rome by the Tiber River. Elisabetta “sensed she was pretty enough,” possessing “large, round eyes [that] were greenish-brown,” a “strong” nose, “prominent cheekbones,” and “full” lips (5). As opposed to her mother, she has a lean body, but Serafina refuses to buy her a bra, ignoring her wants and teasing by other girls. A hard worker, she waits at Nonna’s Casa Servano to help support her family. Elisabetta has a cat named Rico, and after moving in with Nonna following her father’s death, she receives a white kitten named Gnocchi from Nonna.

A dynamic character, Elisabetta initially wants to kiss her childhood friend Marco Terrizzi. However, her other childhood friend Sandro Simone initiates a kiss, and she reciprocates his love over the course of the novel due to their intellectual connection. Despite changing feelings, she tries to maintain friendships with both Marco and Sandro.