For a compact 2-orbifold with negative Euler characteristic \({\mathcal {O}}^2\) , the variety of characters of \(\pi _1({\mathcal {O}}^2)\) in \(\text {SL}_{n}({\mathbb {R}})\) is a non-singular manifold at \({\mathbb {C}}\) -irreducible representations. In this paper we prove that when a \({\mathbb {C}}\) -irreducible representation of \(\pi _1(\mathcal O^2)\) in \(\text {SL}_{n}({\mathbb {R}})\) is viewed in \(\text {SL}_{n+1}({\mathbb {R}})\) , then the variety of characters is singular, and we describe the singularity.