Bitterblue characters

Appears from the start

Queen of Monsea at eighteen, eight years into a reign she inherited at ten when her father was killed. She is small, dark-haired, half Lienid, formidably good with numbers and ciphers, and buried alive under the paperwork her advisers push at her. She has been told for years that her kingdom is healing and that the right policy is to look forward, and she is beginning to notice that nothing she is told matches anything she sees. Cautious, watchful and privately lonely, she still has nightmares about the night her mother died getting her out of the castle.

Appears from the start

The queen's chief adviser, a tall, spare man who served her father before her and who has effectively run Monsea's administration since her coronation. He is devoted to Bitterblue in his way, protective to the point of smothering, and he goes grey and shaky whenever the conversation turns to the years before she took the throne.

Appears from the start

One of the queen's four advisers, Graced with never needing to sleep, which he spends on paperwork and on drinking. He moves through the castle at all hours and knows where every document is, and he is snappish about being asked why any of them say what they say.

Appears from the start

One of the queen's four advisers and the most outward-facing of them, handling the city, the lords and anything requiring charm. He argues harder than any of the others that Monsea's recovery depends on leaving the past alone and refusing to dig it up.

Appears from the start

Runnemood's twin brother and the fourth of the queen's advisers, gentle where his brother is smooth, and prone to breaking down and disappearing from work for days at a time.

Appears from the start

The queen's housekeeper, chaperone and spymaster, once a servant in the Middluns court and now the person who runs Bitterblue's household and her private intelligence. Practical, unshockable, and the one adult in the castle who tells her the truth when asked.

First appears in chapter 2

Bitterblue's cousin, a Lienid prince and a founding member of the Council, who visits Monsea often and treats her as family rather than as a queen. He is Graced, everyone believes with fighting, and he moves through the castle with an unsettling awareness of what is going on in it.

First appears in chapter 4

A young printer in the east city who is teaching himself to write a book of words and a book of truths, on the grounds that Monsea has lost both. Warm, talkative and unwell-advised about his own safety, he takes to the hooded stranger who calls herself Sparks immediately.

Also known as Sapphire Birch

First appears in chapter 4

A Lienid-born Graceling working in the east city, Teddy's friend and partner in a trade that is not quite printing: they steal back the things King Leck took from people and return them to their owners' families. Purple-eyed, gold-jewelled, quick-tempered and reckless, he will not say what his Grace is.

First appears in chapter 5

The castle librarian, Graced with reading at extraordinary speed and remembering perfectly everything he has ever read. He is territorial about his library, contemptuous of interruptions, and the only person alive who has read what King Leck wrote.

First appears in chapter 6

The queen's healer, a plain-spoken woman with an unfamiliar accent who says she is Graced with healing and who mends broken bones better than anyone in the castle. Bitterblue trusts her and knows almost nothing about where she came from.

First appears in chapter 9

A Monsean lord who comes to court over the disputed boundaries of his estate and turns out to want something else entirely from his queen.

First appears in chapter 14

A young woman Graced with hiding herself: she can hold still and make an onlooker's eye slide off her, or take her for a statue, a rock, a piece of furniture. She has been living unseen inside the castle for years. Her mother was Bellamew, the sculptor whose work fills Leck's rooms, and she is wary of everyone, the queen included.

First appears in chapter 20

The Graceling who killed King Leck and carried Bitterblue over the mountains as a child, now the driving force of the Council and rarely still for a month. She arrives in Monsea between expeditions, impatient with courts and paperwork, and she has been exploring the mountains at the eastern edge of the seven kingdoms.

First appears in chapter 20

A Middluns lord and one of the Council's founders, now spending most of his time on its operations rather than on his estate. Courteous, steady, and increasingly at odds with his own king over where his loyalties sit.