Clockwork Prince characters

Also known as Theresa Gray

Appears from the start

An American girl of sixteen, stranded in London and living at the London Institute among Shadowhunters. She can Change: holding an object that belonged to someone, she takes on that person's shape and can reach their thoughts and memories, an ability she has no explanation for. Her aunt is dead, her brother has betrayed her, and the mundane inventor who wants her is still at large, so the Institute is both refuge and the only place working against him. Bookish and stubborn, she reads her way through the Institute library, insists on being useful to the search rather than protected from it, and finds herself caught between Will Herondale, who has turned deliberately cold toward her, and his gravely ill parabatai Jem Carstairs, who has not.

Also known as William Herondale

Appears from the start

A seventeen-year-old Shadowhunter of the London Institute, Welsh by birth, who came to the Institute as a boy and has not seen his family since. He is a gifted, reckless fighter with a cruel and quotable tongue, given to drinking, gambling and disappearing at night, and he works hard at being disliked. He was the one who pulled Tessa out of the Dark Sisters' house and has been distant and insulting to her ever since. Only Jem Carstairs, his parabatai, is allowed close to him, and even Jem does not know what Will is hiding or why he goes out alone.

Also known as James Carstairs

Appears from the start

Will's parabatai, a Shadowhunter of the same age whose parents were killed in front of him in Shanghai by a demon that forced a drug on him. The drug turned his hair and eyes silver, keeps him alive, and is slowly killing him; without it he would die within days, and each dose shortens what is left. He is gentle, patient and clear-eyed where Will is destructive, plays the violin, and is the person the whole household relies on to make Will bearable. He is openly fond of Tessa. His supply of the drug is becoming harder and more expensive to obtain.

Appears from the start

Head of the London Institute, a small, determined woman in her twenties who inherited the post from her father and has been fighting for the Clave's respect ever since. She runs the household, its accounts and its investigations, takes in strays such as Tessa and Sophie, and is held responsible by the Clave for the disaster of Mortmain's escape. Her authority over the Institute is formally challenged at the start of the book, and she is given a deadline to produce results.

Appears from the start

Charlotte's husband, an inventor who spends most of his time in the Institute crypt building devices that tend to explode. Amiable and easily distracted, he is devoted to Charlotte but frequently forgets meetings, meals and the Clave entirely. His gadgets are treated as a joke by the household, though some of them work.

Appears from the start

A Shadowhunter girl raised at the Institute after her parents' deaths, who wants nothing to do with demon hunting. She refuses to train, dresses for a London society she is not part of, and talks constantly of marrying an ordinary man and living an ordinary life in an ordinary house. She resents Tessa's arrival and is barely civil to most of the household.

Appears from the start

A maid at the Institute, formerly a mundane servant in a grand house, dismissed and scarred across the face by an employer's son. Charlotte took her in and she is fiercely loyal in return, especially to Tessa, whom she serves and befriends. She has no patience for Will. Along with the other women of the household she is put into weapons training when the Lightwood brothers arrive as instructors.

Appears from the start

Tessa's older brother, who wrote to her from London and whose letters brought her to England. He proved to be working for Mortmain, sold her to the Dark Sisters, and betrayed the Institute from inside, and he has been in hiding ever since. Charming, self-pitying and entirely self-interested, he is the one thread the Institute has back to the man they are hunting.

Also known as The Magister

Appears from the start

A mundane businessman and inventor who built an army of clockwork automatons animated by bound demon energies and who tried to have Tessa delivered to him as a bride. He escaped the Institute's trap and has vanished, leaving the Clave without a single confirmed address for him. He hates Shadowhunters with a patience that suggests a reason, he claims to know exactly what Tessa is, and he seems to have known the Institute's business from the inside.

First appears in chapter 2

Head of a wealthy London Shadowhunter family and a member of the Council, cold and correct in manner and long convinced that the London Institute should have been his. He presses the Clave to remove Charlotte from her post and sends his two sons to the Institute as instructors, which everyone understands is also a way of watching her.

First appears in chapter 2

Benedict Lightwood's younger son, close in age to Will and openly hostile to him over an old quarrel involving Gabriel's sister. Quick-tempered and eager to prove himself, he arrives at the Institute as a training instructor on his father's orders and makes no secret of thinking little of the place.

First appears in chapter 3

Benedict Lightwood's elder son, recently returned from several years at the Madrid Institute. Reserved, formal and much steadier than his brother, he is sent to train the women of the Institute household and takes the work seriously, particularly Sophie's. He is plainly uncomfortable about his father's dealings and says less than he knows.

First appears in chapter 3

A warlock of London, centuries old, with slit-pupilled cat's eyes and an appetite for parties, colour and expensive things. He is one of the few Downworlders who will deal with the Institute, acts as go-between for the vampire Camille Belcourt, and agrees to help Will with a private matter of his own for a price. Under the flippancy he is capable, well-informed and unusually kind.

First appears in chapter 4

A vampire of London, once second to the clan leader the Shadowhunters destroyed, elegant and entirely transactional. She claims to know something about Mortmain and is willing to trade it, but she negotiates through Magnus Bane and expects a pardon and the Institute's protection in return. Nothing she offers comes without a condition attached.

First appears in chapter 5

The elderly, retired head of the York Institute, suspicious of strangers and contemptuous of the London Institute and its young mistress. He kept meticulous records and trophies of his own hunts, including a raid decades ago that the London Shadowhunters now need to know about, and he guards both his archive and his family's private grief.

Also known as The Consul

First appears in chapter 2

The Consul, the highest elected office of the Clave, a large and imposing former Shadowhunter who knew Charlotte's father and treats her as a girl playing at his old friend's job. He grants her a fortnight to produce Mortmain and makes clear that Benedict Lightwood is waiting to take the Institute if she fails.

Also known as Cecy

First appears in chapter 21

Will's younger sister, who arrives at the Institute alone at the end of the book and demands to be trained as a Shadowhunter. She has not seen her brother since he left home as a boy, she is as stubborn and as sharp-tongued as he is, and she has come with the intention of bringing him back to their family.