Fairest characters

Appears from the start

The younger princess of Luna, fifteen when the book opens, living in her sister's court with no power of her own and a great deal of resentment. Her Lunar gift is unusually strong and she wears a glamour every waking hour, because underneath it a childhood accident left one side of her body and face badly burned and she has decided that nobody will ever see it. Intelligent, ambitious and entirely convinced of her own reasonableness, she narrates her own story, and it is a story in which everything she does is justified.

Appears from the start

Levana's elder sister and the queen of Luna, who inherited the throne when their parents were assassinated. Beautiful, careless and cruel in the offhand way of someone who has never had to consider a consequence, she treats her court as entertainment and her sister as a joke that has gone on for years.

Appears from the start

A palace guard in his thirties, steady and well liked, whom Levana has decided she is in love with. He is married and about to become a father, and treats the younger princess with careful, distant courtesy.

Appears from the start

Evret's wife, a seamstress, warm and well liked at court and heavily pregnant when the book opens.

First appears in chapter 4

One of Levana's few companions at court, a young woman training as a thaumaturge, ambitious and precise, who understands exactly how useful a friendship with a princess may turn out to be.

First appears in chapter 5

Evret's daughter, born early in the book, who grows up in the palace as an unusually beautiful and unusually kind child.

First appears in chapter 14

Channary's daughter and the heir to the Lunar throne, born partway through the book, and by the terms of Lunar succession the one person standing between Levana and the crown.

First appears in chapter 15

A royal physician on Luna, competent and quietly uncomfortable with a good deal of what he is asked to be part of.