Fool’s Errand characters

Also known as Tom Badgerlock, Fitz

Appears from the start

The bastard son of the long-dead Prince Chivalry, trained in his youth as a royal assassin and carrier of both Farseer magics, the Skill and the despised animal-bond Wit. Believed dead by nearly everyone for fifteen years, he lives quietly in a remote cottage under the name Tom Badgerlock with his wolf and the orphan boy he has raised. He is in his mid-thirties, scarred, still troubled by the damage the Skill and old beatings did him, and determined to stay out of the court's reach.

Appears from the start

The wolf Fitz has been Wit-bonded to since he was a boy, so long joined that the two share thoughts, senses and sometimes bodies. He is old now, stiff in the mornings and slower on a hunt than he will admit, and he watches Fitz with the blunt affection and blunter honesty of a partner who cannot be lied to.

Appears from the start

The old assassin who trained Fitz in poisons, subtlety and service to the Farseer throne, and who has since become the crown's quietest and most powerful adviser. Vain about his appearance, endlessly persuasive, and still working from concealed rooms and secret stairways, he arrives at Fitz's cottage after years of silence with a request the throne badly needs answered.

Appears from the start

The foundling Fitz took in and raised as his son, now a young man of about fifteen with mismatched eyes and no trade. He is good-natured and eager for a wider life than a hermit's cottage offers, and the question of finding him an apprenticeship, and paying the fee for it, is the practical worry that shapes Fitz's choices.

Appears from the start

The heir to the Six Duchies throne, son of the dead King-in-Waiting Verity and Queen Kettricken, a boy of about fifteen who has grown up entirely in his mother's shadow and Chade's. He has never been taught the Skill, and a betrothal to an Outislander noblewoman is being arranged to secure peace with the islands.

First appears in chapter 2

The minstrel who travelled with Fitz on his hardest journey and made his deeds into a song, and who has visited his cottage as a lover in the years since. Ambitious, comfortable at court, and impatient with the small life Fitz has chosen, she brings him news of Buckkeep and the wider world on her own terms.

First appears in chapter 4

A travelling hedge-witch who makes charms for luck, sleep, gardens and attraction, and whose small practical magic has nothing to do with the Skill or the Wit. Warm, shrewd and unbothered by other people's secrets, she befriends Fitz on the road and later proves useful to him in Buckkeep Town.

First appears in chapter 5

Fitz's oldest friend, once the colourless jester of King Shrewd's court, who named himself the White Prophet and Fitz his Catalyst, the one person whose choices can shift the course of the world. He returns after years abroad transformed in appearance, his skin and eyes now a warm gold, and presents himself in the Six Duchies as Lord Golden, a wealthy and affected Jamaillian noble in need of a servant.

First appears in chapter 11

The Mountain-born widow of Verity and reigning Queen of the Six Duchies, ruling as regent for her son. Direct, austere and still an outsider to Buckkeep's court manners, she governs by the Mountain ideal of the ruler as Sacrifice, and she has never stopped grieving the man Fitz served.

First appears in chapter 14

The Queen's Huntswoman, a capable and self-possessed young woman assigned to help search for the missing prince. She knows the country and the great houses, and she has family connections among the Witted that she would rather not discuss.

First appears in chapter 15

The young heir of the Bresinga family, whose mother's holding of Galekeep entertained the prince on the hunt from which he disappeared. Grieving his father, awkwardly hospitable, and plainly hiding something about the household's guests and the prince's visit.

First appears in chapter 21

A sleek hunting cat that keeps close company with the prince. To anyone with the Wit the bond between them is obvious and wrong: the animal leads and the boy follows, and the pull it exerts on him is far stronger than an ordinary partnership between beast and man.

First appears in chapter 24

The leader of the Piebalds, a militant faction of Witted who have abandoned the old secrecy. Where most Old Blood folk hide to survive, he intends to force recognition by exposing Witted nobles to their neighbours and by placing a Witted hand on the Farseer throne, and he treats other people's lives as acceptable costs.

First appears in chapter 24

An Old Blood woman, sister to the Piebald leader, who did not accept death when her body failed. Rather than let her spirit disperse she lodged herself in the mind of her bond-animal, and from there she has been working patiently toward a living human body to inhabit.