Golden Fool characters

Also known as Tom Badgerlock, Fitz

Appears from the start

The Farseer bastard the kingdom believes died in Regal's dungeons, now living openly at Buckkeep Castle as Tom Badgerlock, manservant to the foreign noble Lord Golden. He is newly bereaved of his wolf, aching with a grief he cannot explain to anyone, and bound by fresh promises: to teach Prince Dutiful the Skill, to serve the Queen, and to keep his own name buried. He is a trained assassin, an unschooled Skill user of great raw strength, and Witted in a kingdom that still hangs the Witted.

Also known as Lord Golden

Appears from the start

Fitz's oldest friend, once King Shrewd's colourless jester and now golden-skinned and golden-eyed, living at court in the character of Lord Golden, an extravagant and fashionable Jamaillian noble. Nobody but Fitz, Chade and Kettricken knows who he really is. He still names himself the White Prophet and Fitz his Catalyst, and he has grown reticent about what he foresees.

Appears from the start

The old assassin turned royal adviser, effectively running the Six Duchies from behind the throne while Kettricken reigns as regent. He is elderly, vain, insatiably curious, and consumed by a late-life ambition to master the Skill himself and to rebuild the coteries the Farseers lost. He gathers Skill-scrolls, plans, and people, and he does not accept refusals gracefully.

Appears from the start

The heir to the throne, about fifteen, newly recovered from being lured away and nearly consumed by another mind. He is intelligent, dutiful in more than name, and carries two dangerous secrets: the Wit he inherited and cannot renounce, and a Skill link with his mother's servant that neither of them can break. He faces a political marriage he did not choose.

Appears from the start

Queen of the Six Duchies and regent for her son, Mountain-born and still governed by the Mountain idea that a ruler exists to be spent for the people. Against her nobles' instincts she has begun trying to end the persecution of the Witted by inviting Old Blood representatives to court, and she is negotiating the Outislander marriage that is meant to secure the coast.

First appears in chapter 2

Fitz's foster son, apprenticed to a demanding woodworker in Buckkeep Town. Away from the cottage and surrounded for the first time by town life, money and girls, he is finding the discipline of an apprenticeship harder than he expected, and Fitz's ability to help him is limited by the servant's role he has to keep up.

First appears in chapter 4

The hedge-witch, now settled in Buckkeep Town with a shop of charms and a warm household. She is fond of Fitz, entirely unimpressed by castle politics, and offers him something the castle cannot: an ordinary life with an ordinary woman, if he wants it.

First appears in chapter 5

A castle servant taken for a simpleton and used for the heaviest, dullest chores, small and unwashed and generally ignored. He is in fact the strongest natural Skill user at Buckkeep, filling the castle with a music no one consciously hears, and he can push sickness, dread and confusion into anyone who annoys him. He decides early that Fitz annoys him.

First appears in chapter 6

The young Bresinga heir, brought to court as a companion to the prince after his family's part in the prince's disappearance. He is proud, resentful, watched by everyone, and accompanied by a cat, which does nothing to quiet the whispers about Old Blood at Buckkeep.

First appears in chapter 8

The Queen's Huntswoman, who helped recover the prince and now moves between the court and her Old Blood kin. Kettricken's overtures to the Witted put her in an exposed position: to the court she is suspect by association, and to the Piebalds she is a traitor for serving Farseers.

First appears in chapter 10

Fitz's daughter, raised at Burrich and Molly's holding believing Burrich is her father and knowing nothing of Fitz at all. She is a strong natural Skill user who reaches out in her dreams, where Fitz meets her in the shape of a wolf and refuses to give her a name. Chade has noticed her talent and wants her at Buckkeep.

First appears in chapter 12

An Old Blood man who comes openly to Buckkeep as the Queen's guest, bonded to a seabird named Risk. Unhurried, plainspoken and entirely without shame about the Wit, he treats the magic as a discipline with its own ethics rather than a secret to be hidden, and he sees straight through the servant Tom Badgerlock.

First appears in chapter 13

A boy of about eleven who has run away from home to Buckkeep because his father beat the Wit out of him and forbade the bond he was born to. He is a gifted archer and stubborn to the bone, and he becomes Web's pupil at court. His father is the old stablemaster Burrich, which makes his presence acutely difficult for Fitz.

First appears in chapter 20

The narcheska of the Out Islands, a girl of about eleven or twelve betrothed to Prince Dutiful to end generations of raiding. She arrives at Buckkeep haughty, cold and openly contemptuous of the Farseer court, conducting herself with a pride that seems far larger than her years and a nerve that occasionally, briefly, fails her.

First appears in chapter 20

The narcheska's uncle and guardian, a hard, watchful Outislander warrior who accompanies her to Buckkeep. He is scrupulously correct about the marriage negotiations and fiercely protective of the girl, and he is plainly carrying a burden of his own that he will not explain to the Six Duchies.

First appears in chapter 24

A tall, blunt Bingtown woman who arrives with a trade delegation from the south. She knew Lord Golden years ago under a different name and in the guise of a woman, a bead-carver called Amber, and she assumes Fitz knows as much, which he does not.