Graceling characters

Appears from the start

Niece of King Randa of the Middluns and, since she was eight years old, the instrument of his anger. Her Grace appears to be killing: she is faster, stronger and deadlier than anyone alive, and Randa sends her to break fingers and frighten lords into paying what he demands. She loathes the work, and has built a secret answer to it in the Council, a small network that rides across the seven kingdoms undoing the cruelties of its kings. Blunt, impatient with court manners, and convinced she is a danger to everyone near her, she has decided she will never marry and never bear children.

Also known as Greening Grandemalion

First appears in chapter 4

The seventh and youngest son of King Ror of Lienid, who arrives at Randa's court searching for his kidnapped grandfather. He wears the heavy gold rings and arm bands of a Lienid prince, and his Graced eyes are one gold and one silver. He is taken everywhere for a fighter, the only person who has ever come close to matching Katsa in a bout, and he is easy company where she is prickly, cheerfully curious about her and unafraid of what she can do.

Appears from the start

Captain of King Randa's guard and the man who gathers his intelligence, a steady, greying soldier who rides with Katsa on the Council's missions. He is one of its founding members and has a family in the city.

Appears from the start

A young Middluns lord and one of the Council's founding members, who rides at Katsa's side on its missions. He is comfortable with Randa's court in a way Katsa is not, protective of her to the point of irritation, and hopes to marry her.

First appears in chapter 3

King Randa's son and heir and Katsa's closest friend in the castle. He would far rather work with herbs and medicines than learn to rule, and his experiments occasionally leave his hair dyed blue. He hides the people the Council rescues in his workrooms and keeps its secrets from his father.

First appears in chapter 3

Raffin's assistant in the medicine rooms and his constant companion, quiet and capable, trusted with everything the Council does.

First appears in chapter 3

King of the Middluns and Katsa's uncle, a large, loud man who has used his Graced niece as a public threat since she was a child. He is not the worst of the seven kings, but he cannot imagine being refused, and he keeps Katsa close because her reputation does his work for him.

First appears in chapter 3

A servant of Randa's court who has looked after Katsa since she was a small child. She is one of the very few people in the castle who is not frightened of her, and she says what she thinks about Katsa's clothes, her manners and her refusal to marry.

Appears from the start

An elderly Lienid nobleman, grandfather of the Lienid royal children, taken from his home and held half-starved in a foreign dungeon. Nobody can work out why anyone would want an old man who holds no power and knows no secrets, which is exactly what makes his kidnapping worth investigating.

Appears from the start

King of Sunder, in whose dungeons the kidnapped Lienid grandfather is being kept. He deals in goods and information and asks few questions about the origin of either, and he keeps a Graced mind reader at his court.

First appears in chapter 24

King of Monsea, a kingdom shut away behind mountains, and the one ruler in the seven kingdoms with a reputation for pure kindness: he takes in the sick, shelters orphaned animals and children, and is loved by his people. He wears a patch over one eye. As the Council traces the kidnapping, that reputation turns out to be the most dangerous thing about him, because his Grace works through his voice: what he says, people believe, and they forget having been made to believe it.

First appears in chapter 24

Queen of Monsea, born a Lienid princess and sister to King Ror, married to Leck and rarely seen outside Monsea since. She is the mother of the kingdom's only child heir, and her Lienid family has had almost no word from her in years.

First appears in chapter 28

The ten-year-old heir to Monsea, half Lienid, small and half-starved when she is found hiding in the forest with her mother's blood on her. She has been raised inside her father's court and has learned to keep very still and say very little; underneath she is stubborn, sharply observant and far tougher than her size suggests, and she can hold a knife.

First appears in chapter 35

King of Lienid, Po's father, a decisive ruler with the family's gold-and-jewel style and a good deal of his youngest son's charm. He commands a fleet and is willing to use it, and he is Queen Ashen's brother.