How the King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories characters

Appears from the start

The High King of Elfhame, and the subject of this collection of tales. The youngest and least wanted son of the old High King, he grew up with no household of his own and no one who would claim him, and he made himself notorious rather than be overlooked. He now holds a throne he never expected to keep, married to a mortal queen, and he is surrounded by stories about who he is and what he did, most of which were told about him long before he had any say in them.

Appears from the start

The mortal High Queen of Elfhame, Cardan's wife and co-ruler, raised in Faerie by the general who murdered her parents and now holding a throne no human was ever supposed to hold. In the present-day sections of the book she is the one person who knows Cardan without reference to his reputation.

First appears in chapter 2

Cardan's mother, a courtier who bore the High King's youngest child and gained nothing by it. Told that her son was fated to bring ruin on the crown, and finding him no use to her ambitions, she gave him neither care nor a place, and the boy was left to be passed around a court that had no interest in him.

First appears in chapter 2

The old High King of Elfhame, Cardan's father, who ruled for centuries and had many children. Warned by prophecy about his youngest, he kept the boy landless, titleless and at arm's length, neither raising him nor casting him out.

First appears in chapter 4

Cardan's eldest brother, who eventually took the unwanted boy into his own household. What he offered was not affection but instruction: a home run on cruelty, where power was demonstrated by what one could do to those with none. Much of what the court later found monstrous in Cardan he learned there.