Interesting Times characters

Appears from the start

The Discworld's least competent wizard, currently marooned on a warm desert island where nothing has tried to kill him for some time, an arrangement he regards as the high point of his life. He can cast no magic, speaks a great many languages, and has survived a career of catastrophes by running away from them with real skill. His hat is embroidered with the word wizzard, and that spelling is about to matter a great deal.

First appears in chapter 2

The Archchancellor of Unseen University, loud, energetic and impatient with subtlety. When a diplomatic demand arrives from the far side of the world he takes charge of answering it, on the reasonable grounds that the alternative involves committees.

First appears in chapter 4

The University's youngest and most practical wizard, who does the calculations everyone else finds distasteful. He works out how to move a person across the world, and also works out the part of the arrangement that his colleagues would rather not think about.

First appears in chapter 4

The orangutan keeper of Unseen University's library, who knows where every book is and takes a personal interest in a wizard he has known for years.

First appears in chapter 20

Rincewind's walking chest of sapient pearwood, which crosses oceans and continents on hundreds of small legs in order to be wherever its owner is. It is loyal, indestructible and extremely dangerous, and nothing that has tried to stop it has had cause to be pleased about the outcome.

Also known as Ghenghiz Cohen

First appears in chapter 10

The greatest hero the Disc has produced, now extremely old, extremely thin, and still in possession of a full set of diamond teeth and all of his nerve. He has spent a long life stealing from temples and killing monsters, has held a throne or two, and has grown bored with all of it. He is now leading a small band of veterans on the largest theft any of them has attempted.

Also known as Teach

First appears in chapter 12

A retired schoolteacher who has joined the Silver Horde as its instructor in civilisation, on the theory that men who intend to take over an empire will need table manners, etiquette and an understanding of administration. Patient, mild and quietly brave, he teaches barbarians the same way he taught children, and is the only member of the group with a plan for the day after the fighting.

First appears in chapter 14

A member of the Silver Horde, elderly, profane and permanently annoyed, who resists Saveloy's lessons in politeness more strenuously than any of the others and is the least reconciled to the idea that civilisation might be useful.

First appears in chapter 14

The oldest member of the Silver Horde, so old that he travels by wheelchair and hears roughly one word in ten, which he answers loudly and at length. He keeps an axe within reach and remains entirely capable of using it.

First appears in chapter 16

Grand Vizier of the Agatean Empire and head of the most powerful of its noble houses. Cultured, precise and formidably intelligent, he collects the arts and manners of distant Ankh-Morpork and despises the people who produced them. He regards the Empire's ancient rigidity as an obstacle to be cleared rather than a tradition to be honoured, and he treats everyone around him, allies included, as pieces already accounted for.

First appears in chapter 25

A leader of the Red Army, a small band of young revolutionaries in the Agatean Empire who have taken their politics from a smuggled book about a distant city where people are said to be free. Educated, sharp and impatient with sentiment, she does most of the group's actual thinking and is unimpressed by the wizard they have gone to such lengths to summon.

First appears in chapter 25

A young member of the Red Army, sincere, idealistic and entirely convinced that a Great Wizard from across the world will set the Empire free. She believes in the cause with a directness the others have learned to be careful about.

First appears in chapter 35

A tax gatherer of the Agatean Empire, conscientious, courteous and entirely loyal to a system he has never once thought to question. He falls in with Rincewind on the road and explains the Empire's arrangements at length, with the calm of a man who has never imagined an alternative.

First appears in chapter 42

The Agatean Empire's most persistent street trader, whose stock, patter and commercial ethics are recognisable to anyone who has bought a sausage in Ankh-Morpork, and whose prices adjust instantly to whatever the customer appears able to pay.

First appears in chapter 58

A small, cheerful clerk of the Agatean Empire who once travelled to Ankh-Morpork as the Discworld's first tourist and wrote a book about it when he got home. He has since lost his wife, raised two daughters, and discovered that a private account of a foreign holiday can be a more dangerous object than a sword.