Lords and Ladies characters

Also known as Esme Weatherwax, Esmerelda Weatherwax

Appears from the start

The senior witch of Lancre, returning home to find that meddlesome young people have been dancing at the old standing stones and stirring up things that should be left alone. Sharp-tempered and iron-willed, she carries an old, personal grievance against the creatures those games threaten to let back into the world.

Also known as Gytha Ogg

Appears from the start

The warm, worldly Lancre witch, busy helping arrange the royal wedding and enjoying the arrival of visitors. Shrewder than her jolly manner suggests, she knows the old stories about the Fair Folk and takes the danger far more seriously than the youngsters playing at magic.

Appears from the start

The youngest witch, now engaged to King Verence and about to become Queen of Lancre. Caught up in wedding preparations and court expectations, she feels she is losing her old identity as a witch and is unsure who she is meant to be, just as the kingdom faces a threat that will demand more of her than she thinks she has.

Also known as Verence, the Fool

Appears from the start

The former royal Fool who became King of Lancre and is now preparing to marry Magrat. Earnest and conscientious, he reads books on kingship and agriculture and tries hard to be a good, improving ruler, more comfortable with paperwork than with the older, wilder powers stirring in his land.

Also known as Lucy Tockley

Appears from the start

A clever, headstrong young woman who leads a group of Lancre girls playing at being witches. Drawn to the glamour and mystery she imagines witchcraft to be, she dances at the standing stones and dabbles with forces she does not understand, dismissing Granny Weatherwax as an old fraud.

Appears from the start

The beautiful, cruel ruler of the elves, the Fair Folk of old story. Glamorous and utterly without pity, she longs to cross back into the human world she was long ago shut out of, and the weakening of the old barriers gives her the opening she has been waiting for.

Appears from the start

The large, hearty, plain-spoken Archchancellor of the Unseen University, who travels to Lancre with a party of wizards for the royal wedding. Blunt and fond of the outdoors, he turns out to have spent a summer in these mountains as a young man, when he knew a witch named Esme.

Appears from the start

A cheerful, worldly dwarf who styles himself one of the world's greatest lovers and turns up in Lancre with an eye for Nanny Ogg. Good-humoured and surprisingly capable, he proves a useful ally when trouble arrives.