Royal Assassin characters

Also known as Fitz

Appears from the start

The acknowledged bastard of the late Prince Chivalry, raised in the Buckkeep stables and trained in secret as King Shrewd's assassin. He is in his late teens and returning from the Mountain Kingdom badly damaged: the poison that nearly killed him at Kettricken's proxy wedding has left him with tremors and seizures that arrive without warning. He carries the forbidden beast-magic of the Wit, an erratic and unreliable grip on the royal Skill, and a boyhood oath binding him to a king who is now failing. He wants an ordinary life with Molly and cannot have one while the crown owns him.

Appears from the start

Buckkeep's stablemaster, once Chivalry's man and the closest thing Fitz has to a father. Blunt, proud and often drunk, he nursed Fitz through the poisoning and brings him home. He still regards the Wit as a foul thing and will not be argued out of it, and his loyalty to the Farseer line is absolute even as the line begins to come apart.

First appears in chapter 2

King Shrewd's jester, pale-skinned, colourless-eyed and ageless, who speaks in riddles and rhymes and is feared or dismissed by most of the court. The Fool tended Fitz through his recovery and treats him as important for reasons the Fool will not explain, talking of prophecy, of catalysts, and of futures that hinge on small choices. Beneath the mockery is a fierce and entirely serious attachment to King Shrewd.

First appears in chapter 3

King-in-Waiting of the Six Duchies and Fitz's uncle, a plain, decent, soldierly man who has been holding the coast almost alone. He spends himself daily using the Skill to find and turn aside the Red Ship raiders, and it is visibly consuming him: he is greying, gaunt and exhausted, with nothing left over for his court, his treasury or his new wife.

First appears in chapter 3

Verity's queen-in-waiting, brought from the Mountain Kingdom to a court that finds her strange. Raised to see a ruler as the Sacrifice, spent for the good of the people, she arrives ready to work and finds she is expected only to be decorative. Her husband has no time for her, the ladies of the keep freeze her out, and she is lonely, homesick and increasingly determined to make herself useful whether or not anyone gives her permission.

First appears in chapter 3

King of the Six Duchies, old and visibly failing. He is in constant pain and is kept dosed with smoke and herbs by his attendants, which leaves him lucid only in patches. In his clear moments he is still the shrewd ruler who bought a bastard boy's loyalty with a pin; the rest of the time he signs and agrees to whatever is set in front of him.

First appears in chapter 4

King Shrewd's youngest son, elegant, inland-minded and openly resentful of the two brothers between him and the throne. He has never been called to account for the deaths at Jhaampe. He surrounds his father with attendants of his own choosing, cultivates the inland dukes who care nothing for the raided coast, and treats Fitz as vermin that has survived longer than it should have.

First appears in chapter 4

The king's private assassin, an old scarred man who lives unseen in the walls of Buckkeep and taught Fitz the trade. He is Fitz's handler, his closest confidant and the only person who tells him the truth about court politics. He is loyal to King Shrewd personally and is increasingly unable to reach the man he serves.

First appears in chapter 6

The chandler's daughter from Buckkeep Town and Fitz's oldest friend. Her father's death left debts that took the shop and the candle trade with it, and she comes to Buckkeep to work as a servant, proud, capable and hating the loss of her independence. She loves Fitz and knows almost nothing true about how he spends his time.

First appears in chapter 6

Chivalry's widow, living at Buckkeep with her maid Lacey amid a chaos of half-finished projects. Scattered, sharp and stubborn, she has taken it on herself to be Fitz's patron and to badger the court into giving him a future, and she is one of the few people at Buckkeep who says exactly what she thinks about Regal.

First appears in chapter 2

A dog Fitz bonded with as a boy through the Wit, kept secretly at Buckkeep. He is entirely devoted to Fitz, shares his senses with him, and is the one warm and uncomplicated thing in his life.

First appears in chapter 8

A wolf cub sold caged and half-starved in Buckkeep Town, bought by Fitz out of pity and set free. The bond that forms between them is deeper than anything Fitz has known, and it will not be undone: the wolf thinks in packs and hunts and now, of loyalty. He is sardonic, practical, contemptuous of human complication, and unwilling to let Fitz go anywhere alone.

First appears in chapter 14

A member of the Skill coterie trained by the late Skillmaster Galen, quiet and watchful where the others are strident. He is more able than he lets on, and his loyalties within the royal family are not the ones his office implies.

First appears in chapter 14

A member of Galen's Skill coterie, arrogant about her talent and openly hostile to Fitz, whom she regards as a failed student and a stain on the Skill. She spends her time close to the king's apartments.

First appears in chapter 14

A member of Galen's Skill coterie, young, vain and quick to sneer, who takes his cues from Serene and from the prince who favours the coterie. Like her he is often found attending the failing king.