Speaker for the Dead characters

Also known as Andrew Wiggin, The Speaker

Appears from the start

The boy who, as a child, was manipulated into commanding the war fleet that destroyed an alien species, now a grown man some three thousand years later, kept young by centuries of near-lightspeed travel. He wanders the settled worlds as a Speaker for the Dead, telling the honest, whole truth of a person's life at their funeral, and he secretly wrote the two books that founded that calling. He carries a heavy private guilt for the genocide he was tricked into committing, and hidden with him he keeps the dormant cocoon of the last survivor of the species he destroyed, seeking a safe world where her kind might live again.

Also known as Demosthenes

Appears from the start

Ender's beloved older sister, who traveled the centuries at his side and once shaped politics on Earth under a pen name. Now settled on the icy world of Trondheim, married with children, she is a historian and remains the person Ender trusts most, his conscience and closest tie to his own past.

Appears from the start

The last of an insectlike, group-minded alien race that humanity nearly exterminated in a war of tragic misunderstanding. A single dormant queen survives, carried in secret by Ender, able to communicate with him mind to mind. She waits patiently for a safe world where her people might be reborn and given a second chance at life.

Appears from the start

A hidden, self-aware intelligence that arose within the vast computer and communication networks linking the human worlds. She speaks to the Speaker secretly through a jewel in his ear and is his constant, invisible companion, his confidante, and his link to all recorded knowledge. Playful, brilliant, and fiercely attached to him, she is unknown to almost everyone else alive.

Appears from the start

The kindly xenologer of the colony world Lusitania, the first of the scientists permitted to study the planet's native forest-dwellers under strict rules meant to avoid influencing them. His careful, affectionate work with the little natives is cut short early when they kill him in a slow ritual no human can at first understand, setting the colony's central mystery in motion.

Also known as Ivanova Santa Catarina von Hesse

Appears from the start

A brilliant, orphaned young woman on Lusitania who becomes the colony's xenobiologist. Scarred by early loss and fiercely guarded, she loved the xenologer's family and, after his death, summoned a Speaker for the Dead and then tried to take the call back. Proud and closed off, she keeps painful secrets that have shaped her whole life and her troubled household.

Also known as piggies, Little Ones

Appears from the start

The small, intelligent forest creatures native to Lusitania, the only alien species humanity has encountered since the war with the hive queens. They live among the trees under the watchful, restricted study of human xenologers, and their strange customs, especially the way they treat the dead, remain a profound and dangerous puzzle.

First appears in chapter 3

Pipo's son and apprentice, who takes up his father's work studying the native pequeninos after Pipo's death and grows into the colony's xenologer. Devoted to the natives and to Novinha, whom he loves, he continues the perilous study that cost his father his life.

Also known as Marcos Ribeira

First appears in chapter 4

Novinha's late husband, a large, violent man whose recent death is the reason a Speaker is summoned to Lusitania. His brutal conduct left deep wounds on his wife and children, and the truth of who he really was lies buried beneath the family's fear and silence.

First appears in chapter 7

Novinha's eldest son, a bright and serious young man who has secretly followed the family's calling as an unofficial student of the pequeninos, forming a forbidden bond with the natives and with Ouanda, the girl he loves. He chafes against the rules that keep humans and pequeninos apart.

First appears in chapter 7

Novinha's practical, determined daughter, a gifted young scientist who quietly reaches out for help in healing her broken family. Level-headed where others are ruled by fear, she becomes a key ally to the Speaker as he uncovers the household's and the colony's secrets.

First appears in chapter 14

A particular pequenino, notably curious and quick to learn, who becomes the Speaker's chief go-between with his people as understanding slowly grows between the two species. Eager and thoughtful, he is central to the effort to bridge the gulf between human and native.