The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes characters

Also known as Coryo

Appears from the start

An eighteen-year-old student at the Capitol's elite Academy, the last hope of the once-powerful Snow family, which was ruined by the war against the districts and now hides its poverty behind a proud name. Ambitious, calculating, and desperate to win a university scholarship that could restore the family fortunes, he is charming and self-possessed on the surface while privately obsessed with status and survival. When the Academy makes its top students mentors to the tributes of the tenth Hunger Games, his future comes to depend on how his assigned tribute performs.

Appears from the start

Coriolanus's older cousin, who has helped raise him and keep the impoverished Snow household afloat. Warm, self-sacrificing, and quietly clever, she works as an apprentice to a fashion designer and does whatever she can to protect her cousin's prospects, including altering his father's old shirts so he can appear respectable. She is his closest confidante and moral anchor.

Appears from the start

The listless, contemptuous Dean of the Academy, often visibly under the influence of a narcotic. From the start he treats Coriolanus with pointed dislike that the young man cannot explain, needling and slighting him at every turn. An authority over the mentorship program, he holds real power over Coriolanus's future while seeming to wish him ill.

Appears from the start

Coriolanus's Academy classmate and uneasy friend, the son of a District 2 munitions magnate whose new wealth bought the family Capitol citizenship. Sensitive and principled, Sejanus is sickened by the Hunger Games and openly sympathetic to the districts he came from, which makes him an outsider among his snobbish peers. His conscience repeatedly puts him at odds with the Capitol and in danger.

Appears from the start

A studious, competitive classmate of Coriolanus at the Academy and one of his fellow mentors. Ambitious and eager to impress the Gamemakers, she works closely with him on a written assignment about the future of the Games early in the story.

First appears in chapter 2

The girl tribute reaped from District 12 for the tenth Hunger Games and Coriolanus's mentoring assignment. A performer with the Covey, a family of traveling musicians, she dresses in a bright ruffled rainbow dress and turns her own reaping into a defiant spectacle, singing to the crowd and startling the mayor's daughter with a snake. Charismatic, resourceful, and unafraid to command an audience, she treats attention as a survival tool. Coriolanus first sees her as a hopeless assignment and quickly realizes she may be the most memorable tribute of them all.

First appears in chapter 4

The Capitol's Head Gamemaker and chief scientist, a white-haired woman with unsettling, mismatched eyes who designs the muttations and the cruelties of the Hunger Games. Brilliant, theatrical, and utterly without pity, she runs experiments on humans and creatures alike and takes an interest in Coriolanus, testing his ideas and his nerve. She views the Games as a demonstration of her bleak philosophy about human nature.

First appears in chapter 3

A loud, boastful Academy classmate of Coriolanus and a fellow mentor, from a well-connected Capitol family. She enjoys showing off and taunting the tributes, treating the whole spectacle as a chance for personal attention.

First appears in chapter 3

The boy tribute reaped from District 12 alongside Lucy Gray, a quiet, protective young man who shields her during the brutal journey to the Capitol. Loyal to his district partner, he stays close to her among the caged tributes.

First appears in chapter 19

Lucy Gray's former sweetheart back in District 12, once a member of the Covey band. His betrayal of her before the reaping still stings, and his entanglements in the district cause fresh trouble when Coriolanus arrives there.

First appears in chapter 19

The youngest member of the Covey, Lucy Gray's musical family in District 12. A quick, bright child with a remarkable memory for songs, she performs with the band and is devoted to Lucy Gray.