The Cruel Prince characters

Appears from the start

A seventeen-year-old mortal raised in the High Court of Faerie by the man who murdered her parents. Stolen out of the human world as a small child alongside her twin, Taryn, and their half-fey older sister, she has grown up in the household of Madoc, the High King's grand general, with every comfort and no safety: she can be enchanted, she cannot lie, and the fey children she studies beside despise her for being human. Stubborn and combative, she trains with a sword, answers cruelty with defiance rather than retreat, and wants the one thing her adoptive father will not take seriously: a knighthood and a place at court that would make her impossible to dismiss.

Appears from the start

Jude's twin sister, raised beside her in Madoc's household. Where Jude answers the court's hostility with defiance, Taryn believes survival lies in giving the fey no reason to notice her at all: she keeps her head down, avoids provoking Cardan's circle, and intends to marry into Faerie and be safe. She urges Jude to stop fighting battles she cannot win, and she has a suitor of her own whose name she refuses to say.

Also known as Vivi

Appears from the start

The eldest of the three sisters and the only one who is half fey, with split-pupilled cat eyes and the ability to enchant mortals. Madoc is her father, which is why he took all three girls when he destroyed the rest of their family. She refuses to accept Faerie or the man who raised her, spends as much time as she can in the human world, and keeps a mortal girlfriend there who does not know what she is.

Appears from the start

A redcap and the High King's grand general: a war-loving fey soldier who killed Jude's mother, once his own wife and long since fled from him, along with the human man she had married, then carried all three of their daughters back to Faerie and raised them as his own because his sense of honour demanded it. He is affectionate, indulgent and entirely unrepentant, teaches Jude swordwork, and treats her ambition to be knighted as a child's passing fancy. He loves battle for its own sake.

Appears from the start

Madoc's fey wife, pale-skinned and white-haired, who joined the household after the mortal girls did and has never trusted them. She fears they are a danger to her small son and keeps them at a careful distance while observing every courtesy of family life.

Appears from the start

Oriana's young son, a small horned fey boy who adores his older sisters and is indulged by the whole household. He is kept well away from the court and its politics.

Appears from the start

The youngest son of the High King of Elfhame and the cruellest of the court's young nobles, with a tail he keeps hidden under his clothes and a talent for making an audience of everyone present. Landless, disregarded by his own family and given no duties, he spends his time drinking, staging revels and tormenting whoever is easiest to torment. He reserves a particular and unexplained hatred for Jude.

Appears from the start

A princess of the Undersea and daughter of its queen, fostered at the High Court and one of Cardan's closest companions. Beautiful and contemptuous, she considers mortals beneath notice and takes an active part in making the Duarte sisters miserable.

Appears from the start

A young fey lord in Cardan's circle and the most physically dangerous of them. Where the others humiliate the mortal sisters for sport, he escalates, and he does not appear to need an audience.

First appears in chapter 2

A fey lord with fox-red hair and amber eyes, one of Cardan's companions but the only one who takes no obvious pleasure in the group's cruelty. Playful and hard to read, he is drawn to drama for its own sake and begins seeking Jude out, offering her the kind of attention no one at court has offered her before.

First appears in chapter 8

The High King's second son and his chosen heir, poised and outwardly gracious, expected to be crowned at the coming coronation. He keeps a private company of spies and assassins, and he takes an interest in Jude, seeing a use for a mortal willing to bind herself to his service.

First appears in chapter 8

The ageing High King of Elfhame, who has ruled for centuries and now means to pass the crown to one of his children and step down. Remote and visibly tired of governing, he presides over a court whose quarrels no longer seem to interest him.

First appears in chapter 10

A pale, quiet fey archer, the marksman of the small band of spies Jude joins. He is the most patient of the three and the one who takes on her training when she needs a steady hand rather than a lesson in cunning.

First appears in chapter 10

An explosives expert with a cloud of white hair, one of the three spies Jude works alongside. Cheerful and practical, she treats a lethal craft as a trade like any other and is generous with what she knows.

First appears in chapter 10

A green-skinned hob and the most experienced of the spies, a thief and lockpick who teaches Jude to open what is locked and to move through the palace unseen. He is blunt about the odds a mortal faces in their line of work.

First appears in chapter 18

The High King's eldest son and master of Hollow Hall, a controlling and violent figure who keeps a household of enchanted mortal servants and has custody of his youngest brother, Cardan. Passed over for the throne, he makes little secret of believing himself the better claimant.