The Diamond as Big as the Ritz characters

Appears from the start

A teenager from the small Mississippi town of Hades, sent away to the exclusive St. Midas's School. John is accustomed to thinking of his own family as prosperous until his classmate Percy invites him to a hidden Montana estate whose wealth exceeds anything he has imagined.

Appears from the start

John's reserved schoolmate at St. Midas's. Percy Washington casually claims that his father owns a diamond larger than a famous luxury hotel and invites John to spend the summer at his family's remote home in Montana.

First appears in chapter 3

Percy's father and master of the Washington estate. Braddock possesses almost limitless private wealth because his home stands on a mountain made from a single diamond. His polished hospitality rests on absolute control of the estate and the secret that preserves his fortune.

First appears in chapter 4

Percy's younger sister, a beautiful and sheltered girl who has grown up inside the family's isolated luxury. She and John quickly become romantically attached, though her calm assumptions about the estate's practices reveal how completely its values have shaped her.

First appears in chapter 4

Percy's older sister. Jasmine shares the elegance and detachment of the Washington household and, like Kismine, has little practical understanding of ordinary life beyond the concealed estate.

First appears in chapter 4

Braddock's wife and the mother of Percy, Jasmine, and Kismine. She presides over the household's extraordinary luxury while remaining insulated from the labor and violence that make its isolation possible.

First appears in chapter 6

Braddock Washington's grandfather, whose history is related after John reaches the estate. He discovered that an entire Montana mountain was one immense diamond and established the secrecy and coercion by which the family kept the discovery from disrupting the world's diamond market.