The Empire of Gold characters

Appears from the start

The Banu Nahida of Daevabad, thrown out of the city she had spent five years learning to survive and washed up in the country she was born in. She knows now that Banu Manizheh is her mother, that Jamshid is her brother, and that the woman who bore her has just taken Daevabad by poisoning a festival. She has no magic worth the name outside the city's walls, no army, and a very long habit of solving problems by lying to the right person.

Also known as Alizayd al Qahtani, Ali

Appears from the start

The surviving Qahtani prince, carrying Suleiman's seal in his heart and the marid's work in his body. His father is dead, his brother is dying in a captured palace, and the magic that saved his life is steadily making him into something the djinn have no comfortable name for. Stranded in Egypt with Nahri, he is the reason Daevabad has no magic, and he cannot go back without carrying the one thing his father's killers still need straight to them.

Also known as Darayavahoush e-Afshin, the Afshin

Appears from the start

The Afshin, raised from the dead to win Manizheh a city and having now done it. He destroyed the Citadel, delivered the army that made the massacre possible, and is left occupying a conquered Daevabad in the name of a Banu Nahida whose orders he can no longer pretend are defensible. Bound to her service and to fourteen centuries of doing what he was told, he is a soldier with nothing left to tell himself.

Also known as Banu Manizheh

Appears from the start

The Nahid healer who spent twenty years presumed dead and has now taken Daevabad, at the cost of most of its Geziri population. She rules a city whose magic died the moment the seal-bearer fled it, holds the emir hostage, and intends to put her son Jamshid on the throne. Nahri's mother, and entirely unmoved by what that is supposed to mean.

Also known as Jamshid e-Pramukh

Appears from the start

Kaveh's son and, as of the fall of Daevabad, publicly Banu Manizheh's son and Nahri's half-brother. A Nahid who spent his whole life believing he had no magic at all, he is now the heir his mother wants and the only healer who can keep Muntadhir alive, which is precisely how she keeps him cooperative.

Appears from the start

Emir of Daevabad, mortally wounded in the taking of the city and kept alive in a captured palace because his survival is useful to the people holding it. His father is dead, his brother and his wife are gone, and the man he loves is the son of the woman who did all of it.

Appears from the start

Ghassan's daughter, who survived the massacre and is left in an occupied city with no title anyone will honour and no intention of sitting still. She is the most politically able of her family and the only Qahtani still inside Daevabad's walls with any freedom of movement.

Also known as Kaveh e-Pramukh

Appears from the start

Former grand wazir of Daevabad, Manizheh's oldest collaborator and the man who released the poison that killed the Geziri. He is Jamshid's father, and he has spent decades believing that everything he did was for his tribe and for his son.

Appears from the start

Ali's mother, an Ayaanle noblewoman of Ta Ntry, who survived the poison because it was not made for her tribe. She has family, money and standing in a wealthy country far from Daevabad, and a son who has just become the most dangerous person alive to shelter.

Appears from the start

An ifrit allied to Manizheh, one of the original daevas who refused Suleiman's judgement. He has been circling the Nahid family for a very long time, and the price he expects for his help was agreed before the war began.

First appears in chapter 3

The elderly Cairo apothecary Nahri worked beside before she was taken east, still in the same shop, still convinced she takes too many risks. He is the only person in the world who knew her before any of this.

First appears in chapter 14

A marid of the Nile, ancient and territorial, bound by an old pact to the Ayaanle line Ali is descended from. He speaks in obligations rather than affection, and what he is owed and what he owes are not the same thing.

First appears in chapter 16

A shafit ship's captain, quick, mercenary and completely unimpressed by djinn nobility. She joins Nahri and Ali's expedition on terms she negotiates herself and holds them to.

First appears in chapter 38

The eldest of the marid, vast and ancient, who holds the sea and the memory of every bargain her kind ever made. The marid's grievance against Daevabad is older than the Qahtanis and older than the Nahid dynasty, and she is not inclined to be helpful about it.