The Poppy War characters

Also known as Fang Runin

Appears from the start

A war orphan in the southern town of Tikany, taken in as a small child by the Fang family and raised as unpaid labour for their shop, whose real trade is smuggled opium. Dark-skinned, poor and southern in a country where all three are held against her, she learns she is to be married off to a wealthy man three times her age. Her only escape is the Keju, the empire-wide examination whose highest scorers are admitted to Nikan's academies. She studies for it to the point of injuring herself, and is driven as much by resentment of everyone who has written her off as by ambition.

Appears from the start

The woman who took Rin in as a war orphan and raised her as household labour in Tikany, where the family shop is a front for the opium trade. Calculating and unsentimental, she arranges Rin's marriage to a wealthy older man to clear the family's obligations and secure its business.

First appears in chapter 3

The son of Nikan's defence minister and the first person at Sinegard Academy willing to speak to Rin. Talkative, restless and unable to stop reading, he retains everything he sees and is the strongest strategist in their year. He is baffled by the southern classmate nobody else will acknowledge, and then steadily loyal to her.

First appears in chapter 3

The son of the Warlord of the Dragon Province, Nikan's wealthiest, and the most privileged student at Sinegard. Trained in arms since childhood, quick, and openly contemptuous of Rin's accent, colouring and poverty, he singles her out on her first day and remains her chief rival in every class.

Also known as Master Jiang

First appears in chapter 4

Sinegard's master of Lore, a subject the rest of the faculty treats as a joke. He wanders the grounds half-dressed, gardens obsessively, has refused to take an apprentice for years, and answers direct questions with evasions. He accepts Rin as his student and sets her to meditation, herblore and the old stories of the sixty-four gods, insisting that restraint matters more than power and declining to explain what any of it is for.

First appears in chapter 4

A wealthy Sinegardian in Rin's year, sharp-tongued and openly hostile to the southerner among them. She is a capable student in her own right, particularly with a bow.

First appears in chapter 5

The best student at Sinegard, an apprentice in Combat whose speed is talked about across the academy. He is the last surviving Speerly, from an island people destroyed in the previous war, marked by dark skin and red eyes, and he keeps almost entirely to himself. Rin, the only other southerner at the school, watches him with a mixture of envy and fascination.

Also known as The Empress

First appears in chapter 11

The empress of Nikan, who has held the throne since the end of the last war and appears not to have aged in twenty years. Striking, politically ruthless and unreadable, she keeps the twelve provincial warlords in place by setting them against one another. The Cike answer to her personally.

First appears in chapter 12

A pale Hinterlander shaman attached to the Cike, arrogant and openly dismissive of Rin. He can send his mind out of his body to scout, read what others are thinking, and steady a shaman who is losing themselves to their god. His loyalty runs to Altan and to his twin sister, and to very little else.

First appears in chapter 12

Chaghan's twin sister and the Cike's archer, quiet where he is caustic. She keeps a bonded hawk and can see through the eyes of birds, which makes her the unit's scout.

First appears in chapter 12

The youngest of the Cike, a one-eyed teenager who builds and improvises explosives, cheerfully and with very little supervision.

First appears in chapter 12

A Cike soldier who fights with a nine-pointed rake and channels a boar god, loud, blunt and untroubled by the unit's reputation.

First appears in chapter 12

An enormous Cike soldier who channels a monkey god and becomes a danger to everyone nearby when the god takes hold of him. Between episodes he is quiet and apologetic.

First appears in chapter 22

A former member of the Cike who lost himself entirely to the wind god and was sealed alive inside the Chuluu Korikh, the stone mountain where shamans beyond saving are entombed rather than executed.

First appears in chapter 24

A Federation physician who studies shamans as experimental material and has spent years working with captive subjects at the research station on Speer. Courteous, methodical and entirely untroubled by what he does.