The Shepherd's Crown characters

Appears from the start

The witch of the Chalk, now in her late teens and fully established in her own country: land of her own, a cottage, a reputation, and more work than one person can reasonably do. She nurses, delivers, buries, arbitrates, and flies out at any hour, and she has learned to treat exhaustion as part of the job. The world around her is changing quickly, with railways, machinery, and iron spreading across the Disc, and she is more aware than most that old things do not simply go away because the times have moved on.

Also known as Esme Weatherwax, Mistress Weatherwax

Appears from the start

The senior witch of the Ramtops, austere, undemonstrative, and acknowledged without any formal title as the one the other witches measure themselves against. She lives alone in a small cottage in Lancre with her bees and her white cat, keeps her steading in perfect order, and has spent a lifetime standing between her country and the things that would come into it if nobody was watching. She has a very clear sense of when things need doing.

Also known as Gytha Ogg

First appears in chapter 2

The other great witch of Lancre: warm, disreputable, endlessly sociable, and the matriarch of a very large family. Where Granny Weatherwax is respected, Nanny Ogg is liked, which she has always known is the more useful of the two. She has been in on every serious piece of witching in the mountains for decades.

First appears in chapter 2

The Big Man of the Nac Mac Feegle of the Chalk, the small blue fighting men who consider Tiffany their hag and follow her everywhere whether or not this is convenient. Loud, entirely fearless, and married to a kelda who takes a firm line on unnecessary fighting.

First appears in chapter 4

The kelda of the Chalk's Feegle mound, small and sharp, who governs the clan and can see some way into what is coming. She has begun to feel something moving in the old places that ought to be shut.

First appears in chapter 4

Rob Anybody's brother, cheerfully enthusiastic and reliably a step or two behind the conversation.

First appears in chapter 5

A small white cat belonging to Granny Weatherwax, self-possessed, unimpressed, and quite capable of walking into places that other creatures avoid.

First appears in chapter 10

The Baron of the Chalk, Tiffany's childhood friend, now married and running the estate, and rather better at the job than either of them expected.

First appears in chapter 10

The Baroness of the Chalk, married to Roland, and a trained witch in her own right who quietly keeps a library and does useful work without making a performance of it. She and Tiffany, once rivals, get on rather well.

First appears in chapter 10

Tiffany's young man, away in Ankh-Morpork training as a doctor at the free hospital. Bookish, precise about words, and unfailingly kind, he writes when he can and visits when the work lets him, which is not often.

First appears in chapter 12

The Queen of the elves, beautiful, glamorous, and utterly without pity, who rules her court by fear and regards humans as entertainment and as material. She has been kept out of the human world for many years and has not forgiven it.

First appears in chapter 12

The third son of a rich, bullying lord, who has run away from a future he wants nothing to do with and turned up in Lancre announcing that he intends to be a witch. Gentle, stubborn, and unusually good at calming animals and people and at getting the quarrelling parties in a room to stop shouting, he is entirely unbothered by being told that men do not do this.

First appears in chapter 14

Geoffrey's goat: an animal of considerable presence, disturbing intelligence, and firm opinions, who accompanies him everywhere and is not to be argued with.

First appears in chapter 16

An ambitious elf lord of the Queen's court, cruel even by elvish standards and impatient with a ruler he considers to have gone soft. He believes the human world has become weak and distracted and is ripe for taking back.

Also known as Queen Magrat

First appears in chapter 18

The Queen of Lancre, once a witch herself and still one underneath the crown and the royal duties. Vague-seeming, soft-hearted, and considerably harder than she looks when something threatens her kingdom or her children.

Also known as Letice Earwig

First appears in chapter 18

A self-important witch much occupied with the correct occult vocabulary, jewellery, and ceremony, and with her own standing among the other witches. She is quick to explain what proper witchcraft consists of and slow to do any of the unpleasant parts of it.