The Wicked King characters

Appears from the start

A mortal in her late teens who serves as seneschal to the High King of Elfhame and, in secret, rules through him: Cardan is bound by oath to obey her for a year and a day, and the commands he gives at court are hers. She holds power nobody has agreed to give her and keeps it with spycraft, poison tolerance and nerve, while the clock on the oath runs down and she cannot tell a single person why she is so anxious about the date.

Appears from the start

The youngest son of the murdered High King, crowned through Jude's manoeuvring and bound to do as she says for a year and a day. He wears the crown as a provocation, fills his days with drink and revels, mocks the office and the girl holding his leash, and occasionally shows a sharper political instinct than anyone expects of him. What he actually wants from Jude is impossible to read.

Appears from the start

Jude's twin, engaged to Locke and preparing for the wedding that will finally give her the settled place in Faerie she has always wanted. The sisters are on speaking terms again but not repaired; Taryn resents both Jude's refusal to live quietly and the danger she keeps walking into.

Appears from the start

Jude's adoptive father, the redcap general who backed Balekin's coup and lost. Stripped of his command and kept away from the throne, he is still the most dangerous soldier in Elfhame and still speaks to Jude as a father would. He is patient, he wants a war, and he is working out who is really giving the orders.

First appears in chapter 2

A green-skinned hob and the most seasoned of the spies of the Court of Shadows, now working for Jude. He handles locks, thefts and the practical business of running informants, and he is candid with her about how badly her position could go wrong.

First appears in chapter 2

The explosives expert of the Court of Shadows, white-haired and unflappable, one of the few people who knows exactly what Jude is doing and helps her do it. She is loyal, practical, and better company than anyone else Jude works with.

First appears in chapter 2

Taryn's betrothed, a fey lord who once courted both Duarte sisters at the same time for his own entertainment. Cardan appoints him Master of Revels, which gives him a court office and licence to stage entertainments, and he uses it to arrange situations that produce the reactions he enjoys watching.

Also known as Vivi

First appears in chapter 4

The eldest Duarte sister, half fey, living in the human world with her mortal girlfriend and raising Oak there. She has the life away from Faerie she always wanted and no intention of returning, and she is increasingly unwilling to keep lying to Heather about what she is.

First appears in chapter 4

Vivi's mortal girlfriend in the human world, who shares a flat with her and the children and knows nothing about Faerie. She is warm, ordinary and entirely unprepared for the truth about the family she has attached herself to.

First appears in chapter 4

Jude's small half-brother, secretly the son of the murdered Prince Dain and therefore the true heir of the blood, growing up in the human world where nobody can crown him. He is settling happily into a mortal childhood, which complicates every plan to bring him back.

First appears in chapter 4

Madoc's fey wife and Oak's mother, who hid the boy's parentage for years and now lives apart from her son. She has never trusted Jude, and she is the person with the most to lose from any move Madoc makes.

First appears in chapter 5

Princess of the Undersea, Cardan's former sweetheart and her mother's envoy to the High Court. She despises mortals as thoroughly as ever, still considers Cardan hers, and carries the growing impatience of a sea power that the land cannot afford to fight.

First appears in chapter 6

Cardan's eldest brother, who murdered their father and most of their family to seize a crown he never got to wear, now held prisoner in the Tower of Forgetting. Confinement has not humbled him: he is composed, contemptuous, and evidently still able to get messages out of his cell.

First appears in chapter 10

Queen of the Undersea and Nicasia's mother, ruler of the one power in the world that Elfhame cannot easily fight. She is negotiating terms with the new High King and treats her own patience as a resource to be spent for advantage.