The Will of the Many: Hierarchy, Book 1 characters

Also known as Diago, Vis Telimus

First appears in chapter 3

The narrator: a young man living in an orphanage in the provincial Catenan city of Letens, earning money in an illegal fighting pit to keep the other children there fed. He is fast, disciplined and educated in a way no orphan should be, and he refuses to cede any portion of his Will to a superior, which in this Republic makes him Unranked and gives him no standing, no protection and no prospects. He is hiding who he is. Three years earlier he was Diago, son of the ruling family of the island kingdom of Suus, which the Catenan Republic conquered and whose royal house it destroyed. He is the only survivor, he has told nobody, and his intention is to stay alive and unremarkable. His refusal to cede is both principle and habit, and it is also the most conspicuous thing about him.

First appears in chapter 6

A senator of the Catenan Republic who takes an interest in Vis and offers him a way out of the orphanage: adoption into the Telimus family, and with it the standing to sit the entrance examinations for the Republic's most prestigious school. The offer is not charity and he does not pretend otherwise. His older brother died years ago at the Catenan Academy, he has never accepted the official account of how, and he wants somebody inside the place who owes him everything and has no prior connection to it. He is single-minded, politically exposed, and running out of other options.

First appears in chapter 8

Ulciscor's older brother, a scholar who died at the Catenan Academy several years before the book opens, while investigating the ancient ruins on its grounds. The official account of his death is one Ulciscor has never believed, and everything Ulciscor has done since has been aimed at overturning it.

First appears in chapter 10

A blind woman of the Telimus household who takes charge of preparing Vis for what he is walking into: the Republic's etiquette, its politics, the meaning of its ranks, and the Academy's entrance requirements. She was close to Caeror and knows the Academy from the inside. She is a harder, more exacting and considerably less forgiving teacher than Vis expects, and she has her own reasons for wanting the investigation to succeed.

First appears in chapter 26

The Principalis of the Catenan Academy: charismatic, admired by his students, and one of the most celebrated men in the Republic. He was a friend and colleague of Caeror Telimus and was present when Caeror died. Ulciscor is convinced he is responsible; the Academy regards him as its finest ornament and its guiding intelligence. He takes an interest in the Republic's newest and least connected student that Vis cannot account for.

First appears in chapter 28

A student at the Catenan Academy from a family that has lost its standing, which at a school where standing is everything leaves him near the bottom of it. Wry, clever and pessimistic about his own prospects, he is the first person there to treat Vis as something other than an interloper, and he becomes Vis's closest friend.

First appears in chapter 28

A student at the Catenan Academy: warm, quick, disarming, and unusually willing to be seen in the company of its newest and least connected arrival. She becomes Vis's closest attachment at the school and the one person there he finds it difficult to stay guarded around, which is a problem for someone whose position depends on being unreadable.

First appears in chapter 29

One of the Academy's highest-ranked and most admired students, from a powerful family, genuinely able, and courteous to Vis where others are not. He is what the Republic's system produces when it works as advertised, which makes his easy authority a standing argument for the order Vis has every reason to oppose.

First appears in chapter 29

A driven, relentlessly competitive student at the Academy from an established family, openly contemptuous of Vis's origins and of the idea that an adopted provincial belongs there at all. She is determined to out-rank him and treats every contest as personal.

First appears in chapter 30

A large, taciturn student at the Academy from outside the Republic's heartland, hostile to Vis from their first meeting and unwilling to explain why. Like Vis, he is an outsider at a school that does not disguise what it thinks of outsiders.