Winterkeep characters

Appears from the start

Queen of Monsea in her twenties, years into the work of repairing what her father did to her kingdom, and tired of it. Precise, stubborn and better at arithmetic than at diplomacy, she refuses to accept the comfortable explanation of anything. When two of her envoys drown on the far side of the world, she declines to call it an accident and goes to find out herself.

Appears from the start

An enormous, ancient creature that lives at the bottom of the bay off Winterkeep's capital, alone with a hoard of things that have sunk to it over centuries. It thinks in long, slow loops, worries about its treasures, and watches a Monsean ship come down through the water at the start of the book.

First appears in chapter 2

A Middluns-born lord and a leader of the Council, long since stripped of his estate for it, now Bitterblue's closest ally and the person she most trusts to tell her when she is wrong. Steady, courteous, deeply competent, and careful to keep his feelings for the queen to himself.

First appears in chapter 2

Bitterblue's half-sister and her spy, Graced with hiding: she can hold still and let an onlooker's eye take her for a crate, a rock, a piece of the ship. She keeps her relationship to the queen private, prefers being unseen to being included, and is happier working alone than being anybody's family.

First appears in chapter 2

A student at Winterkeep's academy, daughter of one of the country's most powerful political families, sharp-eyed and careful about what she lets people see. She keeps her grades up, keeps her relationships casual, and keeps out of her mother's way, and she has begun paying attention to the people who come and go from her family's houses.

First appears in chapter 2

Lovisa's father, a wealthy and charming member of Winterkeep's parliament on the Industrialist side, warm with his children in a way his wife is not, and involved in every important conversation in the country.

First appears in chapter 2

Lovisa's mother, a Scholar politician of considerable power, cold, exacting and physically controlling with her daughter. She runs her household as an instrument and expects it to perform.

First appears in chapter 5

Lovisa's uncle, an adventurer who travels the world rather than sit in Winterkeep's politics, and the one member of her family Lovisa has ever liked. He has gone missing on his travels, which everyone finds unremarkable and Lovisa does not.

First appears in chapter 6

A veterinary student at the academy, from a working family rather than a political one, blunt about what she thinks of the rich. She patches up injured animals, including the blue foxes people bond with, and she has known Lovisa long enough not to be impressed by her.

First appears in chapter 8

A professor at the academy, wealthy, distracted and eccentric, who keeps an unusual number of blue foxes in her house and takes an unusual amount of interest in her students.