Character guide

Don Juan

major

Also known as Juan, Don Juan Tenorio, young Don Juan, Juanna

Juan is the poem's wandering center, a boy whose good looks and passive charm draw other people's desires toward him before he has any plan of his own. His early affair with Donna Julia ends in scandal and a sea voyage, teaching him that innocence is itself a kind of temptation. Byron uses him as a mirror for whatever society he lands in — Spanish, Greek, Turkish, Russian, English — so his story becomes a tour of love, appetite, and hypocrisy rather than a single moral progress.

Haidée

major

Also known as fair Haidée

Haidée lives outside ordinary society, on an island ruled by her pirate father, and her love for Juan is the poem's purest and most doomed idyll. She is all feeling and no calculation, which makes her both radiant and vulnerable in a world that punishes unguarded desire. Her brief paradise with Juan gives the epic its tenderest stretch and sets up the loss that hardens him for everything that follows.

Lady Adeline Amundeville

supporting

Also known as Adeline, Lady Adeline, the Lady Adeline, sweet Adeline

Lady Adeline Amundeville runs the social machinery of the English cantos, arranging guests, matches, and morals with practiced grace. Her interest in Juan is intense but ambiguous — part maternal, part matchmaking, part something she will not name — and her marriage to the stolid Lord Henry leaves her restless. She matters because she embodies the poem's English target: virtue that is mostly performance, and a heart that keeps its own accounts.

Gulbeyaz

supporting

Also known as fair Gulbeyaz, Sultana

Gulbeyaz rules the harem with the absolute authority of a woman who has never been refused, and Juan's arrival as a purchased captive becomes an experiment in power and appetite. Her passion is imperious, wounded easily, and dangerous to refuse, and the scene between them turns on who is really the slave. She represents the poem's fascination with despotism in love, where command and surrender blur into the same gesture.

Catherine the Great

supporting

Also known as Catherine, Catherine II, the chaste Catherine

Catherine receives Juan at court after his exploits at Ismail and installs him as her latest favorite, a position of glittering privilege and short tenure. She is shrewd, voracious, and utterly unsentimental about the young men she collects, and Byron treats her with mock deference as 'the chaste Catherine.' Her court shows Juan the imperial version of the same appetite he has met everywhere else, scaled up to a throne.

Donna Julia

supporting

Also known as Julia, the Donna Julia

Donna Julia is unhappily wed to an older man and finds in the adolescent Juan a passion that flatters her intelligence as much as her vanity. Her letter to him after the discovery is one of the poem's sharpest pieces of self-justifying eloquence, mixing tenderness with calculation. She matters because she is Juan's first real education in love: not romance, but risk, concealment, and the cost of being found out.

Lambro

supporting

Also known as Old Lambro, XXVI Lambro

Lambro is a seafaring trader-raider whose wealth and authority rest on plunder, and whose household on the island has flourished in his long absence under Haidée's gentle rule. His return forces a collision between the free, sensual world his daughter has made and the hard patriarchal code he embodies. That clash of temperaments drives the poem's most emotionally charged episode and shows how Juan's charm fares against real power.

Donna Inez

supporting

Also known as Inez, the Donna Inez

Donna Inez presides over Juan's childhood in Seville as a bluestocking moralist who can cite philosophy and arrange a match with equal confidence. Her running war with her husband, Don José, and her zeal for managing Juan's education and future make her both comic and quietly menacing. She sets the poem's tone of satiric domesticity and gives Juan the polished innocence that the world will spend the rest of the epic exploiting.

Baba

supporting

Also known as old Baba, the negro Baba, CIII Baba

Baba is a veteran of the slave trade whose wit and worldliness make him a useful guide through the seraglio's dangerous etiquette. He treats Juan with a mixture of commercial appraisal and grudging fondness, selling him into the harem while also coaching him on how to survive there. His cynical pragmatism exposes the machinery behind the poem's Eastern romance and keeps Juan alive long enough for the next adventure.

John Johnson

supporting

Also known as Johnson, LXXV John Johnson, Up Johnson

Johnson is a seasoned campaigner who attaches himself to Juan during the siege of Ismail, trading quips and brandy between volleys. His easy courage and unpretentious humor stand in sharp contrast to the poem's aristocrats and sultans, and his fate at the walls gives Byron one of his bluntest meditations on glory. Through him, Juan learns what soldiering actually costs, not what the dispatches claim.

Aurora Raby

supporting

Also known as Aurora, Little Aurora

Aurora moves through the fashionable world of Canto XVI with an air of stillness that makes the surrounding gossip seem loud and cheap. Orphaned, devout, and self-possessed, she neither pursues nor avoids Juan, and her refusal to perform for the crowd fascinates him precisely because he cannot win her easily. She represents the poem's late glimpse of a sincerity that might, for once, be worth wanting.

Dudù

minor

Also known as XLV Dudù, poor Dudù

A soft and sleepy odalisque in the harem who shares a bed with Juan in disguise.

Zoe

minor

Haidée's loyal and protective Greek maid who assists in Juan's recovery.

Pedrillo

minor

Also known as poor Pedrillo, 195 Pedrillo

Juan's tutor who accompanies him on the ill-fated voyage and is sacrificed in the lifeboat.

Leila

minor

Also known as little Leila, Little Leila

A young orphan girl rescued by Juan during the siege of Ismail.

Katinka

minor

A lively Russian girl who flirts with Juan at Catherine's court.

Lord Henry Amundeville

minor

Also known as Henry, the Lord Henry, L Lord Henry

Adeline's husband, a wealthy and politically ambitious English nobleman.

The Black Friar

minor

Also known as The sable Friar

A ghostly apparition that haunts the Amundeville castle and frightens guests.

Suwarrow

minor

Also known as Suwarrow, LVIII Suwarrow, mad Suwarrow, Suvóroff

The eccentric and brilliant Russian general leading the siege of Ismail.

Don José

minor

Also known as José

Juan's father, a philandering Spanish nobleman who dies early in the poem.

Lanskoi

minor

A handsome young favorite of Catherine the Great who dies suddenly.

Duke of Wellington

minor

Also known as Wellington, The great Duke

The British military hero satirized in the poem's dedication and later cantos.

Don Alfonso

minor

Also known as Alfonso, CLIX The Senhor Don Alfonso

The jealous elderly husband of Donna Julia who discovers her affair with Juan.

Antonia

minor

Also known as sage Antonia

Donna Julia's wise and cautious waiting-woman who aids the lovers' secret meetings.

Lolah

minor

A fierce and jealous odalisque in the Sultan's harem.

Raucocanti

minor

Also known as XCIII With Raucocanti

A boastful Italian singer and adventurer encountered by Juan.

Lady Pinchbeck

minor

An older society woman known for her gossip and matchmaking in London.

Prince de Ligne

minor

Also known as Charles Joseph, Prince Charles de Ligne

A distinguished European diplomat and wit who appears at Catherine's court.

The Seraskier

minor

The Turkish commander defending Ismail against the Russian assault.

Muchtar Pacha

minor

A Turkish pacha mentioned in the context of the war.