# Don Juan — Character guide

> Key figures in Don Juan by Lord Byron.

- [Don Juan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_juan_se/characters/don_juan.md): 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, 
- [Haidée](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_juan_se/characters/haidee.md): 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 vu
- [Lady Adeline Amundeville](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_juan_se/characters/lady_adeline.md): 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 
- [Gulbeyaz](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_juan_se/characters/gulbeyaz.md): 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,
- [Catherine the Great](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_juan_se/characters/catherine_the_great.md): 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 yo
- [Donna Julia](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_juan_se/characters/donna_julia.md): 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 
- [Lambro](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_juan_se/characters/lambro.md): 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 f
- [Donna Inez](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_juan_se/characters/donna_inez.md): 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 Jua
- [Baba](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_juan_se/characters/baba.md): 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 
- [John Johnson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_juan_se/characters/john_johnson.md): 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 aristocra
- [Aurora Raby](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_juan_se/characters/aurora_raby.md): 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 r
- [Dudù](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_juan_se/characters/dudu.md): A soft and sleepy odalisque in the harem who shares a bed with Juan in disguise.
- [Zoe](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_juan_se/characters/zoe.md): Haidée's loyal and protective Greek maid who assists in Juan's recovery.
- [Pedrillo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_juan_se/characters/pedrillo.md): Juan's tutor who accompanies him on the ill-fated voyage and is sacrificed in the lifeboat.
- [Leila](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_juan_se/characters/leila.md): A young orphan girl rescued by Juan during the siege of Ismail.
- [Katinka](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_juan_se/characters/katinka.md): A lively Russian girl who flirts with Juan at Catherine's court.
- [Lord Henry Amundeville](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_juan_se/characters/lord_henry.md): Adeline's husband, a wealthy and politically ambitious English nobleman.
- [The Black Friar](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_juan_se/characters/the_black_friar.md): A ghostly apparition that haunts the Amundeville castle and frightens guests.
- [Suwarrow](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_juan_se/characters/suwarrow.md): The eccentric and brilliant Russian general leading the siege of Ismail.
- [Don José](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_juan_se/characters/jose.md): Juan's father, a philandering Spanish nobleman who dies early in the poem.
- [Lanskoi](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_juan_se/characters/lanskoi.md): A handsome young favorite of Catherine the Great who dies suddenly.
- [Duke of Wellington](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_juan_se/characters/the_duke_of_wellington.md): The British military hero satirized in the poem's dedication and later cantos.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_juan_se/characters