# Don Quixote — Character guide

> Key figures in Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra.

- [Don Quixote](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/don_quixote.md): He is a minor landowner from La Mancha who, addled by books of knight-errantry, dubs himself Don Quixote and rides out to right wrongs in a world that no longer has any use for knights. His defining tension is between th
- [Sancho Panza](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/sancho_panza.md): Sancho Panza is a laborer with a wife, Teresa, and children, who trades the security of home for the squire's saddle because necessity and hope of a governorship push him out the door. His tension is between his shrewd, 
- [Dulcinea del Toboso](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/dulcinea_del_toboso.md): Dulcinea exists in the book almost entirely as a name — the lady whose beauty Don Quixote demands strangers confess, and whose identity he insists must appear plainly in any verse written for her. The tension she embodie
- [Samson Carrasco](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/samson_carrasco.md): Samson Carrasco is a university man of about twenty-four, small in body but a great wag, with a sallow face and a large mouth that promise jokes. His tension is that he knows Don Quixote's madness is real and also that t
- [Miguel de Cervantes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/cervantes.md): Cervantes is the book's presiding intelligence, a man who grew up in a Spain where chivalry had died and printing had flooded the market with romances, and who read everything from ballads to chronicles in his youth. His
- [Cide Hamete Benengeli](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/cide_hamete_benengeli.md): Cide Hamete Benengeli is the invented author behind the book, a Moor whose Arabic manuscript the narrator says he had translated into Castilian. The tension he creates is one of trust: Don Quixote, hearing that a Moor wr
- [Anselmo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/anselmo.md): Anselmo belongs to the world of wealthy Italian gentlemen whose honor rests on reputation and the appearance of virtue. Rather than trust his marriage, he pressures his closest friend into testing Camilla's fidelity, tre
- [Camilla](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/camilla.md): Camilla is a Florentine lady whose beauty and integrity are the pride of her household, admired by all who know her. She is placed in an impossible position: her husband wants her tested, her tester is his dearest friend
- [Lothario](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/lothario.md): Lothario is the intimate friend to whom Anselmo entrusts the impossible task of testing his wife's fidelity. He begins as the reluctant instrument of another man's jealousy, protesting that the scheme is both dishonorabl
- [Don Fernando](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/fernando.md): Don Fernando is a young nobleman of wealth and standing whose word carries weight in the inns and households he passes through. He pursues Dorothea with promises, then abandons her for a more advantageous match, treating
- [Dorothea](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/dorothea.md): Dorothea is a lady of beauty and high birth who has been seduced and abandoned by Don Fernando, and who refuses to let her story end in shame. She enters the narrative disguised as the distressed Princess Micomicona, enl
- [Cardenio](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/cardenio.md): Cardenio is a well-born young man whose betrothal to Luscinda was destroyed by Don Fernando's interference, leaving him to roam the wilderness in tattered clothes and fractured speech. He veers between lucid courtliness 
- [Luscinda](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/luscinda.md): Luscinda belongs to the world of well-born lovers whose private vows collide with the ruthless ambitions of noblemen like Don Fernando. Her constancy to Cardenio is tested by force and family pressure, and her anguish be
- [Zoraida](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/zoraida.md): Zoraida moves between the corsair world of Algiers and the Christian Spain she yearns to reach, her beauty and secrecy making her an object of both desire and suspicion. Her willingness to abandon family and homeland for
- [Rocinante](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/rocinante.md): Rocinante is the four-legged partner of Don Quixote's knight-errantry, a tired workhorse elevated by his rider's imagination into a steed of legend. His wandering lust and frailty get the pair beaten by Yanguesan carrier
- [Dapple](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/dapple.md): Dapple is Sancho's steady mount and closest possession, a creature whose plodding good sense contrasts with Rocinante's delusions of grandeur. He is there when Sancho meets the disguised Morisco Ricote and shares his bre
- [Teresa Panza](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/teresa_panza.md): Teresa keeps the household running while Sancho rides off chasing islands, and she receives the duchess's coral beads and letters with a farmwife's mixture of delight and shrewdness. She cannot read, yet she reads people
- [Sanchica](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/sanchica.md): Sancho and Teresa's daughter, who hopes for a better life.
- [Altisidora](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/altisidora.md): Altisidora belongs to the duke and duchess's castle, where elaborate practical jokes are staged at the knight's expense. Her feigned love and dramatic fainting are part of a larger conspiracy of amusement, yet her perfor
- [The Duke](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/the_duke.md): The Duke rules a country estate where Don Quixote and Sancho are welcomed as honored curiosities, then quietly converted into performers in his private theater. His humor is generous in appearance yet coolly experimental
- [The Duchess](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/the_duchess.md): In the ducal castle the Duchess is the true author of the games, inventing enchantments, distressed duennas, and the cat-and-bell prank that leaves Don Quixote wounded in bed for five days. She is delighted by his sincer
- [Marcela](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/marcela.md): A beautiful shepherdess who rejects all suitors and defends her freedom.
- [Chrysostom](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/chrysostom.md): A shepherd who dies of unrequited love for Marcela.
- [Ginés de Pasamonte](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/gin%C3%A9s_de_pasamonte.md): A cunning criminal freed by Don Quixote who later reappears as a puppeteer.
- [Andrés](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/andres.md): A young boy beaten by his master whom Don Quixote tries to help.
- [The Priest](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/the_priest.md): As a man of the church and a reader himself, the Priest knows exactly which books inflamed Don Quixote's brain, and he joins the barber and housekeeper in the first attempts to wall off the library and lure the knight ba
- [Master Nicholas](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/master_nicholas.md): Master Nicholas is a practical man of the village who knows Don Quixote well enough to mock him gently and love him anyway, and he lends his wit and his person to the priest's rescue plans. He is one of the first to dres
- [The Housekeeper](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/the_housekeeper.md): Don Quixote's housekeeper who worries about his madness.
- [The Niece](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/the_niece.md): Don Quixote's niece who cares for him and fears for his sanity.
- [Ricote](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/ricote.md): A wealthy Morisco and former neighbor of Sancho, forced into exile.
- [Basilio](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/basilio.md): A poor young man who uses a trick to win his beloved Quiteria.
- [Quiteria](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/quiteria.md): A beautiful woman caught between her love for Basilio and a rich suitor.
- [Camacho](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/camacho.md): A wealthy man whose wedding to Quiteria is interrupted by Basilio.
- [Don Diego de Miranda](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/don_diego_de_miranda.md): A gentleman who hosts Don Quixote and is known as the Knight of the Green Coat.
- [Don Lorenzo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/don_lorenzo.md): The son of Don Diego de Miranda, a poet and scholar.
- [Roque Guinart](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/roque_guinart.md): A famous Catalan bandit who encounters Don Quixote.
- [Don Antonio Moreno](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/don_antonio_moreno.md): A wealthy gentleman in Barcelona who hosts Don Quixote.
- [Ana Félix](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/ana_felix.md): A beautiful Morisco woman disguised as a man, daughter of Ricote.
- [Don Gaspar Gregorio](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/don_gaspar_gregorio.md): A young Christian nobleman in love with Ana Félix.
- [The Countess Trifaldi](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/the_countess_trifaldi.md): A duenna who tells a fantastic tale of enchantment to Don Quixote.
- [Trifaldin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/trifaldin.md): The squire of the Countess Trifaldi, with a famously long beard.
- [Clavileño](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/clavileno.md): A magical wooden horse that Don Quixote and Sancho ride.
- [Malambruno](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/malambruno.md): The enchanter who supposedly controls the fate of the Countess Trifaldi.
- [Merlin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/merlin.md): The legendary enchanter who appears in a prophecy to Dulcinea.
- [Montesinos](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/montesinos.md): A legendary figure from chivalric romance who appears in Don Quixote's dream.
- [The Biscayan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/the_biscayan.md): A Basque gentleman who fights Don Quixote over a perceived insult.
- [Maritornes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/maritornes.md): A kind-hearted Asturian servant at an inn who helps Don Quixote.
- [The Innkeeper](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/the_innkeeper.md): The owner of the inn who dubs Don Quixote a knight.
- [The Innkeeper's Daughter](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/the_innkeepers_daughter.md): The innkeeper's daughter who helps with Don Quixote's vigil.
- [The Captive](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/the_captive.md): The Captive arrives at the inn as a traveler among travelers, but his story of captivity and escape, told in the novel's long embedded narrative, reveals a life shaped by courage, patience, and a Moorish woman named Zora
- [The Judge](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/don_quixote_se/characters/the_judge.md): A Spanish judge who is revealed to be the captive's brother.

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