# Orlando Furioso — Character guide

> Key figures in Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto.

- [Orlando](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/orlando.md): Orlando is Charlemagne's nephew and the church's champion, a warrior so generous he refuses to strike a sleeping foe even when hunting through an enemy camp. Yet love for Angelica has begun to hollow out his loyalty, dri
- [Rogero](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/rogero.md): Rogero is the finest warrior on Agramant's side, yet his destiny is tangled with Bradamant, the Christian maiden he loves and cannot openly claim. Honor pulls him one way, desire another, and he keeps leaving her side fo
- [Bradamant](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/bradamant.md): Bradamant is a peerless fighter and Rinaldo's sister, equally at home in plate mail and in the politics of Charlemagne's court. When she finds the humiliated Ulany stripped and beaten by a lawless lord, she forgets every
- [Angelica](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/angelica.md): Angelica flees across Europe with Orlando, Rinaldo, and half the chivalry of two religions at her heels, trusting no one and resting nowhere. She is less a prize than a tactician of her own escape, slipping from a hermit
- [Rinaldo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/rinaldo.md): Rinaldo is one of Charlemagne's most trusted captains, sent on embassies to England and Scotland to raise troops while Paris sits under siege. He is brave and effective, but the old romances remember him as a borderer wi
- [Charlemagne](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/charlemagne.md): Charlemagne rules the Christian cause from a threatened capital, dispensing commissions, letters, and countersigns to men like Rinaldo while Saracen armies camp outside his walls. His authority depends on paladins who ke
- [Agramant](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/agramant.md): Agramant commands the Saracen invasion from Arles, scraping together horse and foot while levying crushing taxes across Africa to refit his broken force. His authority rests on managing dangerous subordinates like Rodomo
- [Rodomont](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/rodomont.md): Rodomont refuses Agramant's summons and even the offer of a royal bride, choosing instead to squat on his bridge and strip passing cavaliers of their plate and mail. His brutality is matched only by his contempt for any 
- [Astolpho](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/astolpho.md): Astolpho travels farther than any other paladin, trapping the wind Auster in a bladder, raising cavalry from scattered stones, and besieging Biserta with a Nubian host. His adventures tilt toward the marvelous rather tha
- [Brandimart](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/brandimart.md): Brandimart appears throughout the poem as the friend Orlando can rely on when love has driven the count to madness and wandering. His constancy contrasts sharply with the betrayals and self-interest that surround him, an
- [Zerbino](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/zerbino.md): Zerbino leads a Scottish band through the chaotic aftermath of battle, where he grants Medoro's plea for burial of his lord and is enraged when one of his own men strikes the suppliant down. His instinct to protect the h
- [Isabella](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/isabella.md): Isabella moves through the poem as a woman defined by her bond to Zerbino, a love that exposes her to the predations of wandering knights and false holy men. Her fidelity stands against the poem's prevailing inconstancy,
- [Mandricardo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/mandricardo.md): Mandricardo rides into the siege of Paris armed head to foot on a chestnut courser, having vowed to turn his back on the camp until he finds the knight in black. His pride is the engine: he treats the war as a personal e
- [Marphisa](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/marphisa.md): Marphisa moves through the Moorish camps as a peerless fighter, her boldness matched only by her refusal to be anyone's ornament or prize. She is sister to Rogero, a bond she does not fully know, and that hidden tie give
- [Gradasso](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/gradasso.md): Gradasso is the invader whose appetite for famous trophies helps set the poem's whole machinery in motion, a monarch who treats the greatest Christian warrior's gear as the only prize worth a kingdom. His fixation on Dur
- [Sacripant](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/sacripant.md): Sacripant is a genuine champion — brave, courteous, and hopelessly in love with Angelica, who treats his devotion as a convenience. His rivalry with Orlando and the other suitors makes him both a worthy knight and a comi
- [Pinabel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/pinabel.md): Pinabel, sprung from the faithless line of Maganza, schemes against Bradamant and thinks he has buried her for good. His treachery is not grand villainy but petty, self-serving malice, the kind the poem treats as a famil
- [Melissa](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/melissa.md): Melissa is the poem's wise woman, a sorceress whose counsel and illusions serve the long game of bringing Bradamant and Rogero together. Where the knights chase immediate glory, she works in decades, conjuring visions of
- [Atlantes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/atlantes.md): Atlantes raised Rogero and now bends all his magic toward one end: keeping the young knight away from the war in France, where he believes Rogero is fated to die. He builds a steel tower, then a pleasure palace whose roo
- [Alcina](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/alcina.md): Alcina rules an island of gardens and music where knights are welcomed, feasted, and adored — until she tires of them. Her power lies less in open violence than in pleasure that dissolves a man's purpose, and her victims
- [Logistilla](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/logistilla.md): A good enchantress, sister of Alcina.
- [Gryphon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/gryphon.md): Gryphon fights in the wars around the Mediterranean, where his temper and his sword-arm make him both feared and useful. He is bound to his brother Aquilant by a devotion that survives separation, mistaken identity, and 
- [Sansonet](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/sansonet.md): A Christian knight, companion of Rogero.
- [Olivier](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/olivier.md): Olivier stands among the twelve peers of France, known for good judgment as much as for his sword, and he is often the one who sees clearly what Orlando's love for Angelica has obscured. He fights in the same campaigns, 
- [Dudon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/dudon.md): A Danish Christian knight.
- [Ferraù](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/ferrau.md): A Saracen knight, one of Angelica's suitors.
- [Medoro](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/medoro.md): Medoro is a foot soldier in the Moorish army, notable at first only for refusing to abandon the body of his slain lord Dardinello. Wounded and hunted, he is found and healed by Angelica, and the two fall in love in a pas
- [Martano](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/martano.md): A cowardly and treacherous knight.
- [Origille](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/origille.md): A deceitful woman who betrays knights.
- [Gabrina](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/gabrina.md): An old and wicked woman.
- [Flordelice](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/flordelice.md): Flordelice belongs to the poem's company of women who refuse to wait — she travels, searches, and endures separation from Brandimart with a constancy that mirrors his own devotion to her. Her faithfulness is tested by di
- [Doralice](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/doralice.md): A Saracen princess, beloved of Mandricardo and Rodomont.
- [Olympia](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/olympia.md): A countess abandoned by her lover Bireno.
- [Bireno](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/bireno.md): A faithless duke who abandons Olympia.
- [Geneura](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/geneura.md): Princess of Scotland, falsely accused of unchastity.
- [Ariodantes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/ariodantes.md): A knight in love with Geneura.
- [Lurcanio](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/lurcanio.md): Brother of Ariodantes.
- [Polinesso](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/polinesso.md): Duke of Albany, a villain who slanders Geneura.
- [Brunello](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/brunello.md): A dwarf and thief who aids Bradamant.
- [Malagigi](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/malagigi.md): A Christian enchanter, cousin of Rinaldo.
- [Aymon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/aymon.md): Father of Rinaldo and Bradamant.
- [Richardetto](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/richardetto.md): A Christian knight, brother of Rinaldo.
- [Guido](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/guido.md): A wild knight, later civilized.
- [Leo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/leo.md): Son of the Emperor of Greece.
- [Hippalca](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/hippalca.md): Bradamant's maid and messenger.
- [Frontino](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/frontino.md): Rogero's faithful horse.
- [Bayardo](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_furioso_se/characters/bayardo.md): Rinaldo's magical horse.

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