# Orlando — Character guide

> Key figures in Orlando by Virginia Woolf.

- [Orlando](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_se/characters/orlando.md): Orlando moves through Elizabethan courts, Turkish embassies, and English drawing rooms with the same restless, poetic hunger, outliving everyone he meets. His biographer keeps complaining that he neither loves nor kills 
- [Sasha](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_se/characters/sasha.md): Sasha arrives at the Elizabethan court as part of the Muscovite embassy, all dark curls and reckless laughter, and Orlando falls for her with an intensity that rearranges his whole sense of himself. She is elusive, possi
- [Nicholas Greene](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_se/characters/nicholas_greene.md): Greene is the literary lion of the age, invited to Orlando's table, flattered by his host, and quietly contemptuous of the noble amateur who wants so badly to be taken seriously as a writer. He embodies everything treach
- [Marmaduke Bonthrop Shelmerdine](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_se/characters/marmaduke_bonthrop_shelmerdine.md): Shelmerdine is a man of action dropped into a book about a person of thought, and the mismatch is the joke and the tenderness of the whole Victorian section. He and Orlando discover, to their mutual astonishment, that ea
- [Queen Elizabeth](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_se/characters/queen_elizabeth.md): Elizabeth rules the opening world of the book, dispensing favor and jealousy in equal measure, and Orlando's boyish beauty earns him a place near her throne. Her attention is flattering and dangerous, a reminder that in 
- [Archduchess Harriet Griselda](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_se/characters/archduchess_harriet.md): Harriet first appears in Constantinople, looming in Orlando's doorway with an infatuation that Orlando finds suffocating and slightly absurd. She follows him back to England, undeterred by indifference or geography, and 
- [King James](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_se/characters/king_james.md): The Scottish king who succeeds Elizabeth and favors Orlando.
- [Ben Jonson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_se/characters/ben_jonson.md): A playwright and rival to Shakespeare in Orlando's literary circle.
- [Mrs. Grimsditch](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_se/characters/mrs_grimsditch.md): The loyal housekeeper at Orlando's country estate.
- [Mr. Dupper](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_se/characters/mr_dupper.md): A minor poet and hanger-on in Orlando's literary circle.
- [Mrs. Nelly](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_se/characters/mrs_nelly.md): A woman associated with Orlando's domestic life.
- [Mr. Addison](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_se/characters/mr_addison.md): A writer and critic who visits Orlando in the 18th century.
- [Sir Nicholas](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_se/characters/sir_nicholas.md): A courtier or nobleman in Orlando's social circle.
- [Mrs. Bartholomew](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_se/characters/mrs_bartholomew.md): A woman who appears in Orlando's household.
- [Captain Bartolus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_se/characters/captain_bartolus.md): A sea captain encountered during Orlando's travels.
- [Marched Basket](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/orlando_se/characters/marched_basket.md): A servant or minor functionary in Orlando's estate.

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