# The Black Tulip — Character guide

> Key figures in The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas.

- [Cornelius van Baerle](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_black_tulip_se/characters/cornelius_van_baerle.md): Godson of the murdered statesman Cornelius de Witt, Van Baerle has earned the love of Dort by shunning politics and pouring his fortune into the pursuit of a black tulip. His serene obsession is precisely what makes him 
- [Rosa Gryphus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_black_tulip_se/characters/rosa_gryphus.md): Rosa lives inside the walls of Loewestein, where her father Gryphus guards the prisoners and her future is supposed to be settled by obedience. Instead she becomes the courier between Cornelius and the outside world, car
- [Isaac Boxtel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_black_tulip_se/characters/isaac_boxtel.md): Boxtel has spent years perfecting his soil and his frames, only to watch Cornelius van Baerle's garden outshine his own without effort. From his sycamore tree he spies on his neighbor's beds, and when the black tulip bec
- [Gryphus](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_black_tulip_se/characters/gryphus.md): Gryphus rules his prison with growls and blows, treating every inmate as a personal insult and every kindness as a weakness to be stamped out. He is flattered by the false Jacob, bullied by his own temper, and blind to t
- [Cornelius de Witt](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_black_tulip_se/characters/cornelius_de_witt.md): Brother to the Grand Pensionary and godfather to Van Baerle, Cornelius de Witt has spent his life in the thankless business of governing, and the Orange mob has decided to make him pay for it. His dignity on the way to e
- [John de Witt](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_black_tulip_se/characters/john_de_witt.md): John de Witt has spent his career steering the Dutch republic through faction and foreign pressure, and now finds the streets of his own city turned against him. In the carriage with his brother he keeps thinking — testi
- [William of Orange](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_black_tulip_se/characters/william_of_orange.md): William moves through Haarlem's tulip affair as its highest authority, the man whose quiet presence turns a florists' ceremony into a matter of state. Where Rosa pleads and Van Systens trembles, he simply reads, asks one
- [President van Systens](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_black_tulip_se/characters/president_van_systens.md): Van Systens wants nothing more than to award a prize for the black tulip and return to respectable obscurity, but every witness who enters his drawing-room drags him deeper into danger. He trembles when Rosa confesses to
- [Craeke](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_black_tulip_se/characters/craeke.md): Cornelius de Witt's loyal servant who warns him of danger.
- [Count Tilly](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_black_tulip_se/characters/count_tilly.md): Captain of the cavalry guard who protects the De Witt brothers.
- [Tyckelaer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_black_tulip_se/characters/tyckelaer.md): A burgher of the Hague who incites the mob against the De Witts.
- [Van Deken](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_black_tulip_se/characters/van_deken.md): A captain who assists in the execution of Cornelius de Witt.
- [Grotius](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_black_tulip_se/characters/grotius.md): A famous Dutch jurist mentioned as a former prisoner of Loewestein.
- [Mathias](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_black_tulip_se/characters/mathias.md): A minor character who assists in the prison escape plot.

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