# The Castle of Otranto — Character guide

> Key figures in The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole.

- [Manfred](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_of_otranto_se/characters/manfred.md): Manfred rules Otranto with an impatience that curdles into cruelty the moment his plans are thwarted, and the sudden, grotesque death of his only son Conrad on the wedding day exposes how little he grieves and how much h
- [Isabella](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_of_otranto_se/characters/isabella.md): Isabella is the daughter of Frederic and the intended bride of young Conrad, but she conceives little affection for her groom and shows more interest in the handsome cavaliers who pass through the castle. When Manfred's 
- [Matilda](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_of_otranto_se/characters/matilda.md): Matilda lives under her father's watchful confinement, her days brightened only by her friend Isabella and the babbling of her maid Bianca. When a mysterious voice drifts up from the haunted chamber below, she refuses Bi
- [Theodore](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_of_otranto_se/characters/theodore.md): Theodore enters the castle as a captive peasant, yet his grave courtesy and self-possessed dignity impress even those who should despise him. He tells a brief, sorrowful history — carried to Algiers as a child, orphaned,
- [Hippolita](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_of_otranto_se/characters/hippolita.md): Hippolita is the mother of Conrad and Matilda, a woman whose beneficent soul, as her daughter says, ever melts for the distressed. She faints at the news of her son's death, yet her concern for others never wavers, and s
- [Frederic](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_of_otranto_se/characters/frederic.md): Frederic is the nobleman whose daughter Isabella was sent to wed young Conrad, and his distant authority hangs over the opening events even before he appears. When he finally arrives, he comes as a claimant entangled wit
- [Bianca](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_of_otranto_se/characters/bianca.md): Bianca serves Matilda inside the castle's cloistered, melancholy routine, and her idle tongue is the household's chief source of gossip and dread. She is terrified of the ghost she is certain haunts the chamber below, ye
- [Jerome](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_of_otranto_se/characters/jerome.md): Father Jerome moves between the castle's corridors and the church's authority, a holy man whose advice the tyrannical Manfred both demands and resents. He carries a secret about Theodore's parentage that binds him to the
- [Conrad](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_of_otranto_se/characters/conrad.md): Manfred's sickly son, whose sudden death sets the plot in motion.
- [Horace Walpole](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_of_otranto_se/characters/horace_walpole.md): The author of the novel, appearing in the preface and introduction.
- [Holy Father](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_of_otranto_se/characters/holy_father.md): A religious figure invoked in prayers and exclamations.
- [Madam](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_castle_of_otranto_se/characters/madam.md): A formal address used for noblewomen, especially Hippolita.

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