Character guide

Felix Kennaston

major

Also known as Kennaston, Mr. Kennaston, Mr. Felix Kennaston

Kennaston is a country gentleman and former verse-writer whose late-blooming novel makes him a minor celebrity he greets with urbane amusement, even as he privately feels his real self slipping elsewhere. His marriage to Kathleen has settled into affectionate incomprehension: she urges him toward up-to-date, marketable fiction while he retreats into a world she will not read. The sigil he discovers opens that retreat into something stranger, and his growing detachment from ordinary human standards of value is what drives the book's central inquiry into dream, identity, and authorship.

Horvendile

major

Also known as Gravely Horvendile, brave Horvendile

Horvendile is the witty, faintly blasphemous servant whose quick wits have rescued Ettarre from Maugis d'Aigremont and whose clear-eyed mockery unsettles the chivalric certainties around him. He loves Ettarre hopelessly and confesses it with a shrug, arguing that love must aim at something not quite accessible; his envy of the immaculate Guiron curdles into a weary sense that he is watching a romance close its last page. He matters because his restlessness and his longing for a life that employs every faculty mirror Kennaston's own, and the half-sigil Ettarre gives him at parting is the hinge between the two worlds.

La Beale Ettarre

major

Also known as Ettarre, Dame Ettarre, La

La Beale Ettarre is the sister of Count Emmerick and the center of a notable marriage-feast, a woman whose big blue eyes have troubled many men's sleep and whose happiness is shadowed only by the surviving menace of Maugis d'Aigremont. She pities Horvendile's hopeless love with genuine tenderness, yet cannot return it, and her serene certainty about virtue and nobility quietly rebukes his irony. As the figure Kennaston's imagination keeps circling, she is the inaccessible ideal whose various historical guises give the novel its recurring question: whether the woman we dream of can ever be the woman we marry.

Mrs. Kennaston

supporting

Also known as Mrs. Felix Kennaston

Kathleen Kennaston is the competent mistress of the household, preoccupied with gasoline engines and clipping-bureaus, who has lived beside her husband's abilities without quite crediting them. She defers reading Men Who Loved Alison on various pretexts and treats it as a private joke that she alone has not read the book everyone discusses, a humor Kennaston finds neither funny nor wifely. Her cheerful suggestion that he write something dealing with real life, and make money from it, exposes the gulf between his dream-values and her domestic ones, making her the quiet counterweight to everything the sigil offers him.

Kathleen Saumarez

supporting

Also known as Kathleen, Kathleen Eppes Saumarez

Before her marriage Kathleen Eppes Saumarez earned precarious bread as a lecturer and journalist, reviewing books she came to loathe, and she now cares even less for books as art than the average honest woman. That weary professional skepticism makes her the perfect domestic foil to a husband who lives through fictions, and it colors the way she receives his sudden success. The colophon Kennaston writes for Men Who Loved Alison, celebrating books as travel that lets one exchange one's personality for another's, reads very differently once we know the reviewer he married, and her presence sharpens the novel's meditation on why we read at all.

Maugis d'Aigremont

supporting

Also known as Maugis

Maugis d'Aigremont is the lurking menace of Storisende, a knight and magician whose persistency Ettarre fears even in her happiness and whose motives Horvendile frankly calls base. He has been driven into hiding after his attempt on Ettarre, but his resourcefulness and theatrical wickedness make him a foil to the too-perfect Guiron, and Horvendile's half-admiring talk of him unsettles Ettarre's moral certainties. His shadow over the marriage-feast keeps the imagined world from becoming merely idyllic, and his resemblance to something in Horvendile's own face hints that villainy and dreamer may share a root.

Sir Guiron des Rocques

supporting

Also known as Guiron, Sir Guiron

Guiron is the celebrated champion of Poictesme, betrothed to Ettarre in a match Count Emmerick has staged as the social event of the realm. His very perfection breeds trouble: Maugis d'Aigremont confesses he cannot pardon Guiron for being worthy of her, and even Horvendile's loyalty carries an edge. As the marriage-feast approaches and old grudges converge on Storisende, Guiron stands at the still center of a gathering storm, the man whose happiness others have quietly resolved to test.

Muriel Allardyce

minor

Also known as Muriel

A friend of the Kennastons, involved in social circles and local gossip.

Avis Blagden

minor

Also known as Avis

An acquaintance of the Kennastons, part of their social set.

Dick Harrowby

minor

Also known as Harrowby, Mr. Harrowby

A local man involved in the town's affairs and Kennaston's circle.

Count Emmerick

minor

Also known as yonder Count Emmerick, Emmerick

A nobleman in the fictional world of Poictesme.

P. N. Flaherty

supporting

Flaherty is the narrator's stand-in: a reporter of the shallow country intimacy that chance imposes on neighbors, who listened while Kennaston spoke of the sigil with what struck him as indecent unconcern. He takes notes, marvels, and slowly realizes that Kennaston's standard of values had ceased to be human. His skepticism and his willingness to follow the dream anyway make him the reader's guide into Poictesme, lending the fantastic frame its air of reported fact.

Margaret Hugonin

minor

A young woman from Kennaston's past, briefly mentioned in his memories.

Alison

minor

Also known as Men Who Loved Alison

A legendary figure referenced in the fictional narrative.

Nan Boleyn

minor

Also known as Mistress Boleyn, Mistress Anne Boleyn

A historical figure appearing as a character in Kennaston's visions.

Charicles

minor

A character from the ancient Greek segments of the fictional narrative.

Scoteia

minor

A figure from the fictional world, associated with the sigil's lore.

Amrou

minor

Also known as the victorious Arabian general Amrou

A historical general appearing briefly in the narrative's visions.

John Faustus

minor

The legendary scholar, referenced as a character in the fictional world.

Pontius Pilate

minor

Also known as Pilate

The Roman governor, appearing in a vision of historical events.

Tiberius

minor

Also known as Tiberius Caesar, Caesar

The Roman emperor, mentioned in the narrative's historical scope.

Cromwell

minor

Also known as Oliver Cromwell

The English lord protector, appearing in a historical vignette.

Napoleon

minor

The French emperor, mentioned in passing historical allusions.

Moira

minor

A name appearing in the fictional narrative of Poictesme.

Adam

minor

The biblical first man, referenced in the story's philosophical themes.

Christ

minor

Central figure of Christianity, referenced in the narrative's reflections.

Perion

minor

Also known as Count Perion

A character from the fictional realm, father of Horvendile.

Ailas

minor

A minor character in the Poictesme narrative.

Alcluid

minor

A character from the fictional realm of Poictesme.

Beatricê Cenci

minor

Also known as Beatricê

A historical figure appearing in Kennaston's imaginative sequences.

George Washington

minor

Also known as George, Washington

The American general, briefly referenced in the narrative.

Coleridge

minor

The poet, referenced in Kennaston's literary musings.

Leonard

minor

A minor character in the contemporary sections of the book.

Old Caesar

minor

A minor character or reference in the fictional world.

Ptolemy of the Fat Paunch

minor

A comedic figure from the fictional realm of Poictesme.

Monsieur le Prince

minor

A French nobleman appearing in the historical vignettes.

Mr. Booth Tarkington

minor

A real author mentioned as a contemporary of Kennaston.