# The Duke’s Children — Character guide

> Key figures in The Duke’s Children by Anthony Trollope.

- [Lord Silverbridge](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/lord_silverbridge.md): As eldest son of the Duke of Omnium, Silverbridge carries the family's political hopes — and keeps disappointing them, having gone renegade in the Commons and onto the turf with Major Tifto. His courtship of the American
- [Frank Tregear](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/frank_tregear.md): Tregear moves easily among the great — he is Lady Mabel Grex's old friend and Silverbridge's intimate — yet his lack of money makes him unthinkable as a suitor for Lady Mary Palliser. He has done the honest thing, approa
- [Lady Mabel Grex](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/lady_mabel_grex.md): Lady Mabel Grex is the daughter of a ruined earl, raised to shine in society and now forced to calculate where her beauty can be sold. She loves Frank Tregear, who cannot support her, and is courted by Lord Silverbridge,
- [Lady Mary Palliser](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/lady_mary_palliser.md): Lady Mary Palliser has given her heart to Frank Tregear, a man with no fortune, and told her father so rather than deceive him. Forbidden to see or write her lover, she clings to her vow that nothing but death or falsene
- [The Duke of Omnium](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/the_duke_of_omnium.md): The Duke of Omnium has lost his wife and his taste for power, and now watches his children — a renegade heir, an expelled son, a daughter in love with a penniless man — wound everything he holds sacred. He believes profo
- [Isabel Boncassen](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/isabel_boncassen.md): Isabel Boncassen arrives in England with her scholarly father, charming everyone from the Duke downward while refusing to be a suppliant for a coronet. She loves Silverbridge, but she will not force her way into a family
- [Major Tifto](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/major_tifto.md): Tifto belongs to the racing, betting, and club world that the Duke's heir finds so dangerously seductive, and he trades on his association with Silverbridge to be admitted where he does not belong. His neediness and his 
- [Lord Gerald](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/lord_gerald.md): Gerald is the Cambridge son whose gambling debt lands the family in a moral and financial crisis, forcing him to stand bolt upright before the Duke and admit the sum. His shame and his naive hope of winning back what he 
- [Lady Cantrip](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/lady_cantrip.md): Lady Cantrip is the respectable widow the Duke trusts to keep Mary occupied and away from Tregear, and she accepts the charge with a mixture of kindness and worldly realism. When the Duke finally tells her the whole stor
- [Sir Timothy Beeswax](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/sir_timothy_beeswax.md): Beeswax is the Duke's opposite in the House, a man of parliamentary aptitude rather than birth, whose quarrel with Phineas Finn becomes a running topic of dinner-table politics. Lady Cantrip's sarcasms and the Duke's rel
- [Dolly Longstaff](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/dolly_longstaff.md): Dolly is the amiable lounger of the London clubs, a man who talks of emigrating when disappointed in love and then decides that marriage 'clips a fellow's wings confoundedly.' His chance encounter with the shabby Tifto i
- [Lord Popplecourt](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/lord_popplecourt.md): Popplecourt is the eligible but tedious lord whom Custins and Lady Cantrip quietly promote as a match for Mary, and his conversation about salt-mines, coal royalties, and pretty things exposes how little he understands h
- [Mrs. Finn](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/mrs_finn.md): Mrs. Finn moves through the Palliser circle as a woman of political experience and unsparing judgment, the one Tregear seeks out when he needs someone to plead his hopeless suit. She has written to the Duke on the young 
- [Miss Cassewary](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/miss_cassewary.md): Miss Cassewary belongs to that shadowy class of genteel dependents who see everything and say little, attending Lady Mabel through visits to the Pallisers and the Boncassens alike. Her loyalty to Mabel is absolute, yet s
- [Mr. Boncassen](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/mr_boncassen.md): Mr. Boncassen arrives in England as a man of wealth and ideas, debating monarchy with the Duke himself and earning a respect the Duke would never extend to his daughter as a daughter-in-law. He is no social climber — his
- [Reginald Dobbes](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/reginald_dobbes.md): Dobbes runs the shooting at Crummie-Toddie with military discipline, despising anyone who cannot walk thirty miles with a gun and resenting young lords who arrive without proper credentials. His contempt for Silverbridge
- [Lord Percival](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/lord_percival.md): A young nobleman and friend of Silverbridge.
- [Mrs. Spooner](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/mrs_spooner.md): A matchmaking widow at Killancodlem.
- [Lord Nidderdale](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/lord_nidderdale.md): A young peer and friend of Silverbridge.
- [Lord Chiltern](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/lord_chiltern.md): A hunting friend of the Duke's family.
- [Mr. Lupton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/mr_lupton.md): A gentleman at the Beargarden club.
- [Mrs. Montacute Jones](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/mrs_montacute_jones.md): A society hostess who gives parties.
- [Mr. Jawstock](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/mr_jawstock.md): A racing man and associate of Major Tifto.
- [Mr. Moreton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/mr_moreton.md): The Duke's agent at Matching.
- [Captain Green](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/captain_green.md): A racing acquaintance of Major Tifto.
- [Lord Grex](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/lord_grex.md): Lady Mabel's impoverished father.
- [Phineas Finn](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/phineas_finn.md): A former politician and friend of the Duke.
- [Mr. Du Boung](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/mr_du_boung.md): A friend of the Boncassens.
- [Lady Chiltern](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/lady_chiltern.md): Wife of Lord Chiltern and friend of the family.
- [Mr. Pook](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/mr_pook.md): A trainer involved with Silverbridge's horses.
- [Mr. Walker](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/mr_walker.md): A lawyer consulted by the Duke.
- [Old Mr. Topps](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/old_mr_topps.md): A sporting gentleman at Doncaster.
- [Lord Drummond](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/lord_drummond.md): A political colleague of the Duke.
- [The Duchess of Omnium](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_duke_s_children_se/characters/the_duchess_of_omnium.md): The late Duchess, remembered by the family.

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