The King in Yellow · Characters
Character guide
Key figures in The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers.
Skim names here — open a free preview to see character cards and Character Web beside the page as you read.
Hastings
major
Also known as Mr. Hastings, Monsieur Hastings
A newly arrived American in Paris whose sober decency makes him the perfect witness to his friends' unraveling, and to worse things waiting in the dark.
Clifford
major
Also known as Monsieur Clifford, Mr. Clifford, Foxhall Clifford, Jacqueline
A brilliant, harebrained painter whose Salon triumph and scandalous charm conceal how little he can resist anything — wine, women, or the wrong book.
J. Trent
major
Also known as Trent, Monsieur Trent, Jack Trent
A sculptor of fierce discipline and stranger appetites, drawn to the forbidden text as a man is drawn to a cliff edge in the dark.
the girl
major
A servant girl whose idle curiosity about a serpent-bound book costs her everything, and whose dazed eyes afterward see things no living woman should.
Selby
supporting
Also known as Kid Selby
A fresh-faced newcomer to the Latin Quarter, still innocent enough to blush at a pretty girl and ask the one question everyone else knows better than to answer.
Mr. Wilde
supporting
A soft-spoken, unsettling presence who reads dynasties into being and treats other men's minds as instruments to be tuned to his own key.
Tessie Reardon
supporting
Also known as Tessie, Tess
A model whose laughter and curiosity pull her toward the forbidden Yellow Sign, binding her fate to a painter already marked by the King in Yellow.
Boris Yvain
supporting
Also known as Boris
A painter whose easy friendship with the narrator and shared love for Geneviève becomes an unbearable weight the narrator can neither name nor shed.
Louis de Calvados
supporting
Also known as Louis, Mrs. Louis Castaigne
A Parisian artist and friend whose charm and constancy anchor a circle of painters, even as one of them drifts toward ruinous obsession.
Richard Osborne Elliott
supporting
Also known as Elliott, Richard Osborne, Mr. Richard Elliott
A blunt, loyal painter who scolds his friend Clifford for chasing women and dodging engagements, yet keeps covering for him anyway.
Constance Hawberk
supporting
Also known as Constance, Hawberk, old Hawberk
Hawberk's daughter, whose beauty and warmth draw the narrator's devotion even as his ambitions curdle into something far darker.
Geneviève
supporting
Geneviève is the woman whose face the narrator of 'The Demoiselle d'Ys' longs for daily, whose hands he remembers on the spinet keys, whose marble likeness he kneels before in the sealed room. She is both flesh and stone, a living woman who sat for the Madonna and a figure so still she seems carved. Her absence drives the narrator's passion and his dread, and her ambiguous nature — saint or statue, memory or ghost — gives the story its ache.
Sylvia Elven
supporting
Also known as Sylvia, little Sylvia
Sylvia Elven exists in 'The Street of the Four Winds' as a name on a garter, a town in Brittany, and a corpse laid out in lace and silk in a darkened chamber. The narrator, who once met Fate in Elven and found it unkind, follows a stray cat up five flights to find her — pale, golden-haired, eyes untroubled as a child's. Her death and his kiss on her mouth close the story in a hush of grief and recognition.
Rue Barrée
supporting
Also known as Rue
Rue Barrée is the elusive object of Clifford's, Elliott's, and Rowden's thwarted affections, a woman whose heart of ice they describe with rueful admiration. She buys pansies every spring but shakes her head at roses, and her trembling voice at the flower market hints at feeling beneath the chill. Selby, newly curious, watches her across the marble bridge, and her refusal to be won is the quiet engine of the story's longing.
Jack Scott
supporting
Also known as Jack
Jack Scott moves through the Paris stories as a friend to Hastings and the narrator, a painter whose letters arrive incoherent with prayers that his friend not leave the house in the Rue Sainte-Cécile. He is the voice of caution in a world of bohemian liberties, a man who senses the uncanny before he can name it. His warnings, half-mad and wholly sincere, pull the reader toward the story's deepening unease.
Severn
supporting
Severn belongs to the circle of painters and models around Clifford and Elliott, a man Clifford names alongside Selby as being 'like Hastings' — straitlaced, decent, a brick. He is the moral ballast in a Quarter where morals are rare, the friend whose presence makes Clifford want to spare Hastings the orgy. His steadiness sharpens the contrast with the story's encroaching horror.
II West
supporting
Also known as West, Monsieur West
West is the narrator's companion in Boris's studio, the witness who listens fascinated as an Easter lily is plunged into a basin and drawn out as flawless marble, veined with palest azure. He is the curious, skeptical eye through which the reader sees Boris's impossible chemistry, and his wonder at the golden ray — the vital spark escaping — grounds the story's quiet dread. His presence makes the uncanny feel domestic, almost scientific, before it turns.
Braith
supporting
Braith belongs to the small circle of friends and household intimates moving through the narrator's rooms, part of the comfortable social texture that the story slowly corrodes. The tension he embodies is the ordinary man's helplessness before forbidden curiosity: he can warn, but he cannot prevent Tessie from dancing off with the book, and he can only watch as the damage is done. His presence in the early arc makes the horror feel domestic and personal rather than abstract, grounding the tale in recognizable friendship before the second part of The King in Yellow works its ruin.
Fallowby
minor
Also known as Monsieur Fallowby
An acquaintance in the Parisian stories.
Colette
minor
A young girl in The Street of the Four Winds.
Valentine
minor
A character in The Demoiselle d'Ys.
Cécile
minor
Also known as Poor Cécile
A woman in The Street of the Four Winds.
Puss
minor
A cat in The Street of the Four Winds.
Hartman
minor
A character in The Repairer of Reputations.
Rowden
minor
Also known as Monsieur Rowden, Mr. Stanley Rowden, Mr. Rowden
An acquaintance in the Parisian stories.
Alec
minor
A friend in The Repairer of Reputations.
Hildred Castaigne
minor
Also known as Hildred, Hildred - Rex
A relative of the narrator in The Repairer of Reputations.
Phantom of Truth
minor
Also known as Truth
An allegorical figure in The Phantom of Truth.
Countess Jeanne d'Ys
minor
Also known as Jeanne, Jeanne d'Ys
A noblewoman in The Demoiselle d'Ys.
Mr. Castaigne
minor
Also known as Castaigne, young Castaigne
The narrator's father in The Repairer of Reputations.
Raoul
minor
A character in The Demoiselle d'Ys.
Edward Burkes
minor
Also known as Edward, Ed, Ed Burkes, Eddie Burkes
A friend in The Repairer of Reputations.
Hastur
minor
A mysterious entity associated with the King in Yellow.
Madame Marotte
minor
Also known as Madame
A landlady in the Parisian stories.
Cassilda
minor
A character from the play The King in Yellow.
an old Breton woman
supporting
The spinning nurse of an isolated Breton household, whose quiet care and old legends frame a visitor's strange awakening in a world centuries removed.
Thomas Stainbridge
minor
Also known as Thomas
A character in The Repairer of Reputations.
Osgood Oswald Vance
minor
Also known as Vance
A poet and acquaintance in the Parisian stories.
Dr. Archer
minor
Also known as Doctor Archer
A doctor in The Repairer of Reputations.
Susie Byng
minor
Also known as Susie, Miss Susie, Miss Byng, Miss Susie Byng
A friend in The Repairer of Reputations.
Bowles
minor
A servant in The Repairer of Reputations.
Moses
minor
A servant in The Repairer of Reputations.
Dr. Byram
minor
A doctor in The Repairer of Reputations.
Mr. Bladen
minor
A character in The Repairer of Reputations.
Monseigneur
minor
Also known as Monseigneur C⸺
A bishop in The Demoiselle d'Ys.
Monsieur Julian
minor
Also known as papa Julian, Julian, Jules
A father figure in The Street of the Four Winds.
Marie Guernalec
minor
Also known as Marie, Molly, Guernalec
A woman in The Demoiselle d'Ys.
Arnold Steylette
minor
A friend in The Repairer of Reputations.
Laffat
minor
Also known as Mr. Laffat, the astonished Laffat
A character in The Repairer of Reputations.
Sieur Piriou Louis
minor
Also known as Louis, Piriou Louis, Sieur Piriou
A Breton sailor in The Demoiselle d'Ys.
Mademoiselle Murphy
minor
Also known as Murphy
A model in the Parisian stories.
Philip
minor
A character in The Repairer of Reputations.
Thorne
minor
A character in The Repairer of Reputations.
Alfred
minor
Also known as mon petit Alfred
A young boy in The Street of the Four Winds.
Odile
minor
A woman in The Demoiselle d'Ys.
Mr. Scott
minor
Also known as Scott
A character in The Repairer of Reputations.
old Pélagie
minor
Also known as Pélagie
An old woman in The Demoiselle d'Ys.
Monsieur René
minor
Also known as René
A character in The Street of the Four Winds.
Joseph
minor
A servant in The Repairer of Reputations.
The King
minor
Also known as King
The titular King in Yellow from the play.
Pinkie
minor
A character in The Repairer of Reputations.
Captain Southwark
minor
Also known as Southwark
A military officer in The Street of the First Shell.
Reverend Joel Byram
minor
Also known as the Reverend Joel Byram, the Reverend Byram
A clergyman in The Repairer of Reputations.
Mrs. Byng
minor
A character in The Repairer of Reputations.
Monsieur Bouguereau
minor
Also known as the great Bouguereau, Bouguereau
A famous painter mentioned in the Parisian stories.
Monsieur Clisson
minor
Also known as Clisson
A character in The Demoiselle d'Ys.
Camilla
minor
Also known as Camilla Terrified
A character from the play The King in Yellow.
Lizzie Burke
minor
Also known as Lizzie
A woman in The Street of the Four Winds.
Randall
minor
A character in The Repairer of Reputations.
Eugene
minor
A character in The Repairer of Reputations.
