Character guide

Dorothy

major

Also known as Mummy Dorothy, Mademoiselle Dorothy, cousin Dorothy

Dorothy commands a traveling troupe of four orphaned boys while secretly pursuing the word 'Roborey' her dying father repeated, a thread that leads her to estranged aristocratic cousins and a buried family fortune. Her gaiety masks a fierce grief and a willingness to risk everything, even as she dreads that her father was murdered rather than lost to fever. She is the engine of the hunt: her daring, her instinct for the theatrical, and her refusal to be excluded from the inheritance make her both the story's heart and its most unpredictable force.

Baron Saint-Quentin

major

Also known as Quentin, Saint-Quentin, Baron de Saint-Quentin

Saint-Quentin travels with Dorothy's caravan as her right-hand man, a stickler for propriety who nonetheless thrives on the road and in her company. When she promises him fine clothes and a princess's future once the Golden Fleece is won, his pleasure curdles, since wealth means the end of their close companionship. His quiet attachment and his unease about what awaits them give the treasure hunt a human cost beyond gold, and his steadiness anchors Dorothy's wilder schemes.

Raoul Davernoie

major

Also known as Davernoie, cousin Raoul

Raoul moves between Hillocks Manor and Dorothy's orbit as both kin and threat, the relative whose presence unsettles the four boys who guard her. He rows her across the lake where sunken stones spell out the family motto, and he joins her schemes with a laughing willingness that may conceal his own claim. His ambiguous loyalty keeps the early mystery taut: is he ally, rival, or the very danger the children sense in the thickets?

D'Estreicher

supporting

Also known as d'Estreicher

D'Estreicher orchestrates a long con built on a dress rehearsal, a bribed confederate, and a forged identity, all to seize the codicil at the reading of the will. When his accomplice wavers, he kills him without hesitation and vanishes into a Russian soldier's disguise, his shaved skull and slung arm rendering him unrecognizable. His cold methodical violence transforms the treasure hunt from a family puzzle into a manhunt, and his whistle in the dark signals that the real enemy is already inside the walls.

Maître Delarue

supporting

Also known as Delarue, Monsieur Delarue

Delarue arrives at the clock tower clutching the gold medal and the instructions of a client long dead, the legal hinge on which the whole inheritance turns. He is pompous about his office yet craven in a crisis, cowering in corners and sniveling when shots are fired, and Dorothy must drag him by the hand like a child. His comic cowardice sharpens the stakes: the man who represents the dead is the least equipped to face what the dead have arranged.

Archibald Webster

supporting

Also known as Webster, Archibald

Webster answers Dorothy's summons as one of the four scattered heirs, producing the medal passed down through his mother's line and speaking excellent French with quiet formality. He is a decorated veteran, and his calm competence contrasts with Delarue's panic and Dario's heat. His presence widens the family circle beyond France and makes the inheritance a matter of international cousins bound by a two-hundred-year-old promise, giving the hunt its sense of a scattered clan finally converging.

Count Octave de Chagny

supporting

Also known as Count, Octave, Count de Chagny

Count Octave de Chagny presides over the family council that folds Dorothy and Raoul into the old partnership of their murdered fathers, presenting the arrangement as both duty and magnanimous gesture. His eloquence is genuine but a little self-satisfied, and Dorothy's obstinate silence in the face of it quietly exposes how late his concern for his kinsman's daughter has arrived. His vexation when she declines the château life reveals a man more comfortable conferring obligations than receiving refusals, and that friction keeps the Chagny household a place Dorothy must negotiate rather than simply inhabit.

Marco Dario

minor

Also known as Dario

A character associated with the circus or the secret tomb.

Sire Montfaucon

supporting

Also known as Montfaucon, Captain Montfaucon

Montfaucon is the comrade whose kidnapping, reported by a frightened child, turns the tower from a possible refuge into a trap Dorothy cannot leave while he is missing. His disappearance is the hinge on which her courage pivots: she lets the little ball of paper roll away and goes forward alone, unarmed, into the vault where armed men wait. He matters less for what he does than for what his absence compels in others, and the loyalty he inspires is the measure of what d'Estreicher is willing to break.

George Errington

minor

Also known as Errington, the trembling Errington

A nervous character who appears in the story.

Marquis de Beaugreval

supporting

Also known as de Beaugreval, Beaugreval

The Marquis de Beaugreval left behind a statement so precise that Errington treats him as a host expecting guests, and the stones, the staircase, and the step count oblige with unnerving exactness. His letter turns a treasure hunt into something closer to a séance, with Maître Delarue singing to keep his nerve as the numbers climb. When the alcove finally yields its occupant, the portrait above the bed matches the man before them, and the Marquis's authority over the living only deepens.

Juliet Assire

minor

Also known as Madame Juliet Assire, poor old Juliet Assire

An elderly woman with knowledge of past events.

Castor

minor

One of a pair of twins or companions in the story.

Pollux

minor

The twin or companion of Castor.

Monsieur Voirin

minor

Also known as Voirin

A character with a minor role in the narrative.

Geoffrey

minor

A minor character mentioned in the story.

Jean d'Argonne

minor

Also known as Jean, Jean-Pierre-Augustin de la Roche

A historical figure mentioned in connection with Yolande.

Sire Barbier

minor

Also known as the scrivener Barbier

A scrivener or clerk involved in legal matters.

Commandant Georges Davernoie

minor

Also known as Georges Davernoie

A military officer and relative of Raoul.

Kourobelef

minor

A foreign character with a minor role.

Yolande

minor

Also known as Yolande Isabel Dorothy, Isabel

A young woman mentioned with fondness, possibly a relative of Dorothy.

Chagny-Roborey

minor

Also known as Roborey, de Chagny

A family name tied to the secret and the estate.

Monsieur de Fontenelle

minor

A minor noble or official encountered in the story.

Goliath

minor

A large or imposing figure, possibly a servant or performer.

One-eyed Magpie

minor

Also known as Magpie, Harness One-eyed Magpie

A character with a distinctive nickname, possibly a pirate or rogue.

Countess de Chagny

minor

Also known as Countess, the Countess

The countess of the Chagny family.

Antoine d'Estreicher

minor

A relative or associate of D'Estreicher.

Fortune

minor

A character or personification mentioned in the story.

Dominique de Chagny

minor

Also known as Dominique

A member of the Chagny family.

Widow Amoureux

minor

Also known as Amoureux

A widow who appears briefly in the narrative.