World’s End

Violet Waldron

Violet is the cherished only child of Jason Waldron, raised in seclusion on the Downs and courted by Aymer Malet, a man the local farmers consider far beneath her. As her wedding approaches she grows pensive rather than giddy, giving up her rides to attend her ailing father while Aymer sulks with jealousy. Her tenderness toward Waldron and her willingness to be loved without calculation make her the emotional anchor of the novel's early happiness — and the measure of everything later placed at risk.

Lady Lechester

Agnes Lechester has returned from Florence to her grand, comfortless home, where she recognizes Aymer as the coarse-garbed pilgrim she once observed at the shrine of art. No longer young but still a fine woman, she looks down from her window at the couple and sighs, rejoicing that the poor pilgrim has found so fair a ladylove. Her quiet, unacknowledged approval of Aymer is one of the few benevolent forces in his world — and her loneliness quietly foreshadows the refuge she will later offer.

Aymer Malet

Aymer Malet is a sensitive, self-doubting young man who cannot quite believe he deserves Violet Waldron, and whose constitutional shyness nearly keeps him from ever speaking. When Jason Waldron generously approves the match, Aymer is overwhelmed with thanksgiving — yet the jeers of 'My Lord Muck' and the gift of a grey horse he could never afford keep his happiness alloyed with shame. His unworthiness and quiet pride make him the story's most vulnerable figure, a man whose fortune seems too good to survive.

Theodore Marese

Theodore is the seasoned companion and confidant of John Marese Baskette, older by nearly a decade yet just as hungry for pleasure and power. Together they tour Paris and Vienna, burn through Baskette's reduced income, and graduate to gambling on the Stock Exchange and the Bourse. Cooler and more calculating than his brilliant friend, Theodore supplies the subtlety behind Baskette's ambition — the second mind in every scheme to convert a shadowy inheritance into real political and financial power.

Fulk Lechester

Fulk Lechester is little in body but large in soul, a young man of the Towers who resolves to find the elusive Odo and thereby free Aymer Malet. Knowing he cannot match Odo's strength, he prepares a lasso learned in South America and slips out nightly to stalk the Beast-Man through copses and streams. When at last he finds Odo playing a tin whistle to the dancing dog Dando, Fulk hesitates — pitying the poor fellow even as he prepares to capture him — and in that hesitation lies the tension of his strange, brave errand.

Marese Baskette

John Marese Baskette is a tall, dark, fascinating man whose twenty-first birthday brought him only two thousand a year instead of the fortune he expected, a blow that perverted his nature and inflamed his ambition. Polished and plausible, fierce as a tiger under the velvet glove, he courts the Stirmingham populace with beer, pledges to cut local taxation, and hints at reduced rents, while privately gambling on the Stock Exchange toward a seat in the Cabinet. His hunger for power — and his readiness to use the memory of his father's famous celebration — makes him the novel's great engine of political and personal menace.