History Characters / TheSecretHistory

* TheFaceless: Richard describes the appearances of all his friends, but not himself. He was tall as a kid and "prone to freckles." He has "dusty brown hair," which he cuts himself, though he says he's not very good at haircutting.

* ChickMagnet: Richard attracts attention from Judy Poovy, Mona Beale, Sophie Dearbold, and a few unnamed female characters are implied or directly shown to be attracted to him. Francis also attempts to sleep with him on two separate occasions. We're told next to nothing about Richard's appearance -- he mentions he's "prone to freckles", and that's it -- but the fact that he got into Julian's handpicked-all-beautiful class suggests he might be a PrettyBoy.

* TheBeautifulElite: Richard thinks they're all so attractive, so enigmatic, so smart. They're also rich. Henry and Francis are so rich they'll never have to work. Charles and Camilla are less so, but nonetheless wealthy enough their family can send them to Hampden without any aid. Bunny and Richard pretend to be wealthy to fit in with them, even though they're not.

* DitzyGenius: The classics clique are initially introduced as a GeniusBookClub. Once Richard actually starts hanging out with them, we start to learn they're actually pretty impractical people outside of their studies (see Henry's bizarre and convoluted plans to cover up the murder). They are shown to be bizarrely technologically illiterate, eerily unaware of any history that has taken place since about 1940 (Henry has never heard of the moon landing!), and have trouble comprehending contemporary attitudes towards a variety of subjects (Camilla ends up ComicallyMissingThePoint of an anti-war film).

* ChickMagnet: Richard attracts attention from Judy Poovy, Mona Beale, Sophie Dearbold, and a few unnamed female characters are implied or directly shown to be attracted to him. Francis also attempts to sleep with him on two separate occasions. We're told basically nothing about Richard's appearance -- he mentions he's "prone to freckles", and that's it -- but the fact that he got into Julian's handpicked-all-beautiful class suggests he might be a PrettyBoy.

* BornInTheWrongCentury: This applies to the whole clique, but is especially pronounced with Henry. When researching poisons, his first strategy is to seek out ancient Persian texts on the subject. He had no idea human beings had landed on the moon until Richard tells him. The group all consult Richard with medical questions because he took one year of pre-med, and Richard reports Henry occasionally asking "a perfectly serious question about humors".

* InferioritySuperiorityComplex: ImpliedTrope. Bunny is dyslexic and may have other learning difficulties besides. His family is very concerned with keeping up appearances, so rather than instead of facing the fact that Bunny just isn't that bright academically, they sent him to expensive schools where he struggled to keep up with his peers. Bunny is 24, while his friends are 20 and 21, due to being HeldBackInSchool. He started studying Greek at age 12, younger than any of the others, but is still the worst at it. Additionally, his family did not provide him with enough money to live on, which drove Bunny to develop various mooching strategies. It seems like he feels inferior to his friends, both economically and academically. He makes up for it with a lot of bluster, and by sniffing out his friends' weaknesses and constantly poking and prodding at them.

* MockMillionaire: Bunny pretends to be as rich as his friends, but never actually has any money on hand and is forever mooching off his friends. This is reportedly something he learned from his parents, who also live beyond their means.

* TooDumbToLive: Bunny Corcoran, boy detective.

* BrilliantButLazy / IdleRich: Francis is gifted, but lacks the motivation to get himself out of trouble (or stand up to Henry). [[spoiler: After his grandfather discovers that he's gay, he prefers to get married to a ditzy woman rather than be disinherited and actually have to work for a living.]]

* FieryRedhead: Subverted. He has a "fiery mop of the reddest hair I had ever seen", but he's actually less extra than most of his friends.

* RaisedByGrandparents: His mother had him at 17, and Francis says of his childhood, "the grandparents brought them up like brother and sister, him and his mother, brought them up in such a magnanimous style that even the gossips were impressed." This results is largely HandsOffParenting from his mother, and his grandfather having excessive control of his life.
* TransparentCloset: Francis isn't "out" exactly, insofar as Bunny can shit-talk gay men right in front of Francis and there's enough PlausibleDeniability that Bunny can pretend it's not a personal attack. But everyone knows. Like ''everyone''. Before Richard even meets Francis for the first time, when he's watching the classics group from afar and asking other students at Hampton them, "further inquiries [about Francis] elicited suspicion from male acquaintances, who wondered at my interest in such a person." There's not much stereotypically gay about his personality, and he's fairly discrete about his hookups with men. But he ''looks'' gay, in a TheDandy sort of way--he's described as looking like Alfred Douglas (as in Creator/OscarWilde's boyfriend) or the Count of Montesquiou (both 19th century dandies, both gay poets).
* TheTwink: He's slender and delicate, especially in contrast with Henry and Bunny who are both huge. Among his AmbiguouslyBi friends, he resoundingly, exclusively homosexual.

* [[spoiler: {{Twincest}}]]

* AnimalLover: Charles adopts an old greyhound at the beginning of the year, and a stray cat at the end of the year. He didn't ''seek them out'' in either case, but when they needed a home, he jumped and took them in.

* IllTellYouWhenIveHadEnough: Really doesn't appreciate his friends pointing out his alcoholic tendencies.

* SouthernGentleman: DownplayedTrope. He's from Virginia, has a slight southern accent, and is the most socially graceful of the group -- neither standoffish like Henry and Francis not overbearing like Bunny. His habit of dressing in white also has some associations to this trope.

* BirdsOfAFeather: Camilla and Henry are the more stoic, coolheaded members of the class, and are later revealed to be very close friends (if not more).

* InformedFlaw: Francis alleges that Charles and Camilla are both possessive over each other. The only evidence we see of this, though, is single vague example. At at the end of Bunny's funeral, the twins have a fight which is implied to be about Charles hooking up with Francis a couple hours earlier. She shows no animosity at Francis.

** Bunny's harassment and japes bounce off of her with ease, but when Bunny implies that [[spoiler: she's sleeping with her brother]], she gives him an uncharacteristically icy retort. It clues the reader in that Bunny has touched a nerve, and it's later confirmed to be true.
** When [[spoiler: a drunken Charles gives her a decidedly sensual kiss in front of Richard]], Camilla seemingly doesn't react, but Richard notices that she put sugar in her coffee afterwards. Camilla always drank her coffee black, so her going for the sugar underlined that she was shaken after all.
* PrettyInMink: Camilla seems to own a few fur coats.
* TheSmurfettePrinciple: Camilla deals with being the only woman with intelligence and verve, for the most part, but being the object of three men's lust and love takes its toll after a while. Richard emphasizes that despite hanging out with all guys, she is nonetheless feminine.

* UnkemptBeauty: Bunny calls Camilla a "bramble rose." Richard and Bunny both agree that 1) Camilla looks a lot like Charles and 2) she's really pretty. She has a "boyish haircut" and sometimes wears her brother's clothes, but is also mentioned wearing dresses, jewelry, and lipstick. Richard emphasizes that despite hanging out with all guys, Camilla is nonetheless caries an innate femininity.

* BrokenPedestal: [[spoiler:After he finds out about Bunny's murder, he flees the school (and probably the country), never to be heard from again.]]

* FairWeatherMentor: When he's forced to acknowledge what his students have done, he leaves the country without a word.
* GentlemanAndAScholar: If people apart from his students admire Julian, this is probably why.

* PoliticallyMotivatedTeacher: Laforgue suggests that Julian is this for pushing elitism and segregating the more posh students from their more common peers. He may be hypocritical on this, but he's certainly not wrong.

* RenownedSelectiveMentor: He only teaches a very small group of people, and it is notoriously difficult to become his student.

* SelectiveObliviousness: Julian wants to believe the best of everyone, until confronted with evidence to the contrary.

* ShroudedInMyth: Many strange stories abound about Julian Morrow's past, the vast majority of which really don't check out. Henry has old pictures of him with Creator/VivienLeigh, the Sitwells, Creator/TSEliot, and Creator/MarilynMonroe.

* TeacherStudentRomance: Never conformed, but two {{Implied|Trope}} cases:

** His relationship with Henry is also questionable. Henry clearly has an obsession with him, and--according to Richard's gaydar--Julian is possibly gay. Once, early on, Richard oversees them interacting while they think they're alone, and Henry gives Julian "a quick little businesslike kiss on the cheek." Henry is the only one of Julian's students who has ever been to his house. They would both definitely be into the idea of LoverAndBeloved for Greek reasons. For what it's worth, Claude Fredericks--[[WriteWhoYouKnow the real-life enigmatic Classics professor at Bennington during Donna Tartt's time]]--was openly gay and did have an affair with a student.
* ThinksLikeARomanceNovel: Perhaps the most striking instance of this is when he is aiding in the search for Bunny, and stops for a moment to bask in the dramatism of the situation. He is pleased that he is part of something so dramatic, as if he gets to collect another scene for the novel that he thinks life is.

* TheCassandra: At the very beginning, Laforgue tells Richard that Julian is an elitist, that having only one teacher puts him in a precarious position, that being so isolated from the rest of the school is a loss, and that this is overall a bad idea. Richard goes full steam ahead anyways.

* ObstructiveBureaucrat: Georges Laforgue is hesitant to let Richard join Julian's class, presumably because he suspects Julian of inappropriate conduct with students, but largely because he dislikes Julian's obsession with tradition and apparent elitism.

* HardDrinkingPartyGirl: Almost every time she appears, she's either at a party or getting ready for one.
* OnlySaneWoman: She's pretty sharp for a "senseless cokehead". Judy is a stark {{Foil}} to Richard's DitzyGenius classics friends.

* ValleyGirl: She's from Los Angeles, and thinks that she and Richard have a lot in common because they're both California kids.

* AcceptableFeminineGoalsAndTraits: Bunny likes how she's traditionally feminine. It's simultaneously inverted into RealWomenDontWearDresses as Richard and the book's framing look down on her for the same traits that Bunny praises.

* AwesomeButImpractical: A somewhat cynically comic point is made a few times about how the classics clique spend thousands on shiny brand-name fountain pens and sleek designer clothes. While the evident glamour of these items is attractive to both Richard and the reader, the characters' attitudes toward these expensive items (along with their alternate scorn or bewilderment at cheaper substitutes) is also subtly mocked throughout the book.
* TheBeautifulElite: Richard thinks they're all so attractive, so enigmatic, so smart. They're also rich. Henry and Francis are so rich they'll never have a to work. Charles and Camilla are less so, but nonetheless wealthy enough their family can send them to Hampden without any aid. Bunny and Richard pretend to be wealthy to fit in with them, even though they're not.
-->…different as they were they shared a certain coolness, a cruel, mannered charm which was not modern in the least but had a strange cold breath of the ancient world: they were magnificent creatures, such eyes, such hands, such looks--''sic oculos, sic ille manus, sic ora ferebat''. I envied them, and found them attractive; moreover this strange quality, far from being natural, gave every indication of having been intensely cultivated.

* DitzyGenius: The classics clique are initially introduced as a GeniusBookClub. Once Richard actually starts hanging out with them, we start to learn they're actually pretty impractical people outside of their studies (Henry's bizarre and convoluted plans to cover up the murder). They are shown to be bizarrely technologically illiterate, eerily unaware of any history that has taken place since about 1940 (Henry has never heard of the moon landing!), and to have trouble comprehending contemporary attitudes towards a variety of subjects (Camilla ends up ComicallyMissingThePoint of an anti-war film).
* FamilyOfChoice: Charles at one point suggests that after graduation they could all live together in the country house (except for Bunny, who would just come up on weekends). It's an arrested development fantasy, imagining that things could continue ''exactly as they are now'' for the rest of their lives. Richard is absolutely enamored with the idea. {{Subverted|Trope}} and {{Deconstructed|Trope}} in that it doesn't work out. No matter how much you adore your friend group right now, without the obligations of kinship to hold you together when times get tough, it won't last. Their group falls apart under the weight of the {{blackmail}}, {{murder|IsTheBestSolution}}, [[BatmanGambit various plots]], [[ChronicBackstabbingDisorder general backstabbing]] and a LoveDodecahedron.

** Richard is in awe of the whole clique, but Camilla and Henry in particular he describes in the romanticized manner of a crush. In interviews, Donna Tartt has said more than once that if Richard were {{Gender Flip|ped}}, this new rendition of the main character would seem too in love with Henry. (See YMMV's [=Ho Yay=] listing for details.)

* ChickMagnet: Richard attracts attention from Judy Poovy, Mona Beale, Sophie Dearbold, and a few unnamed female characters are implied or directly shown to be attracted to him. Francis also attempts to sleep with him on two separate occasions. The fact that Richard got into Julian's handpicked-all-beautiful class suggests he might be a PrettyBoy.
* FatalFlaw: The opening lines of the book:

* IJustWantToBeSpecial: Wants nothing more than to be one of the elites and escape the aggressive normalcy of his childhood. [[spoiler:Henry takes advantage of this when telling Richard about the murder of the farmer, knowing that Richard will be so pleased about being let in on the secret that he won't tell anyone else.]]

* TheNondescript: Richard lovingly describes the appearances of his friends, but not himself. He mentions he's "prone to freckles", and that's it.
* OOCIsSeriousBusiness: While slowing freezing to death over the winter, he finally gets to a point where he's desperate enough that he calls his parents, who he only ever talks about with apathy and dislike.

* PerpetualFrowner: He has resting bitch face.

* PseudoRomanticFriendship: Richard basically has a crush on the clique as a whole. He's captivated by, in awe of the group -- they're so beautiful, so smart, so enigmatic, so otherworldly. When Charles brings up the possibility of them living together as adults, Richard thinks it's the best thing he's ever heard. He thinks about the sexual potentiality in all of his friends -- not with ''him'', per se, but ''somewhere''. He goes on for a page and a half about could there be something between Henry and Bunny; when he finds out [[spoiler:the twins hook up sometimes]] he admits the idea had crossed his mind before, and he'd been turned on by it.
* ScholarshipStudent: Richard goes to great lengths to hide his lower-middle class upbringing from his rich friends.

* TooDumbToLive: Unaccustomed to Vermont's freezing temperatures and unaware of the existence of space heaters, he nearly dies of hypothermia during winter break trying to tough it out in a rented room he doesn't realize is unsafe (despite the hole in the roof).

* AbusiveParents: ImpliedTrope. Henry is mostly estranged from his father for no reason that we ever learn. As a child, Henry suffered a serious injury that gave him permanent facial scarring, and Bunny says Henry gets uncomfortable talking about it. Bunny comes up with an explanation involving a car accident, but that's purely his own conjecture and doesn't seem to be true -- Henry "drove fast and often recklessly," which is not the behavior you'd expect from a man who's been in a serious car accident.

* AffablyEvil / AntiVillain / SociopathicHero: He does several things in the story that are definitely very bad, but he has genuinely positive qualities as well -- even saving Richard's life at one point.
* AmbiguouslyBi: According to Richard's gaydar, Henry is the straightest of the group, and he clearly loves Camilla. Yet if any of them had an affair with Julian (as Laforgue alludes to) it undoubtedly would've been Henry. Richard saw Henry kiss Julian on the cheek when they thought they were alone. Henry's the only one who's been to Julian's house. They're both the sort of people who would be into LoverAndBeloved just because it's an Ancient Greek thing.

* BornInTheWrongCentury: This applies to the whole clique, but is especially pronounced with Henry; when researching poisons, his first strategy is to seek out ancient Persian texts on the subject. He had no idea human beings had landed on the moon until Richard tells him. The group all consult Richard with medical questions because he took one year of pre-med, and Richard reports Henry occasionally asking "a perfectly serious question about humors".

* ByronicHero: His large-scale character flaws are [[AllGirlsWantBadBoys exactly what make him so interesting]].

* [[spoiler:DrivenToSuicide: Henry's ultimate fate at the end of the novel.]]
* FourEyesZeroSoul / StoicSpectacles: Henry wears glasses, and generally comes off pretty cold and emotionless and does some reprehensible things through the story.
* GeniusBruiser: Henry does not have the [[GeekPhysiques physique typically associated with scholars]]. He's strong -- really strong. Strong enough to suggest he must work out, at least a little, despite that not seeming like a very Henry-like activity. This may be related to his disabilities (subtilty implied to be the result of a childhood beating from an abusive father) and not wanting to be physically vulnerable.
* GeniusCripple / HandicappedBadass: Henry walks with a slight limp, his eyes aren't very good, and he is prone to migraines.

* HidingTheHandicap: DownplayedTrope, but Henry has "long scar at his hairline, all dented and puckered, with ridges of white flesh cutting across it to the browbone". He parts his hair so that it covers the scar from view.

* IntelligenceEqualsIsolation: Henry is the best at Greek in the group, and is obviously very intelligent and knows many languages, and also doesn't really have any friends outside the Greek class nor any interest in making any.

* OutgrownSuchSillySuperstitions: InvertedTrope. Henry is very smart and the most skilled Classicist of the group. He is also uniquely superstitious. Charles calls Henry a ornithomantist (a bird-diviner). Henry "sometimes left a saucer of milk outside his door to appease any malevolent spirits who might happen to wander by." He thinks they may get caught by a PolicePsychic. But then again, given that Henry is a DitzyGenius, it may also be played pretty straight.

** Henry does save Richard from freezing to death in the Vermont winter, taking him to the hospital and bringing him to his apartment to recuperate.

** According to Camilla, the only reason Henry didn't suggest an animal-killing blood sacrifice after [[spoiler:killing Bunny]], as he had after the bacchanal incident, is that he thought it would upset Richard.

* RenaissanceMan: Henry, though he's more of an old Roman than a Renaissance man. He "can grow flowers, repair clocks like a jeweller, add tremendous sums in his head." He also speaks eight languages and can read hieroglyphics.

* EstablishingCharacterMoment: When Richard overhears him and the twins working on their Greek homework. Bunny's suggestions are sloppy and somewhat random and he's eager to finish the translation without really making sure that it's correct.

* HeKnowsTooMuch: And won't shut up about it.

* TheCassandra: At the very beginning, Laforgue tells Richard being Julian is an elitist, that having only one teacher puts him in a precarious position, being so isolated from the rest of the school is a loss, and that this is overall a bad idea. Richard goes full steam ahead anyways.

* GracefulInTheirElement: Henry is generally stoic, rather stilted and withdrawn, but in Greek he becomes more comfortable and demonstrative.

* OutgrownSuchSillySuperstitions: InvertedTrope. Henry is very smart in some ways, the most skilled Classicist of the group, and also uniquely superstious. Charles calls Henry a ornithomantist (a bird-diviner). Henry "sometimes left a saucer of milk outside his door to appease any malevolent spirits who might happen to wander by." He thinks they may get caught by a PolicePsychic. But then again, given that Henry is a DitzyGenius, it may also be played pretty straight.

* TheCassandra: At the very beginning, Laforgue tells Richard being Julian is an elitist, that having only one teacher puts him in a precarious position, being so isolated from the rest of the school is a loss, and that this is overall a bad idea. Richard goes full steam ahead anyways.