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Ophelia
Ophelia
- The Cassandra: If Ophelia is too blatant about going through a timeloop, she's likely to be mistaken for a madwoman and sent to an asylum.
- Curiosity Killed the Cast: Everyone around the castle knows that Ophelia is too nosy for her own good. At many points, Ophelia will have to deliberately get people killed in order to collect a piece of information. Alternatively, she often begins a chain of events that leads to death beyond her control.
- Defiled Forever: Both Laertes and Polonius will speak of Ophelia and her purity being ruined by Hamlet. Ophelia herself seems unbothered by the concept of virginity.
- Half-Breed Discrimination: Ophelia's mother Elise was a black maid who married Polonius. Ophelia is targeted by Brit with the term "little half-rank".
- Happy Place: If deemed mad by other denizens of the castle, Ophelia decides she might as well be mad for real, and falls into delusions of a happier life.
- Heroic Seductress: Ophelia can use a few of her romance options to gain power and information. While selfish, Ophelia's access to power is generally presented as a net positive for Elsinore.
- The Ingenue: Ophelia is perceived this way, which means that she is beneath notice and can get away with a lot, but also means she won't necessarily be taken seriously when she needs to be.
- Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: The words Exeunt All bring a dramatic re-contextualization of all Ophelia's past behaviour.
- Lack of Empathy: While this depends on the player, many routes and events require wanton cruelty on Ophelia's behalf. Quince is quick to point out your growing lack of sympathy for your fellow men.
- Manipulative Bastard: A few characters jokingly accuse Ophelia of this, though they still consider her helpful. The accusations are less jokey in the limbo theater. Claudius goes so far as to call you predatory, though he includes himself in that description.
- Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: Her memories are all that Ophelia carries from one loop to another, the Hand of Dionysus excepted.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Ophelia works to prevent violence and death from striking Elsinore, believing that finding the perfect outcome will free her from the timeloop. She's wrong.
Quince
Quince
- Ambiguously Human: There's no telling how Quince came to be aware of timeloops, and why he seems so all-knowing.
- Corrupt the Cutie: Attempts this with Ophelia to get her to use the Hand of Dionysis, first by mentally breaking her, and then when all else seems to fail, by granting her a taste of his power with "Exeunt All".
- From Nobody to Nightmare: A thespian of small stature and questionable talent and artistic taste, trapping innocents in time in order to satisfy his own boredom.
- Perpetual Smiler: Even his alternate expressions are smiles, if insincere. Polonius mentions being unnerved by Quince's perpetual smile.
- Time Loop Fatigue: It becomes clear early on that Quince is aware of time repeating. He eventually grows frustrated with your indecisiveness if you don't pick an ending early on.
- Time Loop Trap: Quince himself captures Simona, Hamlet Sr. and Ophelia within their individual time loop prisons. However, it becomes clear that Quince can't move on until his subject chooses to. Ophelia is perfectly able to keep Quince stuck in Elsinore forever.
- Walking Spoiler: His status as the Big Bad is kept hidden until Ophelia recovers the Hand of Dionysis.
Hamlet
Hamlet
- Age Lift: Hamlet's age has gone down to a bracket of 19-23, college-aged as the writer put it.
- And Then What?: He's confronted with this in loops where he succeeds in killing Claudius. He's hated by most of nobility, Fortinbras is still invading, and killing Cladius didn't bring him much relief in the end.
- Byronic Hero: Hard to like and hard to know, few are those who know his soft side.
- Domestic Abuser: The list of grievances among the women in his life goes on and on. He treats Brit especially cruelly whenever she approaches the subject of their betrothal.
- Excessive Mourning: He spends much of his idle time at the graveyard (though not so much as he spends in his room) and stole his father's portrait for his own quarters.
- Hair-Trigger Temper: There is nary a person Hamlet doesn't throw to the ground in a fit of rage.
- We Used to Be Friends: He can attempt to repair his strained friendships with Laertes and Bernado, but his personality and status mean both end up turning him down.
Claudius
Claudius
- Always Someone Better: Everyone loved and preferred Hamlet Sr. to him. In his vulnerable moments, he can admit that he just wanted to beat his brother at something, but he isn't even that good a king.
- "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: This is Claudius' go-to tactic for keeping his servants and vassals in line. He employs it with Polonius, threatening his children to ensure he never reveals the contents of Hamlet Sr.'s correspondence and with Bernardo, weighing the secret of their gender identity over their head to force them into service.
- Boisterous Bruiser: While Claudius' more subtle tactics abound, he's also quick to threaten violence and bare his blade.
- Cain and Abel: As always with adaptations of Hamlet, Claudius has killed his older brother in order to accede to the throne and take Gertrude's hand in marriage.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Killing his brother to steal his wife isn't a great sign of character. He can admit in one route to being attracted to Ophelia, which depicts his nearly murderous reaction to catching her with Othello in a new light.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: He loves Gertrude more than anything and all of his actions come back to his love for her. However...
- I Just Want to Be Loved: There's also room to interpret that he just wants someone to care for him and Gertrude was the only person who reached out to him. If Gertrude dies and Ophelia comforts him, he quickly gains affection for Ophelia in the span of a few hours. In both cases, Claudius often puts his own love for these women over their own feelings.
- The Usurper: And many are unhappy about it, Claudius being considered a poor king, unwilling to cede the wishes of neighboring kingdoms.
Gertrude
Gertrude
- Arranged Marriage: Gertrude underwent quite a few traumatic experiences due to her arranged marriage to Hamlet Sr. Her separation from her family weighed on her particularly hard.
- Cruel to Be Kind: She's hiding letters from Brit's mother, hoping that the girl will learn to let go of her old home.
- Driven to Suicide: Learning of the rumors that her ex-husband is a spirit will lead to her taking a fatal leap off of the castle's walls.
- Heartbroken Badass: Gertrude is hardly a combatant, but any harm done to her family will invite violence. She even gets the apparent killing blow against Quince.
- No Sympathy: Normally a highly empathetic character, but fails to recognize how Brit is suffering in Elsinore.
- Odd Friendship: Enjoys morning walks with Horatio, where they share deep personal conversations.
- Stepford Smiler: While Gertrude is very agreeable and cheery in conversation, she suffers from severe depression and is at the end of her rope. As a result, she is one of the characters easiest to get killed.
- Tragic Keepsake: Gertrude is searching for a pendant which belonged to Hamlet Sr. and believes Claudius has it in his possession.
Birgitta "Brit" Von Brockenhuus
Brit
- An Arm and a Leg: If she’s arrested as a spy, she’s sentenced to death, though Gertrude intervenes and has her exiled instead. However, to give Claudius false proof of Brit’s execution, one of her hands is cut off.
- Broken Bird: Her roles as Getrude's unappreciated companion and as a tool for her father's politics has turned her quite bitter and hateful. Not to mention being a spy for an army that's going to kill quite a number of people in Elsinore.
- Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Brit alludes to her father being oppressive and abusive in some undefined way, pushing her away from her practice of art and into the court politics of northern Europe.
- Jerkass: Brit will use every occasion to be unfriendly to you.
- Heel Realization: Spending a loop befriending Brit forces her to realize exactly how cruel she's been. Seconds before Ophelia dies again, of course.
- Lady Macbeth: Can become this in everything but name, even paraphrasing If Laertes is in Elisnore and Polonius still dies, Brit will encourage him to kill Claudius as well.
- The Mole: Brit is reporting back to Fortinbras and manipulating events in court on his behalf.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: She can call Ophelia "half-rank," mocking Ophelia's mixed heritage. But she's also in love with Laertes, with no bigotry visible in his case. Her feelings on Ophelia ultimately seem complicated: it was her idea to get Ophelia killed, but she can change her mind and her hatred mostly comes from her imprisonment in Elsinore.
- Spirited Young Lady: Brit resents the boundaries of womanhood and wants to run free, travelling, horse riding, and freely practicing art.
- You Can't Go Home Again: Brit was sent away to be Gertrude's companion, and tacitly to be married off. She suffers a lot from this arrangement and misses her mother dearly.
Laertes
Laertes
- Big Brother Instinct: Laertes' love of his sister means he resents Hamlet strongly, to the point of destroying their childhood friendship.
- Freudian Excuse: Its implied that his distrust of the royal family and potentially growing hatred for Denmark is partially due to the bigotry he and Ophelia have experienced as mixed race/"half-rank" nobles.Laertes: We will never be one of them.
- Rabble Rouser: Laertes is quick to raise the people of Elsinore against Claudius and Hamlet, depending on the route.
- Revenge Before Reason: Laertes can easily be spurred into murder if wronged. This is true not just when Polonius' dies, but especially if Brit becomes engaged to Hamlet.
Polonius
Polonius
- Adults Are Useless: Refuses to believe anything Ophelia tells him and often dodges questions that could be useful to either of his children. The closest he comes to revealing information is when he's particularly emotional over Elise's death.
- Dishonored Dead: Polonius' body is never mentioned to be found after Hamlet hides it.
- The Mourning After: Still deeply in love with Elise despite her death and still hasn't quite coped with it.
- No-Respect Guy: He's dutifully served the castle for decades and sacrificed a lot for the royals. Few actually listen to him. Putting on a play that directly insults him convinces him that Elsinore has always hated him, persuading him to skip town with his family.
- Secret Secret-Keeper: Polonius knows a lot about the events surrounding Claudius and Gertrude's marriage. Good luck getting it out of him, though.
- Windbag Politician: While Polonius tends to have reasonable advice, he is seriously lacking on the rhetoric front.
Horatio
Horatio
- Age Lift: Where the play contains some inconsistencies with regards to Horatio's age, suggesting that he went to war with Hamlet Sr. twenty-five years before Hamlet Jr.'s birth, here the play portrays him as only a few years older than Hamlet Jr.
- Reluctant Warrior: While Horatio has experience in the military, he hates the sight of blood and can only be pushed to violence on very select occasions.
- Revenge Before Reason: Will murder Claudius himself if Hamlet is killed in a duel, completely uninterested in the results. By that point though, no one can blame him.
- Unrequited Love: Horatio is in love with Hamlet, and is dealing with the emotional fallout of a one-time sexual encounter with him.
Bernardo
Bernardo
- Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: A subdued version of the trope, but Bernardo is willing to torture prisoners using deprivation of food and water. They're not exactly a By-the-Book Cop, however timid and friendly they might seem.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Bernardo lets a lot slide for the inhabitants of the castle, if not for their own men.
- The Reliable One: Though Bernardo doesn't have as flashy a personality as others, they are the best source of protection and can affect some of the most crucial positive change in Elsinore. Where most characters act primarily as a source of information, Bernardo is more of a tool to directly change the world.
- Trans Tribulations: Bernardo also goes by Katherine, and uses stage performance to explore a part of themself they otherwise don't have the opportunity to. Their dialogue in the "Perfect Day" sequence suggests their feminine identity is slowly becoming more important than the masculine, though anything from that sequence is to be taken with a pinch of salt.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: If Horatio is interrogated by Bernardo, it's revealed that the spy would've been caught long ago, if only Bernardo had had the town under proper watch at night. This wasn't negligence on Bernardo's part, but an attempt to hide their side-job playing female roles onstage.
Irma
Irma
- Evil Old Folks: She means well, but it's possible that she can poison a meal in order to remove the sources of Gertrude's stress.
- Never Mess with Granny: She speaks her mind, takes no guff, and is an excellent gambler that will make sure you pay your debts.
- Outliving One's Offspring: She reveals that her husband and child passed away decades ago, leaving her with only Gertrude to raise. As a result, she's projected a lot of her feelings onto the queen and will do anything for her.
- Replacement Goldfish: Treats Gertrude as a substitute for her dead child.
- Undying Loyalty: To Gertrude, due to her being a Replacement Goldfish for her deceased family.
Marcellus
Marcellus
Rosencrantz
Rosencrantz
- Gender Flip: Becomes Lady "Rosie" Rosencrantz in this version.
Guildenstern
Guildenstern
- Berserk Button: Downplayed, but she'll become upset if Ophelia suggests reviving her relationship with Hamlet.
- Cloud Cuckoo Lander: All it takes is a Cassandra Truth about her fate to convince her to prank the entire castle by arranging her own funeral.
- Gender Flip: Becomes Lady "Guilda" Guildenstern in this version.
- Hopeless Suitor: She's still mourning her lost relationship with Hamlet and embarks on an equally doomed relationship with Othello in the later days.
Othello
Othello
- Doomed by Canon: He'll survive the events of Hamlet, but his own story still awaits him...
- Ladykiller in Love: He has quite a reputation with women and openly admits he's never been in love. This can change depending on the ending. That doesn't mean he'll be in love Ophelia, unfortunately.
The Pirate - Spoiler Character
Grace O'Malley
- Ascended Extra: She's the leader of the pirates who in the original play were just an offscreen Deus ex Machina to get the prince back to Denmark.
- Historical Domain Character: She's based on Ireland's famous "Pirate Queen"
. - Optional Sexual Encounter: If she and Ophelia bond, she offers to sleep together, though Ophelia can refuse.
The Ghost - Spoiler Character
Hamlet Sr.
- Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: He'll finally find rest in loops where his letters aren't burned.
- Yank the Dog's Chain: ...but he exists out of time as well, meaning he'll be stuck as a ghost again in a few days.
- Big Brother Bully: According to Claudius, Hamlet Senior could be quite cruel to his younger brother, beating him senseless.
- Like Father, Like Son: King Alexander is suggested by several characters to be a violent tyrant. Hamlet Sr can be given the same description, but primarily from Cladius.
The Conqueror - Spoiler Character
Fortinbras
- The Good King: Despite his motivations and earlier actions, he's surprisingly reasonable in the endings where he takes over, bringing prosperity to the land and willing to let any survivors continue living as long as they forsake any titles that could rival his power.
- Manipulative Bastard: He intends to make his conquest easier by sowing discord in the court, going as far as ordering the hit on Ophelia.
- Overnight Conquest: As long as he's free at the end of a loop (even if he was imprisoned early on and had to escape), his forces will conquer Elsinore within the span of a day.
Spoiler Character
Lady Simona
- Faking the Dead: Went into hiding with the Hand of Dionysis after using it against Astrid.
- "Groundhog Day" Loop: Underwent one of these after first discovering the Hand of Dionysis, with it only ending when she chose a fate for herself.
- History Repeats: She had some grievances with her sibling before taking their throne, much like how Claudius viewed Hamlet Sr.
- The Mistress: She was having an affair with her sister's husband, the king.
- Remarried to the Mistress: She married the king after Queen Astrid is dealt with.
