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Characters / Inheritance Trilogy

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Unmarked spoilers ahead.

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    The Three 

Yeine Arameri

"I am not as I once was. They have done this to me, broken me open and torn out my heart. I do not know who I am anymore. I must try to remember."

Our Action Girl from a Barbarian Tribe called to participate in a clan succession ceremony, who ends up embroiled in the affairs of gods.

  • Absurdly Youthful Mother: After she absorbs Enefa's essence, she becomes technically Sieh's mother, despite being a significant fraction of his age. She later describes the godlings as stepchildren.
  • Action Girl: Even before becoming a god she was from a culture where women were the warriors and the men tended to the home.
  • All Girls Want Bad Boys: "Having sex with Nahadoth at night gets people killed? I've gotta try that!"
  • Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Takes on Enefa's powers and goddesshood.
  • Child of Two Worlds: Half Darre, half Amn. Since the two peoples don't think highly of each other, each sees her as an outsider, and she has to work extra-hard to earn respect in the Darr homeland.
  • Dead Person Conversation: With Enefa, thanks to hosting Enefa's soul.
  • Deity of Human Origin: She becomes a new goddess through the piece of Enefa's soul implanted in her, and is known from then on as the Grey Lady.
  • Did You Just Romance Cthulhu?: She can't help but find Nahadoth extremely alluring, but she takes pains not to use him as a sex slave as the other Arameri do.
  • Divine Date: She ends up in a romantic relationship with Nahadoth.
  • Fish out of Water: Yeine is a moral, straightforward person thrust into a viper's nest of treacherous, rapacious court politics.
  • The Hero Dies: She's killed at the end of book 1, but manages to absorb Enefa's essence and become a god.
  • Inner Monologue: The viewpoint character for book one.
  • Mama Bear: Sieh notes that Enefa was less maternal than Yeine, whose maternal instinct is so strong that she, as a human girl, attacks a god to protect Sieh.
  • Only Sane Woman: She is the more reasonable one everywhere she goes.
  • Parental Substitute: She becomes a mother figure to Sieh, whom she has maternal feelings for because he was Enefa's child.
  • Proud Warrior Race Guy: She's very proud of her fighting skills and thoroughly earned her position as leader of her people.
  • Sanity Slippage: As a result of her two souls.
  • Save Your Deity: She was literally born into a plot to resurrect the third figure of the Three and save Nahadoth and his loyal children from two thousand years of slavery.

Nahadoth

"Here, fueled by the residue of ancient devotion, he showed me all he had once been: first among gods, sweet dream and nightmare incarnate, all things beautiful and terrible."

Our Hero... Heroine... err... the oldest of a trio of deities, enslaved by his brother and forced to serve a human family. Nahadoth is a god (most of the time) of darkness, change, and chaos.

  • And I Must Scream: Being forced into a human form was so torturous for him that two thousand years of enslavement in Sky was almost an afterthought.
  • Attractive Bent-Gender: Though Nahadoth usually assumes a male form and is referred to with male pronouns, his gender is as changeable as the rest of him, and his female form is equally beautiful.
  • Black Eyes of Evil: Not that he's strictly evil.
  • Brother–Sister Incest: He, Itempas, and Enefa formed a threesome, which is how things usually are with gods.
  • Casting a Shadow: He's a Reality Warper who can remake galaxies with a thought, but when he's working at a human scale, he tends to act through his ever-changing shadow, and every other shadow in the region gets deeper and more opaque when he's near.
  • Dark Is Not Evil: Dark is just a force that balances out the light. Although he's very dangerous—his nature is chaos and change as well as darkness — he isn't evil.
  • A Day in the Limelight: Nahadoth is a main character in book one and a major character in books two and three, but gets a short story all to himself in "The Wild Boy."
  • Disproportionate Retribution: When godlings start getting murdered in Shadow, his ultimatum is to find the culprits in one month or he'll destroy the city.
  • A Form You Are Comfortable With: Nahadoth doesn't have a "true" form, because it's always changing. His most common humanoid form is of a very attractive man with pale skin and black hair, but the details still shift from moment to moment.
  • God of Chaos: Embodies Chaos and change in the universe. He is not evil per se, but doesn't align with human morality most of the time. It doesn't help that he's endured 2000 years of Sanity Slippage from being trapped in human form or that he's shaped by the belief of mortals around him, most of whom see him as a terrifying monster.
  • God of Darkness: Nahadoth is the God of Chaos and Darkness. He is not evil and is presented as a natural force in the universe, but is still dangerous in his own right.
  • God in Human Form: He's confined to a mortal shell in daylight as an Arameri slave.
  • Go Mad from the Isolation: Spent the first few aeons of his existence as the only thing in all the Multiverse, and did not handle it all that well. As he describes it, he rent his essence asunder and screamed his pain across the heavens just to feel something.
  • Interplay of Sex and Violence: Pretty much every sexual encounter with him is fraught with danger. His relationship with Itempas is also full of both sex and violence, sometimes at the same time.
  • Involuntary Shapeshifting: To a human body during the day.
  • Jerkass Gods: He's left deeply bitter about his treatment by the Arameri and Itempas and has no qualms about killing en masse.
  • Living Emotional Crutch: He's Itempas's main one.
  • Lust Object: The Arameri find him irresistible. Many of them, over the centuries, have died because they couldn't resist ordering him to go all the way.
  • Mad God: Two thousand years of being enslaved, raped, and having your consciousness split and confined between day and night will test any deity's sanity. And Nahadoth wasn't all that sane or stable to begin with...
  • Mister Seahorse: Thanks to being a Voluntary Shapeshifter he can have kids with Itempas. Though rare, they tend to be far more powerful than children born to Enefa with either Naha or Tempa.
  • Mr. Fanservice: It's repeatedly stressed that Nahadoth is really, really attractive.
  • Offing the Offspring: The demon holocaust.
  • The Older Immortal: He was the first god born out of the Maelstrom.
  • Papa Wolf: Comes out strong in book two when godlings start dying, and in the backstory of Nahadoth going on a mad genocidal killing spree to take out the demons.
  • Parental Favoritism: Sieh notes that he's prone to playing favorites, as it's against his nature to treat them, or anything else, as equal. That's Itempas' schtick. Sieh tends to be his most favorite of all.
  • Parental Incest: Sometimes has sex with his divine children.
  • Person of Mass Destruction: Even with his powers bound, he sinks an entire continent. He was trying for the whole world.
  • Physical God: Apart from the mortal shell he's confined to in daylight, Nahadoth's god form is still tangible... just endlessly changeable.
  • Sex God: Passion is very much a part of his nature. He's so good in bed that it is actually lethal to most mortals.
  • Sex Shifter: He predates the concept of gender and will shift into either sex or some combination of the two at whim. In The Kingdom of Gods, he manifests a womb to try to heal Sieh while remaining superficially male; in "The Awakened Kingdom", Nahadoth appears exclusively as a woman.
  • Sibling Yin-Yang: The dark god of chaos and change to Itempas' bright god of order and stability.

Itempas (Shiny)

"I am all knowledge and purpose defined. I strengthen what exists and cull that which should not."

Our Whackjob, one of the three creator deities, who killed his sister to have sex with his brother forever, and spends the second book facing the consequences.note  Itempas is a god of light, order, and stability.

  • Alternative Character Interpretation: In-Universe, there are two sides to every story, and his isn't heard until the second book.
    • He killed Enefah to be with Nahadoth, not because of simple jealousy, but because of a sort of powerful psychic backlash he was struck with when the two literally cut their connections with him temporarily while being with each other. The trauma from that sent him down to Earth to seek comfort, and his mortal wife happened to be completely batshit insane. She kindled his pain into jealousy and manipulated him into killing Enefah, killing her own demigod son (whose blood would be poisonous to Gods) and offering Itempas his blood.
    • Itempas maintains that he knew what he did was wrong immediately afterwards, but having brought upon everyone a Crapsack World, he let things continue as they did because he can't change once committed to a new course. Most of the other Gods believed that he did not think himself in the wrong, when he did.
    • This is implied to be the reason that his redemption took only a solid ten years of honest life rather than the millenia of suffering Yeine and Nahadoth assumed it would take.
  • The Atoner: Not that it was his own idea, but he's forced to become mortal to atone for killing Enefa and enslaving his children for two thousand years.
  • Big Brother Attraction: For Nahadoth, who isn't exactly a brother, but who definitely predated him by several "eternities."
  • Break the Haughty: Spent two thousand years ruling over his enslaved siblings and his followers essentially enforced a monotheistic religion. When the other gods freed themselves, they confined him to a mortal body and dumped him in the slums to teach him a lesson.
  • Brother–Sister Incest: Him and Nahadoth, him and Enefa.
  • Brought Down to Normal: His punishment at the end of the first book. He revives after every death, but other than that he only has power at sunrise, or if he's selflessly defending a mortal from deadly danger.
  • But Now I Must Go: Inverted; Oree told him he had to go after some, ahem, "encouragement" from Yeine, who felt it was too soon for him to be released from his punishment even though he'd fulfilled the condition of loving truly, and gave Oree the choice of kicking him out or death. Oree decided kicking him out was best for everyone involved.
  • Character Development: He's bound as a human, which allows him to change on his own for the first time.
  • Crazy Jealous Guy: Originally light on the crazy, but he was manipulated by Shahar Arameri, who was herself completely off her rocker.
  • Death Is Cheap: His human form regenerates whenever he dies. He dies frequently because he doesn't bother to take the same basic precautions that a mortal would, like safety and impulse control. He and others even use his tendency to regenerate as an easy way to heal him. Back broken? Kill him, and he regenerates whole.
  • Death Seeker: Played with. While he never actively attempts to kill himself, or intentionally seeks it out, while trapped in mortal form he rarely takes the most basic of precautions. Most people, when thinking "I should stab myself with this knife." would reject the thought. Itempas doesn't because he sees no reason not to.
  • Defrosting Ice Queen: Towards Oree in book two. He goes from a silent houseguest only there because it's as good as anywhere else, to truly caring about her.
  • Descend From A Higher Plane Of Existence: He was booted out of Sky and ended up living in the slums.
  • The Don: In book three. You could even call him the Godfather.
  • Forgets to Eat: It wasn't one of his habits as a god, so he literally dies of thirst a few times before getting the habit as a human.
  • God Is Flawed: Edges into God Is Evil territory on occasion, but mostly it's just a matter of him being completely incapable of compromising, and given the choice between change and violence, he would most frequently resort to violence.
  • God of Order: Itempas is the Old God of Light and Order, who co-created the universe. However this makes him prone to Black-and-White Insanity.
  • Go Mad from the Isolation: Very, very fast. Just one moment of realizing his siblings were only thinking about each other was enough to seriously damage his psyche.
  • Greater-Scope Villain: Of the first book. The Arameri are the direct source of the conflict of the book, but it was him who gave them power in the first place. Itempas himself only appears at the very end.
  • Grow Old with Me: After the end of Book 3, he returns to Oree to do this. He's even aged himself up a bit.
  • Hot God: Oree, Naha, and Yeine all find him very, very attractive.
  • Humanity Ensues: Nahadoth and Yeine imprison him in human flesh after the latter claims Enefa's divinity, in the hope that having to live among humans will teach him humility and kindness.
  • Interspecies Romance: With the first Shahar, and later with Oree.
  • Jerkass Gods: Sets off a war because he's hurt. Recovers, but instead of admitting he was wrong and forgiving the people he's harmed, he doubles down, keeping them imprisoned for millennia and insisting that they have to submit first. Also kind of a stiffnecked hardass in personality, though he does have an extremely dry sense of humor.
  • Misery Builds Character: Yeine and Nahadoth believe that stripping his powers and confining him to a human body is a more effective punishment than just killing him (also, better, as killing him would probably end life as mortals know it, if not destroy the universe).
  • Murder the Hypotenuse: He killed Enefa because Nahadoth briefly loved her more than him.
  • Mysterious Past: The reader knows it, but Oree is in the dark about it for a large chunk of the book.
  • New Child Left Behind: Slightly messed with in that Tempa and Oree's daughter, Glee, chases her dad down and stays with him.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Book one plays up the drama that the Stone of Earth kills the sacrificial Arameri who picks it up. But Itempas kills Yeine before she can pick it up, and the Stone, because it embodies the power of a goddess of the cycle of life and death, actually revives her.
  • Obsessively Organized: Well, he's the god of order. Of course he's obsessed with everything being neat.
  • Papa Wolf: Like Nahadoth, Itempas shows this most strongly when godlings start dying.
  • Polyamory: With Enefa and Nahadoth. Eventually with Yeine and Nahadoth.
  • Pride: Admitting that he was wrong is not a major feature of his personality. Even after two thousand years.
  • The Quiet One: Particularly in his early days as a mortal, since he finds humans utterly unworthy of consideration. He lives with Oree for three months before he bothers to say a word to her.
  • Reformed, but Rejected: Nahadoth and Yeine initially bound Itempas to wander as a human until he corrected all the wrongs done in his name or found love. But when he found love in ten years, they decided that after everything he put the Enefadeh through, that wasn't long enough, and sent him back on the road. Even after Tempa cries for Sieh's death and is given his powers back, Yeine and Nahadoth still don't like him... well, Yeine is a tiny bit more sympathetic, but she still sides with Nahadoth in order to keep the peace. It's acknowledged that while Nahadoth will eventually forgive him, as despite everything they do still love each other, "eventually" is going to take a long time.
  • Resurrective Immortality: Functionally this throughout book two and three (with an exception for death-by-demon-blood). Being put in a mortal body stops him from healing when he's hurt, like his siblings and godlings do, but if he dies, he'll heal and come back. Functions as Chekhov's Skill in Sieh's plan to stop the Maelstrom.
  • Sibling Yin-Yang: God of light, order, and stability to Nahadoth's darkness, chaos, and change.
  • Single-Target Sexuality: In contrast to Nahadoth and Enefa, who took loads of human lovers, Itempas is so content with the OT3 that he only takes two human lovers in all of history, and those only when Nahadoth and Enefa (or Nahadoth and Yeine) abandon him.
  • The Stoic: As a mortal. He barely speaks three words together.
  • Someone Has to Die: Is planning to go out saving the world from the God Mask and the Maelstrom, hitting notes of Face Death with Dignity and Redemption Equals Death in the process.
  • Sunk Cost Fallacy: Having killed Enefa, he imprisoned Nahadoth and the Enefadeh because it was a choice between that and losing them for good, which would defeat the purpose of killing Enefa in the first place.
  • Supernatural Gold Eyes: Though they're brown once he turns human.

Enefa

"She killed things all the time, Yeine. She was death as well as life, the twilight along with the dawn. Everyone forgets that."

Our Dead Girl, the dead third creation deity. Enefa was the goddess of twilight, life and death, and balance.

  • Dark Secret: Kahl. She forced Sieh to forget his existence.
  • Dead Person Conversation: Happens frequently in Book One, with Yeine.
  • God of the Dead: She's the Goddess of Life and Death and actually invented those concepts as one of the three co-creators of the universe. However, she didn't need to oversee death personally, and not even she knew where the souls of the dead end up. Her brother killed her before the time of the books, in which Yeine inherits her divinity.
  • Mother Nature, Father Science: Averted. Nahadoth and Itempas are emotional forces of nature, while Enefa is the steel-hearted scientist who creates life and offs imperfect experiments as she sees fit.
  • Only Sane Woman: Or more scientific-minded
  • Parental Incest: Had a son with her son, Sieh.
  • Posthumous Character: Killed by Itempas before the start of the series.
  • Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Subverted. As shown by the quote above, Enefa may have been much loved, and she may have been unjustly killed but she wasn't all good all the time. She had her negative traits just like Itempas and Nahadoth do, and is accused more than once of being partly responsible for Itempas' breakdown and the second Gods' War..

    Godlings 

General Godling Tropes

I had not met many godlings at that point, but anyone who dwelled for long in Shadow learned this much: they drew their strength from a particular thing—a concept, a state of being, an emotion. The priests and scriveners called it affinity, though I had never heard any godling use the term. When they encountered their affinity, it drew them like a beacon, and some of them could not quite help responding to it.

Our Divine Supporting Cast.

  • Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Gods' War split them into factions that left some very ugly grudges, even after 2000 years.
  • A Form You Are Comfortable With: Their true forms in the divine realm are unknowable to humans, and the bodies they create in the mortal realm are often alien or disquieting, so most of them develop human forms in which to manifest.
  • Gods Need Prayer Badly: Averted. Turns out they don't even like having worshipers that much.
  • The Mafia: A group of them form a semi-criminal organization in Book 3 to coordinate their interests in the mortal realm.
  • Really 700 Years Old: The youngest godlings are this, since they were all rendered sterile for the 2000 years between Enefa's death and Yeine's apotheosis. Zig-zagged when Ahad is created at the end of the first book and when Shill is created in "The Awakened Kingdom".
  • Time Abyss: The oldest godlings measure age in the billions of years. This was hard on godlings who had affinities for concepts that hadn't manifested in the universe yet, like the God of Dreams, who predates all mortal life that could dream.

Sieh

Madding sighed. "Mortal languages don't have words for this. He... lives true. He is what he is. You've heard that saying, haven't you? It's more than just words for us." I had no idea what he was talking about. He saw that in my face and tried again. "Imagine you're older than this planet, yet you have to act like a child. Could you do it?"
Impossible to even imagine. "I... don't know. I don't think so."
Madding nodded. "Sieh does it. He does it every day, all day; he never stops. That makes him strong."

Our Trickster, a lesser deity imprisoned alongside Nahadoth. Sieh is the god of childhood.

  • Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: Eventually becomes an actual god, and makes a new Three along with Shahar and Dekarta Arameri.
  • Break the Haughty: This happens a lot in book three as he's forced to contend with the limitations of mortality.
  • Calling the Old Man Out: He criticizes Nahadoth's tendency to play favorites with the godlings, while also noting that it's unfair because he can't help but play favorites; it's against his nature to treat things equally when they are clearly not.
  • Creepy Child: Thanks to really being billions of years old and open about the physical and psychological horrors he's suffered. It's unsettling to have a child looking at you with murder in his eyes.
  • The Dutiful Son: Thinks of himself as this, while looking down on all the godlings who didn't stick by Nahadoth during his imprisonment.
  • Fantastic Racism: Aside from children, Sieh doesn't have a very high opinion of mortals, albeit with good reason.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: He kills himself to stop Kahl and the Maelstrom from destroying the world.
  • I Miss Mom: As tricky and deceptive as he is, Sieh truly misses Enefa and treats Yeine as a mother figure.
  • Immortal Immaturity: His nature is childishness. No matter how many years he's existed in the world, he's still a brat. Invoked, since he chooses to "live true to his nature", and is made very powerful by his dedication to it.
  • Made a Slave: Thanks to Parental Betrayal by Itempas, and it leaves mental scars for long after's freed.
  • Manchild: When he's stuck in an adult body. It's actually necessary for him, since acting too much like an adult would be against his nature and would weaken him.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: It turns out that Sieh played his own unwitting part in starting the Gods' War by lying to bring Itempas home to Nahadoth and Enefa, never considering what his abandonment would do to Shahar Arameri's none too stable mind.
  • Parental Incest: With Nahadoth and Enefa; notably never with Itempas.
  • The Prankster: He's the universe's original prankster, with antics that range from stealing suns to smothering babies.
  • Rape as Backstory: While he was enslaved to the Arameri and forced to indulge their appetites. He says with deliberate calm that they usually wanted him to take even younger forms.
  • Rapid Aging: This happens in book three, where there are several instances when Sieh ages decades in a matter of hours. Also, learning that he's a father "poisons" him and makes him age at ten times the normal rate thereafter.
  • The Older Immortal: Ironically, given his childlike nature. He was the very first child Enefa created, the prototype for all subsequent godlings and mortals, making him the fifth-oldest thing in the multiverse (after the Maelstrom and the Three).
  • Voluntary Shapeshifting: He can turn into a cat.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: At times it seems like everyone is saying this to Sieh in book three.

Hado/Ahad/Beloved

"Once upon a time, there was a god imprisoned here. He was a terrible, beautiful, angry god, and by night when he roamed these white halls, everyone feared him. But by day, the god slept. And the body, the living mortal flesh that was his ball and chain, got to have a life of its own. It wasn’t much of a life, mind you. All the people who feared the god did not fear the man. They quickly learned they could do things to the man that the god would not tolerate. So the man lived his life in increments, born with every dawn, dying with every sunset. Hating every moment of it. For two. Thousand. Years. Until suddenly, one day, the man became free."

Our Sort-Of-Clone, a human body with its own personality that comes to life by day and keeps Nahadoth’s godly power imprisoned. Spends book two confusing the hell out of Oree, and book three taking not a little pleasure in both tormenting Sieh and sending him on errands.

General, and shared with Nahadoth:

In book one:

  • Death Seeker: He helps — or at least doesn't rat out — the Enefadeh because Nahadoth has promised to kill him once they're free.
  • Gollum Made Me Do It: He routinely "wakes up" to find himself next to the bloody remains of people Nahadoth slaughtered at night.
  • Sex Slave: To Scimina, although it's heavily implied she's not the first Arameri who's done this to him.

In book two:

  • Ambition Is Evil: Hado tells Oree that he infiltrated the New Lights in order to become an Arameri full-blood so he could eventually become the family head and rule the world. Oree is horrified.
  • Deep Cover Agent: He's only pretending to be part of Serymn and Dateh's inner circle.
  • Going Native: Boy has he picked up on the Arameri social-climbing, power-hungry, ambitious tendencies.

In book three:

  • Abusive Parents: We learn that, in his very early developing years, Ahad regarded Sieh as a father figure. Let us just say that Sieh did not live up to that image very well.
  • Berserk Button: Do not tell him what to do, or even speak to him using imperatives (like this sentence). Having spent two thousand years magically enslaved, he's had it up to here with anything that even sounds like a command.
  • Beta Couple: More or less. He and Glee have apparently been flirting for decades, but they resolve their UST a lot faster and much more easily than Sieh and Deka, and especially than Sieh and Shahar.
  • A Day in the Limelight: After playing a supporting role in the main trilogy, Ahad gets a short story all to himself in "The God Without A Name."
  • Defector from Decadence: Of a sort. He grew fed up with living in Sky due to its continued corruption...so after having an affair with T'Vril's wife and collecting his reward for doing so, he now runs an elaborate brothel. And lounges around smoking cheroots.
  • Everyone Is Related: To be fair, it's a logical extension of sleeping with half of Sky before he left to join the mob.
  • The First Cut Is the Deepest: Two thousand years of emotional fuckitry at the hands of the Arameri drove him to nihilism, apathy, and general hatred, preventing him from realizing that his divine affinity, and the thing he should be drawing power from, is love.
  • Generation Xerox: Sort of! Nahadoth's strange child and Itempas's daughter seem like their Opposites Attract romance will play out better than Naha and Tempa's did. (And hey, Ahad is a doppelganger of Nahadoth's Sky form while Sieh calls Glee "Itempas made over with breasts.")
  • Unproblematic Prostitution: He's a pimp, but a very ethical pimp. Everyone who works at the Arms of Night is there by choice and enjoys their job.

Kahl

I will not be a slave to fate. I will embrace it, control it. I will be what I wish to be.

Our Long-Lost Relative and Big Bad all in one; spends book three gearing up to take his revenge on the parents who abandoned him. And since he's a Godling of Vengeance, that's a very big revenge indeed.

  • Revenge Before Reason: He's willing to destroy the entire world and himself along with it. But revenge is his nature.

Shill

I won’t push any of you, see? I didn’t give you anything, and you don’t owe me anything. Your power is yours; it has always been there. I’m just going to help you reach it. What you do with it, from there on, is up to you.

Our Social Justice Warrior, narrator and protagonist of the sequel novella "The Awakened Kingdoms."

Miscellaneous Godling Tropes

    Arameri 

General Arameri Tropes

"Like our ancestress Shahar, we Arameri are first and foremost the servants of Itempas Skyfather. It is in His name that we have imposed the age of the Bright upon the world. Peace, order, enlightenment. Itempas's servants do not use, or need, weapons. Tools, though..."

Our Ruling Clan, which unofficially controls the world from the city of Sky. Ages before the beginning of the first book, the clan's founder proved crucial to Bright Itempas's victory over the Enefada. For this, the clan was rewarded with the power to command them and the duty of imposing Itempas's will on the world.

  • Big, Screwed-Up Family: Sky is a degenerate mess of backstabbing, debauchery, assassination and general corruption.
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: The Arameri are, by and large, Amn, who seem to correspond to white people. They've conquered the rest of the world and rule tyrannically while calling their reign the Bright and insisting it's good for everyone. Only Arameri serve other Arameri, but it's unusual for biracial children to rise above menial jobs—in the third book, the fact that high-ranking positions are held by mixed-race Arameri is a sign of how many of them have been assassinated.
  • Dysfunctional Family: Everyone in sky is distantly related. Being descended from the woman who helped Itempas defeat their family is a requirement to be in Sky. They're constantly betraying and killing each other.
  • Even Evil Has Standards: The Arameri installed a universal age of consent, and do not condone sexual abuse of children, or tolerate paedophiles. T'Vril's father, even though he was a fairly high ranking member of the family, was executed for raping T'Vril's underage mother. (This doesn't apply to godlings, however, and Sieh has apparently been a target of this kind of thing.)
  • Humans Are Bastards: The Arameri are awful to both the gods they keep as slaves, and the nations they rule over.
  • Hypocrite : The Arameri look down upon the Northern Kingdoms in particular as savage, with bizarre and disgusting customs - conveniently ignoring the fact that their ancestors, the Amn, were cannibals.
  • Jerk Ass Has A Point: They instituted a global minimum age of consent and have punished some of their own who were caught defying it. They also used their power to prevent kingdoms from plundering each other, ending many nations' practices of mass kidnapping people and forcing them into marriage and/or slavery.
  • Made a Slave: The Arameri central family forces distant relatives, particularly mixed-race ones, to come and live as servants in Sky.

T'vril Arameri

"Not only has my cousin forgotten that Bright Itempas no longer rules the gods, but she has also forgotten that we Arameri now answer to several masters rather than one. The world changes; we must change with it or die."

Our Recurring Side Character, a high-ranking Arameri servant in book one who is running the world by book two.

  • Cold-Blooded Torture: He has a conspirator's tongue pulled out in public.
  • The Good Chancellor: The closest thing the Arameri can get to one. T'vril is definitely more good in nature than the highbloods and is more concerned with keeping the empire stable than petty politcal games.
  • Good Is Not Nice: He is not above cruel and unusual punishment, but only resorts to it in dire situations.
  • Overshadowed by Awesome: In-universe. He has a one-night stand with Yeine, but just can't compare to Nahadoth. Also a Romantic Runner-Up.

Viraine Arameri

"But at least I still have a soul. What did you trade yours for?"
To my surprise, Viraine's glee seemed to fade. He looked down into the pit, the gray light making his eyes seem colorless and older than Dekarta's. "Not enough," he said, and walked away.

Our Court Mage who facilitates a certain web of lies, and is keeping someone secret.

Kinneth Arameri

Once upon a time there was a little girl whose father murdered her mother. Then she set all her mind and heart and formidable will on vengeance... because that is what a daughter does when her mother has been murdered.

Our Heroine's Dead Mom, who actually kicks off the plot.

  • Daddy Issues: She doesn't necessarily hate her father completely, but she can't let his actions go unpunished.
  • Defector from Decadence: She left Sky for the "barbarians" of Darre because of Dekarta's actions, as part of her long game for revenge. After her death, Yeine has to investigate what induced her to leave — and what sort of person she was like as a member of the Arameri Decadent Court.
  • Mommy Issues: Most of her actions stem from losing the mother she dearly loved.
  • Spanner in the Works: Her actions ultimately unravel Itempas's carefully laid out system that kept the gods who stood against him in chains.

High Priestess Shahar Arameri

The child was mad, of course. Later events proved this. But it makes sense to me that this madness, not mere religious devotion, would appeal most to the Bright Lord. Her love was unconditional, her purpose undiluted by such paltry considerations as conscience or doubt. It seems like Him, I think, to value that kind of purity of purpose — even though, like warmth and light, too much love is never a good thing.

Our Crazy Priestess, a fanatical follower of Itempas who is at least partially responsible for everything bad in the series, and imposed the Itempan Church on the world two-thousand years before The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms.

Lady Shahar Arameri

I am Shahar Arameri, and I am alone.

First of Our Messianic Twins, who manage to form a friendship with Sieh despite the fact that they're the heirs of the family who tortured him for two thousand years. They both also love him passionately - yes, like that - which both creates a OT3 and causes a whole lot of joy and grief.

  • Angsty Surviving Twin: Her twin didn't die, but she was forced to effectively banish him from the court by their mother for political reasons.
  • Decoy Protagonist: The blurb on the back makes her sound like the main character, while she actually gets shunted aside 260 pages in.

Dekarta Arameri

"But I will not be nothing to you, Sieh. And if I must change the universe to have you, then so be it." He smiled again, tight, vicious, beautiful. Terrifying.

Second of Our Messianic Twins, who manage to form a friendship with Sieh despite the fact that they're the heirs of the family who tortured him for two thousand years. They both also love him passionately - yes, like that - which both creates an OT3 and causes a whole lot of joy and grief.

Scimina Arameri

In The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, she is the favorite to inherit the throne. She's a conniving woman who will stop at nothing to get what she wants.
  • Berserk Button: She becomes very unhinged very quickly when her carefully laid out plans start going even slightly awry.
  • Bondage Is Bad: How do you know Scimina is evil? Because she keeps Nahadoth's human form on a Slave Collar all the time.
  • Bullying a Dragon: She and her ancestors have been using the Enefada as their personal playthings for millenia, and she takes particular joy in using Nahadoth as a sex slave.
  • Fantastic Racism: She spends half a chapter decrying Yeine's people as savages with a condescending drawl.
  • Hypocrite: She belittles Yeina's people because in ancient times they used to kidnap men to act as sex slaves and force them into marriage, all the while using her power over the Enefada to force Nahadoth to be her lover.
  • Laser-Guided Karma: Once he's freed, Nahadoth places a collar just like the one she would make him wear on her neck and makes it clear that he'll kill her... eventually.
  • Rich Bitch: She loves flaunting her wealth.
  • Too Dumb to Live: She's extremely arrogant and thinks that she can strongarm Yeine into choosing as heir, making it very easy for her brother to outmaneuver her.

Relad Arameri

Scimina's twin brother. By the start of The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms he's largely given up on besting his sister.
  • The Alcoholic: One of the best ways to earn his favor is to gift him with expensive drinks.
  • Obfuscating Stupidity: Once he sobers up he manages to politically outmaneuver her sister on top of getting Yeine to pick him as heir by simply not threatening her people and offering them support.
  • Twincest: Relad prefers women who look like his twin sister, but it's implied to be in part because he hates her.

    Others 

Oree Shoth

"I am, you see, a woman plagued by gods."

Our Redemption Love Interest, a blind painter with a unique magical talent who finds an undead man in her dumpster.

  • December–December Romance: Mixed with Mayfly–December Romance. By the time Itempas comes back to her she's well over a hundred even if she doesn't quite look it. This doesn't matter to Itempas, but he does alter his visible form to look substantially older in order to match.
  • My Girl Is Not a Slut: Oree's narration goes out of its way to let you know that she didn't kiss Madding until the second date.
  • Prophet Eyes: A variant — her eyes are completely covered with petal-like layers of grey tissue, which tend to put people off when they realize they're not simple cataracts. It's uncertain whether this has anything to do with her demon heritage, since her father did not share the trait.
  • Save Your Deity: It's Oree's magic that loosens Nahadoth and Yeine's chains on Itempas's powers long enough for Itempas to beat down Dateh.
  • Someone to Remember Him By: “The Broken Kingdoms” is a story Oree is telling to Itempas’s daughter, Glee, in the womb.

Glee Shoth

For just an instant, her eyes seemed to flare red-gold like a struck match. "I have spent nearly the past century trying to keep this world from falling apart," she snapped. "I'm not a god. I have no choice but to live in this realm, unlike you. I will do whatever I must to save it — including working with godlings like you who claim to despise Itempas, though in reality you're just as selfish and arrogant as him at his worst!"

Our Daddy's Girl, the daughter of Oree and Itempas. The mediator between her father and her lover Ahad (who don't really like each other, for some reason) and one of the leading figures in the attempts to find out just who is causing unrest in the kingdoms.

  • Action Girl: When the going gets tough, she won't hesitate to fight to the death.
  • Berserk Button: Don't threaten her daddy, or she will summon a sword of order and come after you. And yes, you should be scared.
  • Dating What Daddy Hates: Daddy and mommy disapprove of Ahad.
  • A Day in the Limelight: After playing a supporting role in "Kingdom of Gods" and a minor role in "The Broken Kingdoms," she gets a short story all to herself in "The Third Why."
  • Meaningful Name: Maroneh girls are customarily given sorrowful names; Sieh even comments on the contrast Glee's name makes.
  • Older Than They Look: She looks about thirty. She's actually nearly a hundred, and she's got quite a few years left in her yet.

Dateh

"We demons are the gods’ children, too, are we not? Yet they have hunted us nearly to extinction. How is that right? I say that if they fear us so, we should give them something to fear: their despised, persecuted children, coming to take their place."

Our Villain, or one of the closest things we’ll have to a straight-up unsympathetic villainous character, who spends book two trying to off stupid sexy Nahadoth.

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