Characters from the The Broken Empire Trilogy. Beware of spoilers.
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The Protagonist
Jorg Ancrath
The Protagonist of the story, the crown prince from the Kingdom of Ancrath who ran away from home at the age of ten. An ambitious man who's dreaming of unifying the Empire by any means necessary.
- Affably Evil: Jorg zigzags between this and Faux Affably Evil, as he's almost always his witty, joking self, but whether or not he actually means it varies on the moment.
- Ax-Crazy: Especially in the first book, he loves fighting and murdering. His bloodlust is toned down as the story progresses, especially once he starts getting over his Lack of Empathy.
- Anti-Villain: Post Character Development.
- Badass Bookworm: He's well educated in various matters such as history, religion, warfare, etc as befitting a royal prince, can speak six languages and knows enough about six more to recognize them when spoken, and apparently read Plutarch in-between his pillages.
- Berserk Button:
- Harming his family is a big one, as long as it's a family he cares about. He swore a bloody murder to Count Renar for his killing of Jorg's mother and brother. Later he also goes berserk after he accidentally kills his half-brother, to the point they need to seal his memory of the event just to calm him down.
- Telling him that there is something that he can't or shouldn't do is also another one.
- Big Brother Instinct: Used to feel protective towards his deceased little brother William.
- Blood Knight: Oh yes.
- Brainy Brunette: He is rather smarter than most people give him credit for and he does like thinking outside the box. When it comes to mysteries of the builders, for example, it's Jorg who gets to the bottom of the problem. In the series' pseudo-medieval setting, he manages to use a gun and an atomic bomb.
- Combat Pragmatist: Definitely has no concept of playing fair. Notably he already has had this trait since his childhood.
- Covered in Scars: After he was thrown into a briar patch in his childhood. Later on he has half his face burned in the second book.
- Deadpan Snarker: Frequently.
- Determinator: Besides his savage cunning and amorality, this is the other key feature of Jorg. The guy will not quit, starting from childhood when he survived impalement on the hook briar patch and the surgeries that removed the thorns from his body and later surviving a long trek through a radioactive desert that no else has ever survived.
- Driven to Villainy: His traumatic childhood, his abusive father, and the world that he lives in itself have formed him into the person he is.
- Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: His skin is sickly pale and scarred and he has long stringy black hair.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Jorg ends up caring to some degree for his friends, his family and his wife. He also loves his son.
- Evil Counterpart: He is the evil counterpart to Prince Orrin, who is the Ideal Hero also going for the throne.
- Freudian Excuse: Jorg watched his brother being murdered and his mother being raped then murdered when he was still a child, while he was stranded in a hook briar patch and lacerated by the thorns. His father was also an Abusive Parent. And, finally, we learn in the third book that he completely snapped after he was raped by Bishop Murillo while he was still a child.
- Genius Bruiser: Jorg is this compared to his Road Brothers, thanks to his royal upbringing.
- Heroic Sacrifice: He lets himself be killed so that he can reunite with William and repair reality.
- Hot-Blooded: Easy to anger and passionate about a lot of things — mostly revenge, murder, and getting the throne.
- I Am a Humanitarian: How he got his necromancy power. By eating a raw necromancer's heart.
- Improbable Age: Only in his early teens when he starts his quest of murder and mayhem in Book One, and the youngest of the band of brothers he leads. Is still only twenty when he achieves his goal of becoming Emperor in Book Three.
- Like Father, Like Son: While William looked like their mother, beneath the scars, Jorg is the spitting image of his father.
- Like Father, Unlike Son: It's revealed in the second and third books that part of the conflict between Jorg and his dad is that Jorg isn't brutal enough. Olidan is cold and calculating and would sacrifice his sons to achieve his goals. Despite everything, Jorg is not that.
- My Nayme Is: Jorg instead of George.
- Psychopathic Manchild: Jorg, especially at thirteen and fourteen, frequently does horrific things that result in people's deaths just because he wants to do them. He lets Jane die under a rock-fall because he couldn't be bothered saving her, he lets a starved lion loose in a circus fully aware of the consequences and finds an old woman getting a fatal heart attack at the sight of his pet monster hilarious.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Went to murder Renar in revenge for his mother and brother's murder. Was only stopped because a wizard messed with his head and directed him elsewhere. Once that's cleared up, he kills his way into becoming king.Jorg: You know how to break the cycle of hatred?Father Gomst: Love.Jorg: The way to break the cycle is to kill every single one of the bastards that fucked you over. Every last one of them. Kill them all. Kill their mothers, kill their brothers, kill their children, kill their dog.
- The Unfavorite: His dad didn't love either of his kids, but he was particularly disappointed with Jorg.
- Tall, Dark, and Snarky: Noted to possess a tall and lean figure with dark hair and a tendency to quip just about anything.
- Took a Level in Kindness: Jorg starts as a Villain Protagonist, whose Establishing Character Moment has him slaughtering a village and raping two girls. He eventually becomes an Anti-Villain who, while often using murder to get what he wants, cares to some degree for the people working for him and for his wife, and loves his son. He also tends to fight people just as evil as he is.
- Villainous Parental Instinct: After the birth of his son, Jorg murders a bunch of guards, his cousin, the pope, and a lot of other people in order to keep him safe. In the end, his son is the driving force behind his Heroic Sacrifice.
- Villain Protagonist: He is this in the first book, and unashamedly so. However, Character development kicks off and he seems to have regretted this attitude of his a bit later on. Doesn't stop him from being an Anti-Villain however.
- Warrior Prince: An odd example. Jorg is the Crown Prince of Ancrath and a capable warrior, though he accomplishes this by running away from home and becoming a bandit for four years.
- You Should Have Died Instead: While not spoken by his father directly, Jorg realizes that this is likely why his father resented him so much: Despite being younger, William was the one with the iron core like Olidan, and would have made for a better king and heir in Olidan's eyes.
The Brotherhood
In General
- Dwindling Party: Jorg's adventures have definitely done quite a number on their membership.
- Family of Choice: Few of them share actual blood relations and yet all of them consider themselves brothers, though their notion of brotherhood isn't typical.
- Rape, Pillage, and Burn: More or less their bread and butter. In the first book Jorg inwardly notes that the brotherhood spends half their time fighting in the ruins of their own making, and the other half fighting in the ruins made by others.
Sir Makin Bortha
The knight sent to find young Jorg when he had run away to join the Brothers, then wound up staying to be his protector. He's Jorg's oldest companion and the closest thing he has to a friend.
- The Champion: Makin is likely the most skilled warrior among Jorg's supporters, and perhaps one of the few he truly trust.
- Chess Motifs: Jorg considers him the Knight, fittingly enough.
- The Face: He's the most charming member in the group, and whenever Jorg wants someone to think well of them, he sends Makin.If Makin had a skill, then smoothing things over was it.
- The Lancer: To Jorg. Alternatively The Dragon, on Jorg's bad days.
- Master Swordsman: The best in the brotherhood at least. The others are surprised when Makin met someone even better than him.
- Old Shame: He later came to regret his days on the road, and all the crimes he committed then.
- Parental Substitute: For young Jorg, though downplayed as Makin also works for him.
- Rank Up: Jorg gave him the Ken Marshes sometime after the event of the King of Thorns, making him a Baron.
Rike
- Blunt features beneath a heavy brow, the ugly puckering of old scar tissue, small black eyes that watch the world with impersonal malice, dark hair, short and thick with dirt, bristling across the thickest of skulls. And had God given him a smaller frame in place of a giant’s packed with unreasonable helpings of muscle, weakness in place of an ox team’s stamina, still Rike would be the meanest dwarf in Christendom.
The biggest, meanest, most thick-headed of the brothers.
- Ax-Crazy: Like Jorg and many of the Brothers, Rike loves fighting, killing, and stealing.
- Bash Brothers: Had an actual blood brother named Price, who was even meaner.
- The Big Guy: Rike is the biggest of the brothers, larger even than Makin, and he prides himself on that and his strength. The only person he's shown to wholeheartedly — almost childishly — respect is the strong man from Taproot's circus, who is bigger and can lift Rike up.
- The Brute: To a T.
- Pet the Dog: Rike's actual late brother, Price, rescued Young Sim from a brothel where the latter had been serving as a child sex slave. After Price is dead, Rike still has a soft spot for Sim, and is one of the first ones ready for revenge when Sim is attacked and has his harp stolen.
- Took a Level in Kindness: Offscreen, no less. Rike is one of the most static characters in the series, starting off as a thick-headed, murder-loving, blood-crazed brute and sticking with it for the entire trilogy. However, in the climax of the final novel, he throws down his sword and refuses to kill Jorg despite constantly saying he wants to, and in the Distant Epilogue, we see that Jorg's young son refers to him as Uncle Rike, and that Rike has tried to warn him away from the "ghost" in the castle, indicating that he's come into some familial instincts (for young William, if no one else).
The Nuban
- Even Evil Has Standards: He has no problem with killing and pillaging, but is uncomfortable with tortures and mistreating men of faith.
- Improbable Aiming Skills: He's the best marksman the brothers have, able to make shots that seem impossible. While much of this is no doubt due to his own skill, some of it might have to do with the spell Corion put on the crossbow.
- Only Known By His Nickname: No one ever calls him anything other than "The Nuban". Jorg learns in the second book that his real name was Kashta, a fact that allows Jorg to put him down when Chella raises his corpse.
- Parental Substitute: Plays this role for young Jorg, serving as his protector until Makin shows up, as well as what passes for a moral compass.
- Scary Black Man: He's tall, muscular, black, and just so happens to be a part of a murderous brotherhood of bandits. That said he's almost positively mellow compared to his brothers.
- Token Minority: The only black guy in the brotherhood, hence the nickname.
Red Kent
- In peace Brother Kent reverts to type, a peasant plagued by kindness, seeking God in the stone houses where the pious lament. Battle strikes loose such chains. In war Red Kent approaches the divine.
One of the few Brothers to make it to the third book. Was once a peasant before joining the Brothers, then later becomes Jorg's knight.
- Arson, Murder, and Admiration: He joins the Brothers because Jorg was very impressed with the way he murdered a bunch of soldiers.
- Dead All Along: Not Kent himself, but the short story Bad Seed begins with him bludgeoning a childhood bully named Darin Reed, who then becomes his best friend. It's only in his adulthood, as he begins his Start of Darkness that he finally admits Darin is only a ghost.
- Morality Chain: In Bad Seed we see that Kent always had an unsettling violent streak, but he tried to put it aside and live a normal life, especially once he had a wife and kids. When they die, he lets himself go and becomes the murderer we see in the main trilogy.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: Called Red Kent because he was soaked head-to-toe in blood when the Brothers first met him. In the Bad Seed short story, we learn that Kent's name isn't actually Kent, either: "Kennt" was the word for killer in his village. His real name is Alann Oak.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: In the short story, Bad Seed, we learn Kent had a wife and children who were murdered by soldiers. He goes to their camp and returns the favor. Jorg and company find him during the rampage and are so impressed, they let him join them.
- Spirit Advisor: In Bad Seed, he has one in the form of Darin Reed. Darin's ghost refuses to forgive Kent for his murder, thus allowing his spirit to stick around and haunt Kent and serve as his best friend and advisor until Kent joins the Brothers.
- Turn to Religion: After seeing the Builder's Sun/Nuclear bomb go off in the first book, Red Kent becomes devoutly religious. It doesn't stop him from helping Jorg kill whoever needs killing, but it does mean he's more inclined to go to confession and pay attention to Father Gomst.
Young Sim
Brother Sim looks pleasing enough, a touch pretty, a touch delicate, but sharp with it. Under the dyes his hair is a blond that takes the sun, under the drugs his eyes are blue, under the sky I know no one more private in their ways, more secret in their opinions, more deadly in a quiet moment.
A Brother who is a couple years older than Jorg. Jorg describes him as being pretty, quiet, and possibly the deadliest of the Brothers due to his subtlety.
- Pretty Boy: Jorg and others comment that Sim is basically the prettiest and most effeminate looking of the brothers. This is something he uses to lull targets into underestimating him.
- Rape as Backstory: Spent his youth in a brothel, and not as a customer.
Fat Burlow
- Big Eater: How he got so fat in the first place.
- Stout Strength: He's the fattest member of the brotherhood, but he's still a competent warrior and physically among their strongest man.
Old Elban
- Old Soldier: Old Bandit more like. He's the oldest brother by far, old enough to have lost all his tooth.
Kingdom of Ancrath
Miana
Jorg's bride in Book Three.
- Absurdly Youthful Mother: Gave birth at the age of fifteen.
- Arranged Marriage: Jorg married her to shore up support from Horse Coast kingdoms, including his grandfather's.
- Kissing Cousins: Miana is Jorg's maternal first cousin.
Olidan Ancrath
Jorg's cold, calculating, and abusive father.
- Archnemesis Dad: His status as this tend to vary early on but solidified later after he stabbed Jorg.
- Bad People Abuse Animals: Orders Jorg to torture his beloved dog. When Jorg finally balks (after having already broken three of the dog's legs), Olidan calmly sets the dog on fire.
- I Have No Son!: What he says when he orders his guards to kill Jorg.
- Offing the Offspring: What he ultimately tries to do to Jorg.
- Puppet King: He's a pawn to Sageous.
- You Have Failed Me: Has a habit of killing anyone he deems no longer useful to him. He killed Lundis because he had no need of a tutor after his son ran away and planning to have Makin killed in a duel because he no longer needs a captain of the Imperial Guard.
Coddin
- Brutal Honesty: The reason why Jorg keeps him as an advisor. As Jorg puts it, Coddin is the only man who can says Jorg resembles his father and lives.
- The Confidant: One of the few people whom Jorg absolutely trust to give him good counsel.
- Honest Advisor: Always gives a good advice to Jorg whenever asked to.
- Only Sane Man: Compared to Jorg's companions and acquintances, he stood out for being an almost completely normal man. No magic, no murderous ambition, just a simple soldier with a deep well of experience and a functional moral compass.
- Rank Up: Jorg appoints him as the Watchmaster of the Forrest Watch after killing his predecessor. He later serves as Jorg's Chancellor after taking a wound that left him unfit for battle.
County of Renar
Osson Renar
- Evil Uncle: Trying to kill your nephews and sister-in-law will make you fit this trope.
- Puppet King: Corion is the one truly running the show.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Jorg notes that he looks almost identical with his brother Olidan and thus Jorg himself.
Earldom of Morrow
Earl Hansa Morrow
The monarch of Earldom of Hansa, Queen Rowen's father and Jorg's grandfather.
Robert Morrow
The son and heir of Earl Hansa and Rowen's brother.
- Cool Uncle: He acts more like an indulgent older brother to Jorg rather than an uncle, a stark contrast compared to Jorg's other uncle.
Principality of Arrow
Prince Orrin
- The Ace: He's noted to be the most ideal candidate to become the Emperor. Handsome, chivalrous, skilled at arms, charismatic, worldy, smart, etc. It's probably easier to list what he's not good at, namely recognizing his brother's flaw.
- The Charmer: Jorg considers him better at charming others than even Sageous, which is impressive considering Orrin doesn't have any magic.
- Ideal Hero: Orrin is pretty much everything you expect a hero should be, though this very trait is also what makes him unsuitable to survive the Crapsack World of the setting.
- Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold: He's a blond man who's also charming, courteous, and honorable.
- Prince Charming: Handsome, smart, a Prince... need we say more?
- The Rival: He was set up to be one to Jorg. Not only does he possess similar cunning and ambition as Jorg, he even married Katherine, a woman whom Jorg felt an attraction/lust to. Notably, their first meeting consists of a short discussion followed by him curbstomping Jorg in a duel.
- Too Good for This Sinful Earth: Everyone agrees he would make a great ruler so of course he was betrayed and murdered beforehand.
Prince Egan
- Blood Knight: Unlike his brother, Egan doesn't seem to have any interest in anything that isn't fighting or war.
- Cain and Abel: Murdered his own brother Prince Orrin to take the throne sometime before his attack on Renar. It's unclear how much of this is the result of his own desire or Sageous' manipulation.
The Mages
Assorted wizards, many of whom want to be the The Man Behind the Man on the Emperor's Throne and treat the politics of the Hundred kingdoms as a "game."
Sageous
Jorg's main wizardly enemy in the first two books. He is a dream-witch with the ability to manipulate people's minds. He is also one of the "players," the mages trying to become the power behind the next emperor.
- Ambition Is Evil: He won't stop at anything until he succeeds in making himself the power behind the reunified Empire.
- Dream Walker
- Dream Weaver: His main talent is the ability to manipulate people's dreams, either subtly influencing them to do what he wants, or to do them actual physical harm through the connection.
- The Man Behind the Man: Chooses Olidan Ancrath to be his initial pawn. Later tries this with Orrin of Arrow, but finds him too hard to control. Winds up encouraging Egan of Arrow to kill his brother and take his place, as Egan is easier to control.
- More than Mind Control
- Nightmare Weaver
- Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: Sageous claims to working to make the empire a better place, but him having Egan kill Orrin since he couldn't control him shows that he only cares about securing his own power.
Corion
The wizard working for (and on) Count Renar. Becomes the climactic enemy at the end of the first book due to his mental manipulation of Jorg.
- The Man Behind the Man: Chooses Count Renar to be his pawn. Also selects Jorg, when Jorg comes seeking revenge.
- More than Mind Control
Ferrakind
Yusef
A mathemagician and fellow of Qalasadi who befriends Jorg on the ship ride to Afrique.
Luntar
- Facial Horror: His face is described like a wet, half-melting wax.
- One Degree of Separation: He's Lundis' brother.
Katherine Ap Scorron
The younger sister to Jorg's new stepmother, and the eventual wife of Prince Orrin of Arrow. She starts off as a naive young noblewoman, but after enduring hardships caused by Jorg and by Sageous, she teaches herself dream magic.
- Good Girls Avoid Abortion: Averted.
- Nightmare Weaver: takes a perverse pleasure in sending Jorg nightmares and making him endure what she perceives as the worst moments of his life over and over again. This is partly revenge for Degran's death, partly to practice her magic (as he's the only target she can use without feeling guilt).
The Dead
The Dead King
- Determinator: More so than even Jorg. His will is so strong that after death he breaks the control that the necromancers had on him and makes them his puppets, when he was seven. Only a little later, he becomes king of the dead.
- Greater-Scope Villain: His importance comes only into focus as the story progresses.
- Long-Lost Relative: Is really William, Jorg's dead younger brother.
- "Well Done, Son" Guy: In their confrontation, the Dead King tells Jorg (his big brother) he wanted to show him how powerful he had become after being "abandoned" by Jorg the day he died, right before offering to join him.
Chella
Kai
Others
Fexler Brews
- Mr. Exposition: He's the largest source of knowledge regarding the builders within the story. Lampshaded by Jorg, who wondered if he simply likes the sound of his own voice.
Qalasadi
A mathemagician initially in the service of Jorg's grandfather and uncle, then the caliph Ibn Fayed, but ultimately on his own side.
- Consummate Professional: Despite his true nature and ambition he apparently still did an excellent job for many years as Morrow's steward, with no one ever complaining about him neglecting duty or shorting anyone of their dues which implies he's either this trope or an evil pragmatist.
- Treacherous Advisor: He serves Morrow for enough years to make himself appear loyal before revealing his nature as a Manipulative Bastard
Michael
Another data ghost made from the memory of the Builders.
- Kill All Humans: Michael is a part of the faction who believes the only way to fix their almost broken reality is by killing all humans.
