Characters / The Victors Project: Career Districts

The Victors Project Character Index
Career Districts | Districts 3–8 | Districts 9–12 and The Capitol | Fallen Tributes and District Citizens

"I'm a Victor. Killing people is all I'll ever be remembered for. For being a murderer."

— Luxe St. James

District 1

"My district's industry is beauty. Men and women are not exempt from this."

—Luster Lancaster

Districtwide Tropes

• Academy of Evil: Gleam establishes the District Academy for Excellence in Youth Development (DAEYD), the first official school to train Career tributes. But it is Luster who makes this academy truly evil by forcing District 1 children to join the DAEYD if they pass certain beauty and intelligence requirements, and then turning them either into Sex Slaves, sociopathic killers, or both. The trainers also encourage Klingon Promotions as long as you don't get caught.
• Always Second Best: Though known for being the luxury district and producing beautiful people and products, District 1 struggles to produce as many Victors as District 2 (particularly after Boudicca takes over the Institute) or garner the respect District 2 does.
• The Beautiful Elite: Frequently described as the nation's most beautiful people and the wealthiest among the districts.
• Beauty Is Bad: How they're viewed by the other districts, and even many in District 1 come to see District 1 this way.
  Evelyn: (inner monlogue) In District 1, they are cruel. They are cruel as only people who have grown up without want are cruel."
• The Big Race: The district's method of naming tributes to represent them in the Hunger Games. The top five DAEYD students from each gender with the most prestige (points) are selected to take part in a race to the reaping stage. The first person (or first two people during the 50th Hunger Games) of each gender to touch the reaping bowl is named their district's tribute for the Hunger Games.
• Blue Blood: The Great Houses, which are the closest example to this in the Districts outside of the Capitol.
• City of Gold: The wealthiest and most luxurious district.
• Crapsaccharine World: Luxe sets Nolan straight about life in District 1.
  Luxe: In One, pregnant women hope for birth defects. They whisper in the dark, wishing for their children to be born ugly so that they won't be taken away. Some of them drink and smoke, hoping that will damage the unborn just enough for it to escape the analysis in eight years. For some it works. For others, it doesn't. Our women go blind at fifty from a lifetime of setting tiny gems in a dark room. Our men are left to fend for themselves when they lose a finger to the graphite compressors and aren't fit for work. The rich and well-off live in perpetual terror that a rival will choose to put a hit on one of their children in a fit of revenge or pettiness. And when the Capitol takes our girls and our boys, whether to the Games or to the brothels or the DAEYD, they never, ever, ever come back.
• Defector from Decadence: St. James House and later Boleyn House go from being very loyal to the Capitol during the Dark Days Rebellion to, under Luxe and Jade's leadership, becoming the major organizers of the District 1 rebels by the time of the Mockingjay Rebellion.
• Designer Babies: Prior to the Dark Days Rebellion, the Capitol gave District 1 the genetic technology to design their babies at conception. This is why so many from District 1 have gold and silver hair "with eyes of blue and green and purple". After the rebellion, the Capitol took away this technology but the genetic effects remain.
• Driven to Suicide/Suicide by Cop: Many District 1 tributes allow themselves to die or get killed in the arena without it looking like suicide, so they don't have to face a life of sexual slavery and their families won't face repercussions.
  Three generations of their girls and boys finding ways to commit suicide while maintaining deniability on live television, so they didn't have to face after.
• Everyone Loves Blondes: A majority of District 1 has blond hair, to the point that in Ermine's combat training class at the DAEYD, the narration notes that the class consists of "[f]our-hundred golden-haired boys and girls", and Woof bet with Cora on whether the District 1 tributes of the 57th Games would be two blonds. Luster himself states that it is extremely rare to find a District 1 citizen with "dark features". It's noted in the text that this is likely a result of Designer Babies combined with the District's pre-existing beauty standards at the time.
  • Nevertheless, there are a few known exceptions to the "District 1 = blond" rule/stereotype: Zinfandel, the male tribute for the 57th Games, and Song Nuo (whose paternal family is from the Capitol) and her son Tybalt.
• Fight Unscene: Of the thirteen District 1 Victors, the only three whose chapters show a significant part of their Games are Platinum, Gloss, and Song. Silk, Luster, and Jade's Games are discussed but not given major focus, while the Games of the remaining seven Victors — Luxe, Gleam, Wonder, Ermine, Brilliance, Crystal, and Cashmere — are not shown at all and only briefly touched upon.
• Full-Circle Revolution:
  • Positive example: District 1 Rebel Leaders are betrayed and imprisoned by the invading District 13 forces, but after Katniss assassinates Coin, they are set free.
  • Centuries earlier, the founders of the Great Houses were the leaders of a Rebellion who overthrew the Sea Kings (inbred white supremacists who wanted to go to war with the technologically superior Capitol). They then collaborated with the Capitol (although it's vague how tyrannical they were towards their own district) before gradually getting worse with the rise of Luster Lancaster's regime.
• Gambit Pileup: There ultimately turn out to be about a dozen factions with rebellious inclinations or goals in the district, only one of which is in contact with the nation-wide rebellion and has a specific, long-term plan about how to conduct a revolt, while the others just want blood. This causes a lot of chaos and unnecessary death once the revolts start.
• Master Race: District 1 was founded by white supremacists who migrated from the former American South and who engaged in racial extermination in their trek across the American continent and in former San Francisco where they settled. Luster notes in recounting this that this created genetic problems for District 1 until they were conquered by the Capitol and began to mix with those from other districts.
• The Quisling: The Great Houses originally come from the lower classes who sided with the Capitolians against the inbred Sea Kings, who attacked the Capitolian envoys when they made First Contact. When the Capitol returns with military force, the lower classes revolt, overthrow the Sea Kings, and submit to the Capitol in exchange for their technological innovations.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Those long oppressed in District 1 exact their revenge during the Mockingjay Revolution against those who sided with the Capitol, especially those associated with Luster and the DAEYD.
  They have no plans or leaders, just one goal. Blood. They march through the streets, smashing windows, burning shops, dragging collaborators into the streets with their families and shooting them as they beg for their lives. … The negligible Peacekeeper force in One is torn apart, literally. White-clad arms and feet and heads lie on the cobbled streets for days.
• Rock Theme Naming/Wealth's in a Name: Many District 1 citizens are named after jewels and (semi-)precious stones, with known examples including Opal, Gemma (Luxe's late ex-girlfriend), Ruby (5th Games), Diamond^*Lancaster, one of Luster's parents, Jet (43rd Games), Topaz, Jade, Turq^*uoise (50th Games), Alabaster (52nd Games), Copper (54th Games), Tourmaline (60th Games), Crystal, Citrine (62nd Games), and Sapphire (67th Games).
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: The Great Houses train for the Games along with everyone else (sometimes willingly, sometimes not), and those from the Great Houses disaffected with Luster similarly plot against Luster and the Capitol and join those who lynch and pillage during the rebellion.
• San Francisco: District 1 was built on its Urban Ruins.
• Sex Slave: The fate of many of District 1's citizens and all of its Victors once Luster takes over the DAEYD and the district. Everything about District 1 centers around this from there on afterwards.
  Antigone: (to Dido) It is unwise to refer to the District 1 tributes as party-favors-in-training. There's a reason you're not aware of its full implications, but trust me, they will not take it well[.]
• So Beautiful, It's a Curse: After Luster takes control of District 1, the most beautiful citizens are forcibly taken to the DAEYD as teenagers and are forced to train to become tributes or high-priced escorts. Luxe claims that District 1 pregnant mothers wish for birth defects and smoke and drink in order to increase the odds, all so that they can keep and protect their children.
• Technicolor Eyes: Some District 1 citizens have purple eyes courtesy of genetic modification in either themselves or as of the Hunger Games-era generations, their ancestors.

Luxe St. James (2nd Games Victor)

• Always a Child to Parent: His mother insists that becoming a Victor has not fundamentally changed Luxe, continually telling herself after his Games, "He's a good boy."
• Arc Words: His mother tells him after his Games, "Remember, there are strawberries" as a way of coaxing him to snap out of his funk and come home. He repeats these words to several Victors over the years as a way of telling them there will be life after the Games, and these words are engraved on his tombstone.
• Armor-Piercing Response: When Nolan tells Plat that the District 1 Victors don't know how hard life is in District 9, Luxe cuts him off and says, "Then tell us. You say we don't know about Nine, Nolan? That's fair. Then tell us." Nolan is taken aback but then describes District 9's terrible conditions. Luxe responds with sympathy but then explains the hardships of District 1.
• Artist Disillusionment: In-Universe. Throws most of his old sketches into the river when his mother gives him to them to try and break his depression, but he eventually starts drawing again, as this become his "hatch".
• Beneath the Mask: Maintains a mask of contentment in old age (one Mags compliments him on) while contributing to La Résistance and doing what he can for the victims of the Capitol, even after Mags tells him that they can't expect the Capitol fall in their lifetimes.
• Berserk Button: Being called a Career, which evokes Luxe's only display of anger during his talk with Nolan.
  Luxe: You're too young to remember, but you should have known that my name came out of a reaping bowl, same as Plat's, same as yours. Don't act like either of us chose this life. So don't you ever call me Career, boy. Do you understand?
• Blood-Splattered Warrior: All his mother watches of his Games is the end when the trumpet plays, and she sees "a boy, standing on a rock, his hands and face and chest covered in blood, a gore-splattered rock in his hand."
• Blue Blood: Member of the St. James family, one of the Great Houses of District 1.
• Cartwright Curse: His girlfriend was an Innocent Bystander killed in the crossfire of one of the last battles in District 1 during the Rebellion. He later falls for Ruby, one of his first tributes, who doesn't make it back home.
• Children Forced to Kill: Sixteen when he enters his Games.
• Fight Unscene: His chapter takes place after his Games, and because he is ashamed of his actions, he says little about it.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: His older brother was an officer in District 1's volunteer militia, while Luxe was an artist busy with romancing a girl from the Wrong Side of the Tracks. When he is reaped, no one, not even his family, expects him to come back.
• Friend to All Living Things: While discussing plans for La Résistance with Mags in the Silvertrees' gardens, several butterflies come to rest on him. Plat has to try hard to stop from laughing.invoked
• I Did What I Had to Do: His mother tries to convince him of this — that he had to kill in the arena to survive. Luxe refuses to see it that way.
• Kill Tally: Two tributes — the District 10 girl and District 7 boy.
• Must Make Amends: His "secret" is that he sends money to the families of the two tributes he killed from Districts 7 and 10.
• No Sympathy for Grudgeholders: Zig-zagged in his confrontation with Nolan. Luxe is very sympathetic to hardships Nolan describes about District 9, but he also makes it clear that District 1 has its own struggles (see Crapsaccharine World above), and that he has no patience for Nolan's hatred of the inner districts or his ignorant assumptions about him or Plat.
• Only Sane Man: Seaward describes him this way, noting that he is the only Victor of the "Old Boy's Club" whose "hatch" is not some type of bad habit. Instead, he just shuts himself up and paints.
• Renowned Selective Mentor: Consciously distances himself from training potential tributes at the DAEYD, but takes a particular interest in Silk after seeing her excel at combat courses but fail in etiquette and strategy classes.
• La Résistance:
  • Recruited by Mags to join the wider resistance to the Capitol, though he already had a bank account set up to finance several Capitol "malcontents".
  • Sometime after the Second Quarter Quell, he and Platinum recruit Jade, which helps bring over much if not all of Boleyn House, without Luster or Snow being the wiser.
• Retired Badass: Though over sixty and retired, Luxe still can intimidate Nolan, a Victor nearly forty years his junior, with a harsh word and a glare.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Defied. When he was reaped, his parents (prominent loyalists) try to get him a reprieve, but the Capitol refuses.
• Teacher/Student Romance: Has an affair with Ruby, his mentee during the 5th Games. She is ultimately killed by Platinum, his other mentee that year and the ultimate Victor.
• Team Dad: To the three Victors he mentored — Plat, Gleam and Silk — and Wonder and Jade after they become Victors. Luster's takeover of the DAEYD, however, strains his relationships with Silk and Gleam when they continue to work there due to them Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life.
• These Hands Have Killed: Sees himself as a murderer, despite his mother's protestations.
• Think of the Children!: Joins La Résistance to protect future children from the Games.
• Uptown Guy: His mother muses that his first girlfriend wasn't from "a family of good standing".
• Vitriolic Best Buds: With Plat.
• Vote Early, Vote Often: Inverted then subverted. His name was not supposed to be in the reaping bowl, but it was accidentally placed in, making his selection as tribute that much more unlikely.

Platinum Wesley (5th Games Victor)

• The Alcoholic: His hatch for dealing with the PTSD around the time of Gleam's victory is alcohol. Unlike Haymitch, Chaff, and Matty, he never shows any signs of it, making it unclear if he's a better Functional Addict than they are or if he just gave it up after a decade or so.
• I Am Not Left-Handed/Obfuscating Stupidity: Hides his athletic abilities prior to the Games and portrays himself as a "complete idiot", thus surprising his fellow tributes once the Games begin, including his district partner.
• Innocently Insensitive: While arguing with Luxe about which one of them played a bigger role in Gleam's victory, he brings up how he got Gleam his knives, causing Gleam to have a Heroic BSoD as this brings up memories of his Games and the tributes he had to kill.
• Kill Tally: Four tributes — the District 4 boy, District 7 girl, District 1 girl (Ruby), and District 3 boy.
• Orphan's Ordeal: Grew up in a group Community Home after his parents were killed in a rebel terrorist attack during the Dark Days rebellion.
• La Résistance: Recruited by Mags to join, though he was already working with Luxe to finance several Capitol "malcontents".
• The Snark Knight: Whether silent or speaking, his only mode is Sarcasm Mode.
  Mags: Wonder is dead, isn't he?
  Plat: Well, unless he figured out a way to live without four liters of blood he let leak out his wrists, I suspect he is.
  Nolan: No respect for even your own dead?
  Plat: After a few decades in One, you don't have much respect for anything. Except for our dearly beloved Capitol, of course.
  • It's finally subverted when Mags begins to convince him that there is a real chance to overthrow the Capitol.
• These Hands Have Killed: Has a momentary Heroic BSoD after his first kill.
• Those Two Guys: Gradually develops into this with Luxe.
• A Threesome Is Hot: Has one with a boy and girl at Gleam's Victory party at Samson's.
• Tragic Bromance: His "secret" is that he refuses cancer treatment after Luxe dies, so he can be Together in Death with his Best Friend.
• The Unfavorite: Sees himself as this compared to Ruby, his district partner.
• Vitriolic Best Buds: His mentor Luxe originally favored Ruby over him, but after he kills Ruby and wins the Games, he and Luxe form a relationship that Mags describes as "the most passive-aggressive friendship in the history of the nation."

Gleam Cobble (9th Games Victor)

• Combat Parkour: His father is a famous acrobat and his mother a knife thrower, and the skills his parents taught him help him win his Games. When Ahenobarbus learns this, he bullies Gleam into having a knife-throwing competition, with an Avox as an unwilling Lovely Assistant.
• Descent into Addiction: Subverted. The end of his chapter suggests that Gleam will become a morphling addict, but then this never comes up again.
• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life:
  • Continues doing what he can at the DAEYD after Luster takes it away from him, even after he's largely become a joke in the eyes of the district.
  • His "secret" is that he maintained hope that his family's old circus would be reopened.
• Fight Unscene: His chapter focuses exclusively on the after-party following his Victory tour, and he is still largely in shock.
• I Have No Son!: Has a falling out with his parents after his Games for unstated reasons.
• Kill Tally: Only one tribute is mentioned — the District 2 boy (Marble). Ahenobarbus does say Gleam spends much of his Games "up in the trees, swinging from branches, doing flips, avoiding everyone else", so it's possible Marble is his only kill, as it's the final one of the 9th Games.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Built the DAEYD with good intentions, hoping to prepare more ordinary kids for the Games and training them in various non sex-trade related jobs. Then Luster came along and took it over.
• Obfuscating Senility: Spends most of his conversation with Inspector Boundaire, the detective investigating Crystal's suicide, talking about the price of wine and then seems to think that the man is a tribute and goes off on a lecture about how to make a shelter out of a snowbank. However, as Inspector Boundaire leaves Gleam's house, he notes Gleam's eyes are "hard and quick", leading the detective to wonder if he's being played.
• Obsolete Mentor: Luster supplants him as head of DAEYD, which greatly increases the quality of tribute recruitment and training, but also turns the school into a full-blown Academy of Evil.
• Post-Stress Overeating: Eats a lot as his "hatch" or coping mechanism immediately following his Games.
• Properly Paranoid: Starts the DAEYD out of fears that soon Ahenobarbus would start sending in two trained tributes a year and ensure that none from District 1 would survive. Not only is he correct about Ahenobarbus amping up his training efforts, but Boudicca's takeover a few years later made the District 2 tributes even more organized and formidable.
• The Revolution Will Not Be Civilized: Killed during the Mockingjay Revolution by District 1 rebels, who find him hiding under a desk inside the DAEYD, chain him to a pillar, and then burn the Academy of Evil down.

Silk Seville (14th Games Victor)

• Action Girl: So aggressive during her training that she even injured her fight instructors.
• Beneath the Mask: During her Victory interview, she looks calm, beautiful, and confident. Only Luxe knows that has been tormented by nightmares and nearly pulls all her hair out.
• Death Mountain: Her arena is built on massive mountain with many different chambers and underground rivers.
• Do Not Go Gentle: Among the Victors who fight off the Peacekeepers at the Control Center. She picks up a rapier, the same weapon she taught many of her mentees to fight with.
  Silk: I've been asleep too long.
• Kill Tally: The exact number is unstated, but she kills two during the initial bloodbath and the remaining members of her alliance once it falls apart. And since the alliance seems to be a proto-example of the Career pack, she likely hunted and killed other tributes with them.
• The Leader: Of her tribute alliance: both District 2 tributes, the District 4 girl, and the District 10 boy. When the alliance collapses, she lets them fight each other and then finishes off the weakened survivors.
• Meditation Powerup: Luxe teaches her this, which allows her to develop the personal discipline to excel socially in the tribute interviews and during the Games.
• "Not So Different" Remark: A silent one. She gives Ermine a look at the latter's reaping and "a bolt of understanding passes between [them]", suggesting she thinks this of Ermine, despite their previously contentious relationship.
• Only Sane Woman: Of her alliance, as she was described to be "the voice of reason among a group of hotheads".
• Orphan's Ordeal: Her family rebelled against the Capitol during the Dark Days and was largely wiped out afterwards. Silk grew up in a Community Home until she comes to the DAEYD for training.
• Professional Gambler: Her "secret" is that she became very wealthy betting on the Games when she did not serve as a mentor.
• Rhetorical Question Blunder: During Ermine's training, shortly before the 43rd Hunger Games.
  Silk: What is it about social classes that bring out the worst in you, Ms. Butler?
  Ermine: Incompetent teaching methods?
• Shell-Shocked Victor: Following her Games, she experiences horrific nightmares and nearly pulls out all her hair out.
• Sins of the Father: Subverted. Despite being from the rebellious Seville House, which was largely wiped out in the Dark Days Rebellion, Silk is allowed to compete in and win the Hunger Games.
• Ur-Example: The first Career tribute from District 1, having been trained for years and then volunteering for the Games.
• Used to Be a Tomboy: As of the time surrounding the 43rd Games, Silk is the feminine teacher for Etiquette and Social Skills at the DAEYD. However, when she attended the Academy in her youth, she hated those classes, and one of the only classes she took at the time of her graduation was martial arts.

Luster Lancaster (30th Games Victor)

• 0% Approval Rating/Hate Sink: By far and away the most loathed Victor in the country. Even the Victors of his own district, many of which he mentored, despise him. Between hijacking the DAEYD and using it to train the District's children into being tributes for the Games and Sex Slaves for the Capitol (and in the case of Victors, both) and forcing said children into joining the DAEYD against their wishes, there is no end to Luster's crimes. He also gives Snow the idea of starting the Victor prostitution ring. Despite this being unintentional, Luster still partakes in the ring, sleeping with Cecelia, Finnick, Gloss and several female Victors against their will. His actions single-handedly made District 1 another hotbed for rebellion simply because the citizens wanted him gone that badly.
• Acquired Poison Immunity: Follows President Snow's example by doing this, which saves him from Wonder's secret attempts to kill him.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: A member of the Lancaster family, one of the Great Houses of District 1.
• Biopic: An opera is made about him, titled Luster the Legend.
• Body Double: Wisely employs one, who ends us getting thrown into a graphite compressor by the District 1 rebels.
• Category Traitor: Pays for the company of both Cecelia and Finnick, despite the understood rule that Victors don't do that to each other.
• Depraved Bisexual: Casually mentions that he had sex with Finnick along with various female Victors that the Capitol prostituted, and is later revealed to have done the same to Gloss.
• Dragon Ascendant: Takes over as leader of the "New Capitol Forces" after Coriolanus Snow's death.
• Faux Affably Evil: Occasionally capable of seeming courteous, caring and almost humble, but only to people outside of District 1 who lack the context to understand what kind of a man he is.
• The Fighting Narcissist: His extreme arrogance is his defining trait, but he also kills both District 2 tributes single-handedly, so he can at least back up his arrogance.
• Genius Bruiser: Cunning and a skilled warrior.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: Pretends to be uncomfortable with swords during his training and purposely scores a 9 in order to seem respectable but non-threatening. This allows him to take his Career allies completely by surprise when their alliance ultimately collapses.
• I Own This Town: Following his Games, Luster essentially becomes the dictator of District 1, so much so that Snow has to occasionally remind him who the true dictator is.
  Luster: It was the perfect system. And I, the last Sea King, ruled it all from the Victor's Village. Everyone, from Gloss and Cashmere and Jade down to the lowest wretch in the lower city, is a piece in this perfect, beautiful machine.
• Inconsistent Coloring: His chapter has him describe his eyes to be deep blue, but in a video of him featured in the rescue mission for Katniss, his eyes are deep green.
• Jerk with a Heart of Jerk: Expresses fury at Ermine after she kills two of his best students and disfigures another, but his face visibly softens for a moment as he realizes that she did it to avenge a murdered friend. And then, he casually refers to the dead girls as lost investments, and threatens to kill Ermine and Esther's families unless Ermine competes in and wins the next Hunger Games.
• Kill Tally: Three tributes at least — the District 1 girl, the District 2 boy, and the District 2 girl once the Career pack turns on each other. Prior to this, he kills an unspecified number of tributes.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Excluded from the gathering where Ahenobarbus reveals the death of President Lucius and convinces the others to back Coriolanus Snow instead of Internal Reformist Julianna Cardew. Given that Luster was already a supporter of Snow, it probably doesn't matter much anyway.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Recognizes that having the Capitol openly move against Katniss and Peeta would incite a rebellion, so he instead plans to have them killed this way. Fortunately for the rebels, President Snow never asks Luster's opinion before rigging the Third Quarter Quell.
• Mama's Boy: Heavily doted upon by his mother growing up.
• Motive Decay: Luster begins training for the Games to bring glory and status to his family and district (according to his own journal, anyway). However, from the moment he becomes a victor, his family is never mentioned again and he delights in oppressing the district as an absolute dictator and Card-Carrying Villain.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Before his Games, District 1 was almost entirely loyalist, and wanted to participate in the Games and placate the Capitol. After 45 years of his tyranny, nearly the entire District is ready to take up arms once the rebellion breaks out.
  • Also, his brilliant plan to prostitute out the Victors turned even more of them against the Capitol, while giving them access to insane amounts of damaging information they got from their johns, which helps bring about the Capitol's downfall.
• Primal Fear: His "secret" is that he is afraid of the dark and has to sleep with a candle on his nightstand.
• Proud Beauty: According to his own description, "With my golden hair, deep-blue eyes and perfectly symmetrical features, I was exceptionally beautiful even for a child of 1."
• Red Baron: Is infamously known as "the Victor" among DAEYD cadets.
• Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: Coin's Kangaroo Court prosecutor announced that Luster had been dumped into a graphite compressor. This is proven false when Luster is revealed as Katniss's kidnapper.
• Smug Snake: Very impressed with his own villainy.
  Ermine: You are an evil bastard.
  Luster: You know, Coriolanus Snow told me the exact same thing once. I consider it the highest compliment I've received.
• The Sociopath: Scorns the idea of needing a therapist after his Games, as he had no problem killing all these people.
  • As of the 65th Hunger Games, Brutus considers Luster the only Victor to have unambiguously enjoyed killing in the arena, as opposed to just faking it for the cameras (although he's also not so sure about Brilliance and Halibut).
• Superior Successor: Greatly improves the recruitment and training of the DAEYD once he gains ownership over it.
• Training from Hell: Averted. His training, while difficult, is far more restrained than anything he subjects the DAEYD students to, aside for a brief period where he had his sisters shout him interview questions and dump buckets of water on him whenever he slipped up.
• Villain with Good Publicity: Greatly respected in the Capitol (at least before the war). Utterly averted everywhere else, where his name is practically a curse word, although his own district has to pretend (and some of the more reptilian members of the Great Houses don't have to pretend).
• Visionary Villain: Takes over the DAEYD and turns it into a true Academy of Evil, forcing people of highest beauty and racial stock to join the DAEYD. Also develops the idea of "Victors' duties", in which Victors became the sexual property of the Capitol.
• White Shirt of Death: When June Everdeen shoots him, the blood from the wound forms a "red flower blossom over his white suit".

Wonder Spicer (38th Games Victor)

• Assassination Attempt: His "secret" is he tries several times to poison Luster, but Luster has Acquired Poison Immunity.
• Bath Suicide: Slits his wrists and arms open in a bathtub to escape his life of sexual slavery. In retaliation, either Luster or Snow has his entire family killed, except his sister, who Luxe is able to smuggle out of District 1.
• Born Unlucky: Aside from winning the Games (which turns out to be no prize itself), he just can't catch a break.
• Break the Cutie: A seemingly nice guy who is ground to pieces by Luster and commits suicide within a decade of winning his Games.
• Chekhov's Classroom: To get away from his annoying Career allies during training, Wonder decides to go over to the nutritionist station, where he learns which plants are edible and contain extra supplies of water. This ends up saving his life in the Thirsty Desert-themed arena.
• Descent into Addiction: Becomes a drug addict due to his partner Scipio being murdered and Luster forcing him to perform Victor's duties.
• Drowning My Sorrows: Has a lot to drink at his Victory banquet due to nerves. This serves as a Start of Darkness for his Descent into Addiction.
• Guile Hero: Mostly an Informed Attribute, but he apparently tricks his district partner into wandering into a mutt den.
• Incompatible Orientation: Jade's father sends her sister Jasmine to try and seduce Wonder, who is gay (and also has an appointment that gives him an excuse to turn her down).
• Innocence Lost: He was happy helping out at his parents' sweet shop, until he turned 11 and DAEYD recruiters showed up to measure his facial symmetry and give him an intelligence test. They then dragged him off to the Academy for "seven years of hell".
• Intergenerational Friendship: Luxe and Platinum try to make things easier for him and convince him that life is worth living (unsuccessfully), with Ermine observing Wonder clinging to Luxe's hand like a child when she volunteers.
• Kill Tally: The only one mentioned is the District 5 boy. He also tricks his district partner, Aura, into going into a mutt den.
• Screw This, I'm Outta Here: The first Victor after Orchus to try this. It ends badly.
• Sex Slave: The first District 1 Victor to have to perform the "Victor's responsibilities" after Luster takes over the DAEYD.
• Socially Awkward Hero: Feels miserable and out of place among the Blue Bloods of District 1.
• Star-Crossed Lovers: With Scipio, another graduate of the DAEYD. They try to run away together after Wonder's victory, but Luster easily catches them, drugs Wonder to make him compliant, and has Scipio dismembered.

Ermine Butler (43rd Games Victor)

• Ambiguously Gay: Her friendship with Esther can be interpreted to have homoerotic undertones. One line describes her as mostly watching Esther while Esther was watching some boys exercise, and at the end of her chapter, she seemingly addresses Esther as "my love" in her thoughts.
• Big "NO!": Gives several when she sees Esther hanged.
• Carry a Big Stick:
  The mace is my favorite. It feels right in my hands, heavy and beautiful, far from the delicate fragility expected from District 1. It suits me.
• Evil Virtues: Luster compliments her for being clever and demonstrating initiative, skill, and patience in executing her revenge against the Girl Posse.
• Fight Unscene: Her chapter takes place before her Games, and her Games are only referred to in passing in the next chapter about Maeve.
• Handicap Match: Challenges the entire Girl Posse during combat training and kills two of them and disfigures the other.
• Heroic BSoD:
  • Has one after seeing Esther's hanging body, so much so that she has to be medicated and restrained. Only snaps out of it after she meets Jade, who slaps her and offers to help her get revenge.
  • She also has one during the 45th Games as Chaff is about to kill her tribute, who reminds her of Esther. She breaks down screaming, begging to be told what to do.
• His Name Really Is "Barkeep": Her surname is Butler, and she works in a servant role at the DAEYD.
• Hollywood Homely: In-Universe, Ermine is viewed this way in District 1.
  Ermine: I'm only barely attractive enough to make it into the DAEYD. Anywhere else in Panem I suppose I'd be gorgeous but no one blinks twice at a pretty face in 1.
• Hope Spot: During the 45th Hunger Games, she successfully warns her tribute to run away from an approaching fire by sending running shoes as a sponsor gift, only for the girl and her ally to blunder into Chaff's hideout and be killed by him.
• Hot-Blooded: Spirited and headstrong, to the point that she struggles in 'social graces' at the DAEYD.
• Human Notepad: Gets a tattoo on her back "for each person she let die, or helped along the way."
• I Will Punish Your Friend for Your Failure: Ermine doesn't know her own family, so Luster threatens to kill Esther's family if Ermine doesn't volunteer for and win the Hunger Games.
• Ice Crystals: Her arena includes several crystal caves.
• Laughing Mad: Does this as she is being dragged away after killing Topaz and Cinnamon and is still laughing even when she sits down with Luster.
• Kill Tally: Her Games aren't shown, and the only kill we learn about is the District 1 boy (Jet). He was Topaz's boyfriend and cradles Topaz as she's dying. Ermine kills him at the bloodbath, knowing that an alliance with him is out of the question.
• Plot Allergy: Topaz throws peppercorn at her right before her big dance number, which will determine her job placement. The peppercorn causes her face to burn and swell up, and she goes into a major sneezing fit, completely ruining her routine.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Ermine is headstrong, impatient, disrespectful, and prefers the mace. Esther is calm, courteous, focused, and prefers the sword. And they are the closest of friends.
• Reign of Terror: Executed by firing squad by the District 13 Kangaroo Court presided over by President Coin.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Kills the Girl Posse for killing Esther.
• Sweet Tooth: Her "secret" is that she is addicted to caramel-covered chocolate cakes.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: The abrasive, fiery tomboy to Esther's delicate Girly Girl who excels in 'social graces'.
• Wrong Side of the Tracks: Comes from the poor part of District 1 and has to work as a servant for the wealthier tributes to pay for her training at the DAEYD.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: After she kills the Girl Posse (and with Esther already dead), there are no viable candidates for female tribute. Luster therefore forces Ermine to take their place, especially in light of her clear willingness and ability to kill multiple people at once.

Brilliance Rosencratz (47th Games Victor)

• Beautiful Singing Voice: Sings an operetta for the Victors talent show "that would have been cheered at the Lucius Memorial Opera".
• Blue Blood: From one of the Great Houses.
• Eye Scream: His eyes are ripped out by crow mutts. After the Games, Capitol technology is used to grow him a new pair of eyes from his DNA.
• Fight Unscene: His Games are not shown and are only referenced in the clandestine conversation between Luxe, Plat, Mags, and Nolan, in which Mags recruits Luxe and Plat to join La Résistance.
• Garden of Evil: His arena.
• I Will Punish Your Friend for Your Failure: He and the District 1 female tribute were particulary targeted during their Games as punishment for Wonder's suicide and Snow's overall annoyance at Luster's increasingly haughty ways. Brilliance nevertheless survives and proves to be an attractive, pliant Victor, putting Luster back in favor.
• Locked Out of the Loop: Unlike the other District 1 Victors Inspector Boundaire interviews, he never displays any hints of being aware of the upcoming Quell twist, implying that he was either this or a very good liar.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: Despite being terribly brutalized in the Games, he remains committed to the Capitol until he is executed by the District 13 Kangaroo Court.
  • Though his "secret" is that he once privately said some unflattering things about Snow's more extreme policies. So, there's that.
• Odd Friendship: Got along well with Crystal, although he claims that they weren't that similar of personalities. They watched the Games together, she'd bring him lasagna sometimes and he seems defensive at the idea that she had rebel sympathies.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: Won his games while blinded even though the Gamemakers were actively targeting him.
• Only Sane Man: The only District 1 Victor to treat Inspector Boundaire in a calm and genuinely sorrowful way when learning about Crystal's death.
• Reign of Terror: Killed by firing squad by a District 13 Kangaroo Court, presided over by President Coin. His executioners purposely shoot him in the stomach, so that he painfully bleeds out, as punishment for refusing to confess and show contrition for his crimes.

Jade Boleyn (49th Games Victor)

• Alliterative Family: Her older sister's name is Jasmine, and in a slightly more downplayed example, her father's name is Gemini.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Lampshaded at the start of her Kangaroo Court.
  Coin: Jade Boleyn, you are hereby accused of the following offenses. Corruption-
  Jade: Conspiracy, assault, murder, and high treason. I have a good memory, Madame President, or did I miss something? Public littering, perhaps?
  Coin: Contempt of court, if you interrupt me again, Boleyn.
• Backhanded Compliment: States that Katniss is "annoying, but I like her", although given Jade's reluctance to give out praise, the "compliment" probably meant more than the "backhanded" part of that.
• Berserk Button: She doesn't take it well when the prosecutor implies that she was a willing participant in the Victor's sex trade.
• Best Friend: With Brutus. Several chapters show the two joking together, mentoring together, and consoling each other. She is also the only non-District 2 Victor shown calling him "Teddy Bear", his Embarrassing Nickname.
• Blue Blood: A member of the Boleyn family, one of the Great Houses of District 1.
• Brainless Beauty: Subverted. Jade leaves Coin stunned when she demonstrates her intricate knowledge of judicial law.
  Jade: What's the matter? Pretty little Careers girls aren't supposed to know judicial law?
• Crowning Moment of Awesome: In-Universe. Her blind arrow shot against the District 11 boy through the mist is often ranked as one of the top ten Hunger Games moments.
• The Cynic: Unlike many of the other District 1 rebels, she is unsurprised by Coin's betrayal and didn't expect to survive the rebellion at all.
• Foolish Sibling, Responsible Sibling: From her father's perspective. She is defiant, leading her to be sent to the DAEYD, as opposed to her cowed older sister Jasmine, who complies with her father's orders to try and seduce Wonder.
• Friend-or-Idol Decision: To both Coin's and her own surprise, she surrenders rather than risking her friend Shilling being killed.
• Full-Name Ultimatum: Her father yells at her in her full name, "Jade Opulence Boleyn!" when she tells Wonder that she wished his district partner, Aura, had won the 38th Games.
• Get a Hold of Yourself, Man!: When Ermine starts having another Heroic BSoD when she realizes the Girl Posse killed Esther, Jade slaps her and then offers her help in getting revenge.
• Heroic Seductress: Cora describes her as the best of the Victor rebels at seducing secrets out of Capitolians, although that was before Finnick.
• I Hate Past Me: Defied. The District 13 prosecutor lists the sociopathic exploits of young Jade Boleyn, hoping that she will be ashamed. Instead, she is largely amused and impressed by her younger self. She does, though, mentally call herself "young, and beautiful and such a fool" as she watches herself race to volunteer for the 49th Hunger Games.
  Jade: Sorry. Lost in good memories. Please continue.
• Kill Tally: Eight tributes — two unnamed tributes at the bloodbath, the District 11 boy, District 4 boy, and District 2 girl (Flavia). It's likely the three other unnamed kills are the other members of the Career pack.
• Klingon Promotion: According to the Kangaroo Court prosecutor, Jade incapacitated her main rival at the DAEYD to become the tribute of the 49th Games.
• La Résistance: According to her testimony, Luxe and Plat recruit her right after the Second Quarter Quell.
• Laughing Mad: Gives this response when Inspector Boundaire comes to her house. It makes more sense after learning that this is right before the Third Quarter Quell announcement, and many of the Victors know what it will be.
• Little "No"/Big "NO!": Gives one and then the other when she discovers that Luster is still alive and is Katniss's kidnapper.
• Living Lie Detector: She can tell when Coin is outright lying during her trial, but is aware it would do her no good to call her out on it.
• Lovable Alpha Bitch: Arrogant, not that friendly even at rebel meetings, and with a murderous streak, but she does care about most of the other Victors and is a dedicated proponent of revolt and reform, telling herself that she'd sworn to never again let another person die when they didn't have to.
• Meaningful Name:
  • Both her given and middle names fit in with the District 1 Theme Naming based on their industry of luxury.
  • Her family name brings to mind Anne Boleyn, who was also an intelligent, Blue Blooded figure who was often seen as an unpopular scheming villain and seductress. Plus, jade is a shade of green, and Anne Boleyn is heavily associated with the color green in both surviving depictions of her and after-the-fact historical media.
• Minor Kidroduction: Jade first appears at the Victory party her father hosts for Wonder when she is seven years old. When she is rude to Wonder, her father threatens to send her to the DAEYD.
• The Mole: She is so renowned as District 1's star Victor that Jason Mellark is shocked to find out that she's a rebel, and she is never even considered as a tribute for the Quell instead of Cashmere or Crystal.^note Nor does Cashmere think of going to Jade about joining La Résistance. This comes back to bite her in the butt, though, during Coin's Reign of Terror, when she ends up on trial and has a hard time convincing the jury that she was a covert rebel, until Bovina arrives as a Surprise Witness.
• Neck Snap: Kills the District 2 girl by snapping her neck with her bow.
• Off to Boarding School: Sent to the DAEYD after daring a girl from Dustell House to do a difficult horse jump, which failed and left the girl paralyzed. Her grudge against Dustell House is why she helps Ermine get revenge against the Girl Posse led by Topaz Dustell.
• Ominous Fog: Her arena is covered in a mist that makes it hard for the tributes to see each other except when close up. Though see Jade's in-universe Crowning Moment of Awesome above.
• The Only One Allowed to Defeat You: Upon being told that Luster was killed by the District 1 rebels, she expresses silent bitterness that she didn't get to kill him, or at least get to watch. When Luster does turn out to be alive, she wounds him before he's finished off.
• Rescue Arc: Among the Victors who go on the rescue mission to save Katniss from Luster and the "Snowmen".
• Rules Lawyer: Has Panem's legal code memorized and uses its provisions to fire her designated lawyer (who wasn't contesting the charges) and plead not guilty.
• Serendipitous Survival: Coin is seconds away from ordering Jade executed when she's called away to a meeting with the known surviving Victors (to make her proposal of a final Hunger Games of Capitolians). She leaves to address them and then to oversee Snow's execution, but she is instead killed by Katniss. Jade and the other prisoners are released soon afterwards.
• The Snark Knight: The only Victor whose snark rivals Blight and Johanna.
• The Sociopath: Shows no remorse when the District 13 prosecutor brings up several terrible actions from her past:
  • Tricks a young Dustell girl into doing a horse trick too hard for her, causing her to become paralyzed from the waist down.
  • Helps Ermine kill the Girl Posse.
  • Somehow incapacitates her main rival to become the District 1 tribute for the 49th Games.
  • That being said, she does feel stabs of grief about learning she is the last surviving District 1 Victor and that Finnick was killed. She also abandons an attempt to kill Coin in order to save the life of a friend.
• Sole Survivor: She's the last remaining District 1 Victor by story's end.
• Sophisticated as Hell: Tutors Gloss and Cashmere in social maneuvering and image, or as she calls it, "How to be a bitch and make them love you for it".
• Tampering with Food and Drink: Her "secret" is that she poured purging elixir on the food and drink at her own Victor's party, including in the drink of her first patron for "Victor's duties".

Crystal Flute (61st Games Victor)

• Death by Irony: Slices her wrists very similarly to the way she filleted the District 5 girl. She may have even used the same knife.
  Inspector Boundaire: Symbolic or just what she had closest?
• Driven to Suicide: Kills herself after learning from Beetee that she will be reaped for the Third Quarter Quell.
• Hungry Jungle: According to Enobaria, Crystal's arena took place in "a stinking jungle swarming with bloodsucking insects and poisonous reptiles".
• Kill Tally: At least four tributes — three unnamed tributes at the bloodbath and the District 5 girl. She may have also killed more tributes after the Career pack dissolves, as implied in Bonds of Blood where Enobaria describes Crystal to be covered in the blood of her former allies at the end of her Hunger Games.
• Klingon Promotion: Her "secret" is that she sabotaged the harness of her nearest rival at the DAEYD during a rock-climbing exercise, who subsequently fell to her death. Crystal was rewarded by having her prestige go up by five ranks.
• La Résistance: Possibly. Her boyfriend apparently was, and Brilliance cautiously implies that she'd been invested in the saga of Katniss and Peeta during the 74th Hunger Games. However, Crystal was closest with the strongest loyalists in the Victors circle, especially Brilliance. But she also received a message from Beetee warning that she'd be reaped, but this may have been a courtesy he extended to all the Victors.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Her boyfriend, a young man from Dustell House, mysteriously dies after rumors that the two may be involved in seditious activity.
• Mayincatec: The motif of her arena. She fillets the District 5 girl on an altar at the top of a stone pyramid.
• Posthumous Character: Her chapter is largely about the investigation into her suicide, with her Games being described in Flashback by Investigator Boundaire, who was both a sponsor and john of hers.
• Punny Name: Lampshaded by Boundaire, who notes he was drinking from a crystal flute when he first meets her at her Victory party.
• Sex Slave: Her chapter puts particular emphasis on her Victor's duties, including with President Snow.
• Working-Class Hero: Crystal came from "relatively low birth" (as Luster describes her posthumously) in which she rose Up Through the Ranks at the DAEYD to become one of the five female tribute candidates^note District One's reaping process involves five of the top-ranking DAEYD students of each gender taking part in a foot race to the reaping bowl, and eventually both the District One female tribute and Victor of the 61st Games.
• Wrong Side of the Tracks: Comes from the lower classes of District 1 and has a relationship with a young man from Dustell House.

Gloss and Cashmere Delacroix (63rd and 64th Games Victors)

• The Ace: Gloss is this throughout his time at the DAEYD and in his Games, where he earns the moniker, "The Golden Hunter".
• Africa: Gloss's arena is a recreation of the Serengeti plains with similar wildlife. Gloss takes on the motif of a Great White Hunter.
• All of the Other Reindeer: Gloss is constantly picked on as a child for being from the poorest Great House. It's not said if Cashmere is treated as harshly, but given District 1's culture, it's likely.
• Appalachia: The arena setting for Cashmere's Games.
• Badass Boast: Cashmere makes one to Beetee about her extensive intelligence network.
  Cashmere: Give me some credit, Volts. I'm Cashmere Delacroix, I have connections that Mags would drool over and secrets that would make Odair's hair curl.
• Beneath Notice: The Delacroix family's poverty and Butt-Monkey status caused them to be ignored by the DAEYD for decades (Gloss and Cashmere's great-aunt was briefly a part of it, possibly under Gleam's tenure, but washed out), but they were deemed as too attractive by their parents, who decided that one of them might as well go and try to be a Victor.
• Beneath the Mask: When Cashmere cries to Beetee, "My brother is dead!", Beetee notes to himself that "something falls away and I know I'm seeing the real Cashmere."
• Big Brother Mentor: Subverted. Gloss is assigned to be Cashmere's mentor in her Games, but then he is called away to perform "Victor's duties", so Jade mainly mentors Cashmere during her Games.
• Blood Knight: Gloss cries when his Games end, because he never felt so free as he did in the arena.
• Brainless Beauty: Cashmere completely subverts this in her Battle of Wits with Beetee, who discovers Cashmere has great Hidden Depths. Moreover, her "secret" is that she has anonymous degrees in microbiology and chemistry from the University of Panem and was working on a degree in ancient history when she was reaped for the Third Quarter Quell.
• Brother–Sister Incest: Averted, though they do enjoy trolling people about it.
• Brother–Sister Team: They are extremely close since birth (being twins) and do everything together: joining the DAEYD, becoming tributes and Victors, drugging and torturing people to satisfy Gloss's sadism, being reaped for the Third Quarter Quell, and dying together. The only thing they don't enjoy doing together is performing their Victors' duties, which Gloss enjoys but Cashmere abhors.
• Cain and Abel: Narrowly averted. Luster almost sends them into the 63rd Games together, interested in the potential for a final sibling showdown, but Silk and the other trainers convince him that the twins would refuse to go that far, and that the benefit of sibling Victors would be stronger. Ultimately, Luster does get his wish when they are both reaped for the Third Quarter Quell, but the twins die before there could be such a showdown.
• Embarrassing Nickname: Blight nicknames them "Sparkle" and "Wool", which catches on among the tributes and even some in the Capitol. This enrages Spar—uh, Gloss so much so that Blight is his first target in the Cornucopia, but Cecelia stops him.
• Et Tu, Brute?: It's implied that Gloss (who'd earlier mentioned to Enobaria his suspicions that District 4 and some of the lower Districts were plotting something) figures out Cashmere's deal with the Rebels in the last moments of his life and dies hating her for it.
• Evil Laugh: Gloss gives one when the Quarter Quell is announced, because he will finally have the chance to get revenge on Evelyn for blackmailing him after discovering that he is the Midtown Mincer.
• Go Out with a Smile: Both their corpses appear to be smiling as they are taken out of the Third Quarter Quell arena.
• Half Identical Twin: Apparently, because when they are children, they pull a Fake Twin Gambit when Cashmere gets her hair cut very short.
• Heroic Sacrifice: By joining La Résistance, Cashmere agrees to do this during the Third Quarter Quell.
• Heroism Motive Speech: Cashmere gives one to Beetee, explaining that Gloss's psychopathic turn and her disgust at District 1's sexual enslavement have caused to want to help the Victor rebels in the arena.
  Cashmere: My brother is dead, they killed him. My parents when they sent us to that… that place. Luster. The DAEYD. The Gamemakers. Snow. They ruined the only person who ever loved me. They murdered my father. They buy and sell my district. Every year they send another pretty thing like me into the arena, and I have to smile and teach her to poise and laugh and kill even as I pray that the Twos murder her early. They have taken everything, and I will tear them down with my bare, bloody hands if I have to!
• Hidden Depths: Beetee is surprised to learn how intelligent and well-read Cashmere is, but is especially surprised by her willingness to sacrifice herself and her brother to help the rebel Victors get Katniss and Peeta out of the Third Quarter Quell arena.
• Hollywood Beauty Standards: The twins are said to be gorgeous even by the standards of District 1, which are already ridiculously high.
• "I Know You're in There Somewhere" Fight: Cashmere tells Beetee that she has tried this with Gloss, but by the time of the Third Quarter Quell she has resigned herself to Gloss having become the Tragic Monster created by the DAEYD and the Games.
• Impoverished Patrician: The Delacroix family is the poorest of the Great Houses and looked down upon by the others. This changes when the twins win their respective Games.
• Inevitable Mutual Betrayal: Gloss can tell the Career alliance plans to turn on him early, so he ditches them early. Seeing his district partner in the sky on Day 3 confirms his intuition.
• It Has Been an Honor: Cashmere gives Cecelia a little salute from her pedestal right before the Quell starts, in recognition of the comfort they provided each other over the years of Victor's duties.
• Jack the Ripoff: Gloss becomes infatuated with the thrill of bloodshed after his Games, so with the help of Cashmere he becomes "the Midtown Mincer." Cashmere drugs the victims and Gloss tortures them, though the victims never realize who their attackers are.
• Kill Tally:
  • Gloss:
    • For his original Games, only two tributes are specified — the District 5 boy and District 4 girl — but it's said he participates in the bloodbath and hunts others throughout his Games.
    • For the Quell, he kills at least two — Elena and Wiress. He likely also kills Evelyn.
  • Cashmere: Her Games are mentioned during Gloss's chapter, in which it's said she and the District 1 boy together kill two tributes — the District 10 pair. Beetee also references that she knifed her allies in the back, but he doesn't specify which or how many.
• Last Kiss: Cashmere gives Beetee one at the end of their meeting.
  Beetee: Why did you do that?
  Cashmere: Because I can. And I wanted to give the tabloids one more headline before I go out.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: They try hard to forget an ugly argument they once had about Victor duties, which ended with Cashmere calling her brother a whore and throwing a vase at his head after he said it was no big deal.
• Mercy Kill: Gloss spears the District 4 girl after she is mauled by a pack of hyenas.
• The Mole: Cashmere wants to be this for Beetee and the others during the Third Quarter Quell, so Beetee asks her to target the non-rebel Victors or make sure that The Pawns Go First, so that those critical for the escape make it to the end.
• Mr. Fanservice: Gloss goes shirtless during his Games.
• Murder Makes You Crazy: Gloss becomes infatuated with the thrill of bloodshed after his Games, so with the help of Cashmere he becomes "the Midtown Mincer."
• O.C. Stand-in: First introduced in Catching Fire as District 1's male and female tributes in the Third Quarter Quell.
• Oh, Crap!: Cashmere has a Heroic BSoD after being told that Crystal killed herself, which ensures that Cashmere will be reaped for the Third Quarter Quell.
• Pelts of the Barbarian: Gloss kills a leopard in his arena and wears its pelt throughout his Games.
• Resignations Not Accepted: Cashmere tries to drop out of the DAEYD after Gloss's victory, but Luster is hung up on the idea of sibling Victors and won't let her.
• Romance on the Set: In-Universe. Cashmere has sex with the District 2 boy during her Games as a likely setup for a Honey Trap.
• Serial Killer: Downplayed. Gloss serially tortures random people after Cashmere selects and drugs them, but Cashmere always makes sure to stop Gloss before he can finish them off. They then dump the victims outside of a hospital.
• Sex Slave: Cashmere is one of the most pronounced ones in the story, which leads to a case of The Dog Bites Back.
• So Beautiful, It's a Curse: Or rather so beautiful their parents realized they didn't have a prayer of keeping both of them out of the DAEYD.
• That Man Is Dead: Cashmere ultimately feels this way about Gloss, so much so that she asks Beetee to make sure Gloss is killed in the Third Quarter Quell before she is killed, because if they kill her first, "he'll die with me. He'll be the monster they made, only the monster. There will be nothing left to love." Beetee obliges, and Johanna kills Cashmere seconds after Katniss kills Gloss.
• This Cannot Be!: Cashmere reacts this way when she learns of Crystal's suicide, continually screaming, "It's not fair!" It makes more sense after learning that this is right before the Third Quarter Quell announcement, which many of the Victors already know about. Cashmere now knows she will be reaped for the Quell.
• Unproblematic Prostitution: Gloss has few qualms about being prostituted (except to Luster himself), reveling in the attention and the free sex. Cashmere averts this hard, coming to view it as a Fate Worse than Death.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: One of their first scenes in Gloss's chapter has Gloss being grounded for playing with street kids and Cashmere sneaking some food into his room.

Song Nuo (66th Games Victor)

• All of the Other Reindeer: Despite being as competent as her Career peers, Song is excluded from the Career pack, her "mentor" Ermine refuses to help her, and the other District One Victors (save for Cashmere) distance themselves from her. Justified because she won her district's reaping footrace without DAEYD ties, which irritates Luster since she's uncontrollable to him.
• Daddy's Girl: Though apparently a rather rebellious child, she is close with her father, who recognizes the depth of her love for Quintus and tearfully agrees that she could volunteer.
  Mr. Nuo: You've disobeyed me all your life, so what good would it do?
  Song: Tell me to come back. I'll obey that one, Daddy.
• Determinator: She and her ally spend three days pursuing Titus up a mountain, through a blizzard, with wounds on their legs, but they are unable to catch him. The Gamemakers have to create an avalanche to do it for them.
• Executive Meddling: In-Universe. As per canon, her victory partially came through Titus (who was mentioned in the novels, although Song herself wasn't) being killed by an avalanche that was sent by the Gamemakers to prevent a cannibalistic lunatic from ending up as the Victor.
• Generation Xerox:
  • Song's grandparents were from two different districts (the Capitol and District 3), fall in love, and her grandfather gives up his life as a Capitolian to live with his wife in District 1. Song falls in love with Quintus, a Peacekeeper from District 2, and risks giving up her life (literally) to get the money for his back surgery.
  • Song's mother trained to become a tribute at the DAEYD but failed to win the foot race for the 45th Games. Song independently trains to become a tribute and wins the foot race for the 66th Games.
• Happily Married: To Quintus, a Peacekeeper originally from District 2 who was injured serving in District 10. She is the only known District 1 Victor to get married and have children.
  • Though her "secret" is she enjoys "having threeways with her husband and pretty blonde girls from around the district, because while she knew she always had his heart, she wasn't opposed to letting him indulge his eyes once in a while."
• Hope Spot: The mob that lynches her pauses after they've put the noose around her neck, with several members recognizing that she was never part of the DAEYD or one of Luster's lackeys. But others feel that she should die for abetting Snow. As the argument goes back and forth without either side coming ahead, one frustrated rebel just kicks away the crate Song's standing on, breaking her neck.
• Kill Tally: Two tributes — the District 10 boy and District 10 girl. She also forces her ally, the District 9 girl, to either jump to a painless death or be speared. She jumps.
• Loophole Abuse: Song exploits the rule that the first person (of each gender) to touch the reaping bowl is named tribute, as it doesn't seem to mention DAEYD affiliation. The escort rationalizes her actions as "rules being rules" before introducing her to the crowd.
• Murder by Suicide: Gives her ally, the District 9 girl, the option of committing suicide by jumping from a cliff or being speared. Her ally chooses the former.
  Song: I was ready to kill her but she deserved a good death. One with … dignity.
• Only in It for the Money: Volunteers for the Games to make enough money to pay for the expensive surgery necessary to fix Quintus's back.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: While also Overshadowed by Controversy in-universe (see below) her anonymity also comes from Living Legends Finnick and Johanna winning in the years before and after her.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: In-universe. Her Games are most remembered for Titus, the District 6 boy who became a cannibal.
• Percussive Prevention: When the rebels break into her house, she immediately knocks Quintus out with the butt of her knife, so he will not risk his life trying to protect her.
• The Quisling: Becomes a spokesperson for President Snow in return for voiding Quintus' peacekeeper contract.
• Reign of Terror: Hanged by the District 1 mob that rose up against the Capitol and Luster's regime. Song does not resist the mob, in hopes that they will overlook her husband Quintus and son Tybalt. Quintus dies anyway, as he refuses to abandon her, but Tybalt survives and becomes an Abandoned War Child.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Connections!: Because she has Capitolian family ties, she avoids the typical District 1 Victor fate of serving as a Sex Slave.
• Together in Death: Tybalt, as an adult archaeologist, finds his parents' remains, with his father's arms wrapped around his mother.
• Tragic Keepsake: Tybalt is able to identify his parents' remains, because Song is still wearing the silver locket from the Institute that Quintus gave her the day she volunteered. Tybalt quietly pockets it while wiping away the sweat in his eyes.
• What Measure is a Non-Capitolian?: Snow orders journalists to stop interviewing her Capitol relatives, "lest Capitol citizens begin to comprehend that all tributes are real people with actual families."
• You Are Worth Hell:
  • Trained for and volunteered for the Games to get her boyfriend medical treatment.
  • Also applies to her grandfather, a Capitol citizen who voluntarily gave up his citizenship to live in the Districts with Song's grandmother after falling in love with her.

District 2

"Do you know why we train tributes, Granyte? For the glory of the nation. For our district's honor. ... Training men and women who are eager to serve the Capitol in any way, even by sacrificing their own lives on the altar of civilization, is part of that. Every Victor we bring home is a part of our eventual triumph."

— Boudicca

Districtwide Tropes

• Academy of Evil: Ahenobarbus first establishes a training center for future tributes composed of homeless teenagers he finds on the streets or in a Community Home. After Boudicca wins her Games, she destroys the old facilty and transforms the training center into the Peace and Training Institute, commonly just called "the Institute" but soon referred to by locals and eventually all Panem as "Murder High."
• Badass Family: The three cousins Honorius, Virtus and Justus were the toughest group in the Community Home, were the only ones Boudicca chose to train from Ahenobarbus's original recruits, were all chosen to be tributes, and all won their respective Games.
• Blood Knight: District 2 tributes live to fight.
• Broken Ace: Their Victors put on a good show of triumph and honor compared to most of the of the other districts (and it's not entirely a show), but Granyte isn't wrong when he calls them a "poster band for PTSD".
• Conditioned to Accept Horror: Deconstructed. Though the District 2 Victors are trained especially for this, they are still traumatized by the violence they see and do.
• Family of Choice: How the District 2 Victors see each other, with Boudicca—and Antigone to a lesser extent—as the Team Mom.
• New Era Speech: Boudicca's purge of the Pit effectively serves as one for District 2, but the only speech that is described is the one she gives to Honorius, Virtus, and Justus.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: In their best light, this is the mindset of District 2. Evelyn notes the respectful way she is treated here during her Victory tour, in comparison to the haughty and cruel way she is treated in District 1.
• Red Is Heroic/Red Is Violent: The uniform for Institute trainees is a red tunic. Only citizens of District 2 (and perhaps in the Capitol) see them as heroic, but everyone else sees them as violent.
  • Both of their leaders, Ahenobarbus and Boudicca, are also redheads.
• Shrine to the Fallen: The Institute cremates the bodies of the District 2 fallen tributes (assuming there is a body to cremate), and their names are "memorialized on the brass wall behind a dais in the Great Hall" of the Institute, in memory of their "sacrifice" for "a peaceful Panem".
• Training from Hell: All Institute students seeking to be selected as tribute must withstand the three major trials: the Trial of Strength (in which students are spread out across District 2 and must find their way back to the Institute without help), the Trial of Spirit (in which they are confronted by their most painful memories and nightmares), and the Trial of Blood (in which they must kill someone).
• Undying Loyalty: With the exception of some outlying villages such as Redfern, District 2 is the only district to remain loyal to the Capitol during both rebellions. The Institute's legacy does much to ensure District 2's loyalty through the Mockingjay Rebellion, as it prevented normal children from being reaped and allowed everyone in the district to take out as much tesserae as they want, limiting the amount of poverty in it. And since Boudicca wasn't a tyrannical dictator like Luster who forced unwilling children to join her training camp, that made District 2 even more amenable to her and the Capitol.

Ahenobarbus Romero (1st Games Victor)

• Berserker Rage: Triggered after killing Jon and Ryla Undersee.
  The world went red. The arena turned into a fog of blood and pain. Ahenobarbus roared and tore through the arena like a storm off the sea in District 4. Anything that moved he cut down, anything that fled he pursued until he was bathing in a river of blood and gore. He wasn't sure who he was killing anymore, if it was tributes or children or rebels or Peacekeepers or the President or his parents or Jon Undersee. All that mattered was that he killed. All that mattered was that he killed them all before he started feeling again.
• Children Forced to Kill: Eighteen when he enters the Games.
• Evil Redhead: His red beard becomes his signature.
• Get It Over With: Wins his Games in thirty-eight minutes.
• Kill Tally: Fifteen tributes (the most in a single Game) — the District 6 boy, District 1 girl, three female tributes, District 12 boy (Jon Undersee), District 5 girl (Ryla Undersee), seven more tributes, and District 8 boy.
• Machete Mayhem: His weapon in the Games.
• May–December Romance: His relationship with Cora, who is at least 24 years younger than he is.
• Odd Friendship: With Gates. Ahenobarbus considers Gates to be the most brilliant Victor and is greatly offended by the Capitol's Post-Game Retaliation against him. He even sits in the hospital with Gates after he has a stroke and is there when he wakes up.
• One Hit Poly Kill: Kills Jon and Ryla Undersee by thrusting a spear through both of them at the same time. Ahenobarbus has a painting of this kill in his Victor's mansion, and there is later a fountain built in the Capitol depicting it.
• Pre-Climax Climax: His District partner, Cassia, propositions him the night before they go into the arena.
• Relegated Mentor: Boudicca supplants him as the head of the Institute, but she doesn't fully marginalize him like she does Tiberius. He in turn recognizes that his methods had not produced any Victors besides Tiberius and gracefully accepts Boudicca's takeover.
• Retired Monster: Ahenobarbus starts out as an Ax-Crazy tribute and Sadist Teacher who relishes in brutality, but after he becomes a Relegated Mentor, he becomes mellow and compassionate toward his peers, casual in his retirement, but not really remorseful about all of the people he killed, the lives he ruined, or his role in allowing President Evil Snow to take over the country.
• Sadist: His "hatch" or coping mechanism is torturing Avoxes.
• Sadist Teacher: As a mentor, he treats his potential tributes — who are referred to as "Ahenobarbus's dogs" – cruelly, letting them know that he only cares about winning, not them personally, and that they will be kicked out if they fail to commit and obey 100%. Regardless, with the exception of Tiberius and Boudicca, this doesn't result in producing any winners.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Twice over. His arena was a true gore-fest, and it's implied that he had a rough time during the war, as he half-seriously mentions that Capitol General Hadrian Fife, who he fought under during the Dark Days, did things that gave him nightmares.
• Sins of the Father: Subverted in his case, as his father fought for the Capitol during the Dark Days. He is therefore initially surprised and angry when he is reaped. His father then explains to him that most of the other tributes were reaped because their parents were considered disloyal, and Ahenobarbus was there to kill them and become the very first Victor. This completely changes his perspective.
  • Although it's possible this was a Motivational Lie and Ahenobarbus is being punished for what his mother did, regardless of his and his father's loyalty.
• Starts with Their Funeral: The Bonds of Blood begins with his funeral at the Institute.
• Til Murder Do Us Part: His father killed his mother in front of him, because she sided with the rebels in the Dark Days Rebellion.
• Tragic Keepsake: His "secret" is that he keeps his mother's shawl throughout his life, so he could he smell it and try to remember her. When he is found dead of a heart attack, he is clutching it to his chest.
• Ur-Example: First Victor ever.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: One of his major motivations for wanting to win his Games—besides his own survival—is to make his father proud.
• We Used to Be Friends: Was friendly with Jon Undersee (who turned out to be a Rebel spy) during the Rebellion and is both angry and shaken when facing him and his sister in the arena.

Tiberius Drake (6th Games Victor)

• Badass Decay: Viewed this way In-Universe.
  The once handsome, brutal Victor of the Sixth Games was now known for his three chins and permanent sweat marks on his clothes rather than his skill in the arena.
• Blood-Splattered Warrior: For his Victory interview, his stylist dresses him "in white with red dye artistically splashed on", to mimic how he looked when he left the arena.
• Butt-Monkey: Ahenobarbus refuses to treat him with respect, even after he becomes a Victor. But Tiberius really becomes this after Boudicca kicks him out of the Institute.
  Ahenobarbus: You shouldn't antagonize Ty so much, Boudicca. You're going to drive him to an early grave.
  Boudicca: It's one of my only pleasures in life now that my Games are done. Indulge me.
  Ahenobarbus: Fair enough.
• Children Forced to Kill: Eighteen when he enters his Games.
• Cut Himself Shaving: Claims the scar over his eye was from a barfight, rather than the beatdown Boudicca gave him when he tried to rape her.
• Dehumanizing Insult: Constantly referred to as "Ahenobarbus's dog".
• Evil Redhead: Becomes this after his Games.
• Face–Heel Turn: Defends his friend Minnie from being raped by Gaius, but later attempts to rape Boudicca. This turn is never explained, but it's possible that the head trip from becoming a Sadist Teacher like Ahenobarbus and his descent into hedonism following the Games causes him to become more cruel.
• Fat Bastard: Played with. He grows into the fattest Victor by far and has plenty of Kick the Dog moments, but his worst acts all take place before he lets himself go.
• Fight Unscene: His chapter focuses on his training before his Games, and the next chapter begins with the Victors watching his Victory ceremony. He is said to have a "slightly insane look in his eyes", and his Games were apparently so violent that Peeta reverts to his trackerjack state.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: His excesses are held in contempt by many of his fellow Victors, but he's still occasionally allowed to speak at the Institute and is invited to Ares' party (although he can't attend).
• The Hedonist: Spends all his time and money on Hookers and Blow and gorging himself.
• Killed Offscreen: Dido tells Enobaria that Tiberius died of an aneurysm while she was in the arena.
• Klingon Promotion: Becomes the male tribute after killing his main rival, Gaius, by breaking his neck.
• Obsolete Mentor/Reluctant Retiree: Boudicca forces him into retirement as a mentor after she wins her Games. He responds by curling up in a ball and crying.
  Boudicca: Whore and drink and party your life away. It means nothing to me. But unless you want me to serve you your balls in a pie, stay away from my tributes.
• The Power of Hate: This enables him to kill Gaius, despite Gaius being stronger and faster.
• Recruited from the Gutter: His father was a rebel killed or executed during the Dark Days, so he cannot get a job anywhere due to sin by association. He lives under a bridge until Ahenobarbus takes him in to be trained.
• Rejected Apology: His "secret" is that he writes love letters to Minnie every year asking for forgiveness about an unspecified offense, but she returns each unopened. Given Tiberius's history, it is likely attempted rape.
• Shrine to Self: His lawn is decorated with ostentatious statutes of himself, presumably depicting what he looked like as a Victor.
• Stuck in the Doorway: During the winter after the 41st Hunger Games, he is unable to attend Ares' Wintermas party, having gotten so fat that he can't fit through his doorway.
• The Un-Favorite: Ahenobarbus clearly prefers Gaius to him, but after he kills Gaius during an impromptu fight, he becomes the tribute. This just gets worse when he becomes a Victor and is surpassed by Boudicca, who tends to utterly ignore him.

Boudicca (17th Games Victor)

• 100% Heroism Rating: Is absolutely adored in the Capitol when she won. The feeling becomes mutual.
• Action Girl: During her training, she beat up everyone in the school, including Tiberius. She then goes on to have a Flawless Victory in her Games.
• All for Nothing: Ultimately forced to realize that her loyalty to the Capitol amounted to this, as she blinded herself to its flaws and could have saved lives by fighting them at the end.
• Anti-Villain: She is a Well-Intentioned Extremist with a blind My Country, Right or Wrong mindset, but she truly sees the Capitol as the best means of overcoming the evils of the pre-Panem Crapsack World, and she never displays of the corruption of the Capitol or Luster. She also fiercely loves her fellow District 2 Victors. And after her Assassination Attempt against Katniss fails, she accepts her defeat with sorrowful dignity.
• Blood-Splattered Warrior: Is covered in the blood of her former alliance partners as the hovercraft lifted her out of the arena.
• Born into Slavery: Either this or Made a Slave (she tells Katniss she doesn't remember which) sometime before Tiberius buys her at a slave auction.
• Broken Pedestal: The Capitol finally becomes this to her, but only after the war is over.
• Caring Gardener: Has an "exquisite garden" outside her home, which she tends to as a hobby.
• Dehumanizing Insult/Gendered Insult: Kills the District 1 male tribute for calling her "Ahenobarbus's bitch".
• Emotionless Girl: Throughout her years of training, she rarely displays any emotion, except for mild bemusement anytime anyone dares challenge her in combat. On those occasions, she would describe in detail what she would do to them.
• Famed In-Story: So much so that a musical is made about her, titled, Boudicca the Bold: The Musical! Dido and Virtus re-enact it during their Wintermas party.
• Fiery Redhead: Depending on how you view her, she may also count as an Evil Redhead.
• Flawless Victory: The Leader of her alliance (which would go on to become the standard Career alliance makeup), who systematically eliminates all the other tributes. She then takes down each one of her allies single-handedly. All in the span of three days.
• Ice Queen: Her major persona. Her first major emotional display was after her Games, as she listened to the Panem anthem, saluted the flag, and realized she was finally free from her life of poverty and slavery. This begins her Patriotic Fervor.
• It's a Long Story: Tells Katniss this when Katniss asks her about her life story. Katniss responds, "It'll be a long night", so Boudicca obliges.
• Kick the Dog: Viciously tries to drum out compassion from her preferred tributes in order to enhance their potential. When Virtus starts feeding a stray dog, she makes him drown its puppies one by one, then slit the mother's throat, cook the dead animals into a stew, and then eat it.
• Kill Tally: Six tributes — the District 6 boy (Chevy), District 1 boy, District 1 girl, District 2 boy (Linus), District 4 boy, and District 4 girl. She also leads the Career alliance, which kills thirteen tributes at the opening bloodbath and both District 7 tributes the next day. There are only two deaths she is not connected to.
• Klingon Promotion: Implied. Ahenobarbus initially chose another student, Aurora, to be the female tribute for the 17th Games. Aurora then mysteriously died that night, and Boudicca was chosen as female tribute.
• The Leader:
  • Handpicks those tributes she wants to be in her alliance: Districts 1, 2 and 4. This becomes the standard Career alliance.
  • After founding the Institute, she essentially becomes the leader of District 2.
• Little "No": Her response when Tiberius tries to advise her on how she should act during her Capitol interviews.
• My Country, Right or Wrong: Her Patriotic Fervor often veered into this, to the disdain of the outer district Victors.
  Boudicca: It is not our place to question those whom the Law sets above us. Our duty is to serve, and so we shall endure.
  Jules: Sweetie, they really did a number on you, didn't they? You're like a jabberjay, singing everything they tell you.
• Namesake Gag: After learning someone from District 2 named their son after her, she personally went down to the medcenter and destroyed the birth certificate herself.
• Neck Snap: Kills the District 4 girl this way.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Boudicca's career program, with its public emphasis on absolute loyalty to the Capitol and viewing the bloody Hunger Games as a great honor, is almost single handedly responsible for revitalizing the rebellion that Boudicca despises. Before her first trainee's victory, people were slowly becoming resigned to the Hunger Games. Hatred for the kind of Career tributes Boudicca turns out erases these feelings of defeat and resignation.
• No Sympathy: She looks down on the outer districts for what they endure at the hands of her Peacekeepers and the Capitol, although she eventually gets better.
  Boudicca: I saw the savagery of the lower districts. I will do everything in my power to keep Two from descending into such barbarism.
• Not So Stoic/Tears of Remorse: Her "secret" is that she is capable of crying, even if rarely seen.
• Only One Name: Only her first name is ever given.
• Patriotic Fervor: Following her Games, she becomes more devoted to the Capitol than any other Victor, rivaled only by Luster. But while Luster mainly seeks power, Boudicca is driven by true devotion.
  Boudicca: I found my honor, my justice, my strength in obedience to the Capitol that saved me and saved the nation.
• The Quisling: Her reputation among the other Victors, which she grudgingly recognizes.
  Boudicca: They seemed to think we were lapdogs, desperate to please our Capitol masters, begging for whatever scraps they'd toss from their tables.
• Revenge: Returns to the Pit, the district Slave Market, with Peacekeepers and orders them to kill everyone there except the remaining child slaves, who she frees.
• The Sleepless: Noted as hardly sleeping during her Games, which makes it impossible for her alliance to betray her.
• Superior Successor: Establishes much higher standards than Ahenobarbus for entry, training, and selection as tribute, which sets District 2 on the path to being the most dominant district in the Hunger Games.
• Tantrum Throwing: Throws an "ornate jade antiquity" at the wall after Snow calls her to ask about giving away his prized horse, which is really a metaphor to tell her to send Justus into the Games.
• Team Mom: Of the District 2 Victors, who she considers a Family of Choice (though for Granyte, she's more of a Cool Big Sis), and more broadly as Headmistress of the Institute.
• Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Zig-zagged. It was her founding of the Institute and the success of its Victors that spurred Luster (frustrated at what he saw as his district being left in the dust) to volunteer for the Games, take over the DAEYD, and develop the idea of Victors duties. Boudicca doesn't seem to care that much though, and while she does dislike Luster, she seems a little pleased at the better fighting skills of District 1's tributes afterwards.
• Visionary Villain: Returns from the Games after a meeting with President Lucius and immediately ends Ahenobarbus's school, kicks out all but three students, purges the Pit, and establishes the Institute, in order to train students to love the Capitol and live by a code of honor, strength, and justice.
• Was It All a Lie?: The futility of her devotion to the Capitol only truly hits her after telling Katniss her life story and mourning the deaths of the her surrogate family, the District 2 Victors.
  Boudicca: What was it worth? All of it? Was it just a waste? Did they all die for nothing?

Granyte Tanner (18th Games Victor)

• Abandon the Disabled: His family refuses to meet him at the train station when he returns from the Games, because they don't want to see him with all his limbs missing. But he does have contact with at least some of their children (namely Lyme) in the years afterwards.
• Ambiguous Situation: It is unclear whether he knows Lyme is The Mole but still helps her out of familial loyalty, or if he is his niece's Unwitting Pawn.
• An Arm and a Leg: Loses both legs and left hand in his final battle in the arena.
• Big "WHY?!": His father's first words to him after he volunteers as tribute. He answers that it's for the money to pay off their quarry. His father then responds with a Big "NO!"
• Children Forced to Kill: Seventeen when he volunteers for his Games.
• Closer to Earth: In part because he is Inspirationally Disabled, in part because he is the only District 2 Victor to not be a Career (besides Ahenobarbus), Granyte is often the Voice of Reason among the District 2 Victors. He alone agrees to mentor Barty, he convinces Ares that he is as worthy as any of them of being a Victor, and he convinces Boudicca to give Lyme a chance (though Lyme does turn out to be The Mole).
• Cool Big Bro: His younger siblings were devastated by his volunteering, and in fact missed saying goodbye to him because the younger ones had run off out of grief and the eldest one had gone after them to gather them up.
• Double Meaning: When he approaches Ares, who has run off from the Wintermas party that the other Victors throw to console him following his Games, Granyte has this bit of wisdom.
  Granyte: Did you know that when hypothermia sets in, it often feels quite warm? Oh certainly there's cold initially, brutally so, shivering, shaking. But then the cold seeps into the bones, the blood, and the victim feels calm, relaxed, ready to just drift off asleep. And no matter how much people try to help him, wake him, get him moving to save his life, he insists that he is fine, that he doesn't need help, until he falls into a sleep from which we will not wake.
  Ares: (snorting) Is that supposed to be some sort of metaphor? Sir?
  Granyte: Only if you prefer to see it that way, Mr. Valerio. Personally, I was making it clear what a complete idiot you are for running into this cold without a coat.
• Driven to Suicide: Tries to kill himself three separate times but fails, "because Boudicca is too stubborn to let me die and the tie I used to hang myself was of very low quality".
• Handicapped Badass: Not normally, but even he is seen armed and ready during the coup that brings Snow to power, as the Victors and various other Games personal take refuge in the training center.
• Kill Tally: At least three tributes, though the Final Battle is not clearly described, so it's not exactly clear which tributes Granyte killed. He likely killed some combination of the District 1 boy, District 4 boy, District 7 girl, and District 7 boy.
• Loophole Abuse: Because he is an actual volunteer rather than a Career who was pre-selected to be reaped, he is able to become the male tribute instead of Cassius, one of Ahenobarbus's "dogs" who was reaped.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: The second of seven siblings, the size of which only contributes to his family's financial woes.
• Never Got to Say Goodbye: Doesn't get to say goodbye to his siblings before leaving for the Games, because Boudicca insists they start preparing immediately. She tells him that if he is truly serious about winning, then he will see them again. He does come back, but by then his family refuses to see him.
• Only in It for the Money: Volunteers for the Games to earn the winnings necessary to pay off his family's quarry. His family takes the money but refuses to have anything to do with him, both because he is now a murderer and because of his severe injuries.
• The Pawns Go First: Forms an alliance with the tributes from Districts 7, 9, and 10 and remains on the sidelines as they battle the traditional Career alliance. When the only survivors besides Granyte are the District 7 tributes and the District 1 boy (and possibly the District 4 boy), he is able to defeat the weakened trio but at the cost of his limbs.
• Reign of Terror: Executed by firing squad by the District 13 Kangaroo Court presided over by President Coin. He is 74 and breathing from an oxygen tank.
• Self-Harm: His "secret" is that he cuts himself to remind himself he's still alive, and because Boudicca won't let him kill himself.
• Ur-Example: Technically the first volunteer from District 2, as Ahenobarbus had rigged all the previous drawings to make sure his pre-selected students are reaped from the bowl. Granyte is a genuine volunteer rather than a Career.
• Voice for the Voiceless: Saves Bartimaeus from bullies when Barty first comes to the Institute and speaks the "sacred words" for him when he was chosen as tribute.

Honorius Manchetti (22nd Games Victor)

• Children Forced to Kill: Seventeen when he volunteers his Games.^note Which means he is seventy when he is killed in the Control Center during the Third Quarter Quell.
• Clashing Cousins: Defied. The cousins refuse to fight each other during their training, even though they are severely punished for refusing.
• Condescending Compassion: Feels this towards Evelyn during her Victory tour, because she won by sneaking around and setting traps. While he views this as dishonorable, he doesn't hold it against her because she can't be expected to "know better".
• Cool Old Guy: Retains his formidable combat skills and unyielding nature when he gets older, while also developing into a fatherly figure for the younger Victors and coming to loath the Games and the system that they enable.
• Defector from Decadence: His "secret" is that he meets with District 2 rebel leaders in Redfern several times over the years, but he does not fully defect until the very end of his life.
  Honorius: The districts are tired. Tired of seeing their children die year after year. So am I, in fact.
  Ares: But the Games are preferable to war, surely?
  Honorius: Are they? These days I'm not so sure.
• Do Not Go Gentle: The first among the Victors at the Third Quarter Quell Control Center to pick up a weapon and decide to fight off the coming Peacekeepers.
• Due to the Dead: Closes the eyes of each tribute the Career pack kills and personally carries the body of the penultimate tribute, his district partner Claudia, to the embalmers on the departing hovercraft.
• A Father to His Men: Despite the Inevitable Mutual Betrayal, he has this role during the 22nd Hunger Games, stopping for two days to treat a wounded member of the pack before resuming hunting other tributes.
• Heel Realization: As the Games go on and on, it eventually drives him to maintain contact with rebels.
  Honorius: How many more children will we add to this macabre carnival? How many more can the nation hold?
• A Hero to His Hometown: Volunteers, fights honorably, and achieves a Flawless Victory, filling his district with a newfound sense of pride. His Games become mandatory viewing for all cadets each sememster. In the Capitol, they feel "lust and joy and adulation", and in District 1 "jealousy and grudging respect." But in the outer districts, Honorius and the District 2 Institute are looked upon with pure hatred.
• Kill Tally: Four tributes — the three youngest tributes (though their districts are unnamed) and the District 2 girl (Claudia). The chapter's description also suggests that the Career pack killed all the other tributes, and he likely killed other Careers in their final fight.
• Loss of Identity: Under Boudicca's tutelage, to an extent.
• Meaningful Rename: Changes his name to Honorius and demonstrates honor in the way he acts in Games. He makes sure each tribute is given a fair fight to defend themselves, personally closing the eyes of each deceased tribute. He also makes sure the Career alliance holds together until all other tributes are dead, and when they do inevitably fight each other, they avoid the Inevitable Mutual Betrayal and fight each other head-on. Honorius personally carries the body of the penultimate tribute, his district partner Claudia, into the hovercraft, so she can be embalmed.
  Boudicca: Honor. That is why we train. It is an honor to represent the district in the Games. It is an honor to serve the Capitol with our very lives. When we train, when we fight, when we kill, even when we bend the knee to those who protect us, honor flows in our very blood.
• Mercy Kill: Punches out the youngest tributes during his Games, knocking them unconscious before spearing them to reduce the pain and fear they feel.
• Orphan's Ordeal: Grows up in the Community Home with his cousins until Tiberius recruits them for tribute training.
• Perpetual Storm: His Games include unceasing rain.
• Perspective Flip: His chapter presents a different, but still quite positive, perspective of Boudicca's takeover.
• Rage Breaking Point: Smashes his control desk with a chair after watching Peeta break Brutus's neck, due to the Gamemakers (who ironically were aligned with Plutarch in La Résistance) blatantly using Brutus's tracker to disrupt his neurotransmitters.
• The Runaway: Convinces his cousins to run away with him from Ahenobarbus's training once he realizes they will likely be selected for the Games, and that District 2 tributes rarely ever come back. His perspective changes, though, when Boudicca takes over and instills them with Patriotic Fervor and better training.

Virtus Manchetti (24th Games Victor)

• Alcohol-Induced Idiocy: His "secret" is that he sells his district token in a pawnshop for less than it took to get a drink that night. (But he also could have done this to try and get rid of a reminder of his Games.)
• After-Action Report: His Games are described in the Victor interview he has with Augustine Pine.
• Children Forced to Kill: Seventeen when he volunteers for his Games.^note Which means he is sixty-eight when he is killed in the Control Center during the Third Quarter Quell.
• Clashing Cousins: Defied. The cousins refuse to fight each other during their training, even though they will be severely punished for refusing.
• Do Not Go Gentle: Among the Victors who fight off the Peacekeepers at the Control Center. He tells the youngest Victors, Abram and Cotton, to go with Haymitch and get him to safety, while the older Victors stayed behind.
• Do Unto Others Before They Do Unto Us: His alliance decides to kill him prior to the alliance's breakup, because none of them believe they will be able to take him on individually.
• Fake Weakness/Obfuscating Stupidity: Acts like a total buffoon from the time he is reaped through the Capitol training and interviews, in order not to come off as the threat he is. His pretense is blown when he is jumped by six outer-district tributes and he easily kills them all single-handedly.
• Heel–Face Revolving Door: Starts out as a loyal, innocent kid who doesn't quite buy into the Career mindset, turns into a hardened loyalist, killer and rapist and eventually evolves into a remorseful rebel sympathizer.
• Idiot Ball: During the 26th Games, he sends his male mentee an oxygen mask… in the middle of a raging forest fire!
  Spartacus: Oh for Panem's sake! Well, no one ever said Virtus was brainy.
• Karmic Rape: Deconstructed. Virtus brutally rapes Luscious, the District 1 girl, after she forms a romantic relationship with him but then joins the other Careers in betraying him. (She even gives him a Last Kiss before they throw him into the sea.) But rather than feeling vindicated after raping her, he is forever haunted by his terrible act.
• Kill Tally: Nine tributes — the District 5 boy, District 7 boy, District 11 girl, District 8 boy, District 9 boy, District 10 boy, District 1 girl (Luscious), District 4 boy, and District 4 girl.
• The Lancer: The least Proud Warrior Race Guy of the three cousins (and notably, he has the least morally-laden name). He is also more pragmatic than Honorius about Granyte's The Pawns Go First strategy. And he is the only one to act less than honorably during his Games.
• Meaningful Rename: Changes his name to Virtus and demonstrates physical and psychological strength by withstanding being thrown over a cliff into violent waves, surviving for three days without food, climbing back up the cliffs, and defeating the other tributes to claim victory.
  Boudicca: Strength. Not just physical strength. Strength of will. Strength of mind. We are the capstone of the nation. It's our blood and sacrifice that holds it together. We must be strong in every way, or the entire structure collapses.
• Murder Makes You Crazy: Completely loses his veneer of cool when the Sixatrons burst into the studio during his interview. In a violent rage, Virtus shoots and kills several of them.
  Gone is the cool, collected Victor of a few minutes ago. It's been replaced by something like an animal, a predator raging and thrashing and eager for more …
• My Greatest Failure: No matter what he does, he cannot forgive himself for raping Luscious.
  Granyte: (to Ares) Did you know Virtus raped a girl during his Games? She had betrayed him, he was high on bloodlust. He had to kill her, that's how the Games work, but he didn't have to hurt her like that. He considers it his moment of weakness, his greatest sin. It doesn't matter how much he drinks, how much he cuts his arm open with a razor blade, how many girls from town he teaches to fight and pinch and defend themselves against an assailant, he'll never rid himself of the shame and guilt of what he did to that girl.
• Neck Lift: Lifts a District 5 boy up by his neck followed by a Neck Snap, while simultaneously fighting off and then stabbing the District 7 boy.
• No One Could Survive That!: The Career alliance throws him over the cliff, but he manages to survive for three days without food and climbs up the steep cliffs back to the base of the island.
• Noodle Incident: The District 2 male tribute for the First Quarter Quell vows to "fuck him over so hard he'll beg for forgiveness before he dies", but it's never revealed what Virtus does to enrage the tribute so much.
• Odd Friendship: Sends Cotton, a much younger District 8 Victor, caramel chocolates on her birthday.
• Orphan's Ordeal: Grows up in the Community Home with his cousins until Tiberius recruits them for tribute training.
• Pet the Dog: Sends caramels to Cotton on her birthday, despite the fact that she’s not from his district and that she killed the District 2 male tribute during her Games.
• Slain in Their Sleep: The other Careers attempt this, grabbing him while he is sleeping and throwing him off a cliff into water. He still survives.
• Soft Water: Averted. When Augustine asks him if Luscious betraying him hurt, Virtus responds, "It hurt harder when I hit the water, to be honest." Augustine says he winced when he saw that … and then plays the clip of it.

Justus Scavo (27th Games Victor)

• Alas, Poor Villain: The surviving Victors drink a final toast to him, "to the man he was and could have been".
• Chick Magnet: At the Institute, he is eyed by about half of the female attendees and some of the men.
• Clashing Cousins: Defied. The cousins refuse to fight each other during their training, even though they will be severely punished for refusing.
• Code of Honor: Truly believes in justice, even when it means disobeying an order from his trainers. This however makes him struggle with the nature of the Hunger Games as he travels to the Capitol. But it's not enough to stop him from becoming a Victor, though.
  Justus: What honor is there in killing a thirteen year old girl? How does it prove my strength to destroy someone so weak? How is slaughtering a child who has never committed a crime in her life any sort of justice?
• Crippling Castration: Castrates a man he sees raping a woman.
• Et Tu, Brute?: Enobaria's response when she sees that Justus has become Luster's No. 2 in the New Capitol Forces.
• Face–Heel Turn: From the perspective of the other Victors. Though the Games twists his moral code, his faith in the Capitol can be seen as My Country, Right or Wrong. But after he sides with Luster against the new regime, even Boudicca admits that he went from simply wanting revenge to being seduced by Luster's promises of power.
• Finishing Stomp: Killed the District 9 girl by stomping on her head.
• Get It Over With: As Odysseus stands over him with his trident, Justus simply tells him, "Just do it." Ody then stabs him through the throat.
• Kill Tally: At least five tributes — the District 9 girl, the District 6 boy, a District 10 tribute (possibly both), a District 11 tribute (possibly both), and the District 2 girl (Venus Archulla).
• Meaningful Rename: Changes his name to Justus and when killing a tribute he lists a crime that that district committed during the Dark Days Rebellion.
  Justus: Justice demands a price.
• Murder by Inaction: Breaks both of Venus's knees and then leaves her for dead. She dies two days later.
• Orphan's Ordeal: Grows up in the Community Home with his cousins until Tiberius recruits them for tribute training.
• Serial Homewrecker: His "secret" is that he sleeps with older Capitol women in order to break up their marriages.
• The Smart Guy: More perceptive than his cousins while growing up, being the one to correctly figure out Granyte's strategy and questioning the value and fairness of the Games.
  • The Smart One Turns Traitor: Becomes this when he allies with Luster against the new regime.
• Supreme Chef: So much so that his recipes were renowned even in the Capitol.
• Tall, Dark, and Handsome: Tall with hair and eyes that "looked like they had come from a mine in District 12".
• Teacher/Student Romance: With Boudicca.
  Boudicca herself was at a loss at how to describe their relationship. It had the structure of mentor and student, the dependency of mother and son, and the intimacy of lovers.
• Thirsty Desert: The theme of the 27th Games arena.

Antigone Frey (32nd Games Victor)

• Appeal to Worse Problems: Uses this argument with Dido in regards to the District 12 tributes to defend the rule against stealing.
  Antigone: (to Dido) If you see a hot spiced bun and think it's not fair that you have to have tesserae rations again while the stupid foreman's daughter is buying two, you should learn to keep your kleptomaniac tendencies in check and be grateful for what you do have. There are children in 12 who won't survive long enough to take tesserae, so stop making that face.
• Cloudcuckoolander's Minder: To Dido, at least until Dido wins her Games.
• Corpsing: In-Universe. He cannot keep a straight face when Lyme applies to take the Trials and rebuts every objection Boudicca makes. This ends when Lyme reveals she's from Redfern.
• I Need a Freaking Drink: Says this several times while mentoring Dido during the 39th Games. She also launches a few Precision F Strikes.
• Inevitable Mutual Betrayal: The only part of her Games that are described is the breakdown of the Career alliance. Antigone personally betrays her District partner, Hannibal, before facing and killing the final tribute from District 8.
• Kill Tally: Four tributes — the District 11 boy (Eddie Baxter), District 1 girl (Perfection), District 2 boy (Hannibal), and District 8 boy (Cotter). Her chapter does not include the Career pack's hunt, so she likely has more unshown kills.
• Killed Offscreen: Executed by the Capitol in the post-Quell Victors purge under suspicion of rebel sympathies.
• Law of Inverse Fertility: Her "secret" is that she longs to be a mother but can't, because she was voluntarily sterilized while training to be a tribute.
• Second-Person Narration: Narrates Dido's chapter, in the form of offering a suspiciously specific set of rules to Dido, all of which Dido breaks.
• Snow Means Death: The Final Battle of her Games takes place on a snowy tundra. It's possible the whole arena is covered in snow, but it's not said.
• Supporting Protagonist: The main focus of her chapter is the Victors meeting following President Lucius's death. Her Games are playing in background, and there are occasionally breaks in the main storyline to show her perspective.
• Team Mom: Though Boudicca more fully occupies this role, Antigone's maternal nature leads the other District 2 Victors call her "Mother Tig", despite her protestations.
• You Have GOT to Be Kidding Me!: Sums up Antigone's mindset towards mentoring Dido.

Bartimaeus Pastier (37th Games Victor)

• Abusive Parents: Suffered terrible beatings from his Wicked Stepfather, Phyle, while his mother does nothing to protect him.
• Berserk Button: The District 1 female tribute has the upper hand against him, but then she says, "If I were your daddy, I would've whipped your hide bloody until you had the decency to call me 'sir'." Given his abusive stepfather, that was the wrong thing to say.
• Beware the Quiet Ones: The other Careers don't view Barty as much of a threat (except his district partner), since he is The Voiceless. Their mistake.
  Barty: I'm full of surprises, sir.
• Blind Seer/Hermit Guru: His "secret" is that after the war he becomes known as "The Confessor", a mute hermit living in the Nut to whom many brought offerings and confessed their sins.
• Challenging the Bully: He is "source of endless pranks and goads" until he develops into a knife nut, and then the "taunts dried up quickly after the first few liters of blood spilled".
• Children Are Innocent: Has a certain innocence to him before going to the Institute. The first time he got hit by Phyle was after watching the Hunger Games and asking "why the mean kids killed the nice, pretty girl on the screen".
• Elective Mute: Phyle beat him anytime he says anything wrong, so he just stops talking altogether.
• Gold Digger: His mother, who left her husband (Barty's father) for Phyle due to thinking he was about to strike it rich on mining investments. He didn't.
• Happily Adopted: After running away from home, he is taken in by the family of a girl he saved from a vicious stray dog and later takes their name as his own. He would have happily stayed with them except his biological family demanded him back, causing his surrogate parents to send him to the Institute instead.
• Hungry Jungle: The arena theme of the 37th Games.
• In Medias Res: His chapter starts with the tributes entering the arena and then flashbacks to his back story of his abusive upbringing and his time in the Institute.
• Irony: Phyle beat him so many times for not respecting the Hunger Games, and then he goes on to win the 37th Games.
• Kill Tally: Three tributes — the District 11 boy, District 5 girl, and District 1 girl.
• Nice Guy: Except in the arena.
• The Runaway: After refusing to learn all the names of the deceased District 2 tributes at school, Phyle beat him so severely that he runs away from home. After roaming the streets for two months, he is taken in by a family, but they are legally unable to keep him, so they send him to Murder High.
• Spiteful Spit: Gives one to Phyle from ten feet away when Phyle comes to see him off after he volunteers as tribute.

Dido Castremi (39th Games Victor)

• Action Girl: Antigone acknowledges that Dido is one of the best cadets at hand-to-hand combat that the Institute ever has had. She is also a gifted wrestler.
• Ambiguously Brown: Described in Bonds of Blood as having "dark hair and skin."
• Bad People Abuse Animals: Uses stray cats for target practice. (And she's a Career, so she's not exactly a great person.)
• Badass Boast: Declared to the Gamemakers that she'd conquer the world during her training session. Antigone rebukes her for this, saying it set them up to be underwhelmed.
• Beware the Silly Ones: Say what you will about her, she wins the Hunger Games.
• Boisterous Bruiser: Will fight anyone at any time anywhere. And will have a fun time doing it.
• Caught Monologuing: Exploited in Dido's case, as her monologuing causes the other final tribute to monologue as well. Played straight in his case, because Dido uses the distraction to break his neck.
• Chainmail Bikini: Wore one during her tribute parade.
• Cheery Pink: The color of her Victor's mansion.
• Cloud Cuckoolander: Turns the training center into her own personal gym, makes fun of many of the trainers and tributes, and during her interview with Caesar, she tells him that she is secretly a duck. It's a reputation subsequent District 2 tributes try hard to distance themselves from.
  Caesar: (about District 2's female tribute for the 40th Games) It was obvious she didn't want anyone to mistake her for Dido Castremi. The joyous half-lunatic angle only works for a select few, after all.
• The Commandments: Her chapter is structured as a series of rules her mentor Antigone describes to her, all of which are suspiciously specific. Dido of course defies them all.
• Do Not Go Gentle: Among the Victors who fight off the Peacekeepers at the Control Center. Her final words are a Call-Back to her Games: "I am secretly a duck."
• Eccentric Mentor: Gets Enobaria high on her last night before her Games, but it does help Baria get to sleep and has no after-effects.
• Fighting in the Playground: Or rather, acting like the training center was her personal playground (despite Antigone's warnings) and getting into fights over it, such as playing king of the mountain at the climbing station and attacking anyone else who tried to climb it.
• Hard-Drinking Party Girl: Got into trouble for sneaking booze, grass, hookers (it isn't specified which gender) and a donkey into the Institute and was constantly sneaking into the boys' dorms. The money and status of a Victor don't exactly encourage her to stop after the 39th Hunger Games.
• Hidden Depths: Spent some time at the Institute library, apparently reading history books, as she refers to the archery instructor as Pocahontas, but no one else gets the joke.
• Is That the Best You Can Do?: Says this to the Gamemakers after being abandoned by her alliance, suffering two separate mutt attacks and several other injuries, and being near starvation and hydration.
  Antigone: They always, always, always have more.
• Just Like Robin Hood: As a pre-adolescent, Dido is constantly stealing food and medicine from well off people. Sometimes it's for herself, other times it's for girls she sits with at school who don't have anything for lunch or her elderly babysitter (who has pneumonia). This is slightly deconstructed, as Antigone claims that it wouldn't have been very difficult for Dido's friends to take out tesserae rations and her babysitter to ask for financial assistance to buy medicine.
• Kill Tally: Her only specified kill is against the District 1 boy, but she definitely killed other tributes as well as part of the Career pack.
• Laughing Mad: Both during the opening bloodbath of her Games and at the Victor's Last Stand at the Control Center.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: Really Gets Around and has kinky tastes, but gets along better with non-Twos than most others, tries to take a Cool Big Sis role to Ares, is a good mentor for Enobaria, and ultimately chooses to fight the Capitol rather than remain loyal to it.
• Named After Somebody Famous: Antigone warns her against changing her name to something pretentious, "like a long-dead but much admired ancient queen, for example".
• Neck Snap: How she kills the District 1 boy.
• Obfuscating Insanity: Tells Enobaria that the Capitol enjoys tributes who display novelty and then boasts, "I was completely horseshit insane. They adored me."
• Off to Boarding School: Her chronic problem with Sticky Fingers causes her to be sent to the Institute, much to her parents' relief.
• The Prankster: Caught sneaking into the boys' dormitory at various times with rope, snakes, and honey. Also tries to put laxatives in Tiberius's coffee.
• Shameless Fanservice Girl: Stripped naked to show off her combat skills during her training session. Antigone admits this may not have been a bad idea but asks if Dido could have at least put her clothes back on before coming back to the apartment.
• Snowball Fight: Known to throw snowballs at Peacekeepers filled with frozen dog excrement.
• Spanner in the Works: Her "secret" is she sponsored several District 3 tributes, "just to spice things up once in a while."
• Unsportsmanlike Gloating: Brags about her performance during the Trials, which is considered a taboo, and then mocks all the other cadets who were not chosen as tribute for her Games.
• Vulgar Humor: Shows quite a bit of it. For instance, during training she paints a penis on the camouflage instructor's forehead and when he went to wash it off, paints another penis on the floor to the amusement of the District 7 tributes but no one else.
• Wild Card: Secretly sponsors District 3 tributes, at least partially just for the heck of it.

Ares Valerio (41st Games Victor)

• The Baby of the Bunch: The other District 2 Victors treat him this way after he wins his Games – worrying about whether he is sleeping well and throwing a surprise Wintermas party to make him feel welcome.
• Big Brother Worship: Idolizes his older brother Logan, who went through the Institute and received the highest marks, but for whatever reason wasn't chosen as tribute his year (the 35th Games, in which Beetee electrocuted all the Careers). Logan is then jealous when Ares is chosen as tribute, and Ares is convinced Logan would have not only survived his Games but would have done so without suffering PTSD.
• Broken Ace: Viewed as "the perfect tribute" as he enters his Games, being seen as strong, handsome, and charming. Yet he personally is deeply haunted by the deaths of his fellow tributes and feels inferior to his older brother and fellow District 2 Victors.
• Brutal Honesty:
  • Receives this from Granyte when he says he feels unworthy of being a Victor (see Heroic Self-Deprecation below).
  • Is honest with Beetee when Beetee asks him if he specifically told his tribute to kill Beetee's promising tribute during the 45th Hunger Games. Beetee says this is in-character for him.
  • Subverted during Berenice's victory tour, where he knows full well that she won due to in-universe Executive Meddling but won't admit this out loud (for both her and himself) when Cecelia confronts them over it, feeling that he's been waiting for a Victor longer than she has, and they deserved that win.
• Bully Hunter: His "secret" is that, when he learned his wife was sexually abused by her uncle, Ares tried to kill him by burning down his shack. Though he didn't die, he was injured enough to prevent him from abusing others.
• Christmas Episode: The District 2 Victors hold a Surprise Party at Ares's new Victor's mansion to celebrate Wintermas. Boudicca claims it's a District 2 tradition for the newest Victor to host the Wintermas dinner, but Ares later realizes they started the tradition specifically for him.
• Condescending Compassion: Pities Emrys a little for his "two disappointing Victors", never mind that Emrys actually did get two Victors under fairly hard circumstances.
• Death Glare: Gives Luster one after Luster’s tribute betrays his in the 45th Games.
• Dies Wide Open: Jade notes that his eyes are wide as the District 13 guards drag his corpse away.
• Eyepatch of Power: Wears one after the District 1 female tribute ripped out his left eye during his Games. Granyte gives him a set of glass eyes as a Wintermas present.
• Family Man: The only District 2 Victor who is said to have gotten married and had children (prior to the Mockingjay Rebellion). Jade later speculates that he makes a False Confession (or, at least, a disingenuous one) to Coin's Kangaroo Court in order to protect his family from harm.
• First-Person Peripheral Narrator: for Berenice's chapter.
• Heroic Self-Deprecation: Sees himself as unworthy of being a Victor on par with the other District 2 Victors. He also believes his brother, who went through the Institute but was not selected as tribute, would have been a more worthy Victor. Granyte sets him straight on both counts.
  Granyte: You killed people, Ares, but so did we all. … You have guilt, yes. Good. You feel unworthy. Good. You are. You feel like you don't belong her. Shut the fuck up. Your failings and your guilt and your brokenness are exactly why you're here[.]
  • Unfortunately, it's hinted he might have taken that suggestion a bit too much to heart, as after the 62nd Hunger Games President Snow lists him as one of the Victors who believes the official narrative, that they are heroes who triumphed over lesser men. Although given that it's Snow talking, that might not have been true.
• Hoist Hero over Head: Does this to the District 7 male tribute, throwing him over some waterfalls to the cheers of the other Careers.
• Kill Tally: Five tributes identified—the District 4 girl, District 7 boy and likely the District 1 girl (who cut his eye out), District 1 boy, and District 2 girl, the latter two being mentioned among the tributes who haunted him.
• Like a Daughter to Me: His relationship with Berenice, his only mentee to ever win.
• Little "No": Gives one after his first mentee in the 45th Games is betrayed by the District 1 male tribute and killed by Chaff. Ares's sorrow quickly turns to rage against Luster, but the other District 2 Victors stop him from acting on it.
• Love-Interest Traitor: Forms a relationship with the District 4 female tribute but cut her throat while they were kissing.
• Really Gets Around: Deconstructed. Sleeps with several women to help soothe the emotional pain from his Games, but he can't reach orgasm because he feels such guilt about betraying the District 4 girl.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Chooses to put in the red Glass Eye among the set of glass eyes Granyte gifts him.
• Reign of Terror: Killed by firing squad by President Coin's Kangaroo Court.
• Shell-Shocked Victor: Has continual flashbacks of the tributes he killed, particularly the District 4 girl, which causes him to have Anorgasmia. He also attacks his niece when she jumps on his back.

Brutus Barsetti (48th Games Victor)

• Ascended Fanboy: Was a huge fan of the Games long before he was press-ganged into the Institute, entered the Games, or became a Victor himself.
• Autism in Media: Diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome soon after joining the Institute. Rather than being embarrassed, Brutus is proud to know he has a "special brain" rather than being the Dumb Muscle most people assume he is, and it helps him in being straightforward with his mentees about their chances in the Games and what they need to do to survive.
• Badass Teacher: Renowned for being an outstanding teacher and mentor. He even helps Peeta during the training for Third Quarter Quell, which proved ironic as Peeta ultimately kills him.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • Initially has a reputation at the Institute for being soft, garnering him the Embarrassing Nickname, "Teddy Bear". But when one cadet cut down his pants in front of Ahenobarbus, Brutus finds him and shatters half his ribs.
  • He also treats all of the other Victors with sincere respect and friendship. "And if the camaraderie and companionship he cultivated made the others underestimate him in the Control Center, well, he wasn't going to complain about that either."
• Body-Count Competition: Ties Ahenobarbus's record for most kills in a single Games, which includes killing the rest of the Career pack and the pairs from 5, 8, 9 and 12. He is greatly disappointed to not have broken the record, but he finally does when he enters the Third Quarter Quell.
• Bruiser with a Soft Center: Among the most brutal cadets and kills more tributes in the Hunger Games than any other Victor, but he earns the Embarrassing Nickname "Teddy Bear" because his concern for the weak is unshakeable. He is also known to grow orchids and drink jasmine tea.
• Commonality Connection: Even before he becomes a Victor himself, Beetee is one of his favorite Victors, partially because they both have "special brains" and partially Beetee gave him an autograph during his victory tour.
• Executive Meddling: In-Universe. The Gamemakers working with La Résistance use his tracker to disrupt his neurotransmitters and cause him to become incoherent and insane, allowing Peeta to kill him.
• A Father to His Men: To all his tributes and most especially his two Victors, Phoebus and Lupus.
• Glorified Sperm Donor: Cecelia sleeps with him so she can get pregnant. She has a son, named 'Aaron' after Brutus's brother, but she doesn't allow Brutus to see him. Brutus's "secret" is that he buys Aaron several gifts over the years but never mails them.
• I Gave My Word: He promised Lupus he would never have to go back into the arena, and made good on that promise by volunteering for him during the reaping for the Third Quarter Quell.
• If It's You, It's Okay: Though mainly attracted to women, Brutus had an intense unrequited attraction to Blight for a while.
• It Gets Easier: The Trial by Blood is an hour-long test in which the Institute trainee must kill someone. It takes Brutus fifty-nine minutes and forty-seven seconds to leave the room, indicating that he either took a long time to work up the nerve to make that kill or spent a long time suffering a Heroic BSoD afterward. He asks Virtus if it will always be like that, and Virtus's reply seems to be one he takes to heart.
  Virtus: No. It only gets worse, but not harder. You'll see.
• Kill the Ones You Love: Snow orders Brutus to kill Cecelia during the Third Quarter Quell, because he knows he is the father of her son Aaron.
• Kill Tally:
  • During his original Games, 15 tributes (see Body-Count Competition) — both tributes from Districts 1, 5, 8, 9, and 12, the District 10 girl, the District 2 girl, and three other unnamed tributes.
  • From the Quell, three tributes — Woof, Cecelia, and Chaff.
• Middle Child Syndrome: The sixth of eleven children, Brutus as a boy just wants to be noticed. He gets his wish.
• Nice Guy: Shows genuine concern for the weak and treats all the other Victors with respect. Even staunch ABACs like Blight find it hard to dislike him.
• Nothing Personal: His Bond One-Liner to Woof right after stabbing him in the Third Quarter Quell.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: He deliberately used his reputation to hide the fact that he was volunteering to save Lupus, figuring that he would be the only District 2 Victor that could get away with it. It's implied that Snow wasn't fooled, however, and ordered him to kill Cecelia during the Games to punish both him and her.
• O.C. Stand-in: First introduced in Catching Fire as District 2's male tribute in the Third Quarter Quell. This is lampshaded by the chapter heading: "Thirteen Things about Brutus Barsetti that Katniss Everdeen never bothered to find out".
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: Phoebus notes that Brutus says "fuck" a lot, notably when he is pulled from the arena and during the 67th Games.
• Spiders Are Scary: Has a major fear of spiders, so of course there are Giant Spiders in his arena (though the Gamemakers send them to prevent the other Careers from killing him). He gets caught in a major spider web and is bitten by one of the spiders, but nevertheless he is still able to kill four of them with a knife, and an adrenaline boost keeps him alive long enough for Virtus to send him an anti-venom kit.
• Swamps Are Evil: His arena.
• Teeny Weenie: Half-jokingly implied by Blight, who says Brutus has the manhood of a naked mole rat when Brutus gets drunk, strips down at the Victor talent show, and makes a clumsy pass at Blight.

Lyme Tanner (51st Games Victor)

• Always Close: Just barely makes it back to the Institute in time to successfully complete the Trial of Strength.
• Fight Unscene: Her Games are completely skipped over, and her victory is declared to be "a shocking upset". Given that she is meant to be the The Mole for District 2, the rebel Victors may have helped ensure her victory.
• Get Out!: Boudicca tells Lyme this (first in a whisper, and then more loudly) after finding out she is from Redfern, known as the one village in District 2 that opposes Capitol rule.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Maxx's son Mesa tells Lyme not to blame herself for killing Maxx, as it was Maxx's own plan for Lyme to do this to gain the Institute's trust.
• It's Personal: Her "secret" is that she agrees to be The Mole at the Institute, because her best friend volunteered for and died in the 49th Games, and the commentators only remarked that they died too quickly. Given the rebel sentiment in her home village, it is unrevealed whether or not this friend was someone she'd known before her father moved to Redfern, or a Redfern child forcibly indoctrinated into the Institute due to athletic prowess (like Brutus was) and brainwashed into becoming a loyalist.
• Kill Tally: Three tributes — the District 1 boy, District 1 girl and District 4 boy.
• Lady Looks Like a Dude: Lyme is so mannish that Boudicca initially mistakes her for a boy. Growing up, she was mocked as a freak and called Bigfoot.
• The Mole: Sent by District 2's La Résistance to the Institute in order to be selected as tribute and win the Games, so they can gain greater intel about the other districts and learn if there are other rebel pockets throughout Panem.
• O.C. Stand-in: First appears in Mockingjay as the leader of La Résistance in District 2.
• Out-Gambitted: The District 2 rebels anticipate that the Institute will likely use one of their own in Lyme's Trial of Blood, so when Lyme sees Maxx, they already have a script prepared, which includes Lyme saying she's Just Following Orders and a Pre-Mortem One-Liner: "The Capitol is my true family."
• Parental Neglect: Her father Flint, Granyte's brother, is more consumed by Hookers and Blow than raising his children, while her mother is never mentioned.
• Promotion to Parent: Arrow mentions that her father OD'd when she was thirteen, leaving her with his debts and her brothers to raise, although the original story has Granyte speaking of her dad in the present tense while Lyme is asking to take the Trials.
• The Scream: Gives one when she returns to Redfern and finds all the people hanged.
• Shoot Your Mate: Her Trial of Blood requires her to kill her friend, Maxx. Even though this is All According to Plan, it still devastates Lyme to have to do it.
• Training from Hell: Her completion of the Trials is especially difficult, because she never trained at the Institute, and because her Trial of Blood requires her to kill her friend, Maxx.
• What Happened to the Mouse?: Doesn't appear to be among the survivors at the end but her death is never explicitly stated or described here or in Mockingjay.
• You Are in Command Now: Becomes leader of the District 2 rebellion, because all the Redfern rebel leadership is wiped out immediately after Katniss shoots her arrow. As a Victor, she is the most famous person among the District 2 rebels.
• Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Boudicca catches her glaring after complimenting her on her victory.

Phoebus (60th Games Victor)

• Big Brother Instinct: Develops this for Creon during their time at the Institute. It started out as just an effort to impress Creon's hot cousin but quickly turned into something genuine and powerful.
• Cartwright Curse: Has close relationships with Orion Baker and Creon, the District 2 male tributes for the 62nd and 67th Games respectively, neither of whom make it out.
• Dude, Where's My Respect?: Blight calls him out for actually being hurt and offended that those in District 7 hated him.
  Blight: I think I hate you most of all. Because you volunteered to kill our kids for whatever reason, and you genuinely expected people to like you for it. You think people should like you no matter what you do. I remember when you came to Seven on the Tour. You looked like you were going to cry, because we hated you so damn much. Connor and I laughed about it later over a pint. We laughed.
• Faux Affably Evil: How Blight sees him.
• Flashback Nightmare: Phoebus's chapter takes place during the 67th Games. His Games are largely portrayed through a nightmare he has about them after Blight calls him out for taking advantage of the District 4 boy's infatuation with him and then killing him. That night, Phoebus dreams of all the tributes he kills and ends with him waking up screaming.
• Go-Karting with Bowser: Gets along okay with Connor and sometimes drinks with him, despite Connor being Blight's best friend and the two mocking Phoebus together.
• It's Personal: Feels this way towards Blight, to the point that they never speak to each other again after the 67th Games. Phoebus is even disappointed that he is not reaped for the Third Quarter Quell, since he would finally have the chance to kill Blight.
• Kill Tally: Four tributes at least—the District 11 girl, District 6 boy, District 1 girl (Tourmaline), District 4 boy. He likely killed others while hunting with the Career pack, and based on details given in Song's chapter, he likely killed the District 4 girl and District 1 boy as well.
• Killed Offscreen: Killed in the Nut when it is destroyed by the rebels.
• Lack of Empathy: Blight accuses him of having this towards those from the outlier districts.
• The Loins Sleep Tonight: Brings a girl back to his room, but he can't perform because Blight got in his head.
• Love-Interest Traitor: To Tourmaline, the District 1 girl, and to the District 4 boy. With the latter, it's not clear whether Phoebus was aware that the 4 boy was attracted to him.
• "Not So Different" Remark: Makes one to Blight, based on their similar working-class backgrounds, that both their arenas were in Urban Ruins, and of course they're both Victors. Blight is not impressed.
• Only One Name: Besides Boudicca (who was previously a slave), he's the only Victor whose last name is never given whenever he is mentioned.
• Rage Breaking Point: Tries to take the high ground as Blight breaks the unwritten rule about Victors not holding each other's Games against them. But later, when Johanna kills Creon, Blight gives Phoebus a little wink, because District 7's Wounded Gazelle Gambit tricked the Careers and their mentors. This sends Phoebus into a rage, and Brutus has to hold him down to prevent him from attacking Blight.
  Blight: So Phoebus does have a temper under that gee-golly-whiz pretty boy face. Interesting.
  Phoebus: What, this is some sort of fucking game to you? Trying to make me crack?
  Blight: Oh no, but I admit it's rather enjoyable to drag the monster out into the sunlight.
• Sweet Tooth: Constantly eating or talking about eating ice cream.
• Undying Loyalty: To Boudicca and the Capitol.
• Urban Ruins: The arena setting for his Games, according to Enobaria, is "a scorching city where the only water was sewage and acid rains".

Enobaria Malachite (62nd Games Victor)

• Antagonist in Mourning: After killing Seeder during the Third Quarter Quell, Enobaria's eyes become watery due to the heat when she sees Seeder's picture in the sky.
• Arc Words: "Kill them all, Baria." These are Pat's Last Words to her, and she takes them to heart.
• Babies Ever After: Ultimately moves to District 11, where she marries Matthos and gets pregnant.
• Blood-Splattered Warrior: Covered in blood several times: after ripping out Codey's threat, when she leaves the arena, and after ripping out the Speaker's throat. In commemoration, her Victory gown is a "white silk dress artistically splattered with red dye".
• Call-Forward: While imprisoned in the Capitol, she flashes back to when she first wrestles Maura as young cadets, and Maura bites her in the shoulder after she pinned Maura. The trainer chastises Maura and asks what the rule about biting is. Maura responds, "Biting … is a last resort … only." And when the trainer asks why this is the case, Declan responds, "If your teeth get caught in the flesh, you risk having them pulled out entirely."
• Call to Agriculture: Moves to District 11, where she lives in a cabin in a field.
• Dark and Troubled Past: So many things even before entering the Games:
  • Loses her parents at a young age due to a landslide.
  • Captured by Reavers, nomadic tribes of who remained outside the Capitol's control.
  • Witnesses the Reavers kill all her friends and has to kill Declan in order to save Pat, who ends up dying anyway.
  • Spends months as a mistreated slave before escaping (and slaughtering everyone in her path).
• Deadly Dodging: Tells Orion and Citrine that she tortured Rob to death, which causes Orion to recklessly charge her. She then moves out of the way, and the two end up stabbing each other.
• Deal with the Devil: Makes one with Snow, agreeing to be his assassin to ensure her revenge against the Reaver chiefs. She quickly comes to regret it.
• Defeat Means Friendship: Becomes best friends with Maura after the two have a wrestling match and then get into a fight afterwards. Maura later makes a peace offering of stolen cookies, and Enobaria finally opens up and tells her her name.
• Easily Forgiven: Ends up living in District 11, even though she kills one of their tributes in both of her Games, torturing one of them for two hours.
• Elective Mute: Doesn't talk for the first two years she is at the Institute after her family is killed in a landslide.
• Electric Torture: Codey does this to her and Rob, the District 6 boy.
• Fair-Play Villain: When the Career pack has an unarmed Hera cornered at the Cornucopia, Enobaria stops them from killing her, allows Hera to arm herself, and the fights her one-on-one.
• Fang Thpeak: How she talks after losing her two front teeth from ripping Codey's throat out.
• Fire-Forged Friends: Implied to have become this with Annie and Johanna after suffering torture together under Snow. Downplayed in that didn't stop Johanna from accusing her to be part of the plot to kill Katniss, though apparently they patched up their relationship enough that Enobaria felt comfortable attending Johanna's funeral.
• The Friend No One Likes: Besides the other District 2 Victors, she isn't looked upon nicely by her fellow Victors such as Beetee and Cashmere. Even following the Mockingjay Rebellion, the other Victors making the Victors Project don't seem to like her as much.
• Gory Discretion Shot: After finding Cayne, the District 11 boy, the next lines of the story describe her walking back to the Career pack two hours later covered in blood, wearing a Slasher Smile, and carrying Cayne's birthday cake.
• Got Volunteered: Selected as tribute by Boudicca based on how well she fought against the Reavers. Baria neither sought or even wanted the position, but she quickly makes peace with the idea, reasoning that the influence of a Victor will help her get revenge.
• Hate at First Sight: Takes an immediate disliking to Hera, the District 4 girl, when she first watches her reaping. Enobaria still makes several efforts to befriend her, but Hera rebuffs them all.
• The Hedonist: Becomes this to cope with her PTSD and the toll of becoming Snow's assassin.
• Hell Hotel: Her arena plays with this, as the hotel itself is very nice, and the Gamemakers are very strict about keeping it intact and pristine. But it's still an arena for the Hunger Games.
• Hero of Another Story: Much of her life story, including her Games, are told in the story, The Bonds of Blood.
• I Did What I Had to Do: Implied. She tortures Cayne for two hours, so she can receive a silver parachute. After the Gory Discretion Shot, she is next seen wearing new leather boots.
• Interrupted Suicide: In the process of hanging herself when she's rescued by the Avoxes from District 11, who are tipped off by Plutarch about the coming rescue team from District 13.
• Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: All the female tributes in her Games are all forced to wear ballgowns and high heels. She gets rid of her shoes as soon as the Games begin, and takes off the dress after the bloodbath. The Gamemakers send her another dress right before the final feast.
• Kill Tally:
  • For her original Games, seven tributes — the District 5 girl (Rachel), District 7 boy (Kormac), District 4 girl (Hera), District 11 boy (Cayne), District 3 boy (Codey), District 10 boy (Holsteen), and District 2 boy (Orion).
    • Also provides a Mercy Kill to Rob after Codey severely tortures him, and Rob begs for a quicker death. But this is more Codey's kill than hers.
  • For the Quell, one tribute — Seeder.
• Last Kiss: Gives one to Rob as she delivers her Mercy Kill.
• Laughing Mad: Does this for a long time after killing the Speaker until finally Boudicca raps her in a quilt, gives her tea, and comforts her. It then turns into Cry Laughing.
• The Leader: Becomes leader of the Career pack after the bear-mutt attack, when she rightly warns the pack not to burn down the carriage house (which causes the Gamemakers to punish them) and then gives the calls on how to take the bear down.
  Enobaria: It's a bit unnerving to see my allies all fall to my command, and I push down the urge to giggle.
• Let the Past Burn: At the end of the story, after Luster and his Snowmen are defeated, it's implied she used the opportunity to burn down her old arena (which they had been using as a hideout). Nobody outright accused her, because everyone completely understood her actions.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Has a crushing Heel Realization as she watches the tape of her Games during the victory ceremony, and takes in the bloodlust of the Capitol crowd. It causes her to truly feel the horror of the Games and to realize how Snow and the Capitol are even worse than the Reavers.
• My Greatest Second Chance: Feels very much this way about her post-Rebellion life and acknowledges that she owes it to Katniss during the Rescue Arc.
• Named After Somebody Famous: After Ahenobarbus, the first Victor of her District. It's been noted that she isn't the only person in the Institute to have this name.
• O.C. Stand-in: First introduced in Catching Fire as District 2's female tribute in the Third Quarter Quell. This expands upon her time in Quell and in captivity in the Capitol.
• Pet the Dog:
  • Tries to promise Cecelia/Victoria that she'd give her sister Kerry a death that the Capitol wouldn't remember and thus glorify, though Kerry would eventually take matters into her own hands.
  • Tells Rob that once the Inevitable Mutual Betrayal occurs, she will kill him relatively painlessly and give him a kiss. She does just that as she delivers a Mercy Kill.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: To Orion before finishing him off: "Wherever you end up, I hope it's not boring." This is a Call-Back to him telling her that he signed up to become a tribute because he found his life boring, so he would prefer either the life of a Victor or death in the arena. Be Careful What You Wish For.
• Pregnant Badass: During the Rescue Arc.
• Psycho for Hire: Does assassination missions for Snow's regime, one of which includes Cashmere and Gloss's father. Her "secret" is that she leaves tiny picture of a white rose, Snow's Calling Card, somewhere near or on the body, so their families will know the real reason for their loved one's death.
• Rescue Arc: Among the Victors who go on the rescue mission to save Katniss from Luster and the "Snowmen".
• Sherlock Scan: Does one during the countdown before the Games officially begin. Through this, she quickly realizes boys will have an advantage because they are wearing flat shoes, and she deduces that Kerry will kill herself before she even does it.
• Shipper on Deck: Encourages Rob to play on Orion's affection for him.
• Slave to PR: Decides to hold the Duel to the Death with Hera, because she fears the Careers let too many outliers get away during the bloodbath, and they need a good show for the first day, lest the Gamemakers sic some grotesque mutt on them.
• Slippery Skid: Slips on the bloody floor during her duel with Hera.
• Stress Vomit: Has one in the Samson bathroom after meeting so many bloodthirsty Capitolians. She throws up again during the bloodbath, though this was is largely due to suffering a head injury.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Develops this dynamic with Citrine, with Enobaria as the Tomboy.
• The Un-Reveal: What she said during the interviews. She blacked out for it, with no memory of what she said, and her mentors only tell her that she showed the audience who she really was. During the recap of the Games, she's too far into her My God, What Have I Done? moment to listen to the words she says, and instead just focuses on watching her eyes, being disturbed by what she sees in them.
• Used to Be a Sweet Kid: To a painful degree, given the direction her life takes.
• Wild Child: Though not actually feral, the other Victors constantly refer to her as though she is part animal.
• Woman Bites Man: Per canon, she kills Codey by biting him on the neck and ripping his throat out with her teeth. She does the same to the Speaker when she finally finds and kills him.

Berenice "Niki" Equita (68th Games Victor)

• Glory Seeker: Her "secret" is that she is ashamed of her victory through Serendipitous Survival, and therefore she starts fights with bigger men to prove she is a true Victor.
• Gossipy Hens: While thinking about her life the village in Arrow, Lyme recalls Niki gossiping with her and Enobaria.
• Hidden Depths: A talented guitarist and pens a song about how she sees Ares as a Parental Substitute but is ready to stand on her own.
• Kill Tally: Eight tributes, though none are named. She stabs three male tributes at the bloodbath.
• Killed Offscreen: Killed in the Nut when it is destroyed by the rebels.
• Non P.O.V. Protagonist: Her chapter is from Ares's perspective, her mentor and surrogate father.
• Polluted Wasteland: Ares describes her arena as a "toxic wasteland".
• Serendipitous Survival: Killed eight tributes herself, including three at the bloodbath. But once it was down to the final 3, Lorelei, the District 8 girl, was consumed by a chasm as punishment for a rebellious relative, and then the District 1 boy was eaten by carnivorous fish, allowing Berenice to win.

Lupus Pagano (72nd Games Victor)

• Aw, Look! They Really Do Love Each Other: While he had a bad relationship with his sister and brother growing up, hearing his father talk about wanting to send them into the Third Quarter Quell as a sibling team drives him to his Rage Breaking Point (though only after he returns to his mansion). Canus and Ursa in turn seem upset when he is reaped for the Quell, before Brutus volunteers for him.
• Do Unto Others Before They Do Unto Us: Kills the District 4 boy after he sees he's as good with the mace as he is.
• Heel Realization: Experiences this by the end of his Games when killing his final opponents, the District 1 tributes, and thinking about all the kids he killed and was told by his family, his instructors, and the Capitol that this was a privilege and an honor. It drives him into such an Unstoppable Rage that by the time he's done with those two tributes they have to scrape what's left of them off the ground. He makes good on this realization, though, by not fighting for the Capitol during the rebellion, which saves his life.
• Heroes Gone Fishing: Occasionally with Brutus and Honorious in between his victory and the Quell.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: with Odysseus, his Best Friend and roommate in District 14 after the war ended.
• Kill Tally: Eleven tributes — the District 12 boy (Mick Cahill), three other tributes during the bloodbath, District 5 girl, District 4 boy, District 1 boy, District 1 girl, and three other tributes.
• Like a Son to Me: To Brutus.
• Missing Mom: His mother died soon after giving birth to his sister.
• Neck Snap: How he kills the District 5 girl.
• Oh, Crap!: When he's reaped for the Quell, before Brutus volunteers for him.
• Only a Flesh Wound: Justus shoots him three times in the chest during the rescue mission for Katniss, but Justus misses all vital organs.
• Rescue Arc: Among the Victors who go on the rescue mission to save Katniss from Luster and the "Snowmen".
• Tantrum Throwing: Smashes his entire living room and dining room set in a post-Games fit of rage. Once he stops, Brutus comes to comfort him, resulting in a Cry Laughing.
• Tattoo as Character Type: Covered in tattoos and piercings as a way of rebelling against the expectations of being a perfect, loyal Career.
• Theme Naming: His father names each of his children after a fierce animal, in hopes that they will all become Victors: Lupus (wolf), Canus (dog), and Ursa (bear).
• Underestimating Badassery: He recognizes Katniss's hardness and survival instinct during her tribute parade but doesn't expect it to be enough for her to win her Games, given her lack of training.
• Vicariously Ambitious: Raised by his father, a former Peacekeeper who trained at the Institute, and his uncles, all of whom are obsessed with turning Lupus and his siblings into Victors. When Lupus returns a Victor, he sees his father and uncles, and much is "communicated between hard pairs of eyes. Respect. Contempt. Fear. Hatred. Brokenness. And envy, most of all."
• You Killed My Father: Averted. Though Brutus was a surrogate father to him and Cato and Clove were very close friends of his, he never holds this against Peeta nor discusses it in front of him, nor does this stop him from joining the rescue mission for Katniss.

District 4

"How the Capitol loved the slender, blonde fisher children, as they swam and bled and fought through the arena. How they loved to touch them, feel them, break them."

Districtwide Tropes

• Child Soldiers: District 4's rebellion is primarily fought by clan children who trained just in case they were reaped or volunteer to replace the sick or disabled. Now the Rebellion becomes their Games.
• City on the Water: Any reference to District 4 will mention that it is predominantly water.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Being from the fishing district, District 4 tributes are handy with spears and tridents, so they kill many of their victims this way.
• Noodle Incident: Lianne, Halibut's district partner, makes reference to Halibut's family being killed as retribution for some type of unrest that happens there after the Second Quarter Quell, but gives little other information about exactly what happened.
• Token Good Teammate: Of the Career districts. District 4 tributes tend to be more humane than their District 1 and District 2 counterparts, and their Victors tend to be more well-liked by the outlier Victors, even by ABACs. This may have to do with how Mags, the top District 4 Victor and mentor, is a secret rebel.
• Viking Funeral: District 4's Arrow chapter describes this for the many District 4 citizens who died in the rebellion. Those specifically named include:
  • Edmund Certes and Seafoam Docker, whose daughter Baela was reaped in the 74th Games and killed by Katniss.
  • Minnow Carr, who ran the Community Home.
  • Tiberias Lockwood, Deputy Head Peacekeeper for thirty years, effectively becoming part of the district.
  • The Victors: Mannanan, Briseis, Cerulea, Halibut, and Mags.^note Finnick was still alive at this point, fighting in the Capitol.
• Was It Really Worth It?: During the 36th Games (which Cerulea wins), Mags makes a deal with President Snow to fund and support District 4's training of Careers in exchange for investigating Wheaton's murder. Not only does Mags regret this deal once she understands its full implications, but District 4 immediately after goes on its longest stretch without a Victor—18 years until Halibut wins in the 54th Games.

Seaward Docker (8th Games Victor)

• Ambiguously Related: Baela Certes-Docker, the District 4 tribute Katniss dropped a tracker jack nest on, and her father Seafoam (who kills the District 4 mayor and several others at the start of the Mockingjay Rebellion) share the same surname with Seaward, but it's not said if they are related. Given the Capitol's tendency to reap Victors' family members, it is quite likely.
• Bookcase Passage: His "secret" is that he has a padded room in his basement, so no one can hear him play old classical music on his piano. (He uses Thisbe's screams as an excuse to build his padded walls.) He spends much of his free time doing this or getting high.
• Brother–Sister Team: Forms a tight alliance with Waverly, his brother's fiancée, and the two outlast all the other tributes.
• Children Forced to Kill: Seventeen when he enters his Games.
• Descent into Addiction: Tells Gleam that his "hatch" or coping mechanism is taking morphling. Seaward barely appears after this, and Mags effectively replaces him as the senior District 4 mentor.
• Executive Meddling: In-universe. The Gamemakers created a storm that killed the last three tributes besides Seaward and Waverly, so that the two would have to fight it out in the end.
• Kill Tally: Two tributes — the District 2 boy and District 4 girl (Waverly Mertz).
• Kill the Ones You Love: He and Waverly plan to separate from each other to avoid this, but the Gamemakers kill off all the other tributes, forcing a confrontation. Seaward tries to at least minimize this by going separate ways from Waverly, but Waverly takes the opportunity to throw a spear at his back. She misses, but Seaward's responding spear toss does not.
• Relegated Mentor: Vanishes into the background after Mags' victory, although it's implied to be by his own choice.
• Shell-Shocked Victor: Devastated that he has to kill Waverly, he only makes it through the Victory ceremonies by being pumped full of drugs. This begins his Descent into Addiction.
• Spider-Sense: The quick reflexes by which he avoids Waverly's spear toss and then throws his spear to kill her suggests he may have had a "Victor's premonition".
• This Is Unforgivable!: Half his district hates him forever for killing Waverly (even though Waverly shot first).

Magnificent "Mags" Baxter-Dupont (11th Games Victor)

• Action Girl: Single-handedly takes down the all-boys alliance of Districts 1, 2, 4, 7 and 9, becoming the first female tribute to win the Hunger Games.
• Big Good: Holds authority over the other Rebel Victors and most of the rebellion as a whole.
• Chew-Out Fake-Out: Insists on talking with Cecelia while Cecelia recovers from her Games, making it look as though she is going to attack Cecelia for betraying her tribute Andromache. However, she instead congratulates Cecelia for betraying Andromache first, since the ethic of the Hunger Games is Do Unto Others Before They Do Unto Us.
• Children Forced to Kill: Sixteen when she enters her first Games.^note Which means she is eighty during the Third Quarter Quell.
• Curtains Match the Window: Even as a young girl, Mags was described to have "silvery hair and strangely matching silver eyes".
• Deal with the Devil: Agrees to help "Commander Barrabas" find out the truth behind the murders of Councilman Littleleaf, Wheaton, and many others in exchange for his funding and support of her Careers' training and blank-check sponsorship for Cerulea. She turns out to be an Unwitting Pawn (see below) of a greater scheme, but she nevertheless receives the program support.
• Defensive Feint Trap: When fleeing from the all-boys alliance, Mags acts as though she is running simply out of fear. She was actually leading them into a very well-laid trap.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": Her name is Mags, not Magnificent!
  Mags: Say it with me! My. Name. Is. Mags!
• Famed In-Story: So popular throughout Panem that even the outer district Victors, who hate the Careers, respect her. Ahenobarbus comments that Mags could get anyone in the Capitol to shine her shoes if she wanted.
• First-Person Peripheral Narrator: For Cerulea's chapter; while Fyr, the District 7 male tribute, is this for Mags' own chapter.
• I Was Quite the Looker: Mags was both stunning and very flirtatious in her youth.
• Ironic Allergy: Her "secret" is that she doesn't care for fish, despite being from District 4 (though she is originally from District 1, so this may help explain why).
• Kill Tally: Five confirmed tributes — the District 9 boy, District 1 boy, District 4 boy, District 2 boy (Marcellus), and District 7 boy (Fyr). It is also possible that she killed the District 8 boy, who is Killed Offscreen; he is either killed by Mags, mutts, or a Gamemaker trap.
• Lured into a Trap: Tricks the all-boys alliance into following her over a ravine across a fallen log that she had spent days hollowing out, so that her pursuers would fall into the ravine. She then pours fish oil on the wounded tributes and sets them on fire.
• Massive Numbered Siblings: One of seven sisters, including a twin called Dora, all of whom live with Mags in her Victor's mansion.
• Mercy Kill: Fyr begs her for one after being set on fire.
  Fyr: Please. Just … quickly.
• Non P.O.V. Protagonist: Her chapter is told from Fyr's perspective.
• O.C. Stand-in: First introduced in Catching Fire as District 4's female tribute in the Third Quarter Quell. She sacrifices herself to make sure Finnick can get Peeta and Katniss out of the Fog of Doom.
• Rebel Leader: The leader of La Résistance among the Victors.
• Silver Fox: Has silver hair even in her youth, and as she ages she remains quite attractive.
• Spider-Sense: Has several "Victor's premonitions" throughout her life, including before the Black Banquet, before the first Quell, and when Luster won his Games. Cerulea's chapter focuses on two she has: the first at the beginning of Cerulea's Games when she learns Wheaton is dead, and the second and much bigger as she's sharing the video with "Commander Barrabas". Her premonitions include a "tingling" from a breast wound she suffered in her Games and "the overwhelming stench of burning flesh".
• Teacher/Student Romance: With Manannan.
• Unwitting Pawn: Mags works with "Commander Barrabas" to help solve Wheaton's murder. She uncovers a political/sex scandal that allows Coriolanus Snow, who was Barrabas all along, to move against his political rivals and take sole power.
  Mags: I unleashed a monster on the world. I unleashed him and sold him the district. Oh my god, what have I done?
• War Refugees: Inverted. Her family fled District 1 to District 4 after her father, an underworld businessman, "crossed more Great Houses than was strictly healthy". Once the Dark Days Rebellion started, they were unable to return to District 1.

Manannan Ulmo (19th Games Victor)

• Badass Bookworm: His "secret" is that he has a hidden collection of over five hundred banned books.
• Captain's Log: Keeps a meticulous diary, which provides most of the information the Victors learn about Thisbe's mental state prior to the Black Banquet Massacre.
• The Dead Have Names: Keeps a plaque in his study that includes the names of all the tributes he trained who died in the Games.
• Deadpan Snarker: Not often, but after Roan's victory, his mentor Bovina (aware of what a problem he's going to be) asks Manannan if he has any advice after dealing with the unstable Halibut for the past few years. Manannan responds, "Invest in locks."
• Heroic Sacrifice: Gunned down with Halibut while trying to protect Annie from the Peacekeepers, but he is able to take two Peacekeepers down with him.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Wins his Games by stabbing the male tribute from District 1 in the heart.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Known for being very tough on his students, but those he trained appreciated all he taught them. He also shows the most concern for Thisbe following her Games and sacrifices himself to protect Annie.
• Kill Tally: Three confirmed tributes — the District 9 boy, District 2 boy, and District 1 boy. There are possibly more since he was The Leader of the Career pack.
• Lethal Lava Land: The 19th Games arena is a version of this.
• Shrine to Self: Has a large statue of himself outside his Victor's mansion commemorating his victory, and inside his study is a "massive moving mural" depicting his Games and several more pictures of himself throughout his life.
  Johanna: So he was a typical Career then. He sounds like an arrogant ass if you ask me.
  Annie: I didn't ask you. But I suppose you're right, in a way.
• Stern Teacher: His reputation as a mentor.
• Teacher/Student Romance: With Mags.
• Trophy Room: His "study" is full of pictures and holograms of himself during his Games and afterwards.

Thisbe Everett (21st Games Victor)

• Cheated Death, Died Anyway: Even considering how most victors don't get to live out a natural lifespan even after surviving the Hunger Games, Thisbe is the only one who doesn't even last a year after her first brush with death. Snow kills her at the end of her Victory Tour to make her the scapegoat for a political assassination.
• Children Forced to Kill: Sixteen when she enters her Games.
• The Dog Bites Back: Subverted. The Black Banquet Massacre initially looks like this but it's implied that she was actually The Scapegoat, and that she dies during the banquet trying to kill Snow.
• Driven to Madness: First by the Gamemakers' terrifying arena, and then by Snow's gaslighting.
• Family Extermination: There is no record of any family members of hers after the First Quarter Quell, suggesting this occurred.
• Gaslighting: A young Coriolanus Snow gaslights her into making paranoid rants prior to the Victory Tour banquet, which allows her to become The Scapegoat for the Black Banquet Massacre.
• Punch-Clock Villain: She and her allies, while still out to hunt and kill the other tributes, find the arena so enchanting that they spend far more time swimming and relaxing to take in the beauty (until the Gamemakers release legions of truly horrible mutts).
• The Scapegoat: Likely set up by Snow to take the fall for the 97 victims at the Black Banquet Massacre who were poisoned.
• Unperson: Becomes this after the Black Banquet Massacre. She is the only Victor not to have a statue on the Avenue of Victory, which is perpetually "undergoing renovation". She is not even present among Mannanan's pictures of the Victors he mentored.^note His chapter mentions he has pictures from the Victory tours of the two Victors he mentored, which were presumably Halibut and Annie. The Victors have to do much searching just to learn anything about her.
  If Orchus is the Victor no one can remember, Thisbe is the one they all try to forget.
• Victory by Endurance: All the tributes who survive the first week are driven crazy by the arena, and Thisbe just happened to be the last one standing.

Briseis Barrington (33rd Games Victor)

• Alliterative Name: Briseis Barrington
• Badass Family: Deconstructed. Her brother Brent and her cousin Codai also volunteered for the Games (30th and 29th, respectively), but this is because they were pressured by their Abusive Parents. Briseis is the only one to become a Victor.
• Children Forced to Kill: Being a Career, she is eighteen when she enters her Games.^note Which means she is sixty when she is killed in the Control Center during the Third Quarter Quell.
• Do Not Go Gentle: Among the Victors who fight off the Peacekeepers at the Control Center.
• Evil Aunt/Clashing Cousins: Raised by her abusive aunt and uncle, who ran a Community Home. After her Games, they move into her Victory Village home with Briseis and take control of her finances. But a few months later, they and two of Briseis's cousins, who also bullied her as a child, are found dead from a gas leak. One cousin survived, but it's unstated whether this was unintended or an act of mercy towards a relatively decent member of the family.
• Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Spears the District 2 girl through the neck from twenty yards away.
• Ironic Fear: Despite being from District 4, Briseis is afraid of water, because her cousins used to hold her down underwater and pretend to drown her.
• Kill Tally: On her own she killed two tributes — the District 2 girl and District 2 boy. Fourteen tributes died in the opening Bloodbath, most of them likely at the hands of the Career pack.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: Her aunt, uncle, and cousins are killed in a gas leak at her mansion. Her "secret" is that she actually killed them.
• Murder Makes You Crazy: After murdering her family, Briseis is taken into psychiatric care in the Capitol.
• Post-Game Retaliation: Reportedly gets into a fight at the Institute in District 2, related to her final battle against her District 2 allies, both of whom she killed single-handedly after they turned on the Career alliance.
• Sarcasm Mode: At her best, she maintains this towards the tabloid journalists trying to interview her.
• Sex for Solace: Sleeps with Shine, her deceased ally's brother, during her Victory tour. The tabloid journalist interviewing her suggests this is their way of consoling each other.
• Tabloid Melodrama: Her chapter is narrated by a series of tabloid journalists and is presented in the format of tabloid news.
• Those Two Girls: With Cerulea, so much so that they were holding hands when they were killed together and during their Viking Funeral.
• You Killed My Father: Averted with Ben Cooper, who inflicted a Cruel and Unusual Death on her cousin Codai during his Games. Despite this, Ben and Bri respectively mentor the partnership of Nolan and Perry during the 40th Games. And given how Briseis hated her cousins, it's doubtful this posed a problem.

Cerulea Larson (36th Games Victor)

• Action Girl: Had a training score of 9 and survived against trained killers despite not having prepared for the Games herself.
• Action Mom: Remains a fierce combatant and loyal Rebel in middle age, and is mentioned as having a daughter who dates Tiberias Lockwood, the Deputy Head Peacekeeper.
• Ancient Grome: Her arena is modeled after the ancient city of Rome.
• Children Forced to Kill: Seventeen when she enters her Games.^note Which means she is fifty-eight when she is killed in the Control Center during the Third Quarter Quell.
• Do Not Go Gentle: Among the Victors who fight off the Peacekeepers at the Control Center, and hers are the final words given from the soon-to-be-killed Victors.
  Cerulea: What are you waiting for, GO!
• Due to the Dead: Her "secret" is that every year on Reaping Day, she brings fresh flowers to the graves of District 4's dead tributes.
• Foregone Conclusion: Mentioned as being among the dead Victors well before appearing, all the way back in the prologue.
• Kill Tally: Two tributes. The girl from District 2 and an unnamed tribute (likely either the District 1 girl or District 2 boy). She is specifically relieved at how low this is.
  Cerulea: Only two. I think I can handle only two.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: During the Lured into a Trap incident mentioned below, as soon as one of the Careers breaks out of her traps, she promptly abandons her supplies and gets out of there rather than face them a trained killer in an even fight.
• Lured into a Trap: The remaining Career pack comes upon her sleeping, but it's really a duffel bag wrapped in blankets. The District 2 boy is Caught in a Snare she sets up, and she drops a not-so-Inescapable Net on the girls from Districts 1 and 2. She kills the District 2 girl and wounds the boy before the District 1 girl breaks free.
• Nice Girl: Both before and after her Games.
• Shell-Shocked Veteran: Her hands are trembling as she's prepped after her Games, and she later suffers terrible nightmares immediately following her Games, so much so that her whole body shakes.
• Spider-Sense: Gets a "Victor's premonition" even before she enters her Games that she shouldn't join the Careers alliance. She is immediately proven correct, as the District 2 tributes and the District 1 girl kill the two other Careers once the initial bloodbath is over, and they would've killed her had she stayed.
• Supporting Protagonist: The main focus of her chapter is Mags's investigation into Wheaton's death. Her Games are shown through occasional glimpses Mags gets as she travels to different locations in the Capitol.
• Those Two Girls: With Briseis, so much so that they were holding hands when they were killed together and during their Viking Funeral.
• Tomboy: Never trained for the Games, and instead worked on her father's fishing boat and learned to fish, hunt and use the bow on her own.
• Tropical Island Adventure: Her Games take place among the Caribbean Islands.

Halibut Shore (54th Games Victor)

• Children Forced to Kill: Sixteen when he enters his Games.
• Cynical Mentor: Though known to have a "gruff, no nonsense approach" like his mentor Manannan, his comment to Odysseus below and his treatment of his son Merlin when he becomes a tribute (see I Let Gwen Stacy Die) suggest he is this.
  Hal: (to Odysseus) You're going to die, no point in pretending otherwise. But just in case, let's go over what you know.
• Dead Guy on Display: Peacekeepers do this to his body after his Heroic Sacrifice, hoping this will demoralize District 4. It has the opposite effect.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": Hates being called Halibut, preferring to be called just "Hal".
• Family Extermination: His parents are executed during a districtwide crackdown on malcontents in District 4. His son Merlin is later reaped for and decapitated in the 70th Games .
  • He does have a sister though, and Merlin may not have been his only child.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Gunned down with Manannan trying to protect Annie from the Peacekeepers, but took half a dozen Peacekeepers down with him.
• I Let Gwen Stacy Die: His "secret" is that he blames himself for his son Merlin's death, as he never put much effort into mentoring him, because he didn't want to get his hopes up. He wonders ever since whether Merlin, had he lived long enough, could have outswam Annie when their arena was flooded.
• Inevitable Mutual Betrayal: The only part of his Games that are described is the breakdown of the Career alliance. He personally betrays his closest ally, Copper, and later kills the District 1 girl and the District 2 boy.
• Kill Tally: Four tributes — the District 7 boy, District 1 boy (Copper), District 1 girl (Rarity), and District 2 boy (Priam).
• Murder Makes You Crazy: The Careers in his alliance debate whether he experiences this or he is just a sociopath.
• Ninja Log: Uses a bag of crabapples as a decoy, which Rarity stabs, thinking she kills him. She's wrong.
• Pre-Mortem One-Liner: As his last opponent says his name is stupid for a Victor, he shrugs and says it's better than his.
• Swamps Are Evil: The arena of the 54th Games are described this way, though more pleasantly.
• Switching P.O.V.: His chapter is shown from the perspective of every other Career tribute in his Games except him.
• Tampering with Food and Drink: Poisons Copper's fish.
• Together in Death: The citizens of District 4 disinter Merlin's remains, put them in a carved chest, and place them with Hal for Hal's Viking Funeral.

Finnick Odair (65th Games Victor)

• Best Served Cold: Planned his revenge against the Capitol for years, remembering names, events, and details. Providing a distraction for District 13's mission to rescue the Quarter Quell Victors gives Finnick the perfect opportunity to expose everything he knows on a live broadcast, inciting a massive riot in the city.
• Broken Pedestal: The Capitol became this to him once he becomes its most popular Sex Slave.
  He turned sixteen during the Victory Tour for the Sixty-Sixth Games. President Snow made him the premier party favor at the Capitol Banquet and Finnick learned that there is no such thing as the Panem Dream, not for pretty boys who win the Hunger Games.
• Cheshire Cat Grin: Gives one right before he begins listing the names of Capitolian offenders.
• Children Forced to Kill: Fourteen when he enters his first Games.^note Which means he is twenty-four during the Third Quarter Quell.
• Crosses the Line Twice: In-Universe. Hosts a talent show for the Victors dressed up like Caesar Flickerman, and pulling names out of a reaping bowl replica to determine the order the various Victors go in. Most of the observers can't decided whether to feel appalled or amused.
• Dangerous 16th Birthday: It was on his sixteenth birthday that begins his "Victor's duties".
• The Dog Bites Back: Gets revenge on all the Capitolians who abused him and so many others for so many years by exposing many of their Dark Secrets.
• Egregious: Sends an invitation to all the Victors to attend a "Victors' Talent Show", and the invitation refers to him as the Egregious Finnick Odair.
  Ares: Victors' Talent Show? Are you serious? And does he even know what "egregious" means?
• Famed In-Story: Until Katniss's Games, Finnick is perhaps the most famous and popular Victor in Panem, and this remains so even after the Mockingjay Revolution, as his exploits as a revolutionary are added to his prior fame as a Victor and Capitol darling.
• Historical Hero Upgrade: Occurs in-universe, in which many people overlook his (and Annie's) more ruthless and selfish exploits — like volunteering for the Hunger Games and killing eleven children — and instead emphasize his charm and heroism.
  Lovers and heroes aren't supposed to murder other children. It doesn't fit the narrative.
• Kill Tally:
  • For his original Games, eleven tributes (the most of any District 4 Victor) — the District 2 boy (Eusebius), District 1 girl, District 5 boy, District 8 girl, and seven unnamed tributes.
  • For the Quell, one tribute — Matthias.
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall: The author's description of how so many have told different tales of Finnick Odair refers to the many Hunger Games fans who have written written fan fics about him.
• The Lost Lenore: To Annie, after his death.
• Meaningful Background Event: His Games are described in the background of Brutus and Cecelia's date.
• Memorial Statue: District 13 commissions one of Finnick, a "thirty-foot-high colossus all paneled in gold and platinum and standing over the site of his death on the streets of the Capitol".
• The Mole: Agrees to work with Matthias and Roan to kill Katniss in order to hopefully end the Third Quarter Quell early. He instead spears Matthias right before Matty attacks Katniss and almost kills Roan as well.
• Rags to Riches: Is explicitly described to be this in his chapter.
• Worthy Opponent: Even as many Capitolians are shocked by Finnick's revelations, they are also impressed with his sharp memory for details. President Snow even gives him a Slow Clap in his mansion.

Annie Cresta (70th Games Victor)

• Action Mom: Though a new mother (and widely viewed as a Broken Bird), she develops the plan to rescue Katniss.
• Asskicking Leads to Leadership: Becomes The Leader of the Career alliance during her Games by killing more tributes during the bloodbath than any other Career (including more than both District 1 and 2 boys combined).
• Bad People Abuse Animals: Her "secret" is that she prepared for her Games by stalking and killing stray dogs. Dogs thereafter become a Trauma Button for her.
• Broken Bird: Perhaps more than any living Victor, Annie is known for having been broken by the Games. But in this story she is portrayed as much more resilient, though still traumatized.
• Chekhov's Skill: Becomes the Victor after her arena is completely flooded, and the Super Swimming Skills that are heavily emphasized in District 4 prove vital.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass: As the Rescue Arc proves, she retains combat and leadership skills long after being broken by the arena and the Capitol's torture.
• Happy Place: Briefly has to whisper "words that make me happy" to prevent herself from having another breakdown.
  Annie: Finnick. Ednick. Seashells. Sunset. Mags. Net. Quilt.
• Kill Tally: At least four tributes — three girls at the Cornucopia bloodbath and one boy the next day — but she brags that she killed more during the bloodbath (where ten tributes are killed) than the District 1 and 2 boys combined.
• O.C. Stand-in: First introduced in Catching Fire as the young woman reaped to be District 4's female tribute for the Third Quarter Quell until Mags volunteers for her. She is portrayed throughout the series as fragile and crazy, with little character development outside her relationship with Finnick.
• Orphanage of Love: Founds one for war orphans following the Rebellion.
• Rescue Arc: Develops the rescue mission plan to save Katniss from Luster and the "Snowmen".
• Super Swimming Skills: Her amazing swimming ability is what allows her to win her Games when her arena is flooded.
• Victory by Endurance: As per the books, where she survives a dam attack due to her swimming skills.

Odysseus Wheeler (73rd Games Victor)

• Desperate Object Catch: Catches the remote that controls the sensory deprivation chamber containing Katniss from Luster's wounded hand. If the remote had hit the ground, it would have killed Katniss due to the chamber slowing her heartbeat to a full stop.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: with Lupus, his Best Friend and roommate in District 14 after the war ended.
• Non-Protagonist Resolver: He is pivotal in the final battle with the Snowmen and the rescue of Katniss. This despite not having appeared, or even been mentioned, until three chapters before that.
• O.C. Stand-in: In The Hunger Games first film, Caesar shows a clip of a Victor killing his final opponent with a brick. Ody kills his final rival with a brick, so this is likely him, which would make sense, as Caesar would likely show the recap of the most recent Games.
• Overshadowed by Awesome: Refers to himself as the "perpetually and gratefully overshadowed" Victor, because his Games come right before the 74th Games, which produced the historic outcome of two Victors. Although unlike most examples he actually seems grateful for this, saying, "I never had to be a Victor thanks to her."
• Rescue Arc: Among the Victors who go on the rescue mission to save Katniss from Luster and the "Snowmen".
• Urban Ruins: The setting of his arena, though the former city is not stated.

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