History Characters / KrisLongknife

* DCupDistress: She is ''very'' well-endowed but tells Kris at one point that they came in late. Also her large tracts of land give her back problems and get in the way of her physical training.

* ACupAngst: {{Inverted}} ''and'' played straight. She is ''very'' [[BuxomIsBetter well-endowed]] but tells Kris at one point that they came in late. Also her large tracts of land give her back problems and get in the way of her physical training.

The nation represented by the primary protagonists, an [[ElectiveMonarchy elective]] constitutional [[TheKingdom monarchy]] headquartered on Wardhaven that forms following the dissolution of the [[TheFederation Society of Humanity]] at the end of ''Mutineer''.

* GoodPeopleHaveGoodSex: He and Kris after their RelationshipUpgrade. After she becomes pregnant unexpectedly in ''Unrelenting'', he even mentions looking up how to make sex comfortable for her later in the pregnancy.
* HappilyMarried: To Kris starting in ''Defender''.

* MeaningfulName: Besides her AwesomeMcCoolname surname (a clue to her Native American ancestry), an ethnic Arab points out in ''Deserter'' that a "kris" is a type of dagger.

The nation represented by the primary protagonists, an [[ElectiveMonarchy elective]] [[TheKingdom constitutional monarchy]] headquartered on Wardhaven that forms following the dissolution of the [[TheFederation Society of Humanity]] at the end of ''Mutineer''.

* DarkAndTroubledPast: She survived her first assassination attempt as a preteen. Her younger brother wasn't as fortunate. Her emotionally distant and perpetually busy father and mother were no help ([[ParentalAbuse the latter tried to drug her into]] [[WantedAGenderConformingChild being a "proper" girl]]) and she started stealing from the liquor cabinet. Her great-grandfather got her straightened out and inspired her Navy career.

* ActionMom: She continues her military career, and her assassin-magnet status, during and after her first pregnancy in ''Unrelenting''.

* BulletProofVest: By book two she's in the habit of wearing bulletproof lingerie ''everywhere'', sourced by Abby. Good thing too, given she's such an assassin magnet.
* ChestOfMedals: By the later parts of the PlanetLooters arc, Kris has earned several of the highest awards for valor from the various human governments of TheVerse[[note]]The Order of the Wounded Lion (Earth + [[VestigialEmpire rump Society of Humanity]]), Wardhaven Defense Medal (Wardhaven), Golden Starburst (Helvetican Confederacy), and the ''Pour la Mérite'' (Greenfeld Empire), plus a Navy Cross with combat "V" and a number of other awards[[/note]], as well as three from the two largest Sasquan governments. And, as is brought up in ''Resolute'', most of her other medals have combat "V"s.

* OverrankedSoldier: She goes from being an ensign at the start of book one, to a vice admiral at the end of ''Bold'', and has only been on active duty for six years, and is jumped another two grades to grand admiral at the start of ''Emissary''. It ''is'' {{justified}}--she's just that good and catches a lot of battlefield promotions, and her promotion from lieutenant commander to rear admiral, then to vice admiral, was an acting promotion that she had the clout to make permanent--but she sometimes catches flak from officers who had a more traditional career path and resent her jumping the promotion ladder.

* SpaceshipSlingshotStunt: A close variation: in space combat she is ''scarily'' proficient at using gravity assists to attack her enemies from unexpected angles. In ''Emissary'' she relieves the vice admiral commanding her escort when he refuses to believe her assessment of how the planetary arrangement of the system they're in gives the enemy an advantage.

* BenevolentAI: She's completely harmless, at least to people she likes, although it didn't come easily: she has an entire folder in her file directory labeled "Nelly Is Not Allowed to Start a War" (after she tries to have USS ''Wasp'' fire on a Greenfeld cruiser after a stray shot aimed at an Iteeche ship nearly hits them).

!!General Jack Montoya

!!Admiral Her Grace the Grand Duchess Victoria Smythe-Peterwald

* InadequateInheritor: Considered to be this by her father and his peers, as she was made heir to the throne after her brother's death. A large part of it it's simply due to [[HeirClubForMen the fact she's a woman]]

!!Henry "Hank" Smythe-Peterwald XIII

The son of Henry Peterwald XII and twin brother of Vicky Peterwald. A onetime suitor to Kris Longknife in the first two books, circumstances forced him to become an enemy. He finally ended up on the wrong end of naval guns under her command in ''Resolute'' and died... because somebody who wasn't Kris tampered with his EscapePod.

* BlingOfWar[=/=]ChestOfMedals: In ''Resolute'' Kris encounters him in his dress uniform and notes that while he has more medals than she does, none of his have combat "V"s, whereas all of hers save the Wardhaven Defense Medal and Order of the Wounded Lion do, and those two don't need the "V" by definition.

* {{Foreshadowing}}: In hindsight his mysterious death by sabotaged EscapePod may have been perpetrated by the Bowlingame family that his sister ultimately spends her series fighting.
* OverrankedSoldier: In his final appearance he's made a commodore by order of his father, thereby putting a man completely inexperienced at command or naval combat in charge of a squadron of long-serving veteran officers like Georg Krätz (who do their best to restrain his worst impulses). This of course means the by-now-highly experienced Kris makes a complete fool of him both before and during the inevitable battle.

* BadassBureaucrat: He teaches Vicky nearly everything she knows about how to ''lead'' a country, not just being its titular ruler.

* MixedAncestry: Kris is depicted and described as a blonde white woman but has significant Native American ancestry, which is a plot point in ''Among the Kicking Birds''.

* ACupAngst: {{Inverted}} ''and'' played straight. She is ''very'' well-endowed but tells Kris at one point that they came in late. Also her large tracts of land give her back problems and get in the way of her physical training.

* FieryRedhead: She is an extremely passionate person.

* HeelFaceTurn: She goes from an IneffectualSympatheticVillain in ''Audacious'' to a tight ally and friend to Kris Longknife. Her improvement comes after she's assigned to a military ship as a very junior officer to discipline her following her actions in a previous book. After doing so, she learns not only to take pride in actually being good at something on her own merits and not because of her wealth, family, looks, or skill in bed, but that she's learning how to be a proper officer, something that Hank lacked and actually caused his death.

* [[TheCasanova [=ManEater=]]]: Pre-character development. She regularly snapped up single young men and used her sexual wiles to charm them into doing her bidding, in bed and out (which usually didn't end well for the men on account of her overprotective male guardians). After she's drafted into the Greenfeld Navy, her first CO, Captain Georg Krätz, puts a stop to this after catching her in a paint closet with a fellow ensign.

* OverrankedSoldier: {{Lampshaded}}: Her last legal rank is only lieutenant junior grade (O-2), so even ''she'' thinks it's a bit nuts when she gets frocked up to ''vice admiral'' during the CivilWar. In ''Dominator'' she actually [[DecliningPromotion refuses to be promoted even further]] to grand admiral, despite her military advisors noting that monarchs have traditionally held the highest rank in their militaries.

Vicky Peterwald's LoveInterest and eventual prince consort. A common-born industrialist from the planet St. Petersburg, he is instrumental in helping her build a popular following and teaching her to rule, in the process transitioning the Greenfeld Empire to constitutional monarchy.

* BiTheWay: She likes to use her feminine wiles to manipulate men, but also has a FriendsWithBenefits relationship with her female bodyguards Kit and Kat, and at one point even invites her male spy chief Mr. Smith into bed with them. She's also mentioned to have tried to convince her husband Manny Artamus to let Kit and Kat into their bed (so far unsuccessfully).

* ManEater: Pre-character development. She regularly snapped up single young men and used her sexual wiles to charm them into doing her bidding, in bed and out (which usually didn't end well for the men on account of her overprotective male guardians). After she's drafted into the Greenfeld Navy, her first CO, Captain Georg Krätz, puts a stop to this after catching her in a paint closet with a fellow ensign.

Vicky Peterwald's LoveInterest and eventual prince consort. A common-born industrialist from the planet Sevastopol, he is instrumental in helping her build a popular following and teaching her to rule, in the process transitioning the Greenfeld Empire to constitutional monarchy.

* SacrificialLion: In ''Daring'' he commands a flotilla of human battleships sent along with Kris Longknife's flotilla of Q-ships to investigate rumors of hostile aliens. He's killed in the opening volleys when they intercept a [[PlanetLooter PlanetLooter]] mothership in the Alwa system, as his battleships are simply too big and slow to evade the enemy BeamSpam.

* SacrificialLion: In ''Daring'' he commands a flotilla of human battleships sent along with Kris Longknife's flotilla of Q-ships to investigate rumors of hostile aliens. He's killed in the opening volleys when they intercept a PlanetLooter mothership in the Alwa system, as his battleships are simply too big and slow to evade the enemy BeamSpam.

* BlingOfWar[=/=]ChestOfMedals: In ''Resolute'' Kris encounters him in his dress uniform and notes that while he has more medals than she does, none of his have combat "V"s, whereas all of hers save the Wardhaven Defense Medal and Order of the Wounded Lion do.

A Wardhaven Secret Service officer, Jack Montoya is assigned as Kris's security detail in ''Mutineer''. Between books two and three she conscripts him into the Wardhaven Marine Corps (which becomes the Royal United Society Marine Corps), and he continues to guard her. Over the course of the next several books they fall in love, and marry in ''Defender''.

* BornLucky: [[LampshadeHanging It's actually mentioned in her Greenfeld State Security dossier.]]

* BumblingDad: How Vicky ultimately comes to view him.

[[folder:Manny Artamus]]
!!Manuel Artamus
Vicky Peterwald's LoveInterest and eventual prince consort. A common-born industrialist from the planet Sevastopol, he is instrumental in helping her build a popular following and teaching her to rule, in the process transitioning the Greenfeld Empire to constitutional monarchy.

* BadassBureaucrat: He teaches Vicky nearly everything she knows about how to ''lead'' a country, not just being its titular ruler.
* NonActionGuy: He's just an ordinary civilian with no military training.

* AssassinOutclassin: She has to date survived and/or outfought at least one assassination attempt on nearly every planet she's set foot on except Chance, Xanadu, and Pandemonium. She's such an assassin magnet it becomes one of the series' {{Running Gag}}s for somebody to try to shoot her or bomb her at least OnceAnEpisode.

* TranslatorMicrobes: Give her sufficient time to learn a new language (say a couple hours listening to unencrypted broadcasts) and she can readily act as a universal translator even of alien tongues.

* BlingOfWar[=/=]ChestOfMedals: In ''Resolute'' Kris encounters him in his dress uniform and notes that while he has more medals than she does, none of his have combat "V"s, whereas all of hers do.

* PunchClockVillain: In ''Resolute'' he's JustFollowingOrders. In all subsequent appearances he fights alongside Kris and her companions.

Introduced in ''Audacious'' (after a SequelHook mention at the end of ''Resolute''), she attempted to kill Kris several times to avenge her brother Hank. In ''Intrepid'', however, Kris managed to meet Vicky in a social setting (under the supervision of Vicky's CO) and get across to her that she both hadn't killed Hank and had not intended to kill him beyond the exigencies of a SpaceBattle. After some CharacterDevelopment, Vicky joined Kris on a few of her exploits, culminating in the Voyage of Discovery, which ended in the battlefield death of her protector, Admiral Georg Kratz.

At this point, Vicky jumped off into her own side series and was forced to become an ActionSurvivor and ultimately gather her own fleet to wage a CivilWar against her EvilStepmother to save her entire country.

* ManEater: Pre-character development. She regularly snapped up single young men and used her sexual wiles to charm them into doing her bidding, in bed and out (which usually didn't end well for the men on account of her overprotective male guardians). After she's drafted into the Greenfeld Navy, her first CO, Captain Georg Kratz, puts a stop to this after catching her in a paint closet with a fellow ensign.

* OverrankedSoldier: In his final appearance he's made a commodore by order of his father, thereby putting a man completely inexperienced at command or naval combat in charge of a squadron of long-serving veteran officers like Georg Kratz (who do their best to restrain his worst impulses). This of course means the by-now-highly experienced Kris makes a complete fool of him both before and during the inevitable battle.

[[folder:Georg Kratz]]
!!Admiral Georg Kratz
Introduced in ''Resolute'' as Hank Peterwald's flag captain, Georg Kratz returns as Vicky Peterwald's commanding officer from "Kris Longknife's Assassin" until his death in battle in ''Daring''.

* ShoutOutToShakespeare: He initially presents himself to Kris as a potential suitor suggesting they could end the Longknife-Peterwald feud together, which he compares to ''Theatre/RomeoAndJuliet''. [[GenreBlind Which probably should have been somewhat of a clue how things were going to end up]] (and Kris {{lampshades}} it, noting she has no intention of dying).

* BiTheWay: She likes to use her feminine wiles to manipulate men, but also has a FriendsWithBenefits relationship with her female bodyguards Kit and Kat, and at one point even invites her male spy chief Mr. Smith into bed with them. She's also mentioned to have tried to convince her husband Manny Artamus to let Kit and Kat into their bed.

* LatinLover: He's a pretty handsome Latino man, and Kris develops a crush on him within a few books.