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Protagonists
Malini
- Awesome Moment of Crowning: The moment where Rao drops to his knee and proclaims Malini the true and rightful ruler of Parajatdvipa after she routed Chandra's forces is pretty badass.
- Damsel in Distress: At the start of the series, Malini is in a pretty desperate position. Chandra keeps her locked in the Hirana away from anyone who might help her, aside from a single handler who keeps Malini drugged and malleable. Chandra is waiting for Malini to become so broken by this treatment she will willingly agree to burn to death. Malini seizes on Priya as a chance for escape.
- Et Tu, Brute?: Malini's reaction to Priya's betrayal at the end of The Oleander Sword.
- Fallen Princess: Malini's position at the start of the series. From a popular, savvy princess she's become a chattel prisoner of her despotic brother, kept drugged to keep her obedient and almost entirely lacking in any resources or connections of her own anymore.
- Girl in the Tower: Malini is kept imprisoned inside a tall, very hazardous yaksa temple.
- Hallucinations: Malini has them of her dead handmaids when she's suffering withdrawals, which are very vivid and appear real to her.
- Lipstick Lesbian: She's attracted to other women, with a feminine style; usually she wears a sari, and has long hair.
- Manipulative Bastard: Malini is skilled at convincing people to do what she wants, whether through appealing to what she knows they desire or deceiving people by acting significantly more demure and weak than she is. This is one of the reasons Priya finds it hard to trust her once she realizes Malini was manipulating her as well; and Pramila, Malini's appointed guardian/prison warden, accuses her of being manipulative and dangerous, warning Priya to take caution.
- Muggle–Mage Romance: With Priya, once the latter has tapped back into her yaksa-acolyte powers.
- Official Couple: With Priya. They're the central couple of the trilogy.
- Oppose What You Suffered: Thanks to Chandra's treatment of her in their childhood, Malini is very aware of his tendency to cruelty and zealotry. She knew from the start he would make a violent emperor and she opposes him now on the grounds he isn't fit to rule for that reason.
- Politically-Active Princess: Malini to a T. She organized the entire insurrection effort against Chandra to begin with, and the first thing she does when she escapes the Hirana is pick up where she left off.
- Pre-Climax Climax: Malini and Priya roll in the sheets partway through The Oleander Sword, a while before the major showdown of the book.
- Princess Protagonist: Along with Priya, Malini is one of the core characters and POV protagonists, and she's the princess of Parajadvipa.
- A Protagonist Shall Lead Them: Despite the fact that Malini was originally considered unfit for the throne as a woman, she ends up being the one to unite Parajatdvipa against Chandra and at the end of The Oleander Sword is made empress.
- Queer Romance: She gets involved with Priya, another woman.
- Rebellious Princess: A very serious example. Malini sees the harm that her fanatic brother Chandra is causing as emperor and begins to foment an insurrection against him.
- Secret Relationship: Malini wants to keep her romance with Priya under wraps, so that no one thinks she's unduly favoring Ahiranya. Also, same-sex romances are frowned on in most of Parajatdvipa.
- Semi-Divine: Some of the Parijati priests consider her to be a scion of Divyanski, a goddess who they worship, as her appearance is very similar.
- Silk Hiding Steel: Malini is excellent at playing to the expectations of the men around her, often shielding how knowledgeable or ambitious she really is from them. However, a reader will have little doubt it's Malini who has pushed the rebellion against Chandra the whole way.
- Suicidal Sadistic Choice: What Malini offers Chandra after winning the civil war—die immediately or allow her to slowly poison him into incompetence over several months, as he did to her.
- Take a Third Option: Chandra is maniacal and Aditya is incompetent, but everyone in Parajatdvipa is convinced one of them has to rule, until Rao opens up Malini as an option.
- Uptown Girl: Malini is a princess, and falls in mutual love with Priya, who's her maidservant at first.
Priya
- Action Girl: Priya has been trained from childhood to fight with a knife or her bare hands, and she's quite skillful. Later she also learns to use magic in combat.
- Earthy Barefoot Character: Her powers come from the yaksa, nature spirits, and Priya often goes barefoot.
- Green Thumb: After getting back in touch with her temple training, Priya can access a variety of nature-based magical powers.
- I Am What I Am: It takes Priya some time to accept her identity as a priestess of the yaksa and the associated benefits and conditions, but she does get there.
- I Gave My Word: At the end of The Jasmine Throne Priya promises to come when Malini calls for her, no matter what. In The Oleander Sword, Malini asks for Priya's help fighting Chandra's army. Priya comes.
- Lady-In-Waiting: Priya becomes this for Malina, after being just another maidservant in the Hirana, serving her meals, bathing her and fixing her hair. It's part of Malini's effort to convince Priya to help her escape.
- Magic Knight: Priya is quite skilled at fighting with knives, and later learns to use magic in combat too.
- Muggle–Mage Romance: With Malini. She is the mage of the pair.
- Queer Romance: She becomes lovers with Malini, another woman.
- Official Couple: With Malini. There's elements of Rescue Romance after Priya helps break Malini out of the Hirana. They're the central couple of the trilogy.
- Pre-Climax Climax: Malini and Priya roll in the sheets partway through The Oleander Sword, a while before the major showdown of the book.
- Secret Relationship: Priya wants to keep her romance with Malini under wraps so that no one thinks she's unwittingly playing the pawn of Parajatdvipa.
Supporting characters
Aditya
- Abdicate the Throne: Abdicates to become a priest of the Nameless God. This choice is what sets Chandra on the throne.
- Childhood Friends: With Rao.
- Heir Club for Men: Malini gets stuck trying to drag Aditya out of the priesthood to retake his birthright, since as a woman, she is not considered a viable candidate for the throne.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Goes out sacrificing himself to ensure victory over one of the few remaining strongholds of Chandra's.
- Reluctant Ruler: Aditya's heart and conscience call him to the priesthood. But when Malini insists he's the only one who can stop Chandra, by reclaiming his own birthright, he reluctantly agrees to join her rebellion.
- Senseless Sacrifice: Aditya's Heroic Sacrifice to win a battle for Malini turns out to be useless—at the time he died, Chandra had already surrendered to Malini. Rao is devastated to learn his friend died for nothing.
- Succession Crisis: Crown Prince Aditya kicked off one of these when he abdicated. Sure, Chandra as the next closest male heir makes sense...but he's also insane. Malini may be better suited for the role...but she's a woman.
Bhumika
- Becoming the Mask: Experiences some of this in regards to her husband, concluding that it is impossible to live so closely with someone else and feel nothing for them. That doesn't stop her from killing him later.
- Beneath the Mask: In an effort to shield her past as a temple child, Bhumika has adopted a very demure, subservient role to her husband, hiding the fact that she's far more politically astute than he knows and far more powerful than he is.
- Beware the Nice Ones: Beloved by everyone who serves her, Bhumika goes out of her way to try to help the poorest and most desperate of the Ahiranyi. When her mahal is assaulted, she also murders the attackers with thorny vines and has her husband killed when he means to impede her goals.
- Green Thumb: After getting back in touch with her temple training, Bhumika can access a variety of nature-based magical powers.
- Pregnant Badass: Bhumika is pregnant for most of The Jasmine Throne but still manages to keep up with Priya and Ashok.
- Silk Hiding Steel: Bhumika is the daughter of a well-off family, now married to the governor of Ahiranya. And yet she uses her position to help her fellow Ahiranyi any way she can and proves to be most useful in a crisis, when things get ugly.
- Uptown Girl: Bhumika, daughter of Ahiranyi nobles and wife of the governor, and Jeevan, a commoner.
Antagonists
Chandra
- Aristocrats Are Evil: Chandra is shown to have had a twisted view on the world from a very young age, something that has been encouraged by his mentor.
- Asshole Victim: After winning the civil war, Malini poisons Chandra with oleander, which is, by the book's description, a very painful way to die. Nevertheless, it's hard to feel sympathy for him given how many people he's burned to death during his reign.
- Big Brother Bully: One of Malini's most prominent memories of Chandra is of his using a knife to forcibly cut her hair because she angered him.
- The Caligula: Has themes of this. Chandra is unstable for certain—at best, he simply has no desire or ability to control his temper. At worst, he has some kind of messiah complex. Either way, he views his violence against his own people as holy, and considers himself the only rightful ruler of Parajatdvipa.
- Cultural Posturing: Believes the culture of his home province is superior to all other provinces of Parajatdvipa. Chandra goes as far as to remove all court advisors from other areas of the empire.
- The Emperor: Ruler of the Empire of Parajatdvipa.
- Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Chandra is a ruthless, sadistic, religious fundamentalist with a hatred of women, but he deeply respects and cares about his mentor High Priest Hemanth, with him being more of a father to him than his actual father. When Hemanth betrays him he's heartbroken and is left wondering if Hemanth ever really cared for him.
- The Evil Prince: Prior to his crowning as emperor, Chandra was this.
- Fanatical Fire: Chandra habitually burns people—particularly women—to "cleanse" the country. He is obsessed with the idea of doing this to his sister Malini.
- The Fundamentalist: Chandra is a religious zealot who orders people put to death gruesomely often in keeping with his spiritual principles.
- For Your Own Good: Views his abuse of Malini through this lens. He explains his offer for her to step onto the pyre at the start of The Jasmine Throne as an offer for her to "cleanse" herself and join the revered Mothers who burned to create Mother's Fire and defeat the yaksa.
- He-Man Woman Hater: Chandra has a very narrow view of women, seeing all living women as whores that need to be "purified" by burning them alive and only women who have done so are worth anything.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Chandra is a religious fundamentalist who thinks his ethnic group is naturally superior, wasting no time in having his non-Parijani advisors fired or executed. He also has a distaste for the "impurity of women", having several "promiscuous" women burned to death upon his ascension. His treatment of "pure" women is not much better, as he orders his sister and her companions ritually sacrificed, and exiles and imprisons her when she refuses.
- Sadist: General Vikram recalls how Emperor Chandra made him recount all the details about the priests and the temple children from Hirana burning alive with obvious pleasure, which disturbed him greatly to do.
- Semi-Divine: Chandra believes being a descendant of the goddess Divyanski is why he's the emperor by right.
- Stay in the Kitchen: Chandra has very specific, very limited ideas about how women should behave. Malini does not comply—so she has to burn.
- The Wrongful Heir to the Throne: By the laws of succession, Chandra may be the rightful one for the throne after Aditya's abdication... but just as Malini warned ahead of time, he proves to be violent, unstable, and religiously zealous. This makes it reasonably easy for Malini to start turning his own nobles against him.
Ashok
- Appeal to Tradition: Part of Ashok's goal is a return to the Ahiranya of the past, their "glory days."
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: Ashok's desire to get his home province of Ahiranya out of the control of Parijadtvipa is understandable, but his methods are... less so.
- Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: Naturally Ashok and Chandra disagree on the nature of Ashok's little militia. In Ashok's view, they are freedom fighters for Ahiranya, trying to restore the lost glory of their culture, which has been driven into the dirt by Parajatdvipa.
Santosh
- Aristocrats Are Evil: Santosh is a bigoted, arrogant lord who views common people as beneath him and he brutally suppresses any rebellion he finds.
- Politically Incorrect Villain: Santosh is just Chandra in that he's a Parijati supremacist who views the other races and cultures of the empire as inferior, and he also disdains "impure" women as well.
- Smug Snake: Santosh is under the impression that he's a shrewd operator for Chandra, believing that he can root the rebels without any native help, when in reality he's an arrogant Jerkass whose brutal tactics only serve to alienate any potential allies and inflame the rebels.
