Annabelle McAlistair
A young Mad Scientist who wants to bring back her Unrequited Love.
- Act of True Love: She proves she really loved Jasper when she destroyed the doll his soul was bonded to, no matter how much it hurt her losing him again.
- I Just Want My Beloved to Be Happy: Annabelle allows Jasper to go because she realizes he's miserable.
- Mad Scientist: She is able to bring back the dead with her science.
- Missing Mom: The narrator reveals Annabelle died when Edgar was ten.
- Necromancy: A mad science variant that binds spirits to dolls.
- Stalker with a Crush: She and Jasper went on one date where she fell hopelessly, madly, in love with him while he was apparently bored.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Her attempt to resurrect Jasper results in a century or so of horror for New Albion after Edgar finds her formula and puts it to entrepreneurial use.
Jasper
A young man brought back from the dead twice to a cursed half-life.
- Be Careful What You Wish For: Jasper's wish to finally die is granted at the cost of his great granddaughter's life.
- I Cannot Self-Terminate: Much of his existence is suffering due to the fact he is unable to do much of anything as a doll, including take his own life.
- Radio Voice: Unlike the other characters, his voice has some distortion to it. This is because in-universe he's "speaking" by stringing together sounds from radio broadcasts.
- Stalker with a Crush: Attracts these like flies to a pig. Annabelle and Byron all have strong feelings for his undead half-life.
Edgar McAlistair
A young Albion nobleman who eventually starts a Necromancy-based business.
- Corrupt Corporate Executive: Becomes one of these once his necromancy business takes off.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Destroys Sillof utterly once he's rich."There's a man they call Sillof and he once stole my girl. I want him destroyed, all he has in this world. His business his home and his carriage all crushed. I want him left penniless, face down in the dust."
- Face–Heel Turn: He starts wanting to impress his ex and eventually blackmails her with her dead father after destroying Sillof financially.
- Generation Xerox: He fell in love with the daughter of his mother's unrequited love, and like Annabelle before, his use of necromancy ends up hurting the one he claims to love. Unfortunately, he doesn't have an epiphany about it like his mom.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Determined to get Fay back from Sillof.
- I Have Your Wife: Or your father in this case; he resurrects Jasper from the dead again and tells Fay she will only be able to speak with him if she marries him.
- Irony: Word of God is the fact that Fay turned down his marriage proposal just because he didn't seem to have any ambition or drive. It's only once she's dumped him and moved on with someone else that he becomes an ambitious businessman.
- Love Makes You Evil: His obsession with Fay causes him to become a monster, blackmailing her into marrying him and making a living disturbing the eternal rest of people's dead loved ones.
- Necromancy: He discovered his mother's formula for raising the dead into mechanical dolls and he industrialized the process.
- And Now You Must Marry Me: He forces Fay to marry him by destroying her actual love interest financially and then promising her she could speak to her dead father if she married him.
- Pyrrhic Victory: Achieves all he could ever want and yet gains nothing."When you win you sometimes lose and all you love does not love you."
Byron McAlistair
A Voodoopunk philosopher and nobleman of New Albion. He hates his father due to his father forcing his mother to marry him, and so he projects a "safer" father figure onto the clockwork Jasper, becoming obsessed with him. He becomes enamored with the idea of installing Jasper into public office as a means of facilitating anarchy.
- Generation Xerox: Like his grandmother Anabelle, Byron is a lonely individual thanks to daddy issues and seeks solace in the one-sided devotion to the very same doll.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: His attempts to get social acceptance for Dolls only adds fuel to the resentment the public is already feeling for them.
- Goth: The 19th century romantic poet equivalent.
- Hollywood Voodoo: Voodoopunks attempt to humanize and communicate with the Dolls.
- Innocently Insensitive: His obsession with Jasper and the voodoopunks' political movement renders him oblivious to Amelia's desperate need for emotional support. He's similarly oblivious to the fact that Jasper doesn't want anything except to die.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Triggers the riot that kills all the Dolls in New Albion but Jasper.
Priscilla McAlistair
The final McAlistair child. She takes care of Jasper while they play cards, in hiding from the oppressive anti-doll regime instituted in New Albion. She is the only McAlistair to communicate with Jasper and connect to him as a person.
- Heroic Sacrifice: She doesn't have the means to grant Jasper's wish for death herself, so she calls the police on them—leading to her getting killed along with Jasper.
- Inspirational Martyr: Her willingness to die alongside Jasper has such a profound impact on Soldier 7285 that he not only can't bring himself to shoot, he vows to bring an end to the police state he had been a part of.
- Reincarnation: The New Albion atompunk opera reveals that, after her death, she reincarnates into main characters from each of the sequels.
- Uncanny Family Resemblance: Jasper loves her not only because she's the only one who treats him well, but also because she looks like her grandmother Fay, Jasper's own daughter.
- White Sheep: She is the only McAlistair to not treat Jasper like a thing to be used for their own emotional needs, instead treating him like a human being with his own desires.
