Characters / Tigana

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di Tigana

Tigana

• Divine Parentage: They say their princes are descended from Adaon, by way of Rahal, Adaon's son with Micaela, a mortal woman.
  Alessan: It is our primal story: Tigana is the chosen province of Adaon of the Waves. The first of our Princes, Rahal, being born of the god by that Micaela whom we name as mortal mother of us all. And the line of the Princes has never been broken.
• Ethnic God: The people of Tigana say that Tigana is the chosen province of the god Adaon.
• Royalty Super Power: The Princes of Tigana can bind wizards to them. This comes to them via Divine Parentage.
  Alessan: You will have heard the legend. It happens to be true. The line of the Princes of Tigana, all those in direct descent, can bind a wizard to them unto death.

Devin

Devin di Tigana bar Garin

A singer, born in Tigana and raised on a farm in Asoli.

• First-Person Peripheral Narrator: It would be fair to claim this is more Alessan's story than Devin's. Or Baerd's. Or Dianora's. Or Brandin's. The point is, there are lots of strong candidates for "main character" of this story… and Devin isn't really one of them.
• Hyper-Awareness: He is extremely perceptive, easily noticing details that most other people overlook.
• Nice Guy: He still feels bad about things like abandoning Menico di Ferraut, and killing horses.
• Older Than They Look: Devin is 19 and looks young for his age, much to his dismay.
• Photographic Memory: Devin is "cursed or blessed with a memory like Eanna of the Names".
• Unresolved Sexual Tension: Devin and Catriana, though Downplayed. At least, Devin perceives it that way. Catriana is not interested.

Catriana

Catriana di Tigana

A singer, born in Tigana and raised in a fishing village Astibar.

• Combat Haircomb: She buys a hair comb with a hidden, poisoned blade in the market in Senzio, and then uses it to kill Anghiar, Alberico's emissary.
• Deadpan Snarker
  Catriana: [dripping with sarcasm] In the name of the Triad where would I be taking you? We are going to my room at the inn for a session of love-making like Eanna and Adaon at the dawn of days.
• Faking the Dead: Catriana fakes a bridge-dive for propaganda purposes.
• Fiery Redhead
• Heroic Sacrifice: She goes to kill the Barbadian emissary Anghiar, knowing she will have to kill herself after she does, because the Barbadian are wizards and they can torture her and read her mind. Subverted when when Erlein defies the trope and uses his magic to save her.
• I Am Not My Father: Her father fled when Tigana was being conquered. Her shame from that is a large part of the reason she fights for Tigana so hard. Alessan tries to defy this when he tells Catriana that the Sins of Our Fathers are not hers, and that her father's fleeing was understandable.
  Catriana: I am coming with you. My father was a coward. We fled before the invasion. I intend I intend to make that up.
• Important Haircut/Traumatic Haircut: By Alais, to hide her identity.
  [Catriana reaches down and picks up her cut hair]
  Alais: Catriana, I'm so sorry.
  Catriana: [shakes her head.] Nothing… this is less than nothing. [choking up] Only vanity. What does it matter? [starts crying]
• Kiss of Distraction: Devin and Catriana are hiding in a closet, about to overhear an exposition. Catriana desperately doesn't want Devin to hear it. So to distract him, she has sex with him, feigning a Ten Minutes in the Closet scenario. At the time, Devin is thoroughly distracted… but he has a very good memory and replays the scene later, this time getting the exposition.
• Love Revelation Epiphany: Catriana realizes how much she loves Alessan when he gives her a Love Confession.
• Murder-Suicide: After killing Anghiar, Catriana throws herself out the window so she cannot be tortured. Subverted when when Erlein defies the trope and uses his magic to save her.
• Out with a Bang: She invokes this trope when she goes to have sex with the Barbadian emissary Anghiar, and then assassinates him halfway through the act.
• Statuesque Stunner: Quite tall and quite beautiful
• Tsundere: Standoffish and prideful, and with a softer side

Alessan

Alessan di Tigana bar Valentin

• Affectionate Nickname: He calls Catriana "Bright star of Eanna."
• Anti-Hero: Few would argue his cause isn't noble, but he's willing to do some pretty dark things along the way, forcibly binding wizards into his service and manipulating the two Tyrants into outright war with one another being chief among them.
• Badass Creed: "Tigana, let my memory of you be like a blade in my soul."
• Determinator/Roaring Rampage of Revenge
  Alessan: I want Brandin. I want Brandin of Ygrath dead more than I want my soul's immortality beyond the last portal of Morian.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Baerd and Alessan. Alessan names Baerd as "the only brother of his soul."
• Hypocrite:
  • He enslaves Erlein and later has the gall to berate him for not caring enough about Allesan's fight for freedom.
  • He hates both of the sorcerer conquerors for bringing war and death to the peninsula, and yet his solution to overthrowing both of them is to instigate a bloody conflict between the two with a neutral country as the chosen battleground.
• Kick the Dog: Binding Erlein
  Erlein: And what part of that little speech gives you rights over my life and death?
  Alessan: I have a duty. I must use what tools come to hand.
  Erlein: I am not a tool! I am a free and living soul with my own destiny!
• Love Confession: He has a Love Epiphany and realizes how much he loves Catriana as he watches her jump from a window. It very nearly was a Belated Love Epiphany.
  Alessan: When I saw you fall, I realized that I was falling with you, my dear. I finally understood, too late, what I had denied to myself for so long, how absolutely I had debarred myself from something important, even the acknowledging of its possibility, while Tigana was still gone. The heart… has its own laws though, Catriana, and the truth is… the truth is that you are the law of mine. I knew it when I saw you in that window. In the moment before you leaped I knew that I loved you. Bright star of Eanna, forgive me the manner of this, but you are the harbor of my soul’s journeying.

Baerd

Baerd di Tigana bar Saevar

• Brother–Sister Incest: Baerd and his sister Dianora became lovers when they were 15 and 16.
• Heterosexual Life-Partners: Baerd and Alessan. Alessan names Baerd as "the only brother of his soul."
• The Insomniac: He's drawn to wandering around in the middle of the night.
• The Lancer: To Alessan's leader.
• Mr. Exposition: When he tells Devin the history of Tigana, both the As You Know part and the secret part.
• Say My Name: Dianora recollects the time he shouted "Tigana."
  A witness, a memory, she saw her younger brother spread his feet then, as if to anchor himself in the ground of the square. She saw his hands clench into fists at his sides. She saw his head go back, lifting towards the sky.
  And then she heard his cry.
  He gave them what they demanded of him, he obeyed the command, but not sullenly or diffidently, and not in shame. Rooted in the land of his fathers, standing before the home of his family he looked towards the sun and let a name burst forth from his soul.
  “Tigana!” he cried that all should hear. All of them, everyone in the square. And again, louder yet: “Tigana!” And then a third, a last time, at the very summit of his voice, with pride, with love, with a lasting, unredeemed defiance of the heart.
  “TIGANA!”
• Two Aliases, One Character: We first meet Baerd as Alessan's friend. Then in Dianora's chapter, we meet him again in her flashback. All the way through that part, she refers to him simply as "her brother." She doesn't name him until the very last line of the section, when they've just had sex, and she says to him, "Oh, Baerd. What has been done to us?"
• Parting-Words Regret: He and Naddo part while Baerd is giving Naddo the silent treatment. By that night, he feels horrible about it.
  Baerd: [crying] Why didn't I say goodbye to him? Why didn't you make me say goodbye to him?
• Sex for Solace: Dianora and Baerd's relationship was founded mostly out of their shared pain and loss—grief for their province, their city, Naddo, and their father.
  Baerd: What are we doing? What have we done?
  Dianora: Oh, Baerd. What has been done to us?

Dianora

Dianora di Tigana bren Saevar

• Because Destiny Says So: She does the Ring Dive, planning to drown, because she believes it is her destiny, and told by a vision and a riselka. She accepts this as her destiny with a sense of relief. It seems like a Subverted, when she actually does decide to survive the dive, but it's not really, because even then, it's because she sees what she takes to be the god Adaon indicating this isn't her time to die yet, and so still it's her following destiny. Then a Double Subversion when she really does dive and commit suicide after Brandin is killed.
• Becoming the Mask/In Love with the Mark: She came to the saishan to kill Brandin. Then she was his lover for the next 12 years.
• Brother–Sister Incest: Dianora and her brother Baerd became lovers when they were 15 and 16. Because Baerd is her brother, he's family; he's home. Her love for him is symbolic of, or at least intertwined with, her love of Tigana.
• Driven to Suicide: After she saves Brandin's life, the conflict between her love of him and her love of Tigana almost destroys her. Then a riselka shows her a vision of herself performing the dangerous Ring Dive, a ritual that was discontinued after the last woman to try it drowned, and Dianora decides it must be her destiny to do the same. She ends up deciding that the gods don't want her to die, and completing the dive instead. Then Brandin dies, and she goes back into the ocean to finish the job.
• Love Cannot Overcome/Love Hurts: She loves Brandin, and she loves her homeland, which he razed. Both of these absolutely break her heart. Try as she might, she can't make herself not love Brandin. And she can't bear to turn her back on Tigana either.
  But Tigana’s ruin lay between the two of them like a chasm in the world. The lesson of her days, Dianora thought, was simply this: that love was not enough. Whatever the songs of the troubadours might say. Whatever hope it might seem to offer, love was simply not enough to bridge the chasm in her world. Which was why she was here, what the riselka’s vision in the garden had offered her: an end to the terrible, bottomless divisions in her heart.
• Sex for Solace: Dianora and Baerd's relationship was founded mostly out of their shared loss and pain.
  Baerd: What are we doing? What have we done?
  Dianora: Oh, Baerd. What has been done to us?
• Suicide by Sea: Tonally, the second time is much more this trope than the first is.
• Taking the Bullet: Dianora surprises herself by jumping in front of a crossbow bolt aimed at Brandin... but she yanks a guy she doesn't like along with her. He winds up taking the shot in the shoulder.
• When She Smiles:
  It was oval, wide at the cheekbones, almost austere. It changed when she laughed though—and for some reason she still knew how to laugh—becoming warm and animated, the unexpected dance in her dark eyes seeming to promise things that went deeper than amusement. Men who had seen her laughing or who had caused her to smile at them would encounter that look again in their dreams, or in the memories that lay on the border of sleep and dream, years after Dianora had gone away.

Pasithea

Pasithea di Tigana bren Serazi

• Screw Politeness, I'm a Senior!: Or more importantly, "Screw Politeness, I'm Dying!" She is old, and bitter, and proud, and she is dying. She doesn't care about being polite anymore.

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d'Astibar

Sandre

Sandre d'Astibar bar Tellani

The once duke of Astibar.

• Cool Old Guy
• The Exile: Alberico exiled him from the city of Astibar for the last 18 years of his life.
• Faking the Dead/Faux Death: At the very start, in a Thanatos Gambit order to invoke Starts with Their Funeral.
• Inadequate Inheritor: To his dismay, Tomasso is the only one of Sandre's sons who is anything like him in intelligence and disposition.
• Magnificent Bastard:
• Mercy Kill: He gives poison to his captured son Tomasso, to save him from being tortured and killed by Alberico.
  Sandre: This is the last thing I can do for you. If I were stronger I could do more, but at least they will not hurt you in the morning now. They will not hurt you any more, my son.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Sandre and his son Tomasso together planned parallel cases of this for each of them, so they would both be underestimated. Sandre pretends to be a Grumpy Old Man and a drunk, while Tomasso plays up the weak and effeminate stereotypes of homosexuality.
• The Patriarch: Of the Sandreni.
• Plot-Triggering Death: Sandre deliberately invokes this with his own death.
• Posthumous Character: When the story Starts with His Funeral, it seems like the late great Duke is going to be a Posthumous Character. But then subverted when it's revealed it's a Faux Death.
• So Proud of You: He tells his son Tomasso so, right before he dies.
  Sandre: Will you hear me if I tell you I have been proud of you, in my fashion?
• Thanatos Gambit: Sandre's death and subsequent funeral at first appears to be this, with the twist that Sandre is actually Faking the Dead.

Tomasso

Tomasso d'Astibar bar Sandre

• Bury Your Gays: Tomasso doesn't last very long.
• Camp Gay: Except not really, he's actually purposefully playing up the stereotype in order to make people underestimate him. He really is gay, but the camp part of feigned.
• Enemy Mine: Nievole tried to kill Sandre many times—and Tomasso is pretty sure he's the one behind the poisoned wine that killed his mother. But they're willing to put that aside for their shared hatred of Alberico.
• Obfuscating Stupidity: Sandre and his son Tomasso together planned parallel cases of this for each of them, so they would both be underestimated. Sandre pretends to be a Grumpy Old Man and a drunk, while Tomasso plays up the weak and effeminate stereotypes of homosexuality. Tomasso really is gay, but he plays it up, acting overly effeminate and lisping, in order to be underestimated.
  Tomasso: There are advantages to being seen as aimlessly degenerate.
• Too Kinky to Torture: Early on, Tomasso tells the reader about the time he was whipped when he was 12, and realized he liked it. Subverted when he gets taken and lightly tortured by Alberico's men, and it's no fun.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: When Sandre tells Tomasso he's been proud of him, in his fashion, Tomasso starts crying. He describes it as, "The words were balm for the deepest ache he knew."

Rovigo

Rovigo d'Astibar

Master of the Sea Maid.

• Happily Married/Good Parents: For all that he mock-complains about his wife and daughters, he adores them and he has a very happy home life.

Alais

Alais d'Astibar bren Rovigo

Rovigo's eldest daughter.

• Desperately Looking for a Purpose in Life:
  Alais: I’m happy for Selvena. She’s ready, she’s wanted this for so long and I think he’ll be good to her. But father, I need more than what she will have. I don’t know what it is, but I need more.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: With Selvena. Alais is rather quiet and withdrawn, while Selvena is very outgoing and flirtatious.

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From other provinces

Erlein

Erlein di Senzio

• Changed My Mind, Kid: Erlein claims he doesn't really care about overthrowing the conquerors, and that he's Not in This for Your Revolution. But after he saves Catriana's life, Alessan sees it as this.
• Fighting from the Inside: After Alessan binds him, he desperately tries to disobey him. At one point, this mental struggle puts such a strain on him that he passes out.
• Hypocrite: He is justifiably enraged at Alessan for binding him to his will, which essentially turns him into a slave. At the same time, he openly admits to having lived quite comfortably under the rule of two tyrants, so he's really not one to talk about the importance of freedom.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Erlein never passes up an opportunity to needle Alessan and company, but—as Alessan himself points out—he is being held captive, and his people are in great danger from what Alessan plans to do. (And Erlein gets better, anyways.)
• Mind Rape: Being bound by Alessan is pretty much this. As soon as he bound Erlein, he ordered him to use a spell on himself, which he refused to do for while, breaking down and sobbing, until he did what Alessan asked. Next night, he tried to escape, and it was going well until Alessan ordered him to come back. When he didn't reappear, they went to search for him and they were horrified to see that Erlein literally tied himself to a tree with a rope - all so he couldn't go back. The sight of his ruined hands wasn't pretty...
• Superhuman Trafficking: He gets bound by Alessan because Alessan wants a wizard.

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Foreigners

Brandin

Brandin of Ygrath

• Affably Evil/Anti-Villain: Brandin is cultured, benevolent, an excellent ruler, and an all-around great guy. However, he'll never be dissuaded from seeking revenge against those who have wronged him, no matter who (or what) it harms (or who actually wronged whom in the first place), and so for the good of the entire Peninsula, he's got to go.
• Berserk Button: The only time we see Brandin come close to really losing his temper is when Dianora impudently jokes that he must have used sorcery to help himself complete a physical challenge.
• Disproportionate Retribution: He takes revenge on an entire country because of his son's death. How many other people's sons died because his did?
• Excessive Mourning: He dedicates his life to following through on burying Tigana, all in grief and rage for Stevan.
• Love Makes You Evil: He razed Tigana and stole their name in fury and grief for his beloved son Stevan.
• Moral Myopia: Brandin obsessively seeks vengeance for his son's death without stopping to consider that—since said son was the leader of an invading army—the Tiganese killing him is totally understandable.
• Offstage Villainy: All of Brandin's evil deeds occurred years before the book even starts. We'd never know he was supposed to be evil if those actions didn't have repercussions in the present.
• Outliving One's Offspring: His son Stevan
• Parental Favoritism: Brandin loved his younger son Stevan more than his eldest and heir Girald, to an absurd degree. As Isolla of Ygrath puts it...
  Isolla: You exalted a dead child above a living one, and revenge above your wife. And more highly than your own land. Have you spared a thought, a fraction of a thought, for any of them while you pursued your unnatural vengeance for Stevan?
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Outside his ongoing vengeance against Tigana, Brandin is presented as a fair and competent ruler; at one point, the rather over-his-head civil governor of Lower Corte (ne Tigana) has to contact him for help in resolving a potentially disastrous diplomatic issue, and rather than brushing the Governor off or being angry at being bothered, Brandin backs the Governor completely and praises him, clearly aware that appreciating one's liegemen earns much greater loyalty than abusing them.
• Reincarnation Romance: He has a dream this happens to him and Dianora
  Brandin: Because during the nights this past year and more I have had recurring dreams of being reborn far away from all of this, in Finavir. And in all of those dreams you have been at my side and nothing has held us apart, and no one has come between.
• Sorcerous Overlord: Sorcerer and conqueror
• You Remind Me of X: The riselka reminds him of Dianora.
  Brandin: [as if it had just occurred to him] In fact, she reminded me of you.

Isolla

Isolla of Ygrath

• Your Head Asplode: Following an attempted assassination on Brandin. It's awful.

Scelto

Scelto

Alberico

Alberico of Barbadior

• Big Bad Ensemble: Makes up half of one with Brandin. Interestingly, though Brandin is the more powerful of the two both personally and politically, Alberico is the more evil and antagonistic.
• Establishing Character Moment: Using his magic to survive an arrow shot at his head.
• Hated by All: Nobody seems to approve of Alberico but they're afraid to say so. Probably has something to do with his Barbadian death-wheels.
• Sorcerous Overlord: Sorcerer and conqueror

Marius

Marius of Quileia

• Affectionate Nickname: He calls Alessan "Pigeon" and Baerd "Pigeon Two".
• Handicapped Badass: Marius killed half a dozen would-be assassins while hamstrung.
• The Mentor: To Alessan
• Wild Card: As a Quileian, Alessan names Marius as such
  Alessan: Marius is the one wild card we have ever had,

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