A young Northman who comes to the battle at the Heroes seeking glory and a name. Beck's arc is the series' clearest articulation of the gap between the stories men tell about war and what war actually is - by the end of three days he has his answer, and it is not the one he wanted.

A disgraced royal duelist reassigned to the humiliating role of royal observer at the battle in The Heroes, which means he watches the fighting rather than participating in it. Gorst is the finest swordsman in the Union - possibly in the world - and is entirely aware that his skills are wasted in his current role. His interior monologue, bitter and self-lacerating, is one of Abercrombie's funniest and most uncomfortable achievements: a man consumed by violent fantasies who applies to them the same sardonic intelligence he applies to everything else. In combat he becomes something else entirely.

A war veteran haunted by the violence he committed in Styria, Broad wears eye-lenses and bears Ladderman tattoos. He moves to Valbeck with his wife Liddy and daughter May, seeking honest work, but is drawn into the Breakers' rebellion when the city's injustices prove impossible to ignore.

A vain, lazy, self-regarding nobleman whose talent with a sword is the only thing he has worked for, and even that mostly because it offers social advancement rather than out of any love for the craft. Jezal begins the trilogy as one of the least sympathetic protagonists in fantasy and ends it as something more complicated. His arc is the most conventionally structured of the three - the journey that should make him a better person - but Abercrombie's refusal to let the journey deliver its expected payoff is one of the trilogy's most pointed observations. What happens to Jezal is not what the story of Jezal suggests should happen to Jezal.

Shy South's stepfather - a quiet, gentle man with scarred hands who does the farm work and says very little and does not want to fight. Readers of the original trilogy will recognise Lamb. His real identity is one of Red Country's central dramatic ironies: the most dangerous man in the book is also the one most desperate to avoid violence, and the gap between what he is and what he is trying to be is where the novel lives. He is one of Abercrombie's most carefully handled characters.

A celebrated war hero and the son of a powerful noble house, Leo is brave, charismatic, and not particularly thoughtful - exactly the kind of person that institutions and ambitious people find useful. His arc across the Age of Madness trilogy is about the distance between the hero he believes himself to be and the uses to which that belief gets put. He is not stupid, but he is surrounded by people who are better at thinking than he is and who know it, and his unwillingness to acknowledge this is what drives him toward the series' central catastrophe.

A Named Man from the North - one of the most feared warriors alive, with nine fingers and a reputation for survival that has outlasted everyone who tried to end it. Logen has spent his life fighting and is very good at it, which is not something he is proud of. He is trying to be better than he has been, with limited success. The problem is the Bloody-Nine: something that takes over when Logen is cornered, a killing fury that he cannot control and cannot always remember. His arc across the trilogy is a sustained examination of whether people can change, and Abercrombie's answer is characteristically uncomfortable. He is one of the great characters in modern fantasy precisely because his decency and his violence are both entirely convincing.

The most feared mercenary general in Styria, commander of the Thousand Swords, who is thrown from a cliff and left for dead by the Duke Orso she has served loyally and made very rich. She survives, barely, and the entirety of Best Served Cold is her working through the list of seven men responsible. Monza is not a hero - she is driven by revenge, capable of considerable ruthlessness, and honest about both. Her arc is about what vengeance actually costs and whether it delivers what it promises. She is one of Abercrombie's best protagonists: a woman in a man's world who got there through genuine ability and is not interested in being liked for it.

The son of Jezal dan Luthar, Crown Prince of the Union, and a man who has inherited his father's charm and none of his ambition - which in Orso's case means a cheerful, self-deprecating dissolution rather than Jezal's vain striving. Orso knows he is not cut out for what is being asked of him and is the only person in his vicinity honest about it. His arc across the Age of Madness trilogy involves the discovery that decency, in a world moving toward revolution, is not enough and may not be the point. He is one of Abercrombie's most sympathetic creations and one of his most brutally treated.

The daughter of the Dogman, chieftain of the North, with the Long Eye - the ability to see the future in fits that leave her incapacitated and uncertain what is vision and what is fear. Rikke is the most unconventional of the Age of Madness protagonists: funny, self-aware, and navigating a world of Northern politics that has no obvious place for a woman whose father is dying and whose gift is as much a curse as an asset. Her arc involves learning to use what she has - the Long Eye, her father's name, her own judgment - in a world that prefers its leaders to be straightforward and male.

A crippled Inquisitor who was once the most celebrated swordsman in the Union - winner of the Contest at eighteen, celebrated throughout Adua, the kind of young man who expects the world to keep giving him things. Then he was captured by the Gurkish, spent two years in their prisons, and came back unable to walk properly, unable to eat solid food, in constant pain, and in possession of a very clear understanding of what people will say under sufficient duress. He applies the same methods to his work for the Inquisition with a mixture of professional efficiency and caustic self-awareness that makes him one of the most compelling POV characters in fantasy. Glokta knows exactly what he is. He just can't see a way to be anything else.

The daughter of Sand dan Glokta, now the most successful investor in the Union - a woman who has built a financial empire through intelligence, ruthlessness, and a clear understanding of how power actually works. Savine is her father's daughter in ways she both recognises and prefers not to examine. She enters the Age of Madness trilogy at the top of the social and financial hierarchy and spends three books watching that hierarchy collapse, discovering in the process what she is actually capable of. She is one of Abercrombie's most complex characters in the later work - someone whose competence is genuine and whose blind spots are equally genuine.

A young woman trying to run a farm on the frontier and build a quiet life, who is forced back into violence when her younger siblings are taken. Shy has a past she has spent years running from - she was not always a farmer - and the journey to find her siblings in Red Country puts her back in exactly the situations she has been trying to avoid. She is Abercrombie's most emotionally direct protagonist, less armoured against feeling than most of his characters, which makes her arc in Red Country both more painful and more earned.

Head of the King's Inquisition and one of the most powerful men in the Union. Immaculately dressed and ruthlessly political, he wields the Inquisition as a weapon against his rivals on the Closed Council.

The First of the Magi, one of the most powerful practitioners of the Art in the world, who arrives in Adua claiming to be the legendary founder of the Union and demanding access to the royal library. He is old, irritable, occasionally charming, and completely accustomed to getting what he wants. Bayaz announces himself as a figure out of legend, but a thousand-year absence has left even those closest to the crown uncertain how much of the wizard's history is true and how much has accreted around the name.

The self-styled King of the Northmen and Logen Ninefingers' former master. Bethod clawed his way from nothing to unite the fractious North through a combination of military genius, ruthless politics, and men like Logen doing his killing. By the time the trilogy begins he is the main antagonist driving events in the North - a cold, calculating ruler who has discarded everyone who helped him rise.

Grand Duke of Talins and the most powerful man in Styria. He ordered the murder of Benna Murcatto and the attempted murder of Monza, setting in motion the events of the entire novel. Cold, pragmatic, and utterly ruthless.

A terrifying, inhuman giant covered in magical runes on his left side. He serves as Bethod's champion and envoy, and his appearance alone is enough to unsettle hardened warriors.

Son of Black Calder and self-styled Great Wolf of the North. A devastatingly fast swordsman with a vicious streak who aspires to be the greatest warrior since the Bloody-Nine, and who measures greatness by the fear he inspires.

One of Leo's friends. A flashy, quick-witted womaniser with a lock of dark hair perpetually across his forehead.