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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Bethod's younger son, with none of his father's reputation for violence and all of his father's appetite for power. Calder survives by scheming where other Northmen survive by fighting - he is contemptuous of the heroic ideal and considerably more effective for it. His arc across The Heroes and into the Age of Madness is one of the series' more satisfying long games.

A Northman who tries to go south and be a better man - to leave the violence of the North behind and become something else. He fails, but the manner of his failure and what it costs him make him one of the most interesting characters in the series. Shivers appears first in Best Served Cold as Monza's hired muscle and grows into a recurring presence across the standalones and Age of Madness, each appearance showing him further from who he wanted to be. His arc is the purest expression of the series' central theme: people do not change, and the things that happen to them tend to make them more themselves rather than less.

A Named Man from the North and one of Black Dow's chiefs, Curnden Craw is a veteran of more battles than he can count and has been trying to do the right thing in them for longer than most men live. His chapters in The Heroes are the moral centre of the book - a man who has spent a lifetime in violence asking whether it has amounted to anything, surrounded by younger men who haven't yet asked the question.

A former convict from Safety - the Union's prison island - who counts everything and has strict rules about how things must be done. Friendly is one of the most consistently surprising characters in the series: apparently simple, actually precise, occasionally terrifying. He appears first in Best Served Cold as part of Monza's crew and recurs across the standalones. His comfort with violence and his discomfort with social interaction are presented without judgment and without explanation, and the result is one of Abercrombie's most original supporting characters.

A Styrian mercenary captain of considerable charm and negligible reliability, Cosca appears across nearly every book in the First Law World. He is funny, self-aware, genuinely skilled when sober, and almost never sober. His arc is one of Abercrombie's long games - a man whose capacity for self-destruction is matched only by his capacity for survival, and whose final trajectory is deeply unpleasant.

A lanky, greasy-haired Practical who serves Glokta with dark wit and resourcefulness. Always smiling with his eyes, he handles the investigative work that Glokta's broken body cannot.

A red-haired Practical assigned to work with Glokta later in the story. Her loyalties and motives are not immediately clear.

King of the Northmen in name and Black Calder's elder brother. A great, fat, boisterous man with an iron hand, he serves largely as a figurehead while Calder governs from the shadows.

A former lawyer, former slave, and current notary to Nicomo Cosca's mercenary Company of the Gracious Hand. A man of many past lives and no convictions who has failed at every fresh start, he finds himself reluctantly drawn to both conscience and Shy South.

A mysterious servant of Bayaz with mismatched eyes - one blue, one green. He heralds Bayaz's return to the Agriont and serves as his advance agent.