Characters / Bloody Jack

'Avast ye landlubbers! Thar be Spoilers off the port bow!'

Jackaroe

Mary "Jacky" Faber

Our wayward heroine, who starts off as one of the pluckiest ship's boys on the bounding main despite being a girl. But she's bound for bigger things, our Jackie... if she doesn't manage to get herself hanged in the meantime.

• Action Girl: Sailor, spy, soldier...Jacky rises to just about every occasion.
• A Father to His Men: Very much Jacky's leadership style. Even when she's confined to the brig (which is fairly often) she thinks of her guards as "My Marines" and treats them as such. Foster mother to baby Jesse and later to Ravi.
• Best Served Cold: But only in the form of Restrained Revenge, like forcing Davy to learn how to swim in the seventh book by tying him to a rope and throwing him overboard in revenge for slights from the first book. Or taking revenge on the surviving crewmen of the Bloodhound by winning their loyalty four books after she'd marooned them at sea.
• Catchphrase: "I am so very hard on my friends" and "Men, I swear."
  • And "I am not shy in that regard." And "It's just that I wasn't raised up proper." Jacky has a lot of these.
  • "I am promised to another," and its replacement, "I have sworn to live single all of my days," from when she temporarily breaks up with Jaimy in Under The Jolly Roger.
  • "I'm a good girl... mostly."
  • "I never was very brave." (Usually employed after Jacky has done nothing but feats of derring-do.)
  • "I always feel better with a plan." (Usually employed after Jacky has come up with a seat-of-the-pants, harebrained scheme that's just crazy enough to work.)
• Cowardly Lion: And isn't afraid to admit it, at least to herself. Jaimy recognizes it too, though, and mentions it in one of his reports.
• Defeat by Modesty: Jackie is completely immune to this trope (on account of being "not shy in that regard" because she wasn't "raised up proper") as more than one would-be rapist has discovered to his cost.
• Double Standard: Constantly crashing headlong into it when she isn't playing it to her advantage.
• Embarrassing Nickname "Puss-in-Boots", "Princess Pretty Bottom"...
  • Her Indian name means "She Who Dances Like Crazy Rabbit" but Jacky doesn't mind because she's been called worse.
• Even the Girls Want Her: Mam'selle Claudelle de Bourbon and Cheng Shih
• Famed In-Story: The common seamen of the Royal Navy call her "Puss-in-Boots", consider her a good luck charm, and practically worship the deck she walks on. Her fame becomes even more widespread once Amy starts writing up her adventures...which is kind of a problem, when you're wanted for piracy.
• Genki Girl
• Good Angel, Bad Angel: Starting in Rapture of the Deep "Little Mary" starts showing up.... "Jaaaaackyyyyy... TREASURE, JACKY!"
• Hero with Bad Publicity: Jackie once got a pirate to talk by pretending to torture his shipmate (it was all a scam, of course.) Ends up hoist by her own petard when Flashby uses the incident to justify torturing her for real.
• Improbable Age: From ship's boy to midshipman to fine lady to pirate to soldier to spy to convict to merchant all by the age of 18.
• Large Ham: Jacky *knows* she's a large ham and often plays up her caterwauling and/or feminine modesty in dangerous situations, so that people will back off just to shut her up.
• Master of Disguise: Passing herself off as a boy in the first book seems to have uncovered a talent for disguise. She does it once per book, at least.
• Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: Beginning in Curse of the Blue Tattoo when she accidentally burns down half of Boston, Massachusetts.
• Privateer: At least, she thought she was.
• Puppy-Dog Eyes: Jacky calls this technique "the big eyes" and is quite strategic in its employment.
• Scars Are Forever: Jacky has one on her eyebrow, one on the outer edge of her opposite eye, and a faint constellation of tiny blue powder burns around her right eye that she hides with makeup. She got the burns sighting a cannon at the battle of Trafalgar.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Jackie has a noticeable fondness for pretty clothes whenever she's not being a Wholesome Crossdresser or a Sweet Polly Oliver. While even she'll tell you she's not exactly beautiful, people find her blonde hair and sharp features appealing.
• Shipper on Deck: Jacky is instrumental in getting some of her friends together as couples. Especially evident in the case of Amy and Ezra, when Amy insists she "isn't ready for that sort of thing yet."
• The Social Expert: She learned the skills she needed to become one, mostly because she had to for the sake of survival.
• Street Performer: Often turns to this as an emergency money-making scheme.
• Sweet Polly Oliver: Of course. Almost once per book she'll dress in men's clothing.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: Jacky is the tomboy, with Amy as girly girl.
• Wholesome Crossdresser: She often wears men's 'rig' even when she isn't playing Sweet Polly Oliver. Usually it's whenever skirts aren't particularly practical (like at sea) but sometimes she just wants to put on trousers.
• Virgin Power: Despite all of her escapades, Jackie has so far managed to avoid being deflowered, which provides her with a great deal of moral suasion and the ultimate defense when adversaries accuse her of immorality.

The Lawson Peabody School For Young Girls

Mistress Pimm

The stern headmistress of the Lawson Peabody School For Young Girls.

• Iron Lady: The woman’s backbone might as well be pure steel.
• Mama Bear: You DON’T mess with the Lawson Peabody girls. The kidnapping staged at the beginning of In The Belly of the Bloodhound relied on Mistress Pimm being too sick to notice, and it DID NOT keep her down long.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: She is STRICT, but NOT CRUEL. She looks after her students ferociously.

Amy Trevelyne

• Catchphrase: "Oh, Jacky, no!" and "I'm not ready for that sort of thing yet."
• Friend to All Living Things At least, "All Living Things" seem to think she's this. Hilariously used in In The Belly of the Bloodhound with some seals "Oh Amy, 'E's looking at you in a Husbandly Way, 'e is!".
• I Should Write a Book About This: Amy publishes Jacky's adventures in-universe.
• Tomboy and Girly Girl: With Jacky.

Clarissa Worthington Howe (Of the Virginia Howes)

Jackie's nemesis at Lawson Peabody, she'll do almost anything to get a rise out of Jackie, or better yet, get her expelled.

• Green-Eyed Monster: Her enmity turns out to be half snobbery, half jealousy; she envies Jackie's independence and freedom.
• Rich Bitch: And not afraid to bring it up, along with her prestigious family background.

Jacky's Harem of Boyfriends

James Emerson Fletcher

• Beware the Nice Ones: The villains of the series often mistake Jaimy's being a gentleman for being weak.
• Even the Guys Want Him: Clementine's father and a few others.
• First Guy Wins: He and Jacky fall in love in the first book and somehow manage to maintain their devotion right until the very end.
• Heroic BSoD: In The Mark Of The Golden Dragon, after Jacky gets washed overboard during a typhoon. Leads to him becoming a highwayman to kill the people he sees as responsible.
• Pretty Boy: A number of girls remark on how beautiful/pretty he is.
• Sanity Slippage: Starting with his head trauma in My Bonny Light Horseman.

• Took a Level in Badass: In Mississippi Jack Also in Viva Jacquelina, where he learned bojutsu from a Shaolin monk.

Joseph Jared

Randall Trevelyne

Amy's elder brother

• Chivalrous Pervert: He steals a kiss from Jacky and tries to take things further, but backs off when she tells him she's in love with someone else.
• Handsome Lech

Jean-Paul de Valdon

• Everything Sounds Sexier in French

Flaco Jimenez

• Latin Lover: At least, one of the hopefuls.
• Loveable Rogue
• Pirate

Captain Richard Lord Allen

A charming, rakish British cavalry officer who helps Jackie out of a couple of bad spots

• Chivalrous Pervert: While he absolutely will not shut up about how much of a good idea it is to sleep with him, he will not take advantage of a helpless or reluctant woman, as Jacky learns when he catches her at a vulnerable moment.
• First-Name Basis: Insists (despite his birth) that Jaimy regard him "Richard" or "Dick".
• They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!: Insists that Flashby call him "Lord Allen" in a clear showing of disdain.

Cheng Shih

• Chinese People: No, she doesn't count as an Anime Chinese Girl.
• Historical Domain Character: Based on real-life Chinese pirate Zheng Yi Sao, who personally commanded a fleet of 24 ships and over 1400 pirates.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: She lets Jacky go with Jaimy, even though Jacky promised to stay with her forever.
• Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Make no mistake: Cheng Shih is a serious pirate who will not hesitate to sink a ship with all hands aboard, and has a fearsome reputation in the South China Seas because of it.
• Pirate Girl: Cheng Shih is aged down from her real-life counterpart (who started marauding in her thirties) to be closer to teenage Jacky's age, though she's still around her early twenties—not quite a girl, but definitely a pirate.

Jacky's Crews

Mr. John Higgins

Jackie's loyal manservent and fellow Naval Intelligence operative.

• Ambiguously Gay: While never stated outright, there's a few references to a personal "secret" that could make things difficult for him, a few "companions" or close male friends in his past, and Jacky's trust in allowing him to hang around even in intimate or compromising moments coupled with Higgins's complete neutrality toward her charms.
• Battle Butler: Constantly dual-wielding percussion cap pistols.
• The Jeeves: Often providing moral guidance to his wayward Jacky while brushing or washing her hair.
• Servile Snarker: When you hang out with Jacky, sometimes you have to be.

Liam Delaney

Seaman, rated able.

• Papa Wolf: For not only his especial ship's boy Jacky, but for the rest of the ship's boys.
• Team Dad: He's Jacky's "sea dad" in the first book, acting as a mentor to her on the ship.

Máiread Delaney

Liam's headstrong daughter

• Fiery Redhead: Classic Irish beauty with the temper to go along with the hair.

Clementine Amaryllis Jukes

• First Girl Wins Sorry, Clemmie. Jacky got there first

Jemimah Moses

• Frying Pan of Doom

Enoch Lightner

• Disability Superpower: He can tell how well the sails are drawing by touching the rigging.

Ravi

• Street Urchin: How Jacky finds him. Even when he's off the streets, he still can't help but revert to the meek, timid behavior he used to survive.

The Rooster Charlie Gang

"Rooster" Charlie Brewster

• A Father To His Gang: Unlike many other gang leaders on the London streets, Charlie makes a point of looking after his young charges and protecting them from worse dangers.
• Fiery Redhead: Part of the reason he earns the name "Rooster" is his floppy red hair and his wicked temper.

Polly Von

Hugh the Grand

• Gentle Giant: Though still technically a child, Hugh is over six feet tall and strapping, but is sweet, slow-witted, and slow to rile.
• Huge Guy, Tiny Girl: Hughie & "Little Mary" were a team, with Mary Faber riding on his shoulders

Joannie Nichols

Naval Intelligence

Sir Thomas Grenville

First Lord of the Admiralty. Considers Jackie a jumped-up guttersnipe who doesn't know her place, a scheming trollop at best and an out-and-out criminal at worse. He also seems to regard her desire to marry Jaimy an affront to his entire social class. But as she is also a very effective, if frequently exasperating, secret agent, he keeps punishing her by giving her new missions.

Mr. Peel

Grenville's chief of Naval Intelligence. Considers Jackie a rare treasure — a tough, intelligent, competent urchin with the veneer of a cultured lady — and does whatever he can to retain her services. Not that he has her best interests in mind.

Carr and Boyd

Peel's enforcers, who show Jackie no mercy but also no particular ill will.

Henry Flashby

A treacherous Naval Intelligence operative who hates Jackie with a passion after she made a fool out of him in Mississippi Jack.

• Amusing Injuries: A face full of bug bites and a butt full of rock salt, amongst other things.
• Cold-Blooded Torture: Holds his cigar to Jacky's leg after making her think he was going to blind her with it.
• Obstructive Bureaucrat: Uses his position and contacts in London as well as some good old-fashioned perjury to ensure that Jackie stays in trouble with the law.
• Smug Snake: The smuggest imaginable.
• Would Hit a Girl: Though not as bad as Bliffil, as he prefers slaps to fisticuffs. He also enjoyed torturing Jacky for entertainment and burning her with a cigar, as well as beating his prostitutes in The Mark of the Golden Dragon.

Alexander Bliffil

A right piece of work. First met bullying the other midshipmen aboard HMS Dolphin, where he soon cultivates an intense hatred for our heroine. Put ashore for cowardice by the end of the first book, he gravitated to Naval Intelligence, where his thuggish tendencies are better appreciated. He takes great pleasure in dragging Jackie back in whenever Peel requires her services, especially if he can give her a few lumps in the process.

• The Bully: Bullies not only the other middies but the young ship's boys.
• Would Hit a Girl: Albeit unwittingly, since he doesn't know Jacky's a girl. But he's still willing to beat up on someone much smaller than he is.
  • He is perfectly fine with beating Jacky knowing she is a girl in The Wake of the Lorelei Lee for the damages to his character and body suffered by her hand.

Other Adversaries

Mike Fink

The Mike Fink: Six and a half feet and fully three hundred and fifty pounds of pure bluster. The biggest, baddest, roughest, toughest keelboat man on the Mississippi, to hear him tell it, and he may not be wrong.

• Badass Boast: Many of the Tall Tales surrounding Mike Fink are his own invention, it seems.
• Bar Brawl: Immediately upon setting foot in Pittsburgh.
• Catchphrase: "I'm a ring-tailed roarer!"
• Large Ham: Part of his schtick. As Jacky learns, sometimes a bit of roaring and playing up his own reputation can get him out of situations that might otherwise defeat him.
• Public Domain Character: A real person who was legendary in his own time as a river boatman and brawler on the Mississippi. While no one's quite sure if he did half the things he was alleged to have done, his presentation in the book is pretty accurate to the way he's known in folklore.
• Squash Match: Between him and Jaimy.

Outright Villains

Captain Scrogg

Demented Captain of the Wolverine who promotes Jackie to Lieutenant, puts the rest of his officers overboard, and tried to rape her in his cabin. Fortunately for our heroine his heart is not up to the task his loins set for him.

• Attempted Rape: Once he discovers Jacky's female, he wastes no time taking her for his own use. She only escapes his bed due to a well-timed heart attack.

Ruger

• Loony Fan: He's read the Bloody Jack novels, and identifies Jacky by her tattoo.
• Stalker with a Crush