Characters / Earthsea

Characters introduced in A Wizard of Earthsea

Ged

Ged

Sparrowhawk, Hawk

The protagonist of A Wizard of Earthsea.

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• The Apprentice: Ged to Ogion in A Wizard of Earthsea.
• Celibate Hero: Ged is celibate because he is a mage. This accounts for a complete lack of romance in the first three books, even when a pairing up, first with his friend's sister and then with Tenar, looked to be inevitable. All the mages in Earthsea are celibate by rule, in theory because they will lose their power unless they are chaste, though the truth of this belief is not exactly confirmed. It's implied in Tehanu (by a village witch, who may not be the most reliable source) that wizards use some sort of spell to render themselves asexual, or possibly just make it easier to be completely celibate. Of course, by the time he averts this, he's already lost his magic.
• Deuteragonist: Ged's character development is secondary to Tenar's in The Tombs of Atuan and to Arren's in The Farthest Shore.
• Distressed Dude: To Tenar in The Tombs of Atuan.
• Drama-Preserving Handicap: In The Tombs of Atuan, Ged is shown wandering in an undertomb, weak from exhaustion and thirst, and is easily captured by Arha. He had been weaving and maintaining an entire network of spells in the tombs to keep the Nameless Ones off his trail, in a land where his power is weaker.
• Fatal Flaw: As a young man, Ged is very proud and inclined toward showing off. At Ogion's, he shows off for a neighbor girl who may actually be there to extra his magic secrets. At Roke, in a fit of prideful competition he looses the Shadow into the world. However, his fatal flaw is not a fixed, intractable feature of him. It's a folly of youth that he is able to overcome.
• Famed In-Story: A Wizard of Earthsea is explicitly described as being about Ged when he was young and not famed in story; in it, a friend declares he will make a song so his deeds will be remember, but either he didn't or the song was lost (only distorted pieces survive). However, by The Farthest Shore, Ged is indeed famed. Despite the lines in A Wizard of Earthsea saying that stories of the events of that novel were lost, it is clear that they are common knowledge by the time of The Other Wind, as shown by Alder.
• Farm Boy: Ged grows up as a goatherd, the son of a blacksmith, on a very rural island out on the edge of civilization — but the island is known for occasionally producing very powerful wizards.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Ged, after unleashing a never-exactly specified evil into the world, is scratched up rather terribly by the thing on one side of his face, and scarred for life. However, in that same book someone says approvingly that the scars indicate him as a true hero—and more importantly they are a sign of his kinship with the Nameless Ones, which Tenar is priestess of.
• Heroic BSoD: In Tehanu, after losing his magic, Ged struggles with his place in life and what he will be now that he's no longer a wizard.
• I Know Your True Name: The source of Ged's magic, and he is very good at it.
• Living Legend: "His life is told of in the Deed of Ged and in many songs, but this is a tale of the time before his fame, before the songs were made."
• Not Afraid to Die: By the final confrontation with the gebbeth in A Wizard of Earthsea, Ged is less afraid of dying than of the gebbeth possessing his body and using it to wreak havoc upon the world. In Tombs of Atuan, he is similarly unafraid of dying in the tombs, or of Arha's threats of torture and sacrifice.
• Parental Substitute: Ged becomes Tehanu's adoptive father after marrying Tenar.
• Rite of Passage: In A Wizard of Earthsea, the mage Ogion the Silent gives Duny his True Name of Ged in a coming of age ceremony.
• Sex as Rite-of-Passage: Discussed Trope. While nobody seriously appears to judge Ged for being a virgin in his fifties, Tenar teases Ged about it after sleeping with him:

  Tenar: Now you're a man indeed. Stuck another man full of holes, first, and lain with a woman second.

• Scars Are Forever: Ged has disfiguring scars down one side of his face, inflicted by an evil Living Shadow he summoned as a boy, which remain even when he is the Archmage. He seems to regard them as a reminder of the cost of arrogance and misuse of magic.
• Shadow Archetype: In A Wizard of Earthsea, Ged accidentally raises an evil spirit representing the darkness in himself, which is actually called the Shadow in the book. It follows him everywhere until he can call it by its true name—which is Ged.
• Too Proud for Lowly Work: Ged resents being expected to follow his father into the blacksmithing trade given his magical talents. Early in the miniseries, after foreseeing a Kargad raid, he rushes out of the village and his father runs after him to bring him back.
  Father: Oh, more of your wizard nonsense! Well, you're no wizard! You're a blacksmith! Get used to it.
  Ged: I won't 'get used to it'! I'm better than that!
  Father: 'Better'? You insolent pup! I ought to— (at which point he catches sight of the Kargad raiding party and changes the subject to warning the village)
• Training the Gift of Magic: Ged is first taken as a trainee by a witch when he shows a remarkable ability to cast simple spells after hearing them once, then is apprentice to Ogion, then receives extensive training at a Wizarding School after showing greater but still limited power. It's possible that anyone could achieve something if they knew the right true names, but most people would probably be dangerously clumsy at best.
• Unusual Pets for Unusual People: In A Wizard of Earthsea, Ged ends up with an otak as his familiar. It's explicitly noted that otaks are not easily domesticated at best, and it is shown when his otak nearly bites some of the other students at his school.
• Wandering Wizard: In A Wizard of Earthsea, Ged is forced into life as a traveling wizard because the shadow beast he summoned keeps hunting him if he stays in any one place for too long.
• Youth Is Wasted on the Dumb: Ged foolishly casts a spell to show off, with devastating consequences.

Ogion

Ogion

Aihal

• Almighty Janitor: He acts as the local wizard in a remote island, lives a simple life helping the farmers and villagers instead of directly serving the Lords, and he is always extremely humble and soft-spoken. He doesn't even use his magic to make the rain go away when he is sleeping outside, he simply lies under a tree and thanks the leaves for covering him and Ged. That doesn't detract from the fact he is a very powerful mage, capable of stopping earthquakes, very renowed and respected in Roke, and he was even offered the position of Archmage a long time ago, wich he declined.
• The Dying Walk: Opts to take a walk and die beneath a tree he loved, with Tenar helping him to reach it.
• Elective Mute: To the point where his mage name is Ogion The Silent.

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Characters introduced in The Tombs of Atuan

Tenar (aka Arha)

Tenar

Arha, Goha

Ged: You must make a choice. Either you must leave me, lock the door, go up to your altars and give me to your Masters; then go to the Priestess Kossil and make your peace with her—and that is the end of the story—or, you must unlock the door, and go out of it, with me. Leave the Tombs, leave Atuan, and come with me oversea. And that is the beginning of the story. You must be Arha, or you must be Tenar. You cannot be both.

The protagonist of The Tombs of Atuan. The name given to her by the Priestesses of the Tomb is 'Arha', but after a chance meeting with a certain mage, she regains/remembers her true name of Tenar, the name given to her by her parents.

• Because You Were Nice to Me: Sparrowhawk/Ged is the first outsider who not only defies Arha's expectation of an infidel and a thief, but also treats her with respect, honesty, and kindness, even in the face of her cruelty against him. This begins her turn against the Priestesses, who have taken good care of her, but have also only taught her cruelty and bigotry.
• Curiosity Causes Conversion: Arha's curiosity to the wizard skulking around in the tombs, first by spying on him, then giving him water, talking to him about the outside world, and hiding him from the other Priestesses is what leads to her redemption,
• Defrosting Ice Queen: Arha fits this trope very much in The Tombs of Atuan, although there is a subversion in that Ged—who plays the role of dashing adventurer in the novel—does not "defrost" her through sex as often happens, but rather helps her develop a sense of morality and reconnect with her buried humanity.
• High Priestess: There are 3 High Priestesses at the Place of the Tombs of Atuan, one for each temple. Kossil is the High Priestess of the Godking; Thar is the High Priestess of the Twin Gods; Arha is the High Priestess of the Nameless Ones. But Arha is One Priestess; she is the highest one and even the other two must obey her... in theory.
• Housewife: Ultimately chose to be this rather than becoming an important political figure in Havnor or a mage under Ogion, to the disappointment of Ged.
• Meaningful Rename: Twice, first when goes from Tenar to Arha, and then again when she returns to the name Tenar.
  • She is "eaten" when she's 6, and starts being called "Arha".
    Arha: I am not Tenar anymore.
    Manan: No. I know. I know. Now you're the little Eaten One. But I...
  • Near the end, when she takes back her name Tenar.
    [She awakens from a dream of her mother calling her Tenar.]
    Tenar: I am Tenar. I have my name back. I am Tenar!
• Obliviously Evil: When it comes down to it, Arha at the beginning of her arc has literally had everything but the will of The Empire and the local Religion of Evil removed from her mind; she literally does not even conceive she can be different than the ruthless voice of the Nameless Ones.
• Older and Wiser: In The Tombs of Atuan, she is a very sheltered teenage girl and acts as such. In Tehanu, she is a widow with two grown children.
• Parental Substitute: Adopts Tehanu after she is burned, raped, and abandoned by her birth father.
• Reincarnation: She is Arha, "The Eaten One," Priestess of the Nameless Ones. The priests hold that everyone is reincarnated, but that only Arha is reincarnated again and again as herself.
  • Also a theme to her redemption, when she saves Ged, she must discard the name Arha, along with all the teachings and the misguided life she has been leading with the Priestesses of the Nameless Ones, thereby 'killing' Arha, and be reborn once again as Tenar and escape the Tomb.
• Single Woman Seeks Good Man: In Tehanu, Tenar comes to have more romantic feelings for Ged because of his kindness and humility. As an added bonuses, Ged is actually willing to help around the houuse.
• The Trope without a Title: "Arha" means "the Eaten One." As the priestess of the Nameless Ones, she too has no name.
• Tsundere: At least in The Tombs of Atuan. By the time we see her again two books later, in Tehanu, she seems to have grown out of it.
• Villain Protagonist: She is introduced as a cruel young girl, bigoted against men and foreigners, and bent on destroying invaders to her tomb in the harshest manner possible.

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Characters introduced in The Farthest Shore

Arren

Arren

Lebannen, King Lebannen

The coprotagonist of The Farthest Shore. The young prince of Enlad, he accompanies Ged in his quest to understand and solve the magic' draining problem that engulfs the world.

• Rightful King Returns: At the end of the story, with the magic drought solved and the with the Ring of Erreth-Akbe having been repaired since The Tombs of Atuan, he is crowned as King Lebannen, monarch of all Earthsea.

Cob

Cob

• Big Bad: Of The Farthest Shore, his quest for immortality having caused the conflict of the story.

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Characters introduced in Tehanu

Tehanu

Tehanu

Therru

A child who was severely burned by her father and his bandit group, she is adopted by Tenar at the beginning of the story.

• Abusive Parents: Her parents were part of a bandit group, and her father and seemingly all of the men spent much of their time abusing the women and girls of the group, including Tehanu. Her father and his friends eventually return about halfway through the story with the goal of getting her back from Tenar.
• The Chosen One: Is the "woman on Gont" from The Master Patterner's prophecy. This caused some confusion at first, as Tehanu was overlooked as she was but a child at the time and they misunderstood the prophecy as meaning a woman would help them find the next Archmage. They do not realize it is Tehanu until years later when she is an adult, and it turns out the prophecy has nothing to do with the Archmage: instead she will bring about peace between mankind and dragons and assisting rescuing (alongside the other chosen one, Alder) the deceased from The Dry Land.
• Facial Horror: One side of her face is completely covered in burn scars. This horrifies many of the people that see her, so much that they consider her an abomination and make the "avert" sign to ward off evil whenever they encounter her.
• Good Scars, Evil Scars: Played for Drama. Tehanu's scars, which include one side of her face as well as an entire arm and hand, are disfiguring and horrify many of the townsfolk that see her. They consider her to be a monster and an outcast, and this worsens the impact of Tehanu's trauma.
• Happily Adopted: Adores her adoptive mother Tenar and her adoptive father Ged.
• Meaningful Name: Tenar gives her the use-name "Therru", which means "flame" in Kargish, because of her severe burns.
• Rape as Backstory: Tehanu was raped when she was among the bandits. She was about six or seven.
• The Quiet One: Tehanu doesn't talk much, and takes months to open up to Tenar. This becomes even more prominent when her abusers return, as all it takes is one touch on the arm to trigger Tehanu into not talking to anyone for weeks.
• Shrinking Violet: Tehanu is mistrustful of strangers and is extraordinarily shy, and is initially only comfortable around her adoptive mother Tenar. Even as an adult, she hates talking to strangers and would prefer Tenar to do it for her. Tenar starts to force her out of her shell in The Other Wind.
• Weredragon: Kalessin calls her "daughter" at the end of the Tehanu, and she becomes a dragon at the end of The Other Wind. This is implied to have less to do with her biological heritage and more her personality and history.

Apple

Apple

Daughter of Tenar and her late husband Flint.

• Nice Girl: Apple is very kind and is one of the few people who is warm and welcoming to Tehanu, whom she loves as sister.

Spark

Spark

Tenar and Flint's son.

• Cranky Landlord: To Ged, Tehanu, and his own mother. He technically owns Oak Farm due to inheritance law being that property rights go to the owner's son, and upon his return demands that his mother cook and clean up after him. This is mostly downplayed, however, as he is cold and rude but never outright cruel.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Introduced towards the end of the story when he returns home and reclaims his right over Oak Farm. He spends most of his time being rude to Tenar and Ged, and is coldhearted to Tehanu. When Tenar and Ged decide to move to Re Albi, however, he wonders when his mother will return and teaches Ged how to tie a sailor's knot.
• Men Can't Keep House: Spark has always had his mother and sister to take care of housework, and refuses to learn as he considers it women's work.
• Venturous Smuggler: Most likely, as most Gontish seafarers are "half-pirate". He returns home after his cargo is ceased by the king's soldiers.

Moss

Aunty Moss

The witch of Re Albi.

• Mars and Venus Gender Contrast: A firm believer. Moss has a tendency to talk at length about the natural differences between men and women, and how that reflects their stations on society and how they can use magic differently.
• The Speechless: Seemingly cannot speak by the time of The Other Wind, as she relies on sign language and Heather to communicate for her.

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