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Ants
103 683
- An Arm and a Leg: She loses her fifth leg at the Battle of Poppy Hill, but it doesn't slow her down much.
- Characterisation Marches On: The first book despict her as a soldier of apparently average intelligence compared to 56. Later books emphasize her curiosity and despict her as incredibly smart for an ant, capable of understanding human culture and even adapt some of their concept to Ant society. By the time of Book 3, she had been so influenced by human culture that many Ants consider her a Cloudcuckoolander.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: From a Humans Are Cthulhu perspective, she is the only known Ant to have defeated humans. Though her success in Book 2 was mostly thanks to luck (the human happened to be allergic to bees), the second Book has her defeat Maximilien Linard.
- Easy Sex Change: More like easy sex add. All she had to do was eat some wasp jelly and she became a fertile female.
- Genius Bruiser: From the Ants' perspective; she is depicted as big and strong by Ants' standards, but it's also pretty clear she is one of the smartest in her colony (at least in the two later books; she was more average before).
- Improbable Aiming Skills: Well-known for her very impressive skills at shooting formic acid.
- No Biological Sex: Kind of in the two first books (Worker ants are sterile, wingless females). Then she becomes a complete female.
- Older Than They Look: Is about to die of old age until she takes in wasp jelly, which makes her young again along giving her a fertile sex. She still remarks how old she mentally is.
- Only Sane Woman: Tends to be this amongst other ants. Ironically, the other ants often think she is insane.
- Overly Long Name: initially; after defeating a bird in Book 2, she is granted a nickname by her subordinnates and referred as 103.
- Took a Level in Badass: More like several.
327
- The Cassandra: The ants don't want to listen to him when he tries to warn them about the ant-slaughter he has witnessed, since he fails to bring proof. The ant MIBs didn't help.
- Decoy Protagonist: He is the first ant character introduced in the book, and the one followed for most of the beginning of the story, making you think he might be the hero... until he is killed right toward the middle of the book.
- I'm a Humanitarian: He is forced to kill a guard ant after being stripped of his identity pheromones, and eats part of the corpse.
- Love at First Punch: 56 tried to bite his head off when they first met, but after he explains the situation they become close friends and eventually fall in love.
- The One Guy: He's the only male ant featured in the story.
- Unresolved Sexual Tension: By the end of Part 1, he's fantasizing about mating with 56, and the feeling's mutual. It didn't end well, even by Ants' standards.
56/Chi-pou-ni
- The Charmer: It takes her around a few seconds after meeting 103,683 to convince her to join her just with words.
- Did Not Get the Boy: By the end of Part 1, she's developed an attachment to 327 and wants to mate with him... but he's killed by the stone-scented assassin ants. She fantasizes about him while she's mating, though.
- Fantastic Racism: To her, humans are "puny parasites" that need to be exterminated. Not that she had no reason to think so...
- Gadgeteer Genius: She is a genius even by the standards of Bel-o-kan, coming up with dozens of innovations that she implements as the queen of her own colony.
- God Save Us from the Queen!: in the second book, at least from humans' perspective.
- The High Queen: She aspires to be this, wanting her colony to surpass that of even her mother's colony, Bel-o-kan.
- I'm a Humanitarian: She is forced to eat her own eggs to survive when she's starting to create her own colony.
- Karmic Death: She dies at the hand of the Deist Ants she had been persecuting for the whole book, after seeing the crusade she attempted against humans fail spectacularly.
- Rogue Protagonist: Sort of; she doesn't really switch side, but Book 2 depicts her as much more antagonistic, organizing a crusade to exterminate humanity, leaving the previous Queen's human friends to starve to death and trying to purge the colony from all pro-humans ants.
- Royals Who Actually Do Something: She was one of the few Princesses of Bel-o-kan to survive her mating flight, and prior to that was involved in uncovering a secret conspiracy in the hive. She survived getting eaten by a swallow and falling into a river, founding her own colony and becoming Queen.
- Underestimating Badassery: Not exactly badassery, but she really under-evaluated the humans' number, size and nature. Her crusade against them in Book 2 borders on Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu.
4000
- Body Horror: She's infected with wasp larvae and suffers horrible pain, being eaten slowly from the inside out.
- Sacrificial Lion: At the end of the first Book, she dies trying to cross the road.
- You See, I'm Dying: She was infested by a parasitic wasp and being eaten from the inside out.
- Your Days Are Numbered: Having been infected by a wasp, she only has a short time to live.
23
- Foil: To 9.
- Knight Templar: In the third Book.
- Took a Level in Jerkass: She grows more and more irrational about her faith in Humans as Gods over the course of Book 2 and 3. By the third book, 103 is forced to have her kicked out of the colony because of this.
24
- Character Development: Starts out as a Naive Newcomers following 23 in her religion. Eventually grows into a completely different character.
- Easy Sex Change: Similarly to 103, gets turned into a male in the third book.
- Love Interest: To 103 in the third Book.
- Naïve Newcomer: In the second book, before Character Development kicks in.
- Out with a Bang: 103 knowns that, since male ants can't survive mating, she can't allows herself to have sex with 23 in the third Book, since she cares too much about him. They eventually do it when it appears they are probably going to die anyway.
9
- Fantastic Racism: Toward Humans.
- Foil: To both 103 and 23. She is obsessed with seeing humans as monsters who must be exterminated, in contrast to 103's curiosity about them and 23's conviction that they are gods.
- Humans Are Cthulhu / Humans Are the Real Monsters: All Ants have this kind of vision of humans, but she especially stands as the most violent.
- Irrational Hatred: Her hates of humans reach such level that she eventually turns against 103 and tries to kill her just for possibly be in league with humans. All of this while they are in the middle of a human city, with her, 103 and 23 as the only survivors of the crusade.
- Knight Templar: She is even more hateful toward Humans than Chli-Pou-Ni is.
Humans
Edmond Wells
- Cloudcuckoolander: Judging by what we know of him, at least.
- Mad Scientist: He dedicated his life to studying and communicating with ants, and was seen as crazy.
- Posthumous Character: He is dead just before the first book starts. Yet his role is major in all books.
- Thanatos Gambit: What drives the plot of the three books.
Jonathan Wells
- Lovable Coward: In the first Book. He gets better.
Jacque Melies
- Ascended Fanboy: In his backstory; he always was a big fan of detective novels and polar before becoming a detective himself.
- Belligerent Sexual Tension: with Laetitia Wells.
- Great Detective: A rare case where the detective actually is part of the police force.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Much to Laetitia's surprise, he chose to leave the Ramirez alone after finding out the motive behind their murders.
Laetitia Wells
- Ms. Fanservice: Very hot, judging by the description given of her.
- Technicolor Eyes: Her most recognizable feature are the purple color of her eyes.
Arthur Ramirez
- Heel–Face Turn: Not that he was that much of a bad guy to begin with.
- Hero Antagonist: In the second Book, though he gets better.
- Serial Killer: Only in the second book, and he wasn't comfortable with it.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: He tried to prevent the creation of an insecticide intended to exterminate all insect life (especially ants) by gruesomely killing all the scientists working on it with an army of ant robots.
Maximilien Linard
- Inspector Javert: At the beginning of Book 3, but he slowly evolves into something much, much worse.
- Jerkass: And he gets worse as the book goes on.
- Knight Templar: Attempted to destroy the Ants when finding out they might one day become the dominant species over humans, should they grow smart enough.
- Sanity Slippage: Over the course of the third Book.
