Characters / Wings of Fire: SkyWings

In General

• Anti-Magical Faction: They haven't had an animus dragon in a great many years, as alongside firescales, animus SkyWings are normally killed as soon as their powers are discovered.
• Bread and Circuses: The main form of entertainment for the SkyWings is watching prisoners (and even scavengers) battle to the death with the promise of being let out if they win a certain number of battles. It almost always ended with them being scorched alive by Peril. Scarlet specifically says she uses the arena to distract dragons from the war, and notes that she hasn't been challenged in 15 years as a result. Queen Ruby later converts the arena into a hospital and provides less bloody entertainments for the SkyWings.
• Civil War: The Sky Kingdom briefly descends into one after Scarlet's disappearance, with some fighting for Scarlet and some for Ruby, the new queen. Fast-forward six months and Ruby has quite firmly become queen and is much beloved.
• Fictional Disability: SkyWing twins sometimes have a disorder specific to dragons: one twin will have "too little" fire, and the other twin gets too much. The latter are called firescales, and they're usually culled at birth alongside their twin.
• Gladiator Games: They have an arena for these until Queen Ruby comes into power.
• Out of Focus: Their species receives a lot less exposition than the others, and it's something of a recurring gag that any SkyWing who looks like they might become a protagonist will die before they get the chance. Peril's Day in the Limelight in book 8 finally broke this trend...but then, she's not a typical SkyWing.
• Playing with Fire: Their flame-breath is especially potent.
• Proud Warrior Race Guy: Their entire society is built on warfare and power. This gets significantly toned down under Queen Ruby's rule, though.
• Reincarnation: They believe that dead dragons are reborn as other dragons according to where their body is placed when they die, so they place dead bodies overlooking the sky for a week so they will become SkyWings.
• Super-Senses: Have enhanced sight.
• Theme Naming: Can have various fire-based names, though they're also named after birds of prey, jewels, the features of mountains, and shades of red.

Scarlet

Queen Scarlet

"All in all, a very messing and thrilling day for me and Burn to look forward to."

• Ax-Crazy: Violent, unpredictable and extremely unstable.

• Bad Boss: She has a tendency for executing SkyWings who displease her, and most of them are terrified of her though they're not allowed to show it.
• Beastly Bloodsports: Forces captured dragons to fight each other, and occasionally humans, gladiator-style.
• A Birthday, Not a Break: Gets disfigured, imprisoned, and deposed on her hatching day party.
• Black Widow: She killed her own husband when she got bored of him.
• Bond Villain Stupidity: She always prefers killing dragons in a flashy way than just killing them outright, both to reduce morale and because she thinks it's more thrilling. Burn is always calling her out on this.
• The Caligula: An Ax-Crazy queen who loves watching her subjects and prisoners fight to the death for her amusement. Deposed, she's even more of a threat since she's sworn revenge against the Dragonets, especially Glory.
• Catchphrase: She thinks catchphrases are thrilling! Clay even lampshades it by saying he's getting really tired of the word thrilling.
• Cheaters Never Prosper: It's heavily implied that she remained in power so long by cheating whenever she was challenged. She tried to ensure her last daughter would never attempt to take the throne by giving Tourmaline an enchanted earring to change her into a weak, submissive dragon named Ruby that would never rebel against her.
• Child Hater: She is not a fan of dragonets. As a result, she doesn't even know that SkyWing dragonets generally know how to fly at Cliff's age.
• Dark Action Girl: She likes fighting, sometimes in person, despite being queen. She's powerful enough to have killed 14 challengers.
• Disc-One Final Boss: Is the main villain of the first book of the first arc, but is deposed and seemingly killed by the end of the first book. In the second arc, she continues this pattern, being set up as the Big Bad only to be killed by the end of Escaping Peril.
• Dream Walker: She has a dream visitor, which she uses often to threaten her enemies.
• Enfant Terrible: A segment of the Guide to the Dragon World book says that she was like this as a baby. If she saw something she wanted she'd scream for it, and once she realized that got her whatever she wanted, she'd oftentimes scream for no reason just to get dragons to give her things to get her to stop. She also would steal things from other dragons and play innocent when they found out she'd taken them. Her mother Queen Firestorm thought this was hilarious.
• Establishing Character Moment: Her first appearance has her bite a scavenger's head off and leave the body to bleed. Even Clay (who had mused about eating the scavenger) was shaken.
• Evil Matriarch: Particularly notable in Escaping Peril, since she is the adoptive mother of Peril as well as the biological mother of Ruby. She exerts a tyrannical influence on their lives and has already killed eleven of her daughters in challenges, plus one that mysteriously disappeared.
• Facial Horror: She's grievously disfigured. After having half her face melted off by Glory's venom, part of her skull is exposed.
• Fake Kill Scare: She drops off a severed MudWing head intended to look like Glory at Jade Mountain Academy to scare the dragonets
• Faux Affably Evil: When she first meets the dragonets, she's quite cheery. However, this only serves to highlight her maliciousness and she later drops the cheery front.
• The Fighting Narcissist: She's very vain and wears jewelry even when invading the dragonets' cave. But she's equally arrogant about her fighting prowess, which is enough that she's been able to hold the throne for 31 years and against fourteen challengers.
• God Save Us from the Queen!: Scarlet, despite being deposed and exiled, is an even greater threat to the Dragonets than the three sisters. This also extends to her subjects; nobody likes her and everyone is terrified.
• Hanging Judge: SkyWing law says that she has to hold a trial for another SkyWing before executing him or her, so she always rules them guilty.
• Halfbreed Discrimination: Insists that SkyWings should only breed with other SkyWings. It is why she never lets Chameleon and his daughter Peril meet each other, even though she's not exactly a hybrid.
• Human Shield: Burn uses her as one when Glory attacks them both with her venom.
• Humiliation Conga: Ends up painfully and gruesomely disfigured by the dragon she was using as art, imprisoned by her former ally, betrayed by her champion, and replaced by the daughter who she specifically engineered not to defy her.
• I Have Your Son: Does this to Queen Ruby to get her to renounce her claim as SkyWing queen.
• I Lied: Tells Kestrel that she will spare one of her dragonets if she kills the other. After she kills one of them, she decides to execute the other dragonet as well, leading to Kestrel escaping with the dragonets, and getting burned because the dragonet in question is Peril.
• In Love with Your Carnage: She only acts as a motherly figure to Peril because she's fascinated by the way she burns dragons alive.
• It's All About Me: She's a tremendously selfish and vain dragon who only cares about what she finds exciting, rather than what's best for her tribe.
• Manipulative Bastard: Used Peril's affection for Clay to get her to betray the Dragonets, and later to free her from Burn's fortress.
• Moving the Goalposts: When questioned by an old dragon named Osprey about her decision to kill both of Kestrel's dragonets (even after she said they'll kill only one), she scoffs that she's the queen and she can do whatever she wants.
• The Napoleon: She is noted to be unusually small for a dragon her age, only slightly larger than Clay.
• Never My Fault: She seems to be unable to comprehend the possibility that she ever did anything wrong, blaming everyone else for her problems.
• Non-Indicative Name: She's orange. Tui notes that she regrets not making her red like her name would suggest.
• Matricide: Like most queens, she killed her mother to get power.
• Offing the Offspring: She has killed eleven of her daughters in challenges, while one disappeared just when she was about to challenge her, and suspiciously soon before she first introduced Peril to the tribe. Only one of her daughters is still alive by the time of The Dragonet Prophecy.
• Playing the Victim Card: She complains at one point in Winter Turning about how the Dragonets Of Destiny had ruined her life. In spite of having been a cruel queen, she whines about how she's the victim in this situation and how everyone should help her in her time of need.
• Psychopathic Man Child: She's seen in Winter Turning griping to her follower about how the dragonets had ruined her life, and she adds that they should feel sorry for her. When Chameleon tries saying that she still has him, she complains childishly that he's weird-looking and unreliable.
• Starter Villain: She serves as the main villain in The Dragonet Prophecy, until Glory spits RainWing venom at her and before the three SandWing Sisters^note Burn, Blister & Blaze show up.
• Straw Nihilist: As she describes in her speech to Clay, Tsunami and Starflight in The Dragonet Prophecy, she has no regard or empathy for other dragons but believes the only accomplishment is through power alone, giving her the right to rule, and the war is to her advantage because it provides a distraction. She also does not care at all for SkyWing traditions about what happens to dragons after they die.
• Two-Faced: Half of her face is disfigured by RainWing venom and the other half is normal and beautiful.
• Villainous Breakdown: She's a great deal more unstable in Arc 2 due to being kicked out of her kingdom and having her throne usurped by her daughter. Peril even notices that she's far less confident than she used to be when she briefly takes over the SkyWing palace, as she fears the cooks poisoning her, something she never worried about before. She's also disrespected by the palace's dragonets and nobody attempted to find her or restore her to the throne beyond a brief civil war when she disappeared.
• Villains Love Entertainment: She loves things to be "thrilling", which usually means lots of Gladiator Games.
• War for Fun and Profit: She is thought to have joined the war to get some land from Burn near the SandWing-SkyWing border. She's certainly happy about the war and willing to take advantage of it.
• Wedding/Death Juxtaposition: Her wedding day was like this; she killed her mother for the throne, and poisoned her sister (and multiple other dragons) at the wedding feast, to secure her power.
• We Will Meet Again: Promises revenge against the Dragonets especially Glory, for deposing and scarring her.
• Yellow Eyes of Sneakiness: She’s a malicious queen with yellow eyes.
• You Have Failed Me: Very fond of killing those who undercut her expectations.

Osprey

Osprey:

• Broken Angel: A SkyWing who can't fly.
• Bury Your Disabled: Has to serve under Scarlet due to his disability. She later kills him by throwing him from the arena, which he is unable to escape because he can't fly.
• Career-Ending Injury: Was a lone dragon guarding treasure until his tail was paralyzed by a scavenger, leaving him unable to fly. The graphic novel changes that to his wings having been ripped off.
• Dragon Hoard: Used to keep one.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: Though Peril mentions him throughout Escaping Peril, he's notably absent when she is used by the necklace to not remember Clay. Though nothing is interfering with her memory of Osprey, when trying to think of any friends she's ever had besides Scarlet she can only name Turtle, who she's only known for a few days.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Tui's notes for The Dragonet Prophecy reveal that he knew that not saying what Scarlet wanted in her Kangaroo Court would lead to his execution, but he was willing to so Peril could finally know the truth.
• Intergenerational Friendship: With Peril.
• Mr. Exposition: His role in the only scene he appears in is to narrate how Kestrel left the Sky Kingdom.
• Only Friend: To Peril. He taught her to read and write and she looked up to him as a father figure.
• Retired Badass: He used to be a powerful lone dragon guarding treasure. Now he is stuck as the defense attorney in Scarlet's Kangaroo Court.

Vermilion

Prince Vermilion

• Amoral Attorney: Besides being the announcer of Scarlet's Bloodsports, he is the prosecutor in Scarlet's cases arguing for dragons' inevitable execution.
• Human Pet: He wants to have one, and Smolder sends him letters giving him advice about it.
• Spell My Name With An S: His name is spelled "Vermillion" in some editions.
• Trapped in Villainy: Escaping Peril implies that like his pen pal Smolder, he is an ultimately nice dragon who has to follow his mother or risk being killed.

Flame

Flame

• The Antichrist: Darkstalker thinks he's essentially this thanks to his personality and possession of the dreamvisitor perfectly fitting the dragon the prophecy says to beware of.
• Didn't Think This Through: He and Flame ask a NightWing guard where Starflight is so they can kill him to fulfill Morrowseer's task. The guard throws them in prison, screaming that foreign dragons have come to kill their dragonets.
• Evil Counterpart: To Glory, of course, since he's her replacement and is very smug about this fact. Also to Moonwatcher. They are both hated by most dragons for something they didn't even do and are disappointed about going to Jade Mountain academy due to it meaning leaving their mother who they only just got the chance to spend time with. Flame is far more angry about the situation, though.
• Even Bad Men Love Their Mamas: When he's finally reunited with his mother in The Brightest Night, he cries in relief as she hugs him.
• Eye Scream: Viper's attack makes him blind in one eye.
• Facial Horror: Gets his face horribly scarred by Viper.
• Inferiority Superiority Complex: He is arrogant and always bringing up how he's the irreplaceable one, since his counterpart Glory clearly doesn't fit the prophecy. But his thoughts in Moon Rising reveal that he thinks that his mother and everyone in the school hates him, and though he didn't set the dragonflame bomb, he almost wishes he did just so someone would notice him.

Carnelian

Carnelian

• Child Soldiers: Proudly identifies herself as one of Queen Ruby's warriors, despite not being fully-grown yet.
• Commonality Connection: With Umber, when she realizes that they fought on the same side of the war.
• Deadpan Snarker: What little she says is a sarcastic response to Kinkajou's enthusiasm.
• Decoy Protagonist: Is one of the seven dragonets in Jade Winglet who are clearly set up to be the next set of protagonists but is unceremoniously killed in the Jade Academy explosion, with Peril taking her place as the series' SkyWing POV.

• Hidden Depths: Qibli thinks to himself that she doesn't think of herself as very smart and is worried about dragons thinking she's dumb, and so hides it behind mean behavior and anger.
• Malicious Misnaming: Refers to Kinkajou and Moonwatcher as "Ditzy and Mumbles", respectively, in her thoughts.
• Meaningful Name: Carnelian is a shade of red. Guess what color her scales are?
• Offing the Annoyance: Darkstalker notes that in some futures, she kills Kinkajou because she's being too annoying.
• The Stoic: She's introduced sulking in her bed, barely saying a word to her roommates.

Ruby

Queen Ruby/Tourmaline

• Abdicate the Throne: In order to stop Scarlet from killing Cliff. She later takes it back.
• Always Save the Girl: She gives up her position as queen in order to save Cliff.
• Awesome Moment of Crowning: She becomes queen offscreen, but still gets one after killing Scarlet and cementing her position as queen.
• Babies Make Everything Better: When her son Cliff is born, it makes her suddenly have actual motivation, leading to her being a surprisingly competent queen and standing up against Scarlet even though she was specifically created not to do so.
• Bait-and-Switch Tyrant: Before her rule, she is mostly quiet and obedient to Scarlet, to the point of acting exactly like her when capturing Hailstorm. As queen, she's far more competent and benevolent.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Once she's free of the earring making her weaker than Scarlet, she, in her much bigger and uninjured original body as Tourmaline, wins the fight easily.
• Defeating the Undefeatable: No one thinks she would be able to defeat her mother in a challenge, because Queen Scarlet has already defeated fourteen challengers plus her mother. One Emergency Transformation later, she does actually succeed in killing Scarlet.
• Deliver Us from Evil: Cliff's birth makes her be more defiant against Scarlet, despite having previously acted like her and completely loyal to her to avoid meeting the same fate as Tourmaline.
• Determinator: So much that she's able to hold her own against Scarlet and even challenge her resolutely in the first place, despite being specifically programmed to not challenge her, and fight pathetically even if she did.
• Deuteragonist: "Escaping Peril", focuses on her character development and trials almost as much as it does Peril's.
• Dramatic Necklace Removal: Well, earring removal. Peril removes it when Chameleon implies it might be enchanted to make her weaker. But as it turns out, it reveals her to be a completely different dragon.
• Emergency Transformation: She only wins her battle with Scarlet because Peril transforms her back into Tourmaline when she's about to be killed.
• Extreme Doormat: Was this before she became queen due to the enchanted earring she wore, leading to Scarlet being shocked that she would take her place.
• Fake Memories: Her flashback in the prologue of Escaping Peril turns out to be this, since Tourmaline isn't really her sister. She is Tourmaline.
• Forced Transformation: Like Pyrite, she is actually the transformed version of another dragon, in her case Tourmaline.
• Good Parents: She's a loving mother to her son, Cliff, enough of one that despite being enchanted to never oppose Scarlet, she did it anyway to protect him from her.
• Grew Beyond Their Programming: She is actually a fake dragon created by Chameleon from her sister Tourmaline to be a "perfect", timid daughter for Scarlet but ends up growing beyond that into a competent and powerful queen, to Chameleon's surprise.
• Hero Antagonist: In "Escaping Peril". She hates Peril and believes she'll never change, but is a good queen who is trying to reform the SkyWing kingdom and stop Queen Scarlet from regaining power.
• The High Queen: She's much beloved as Queen of the Sky Kingdom, is a loving mother to her son Cliff, and overall seems respected and adored. When Scarlet returns and attempts to retake her throne, very few dragons even acknowledge her.
• Intro-Only Point of View: In "Escaping Peril", the prologue is shown from her point of view as she watches Queen Scarlet and baby Peril.
• It's Personal: She exiled Peril because she believes that she killed her sister Tourmaline which she is wrong about.
• It Was a Gift: Her earring that she always wears was a gift from Tourmaline. It was actually created by Chameleon and is what's keeping her trapped as Ruby.
• I Want Them Alive!: Crocodile tells the dragonets that Ruby ordered this, guessing that she wants them in the arena like Scarlet did. However, "Escaping Peril" reveals that she made the arena into a hospital and actually believed in the prophecy, at least as a dragonet, suggesting that she had more benevolent motives.
• Leave Him to Me!: Does not let anyone interfere with her challenging Scarlet.
• Long Neck: This is one of her most noted physical characteristics.
• Mama Bear: She is very protective of her son, to the point that she challenged Scarlet and won when Scarlet threatened him.
• Matricide: She ends up killing her mother Scarlet, but as Tourmaline.
• Minor Major Character: Despite being one of the queens, was this until "Escaping Peril", with no appearances except in the prologue of Winter Turning.
• Muggle Power: She's willing to kill dragonets just because they have animus powers or too much fire, like most SkyWings. And she loves her own dragonet despite him being what Scarlet considers too ordinary. She grows out of the former, though, after seeing Peril's heroism.
• Non-Protagonist Resolver: She is the one who kills Scarlet, though as Tourmaline, and with help from Peril, who removes her earring to transform her into Tourmaline.
• Politically Incorrect Hero: She is on the protagonists' side, but also has the traditional SkyWing views that any dragons with unusual powers should be killed as soon as possible, before they have done anything wrong. She eventually changes her mind about Peril, though.
• Shrinking Violet: Before she became queen, she was meek and timid to avoid incurring her mother's wrath.
• Split-Personality Merge: At the end of Escaping Peril, she opts to remain as Ruby while retaining both her original memories as Tourmaline and her memories as Ruby.
• The So-Called Coward: Most dragons thought she just was quietly obeying Scarlet's instructions to avoid being killed and was too weak and cowardly to fight back, but she proved she was clearly not cowardly when she became queen. Scarlet continued to believe she was a coward throughout "Escaping Peril".
• Tomato in the Mirror: It turns out that she was Tourmaline all along, and was given Fake Memories of Tourmaline being her sister. Naturally, she has an identity crisis when she finds this out, and chooses to remain as Ruby, but with her memories of being Tourmaline as well.
• Took a Level in Badass: Twice. First she goes from a weak and submissive dragon to a formidable queen, then after her Split-Personality Merge, becoming an extremely powerful fighter as well.
• Took a Level in Kindness: The reason behind her hatred of Peril was because she believed Peril had killed her beloved sister Tourmaline. Once she learns the truth, she treats Peril with a great deal more kindness and sympathy, acknowledging that Peril didn't have a choice in following Scarlet's orders and was just looking for someone who cared about her.
• Tragic Keepsake: Her earring is (supposedly) a gift from her sister Tourmaline, who disappeared seven years ago and has influenced much of her character.
• Sole Survivor: Of Scarlet's daughters. Sort of.
• Superpowered Alter Ego: Her alter ego is her supposedly dead sister, Tourmaline, who is actually her original identity before she was transformed by Chameleon. Tourmaline is a far more effective fighter than Ruby, who was purposefully created to be weak, even though she somewhat defies that as Ruby by sheer force of will.
• Was It All a Lie?: She is initially shocked and disgusted by Peril helping Scarlet reclaim the throne, asking if her claims of wanting redemption and atonement were all a lie. However, she realized that Scarlet messed with Peril's memories when she asked who Clay is.
• We Have Reserves: When Hailstorm threatens to attack her squadron of SkyWings, she says that she does not care because if they die because she will still win.
• Youngest Child Wins: Is Scarlet's youngest daughter, and the only one that survives and becomes queen and her true identity is also Scarlet's youngest daughter.
• You Monster!: When she sees Scarlet has somehow altered Peril's memories to make her forget about Clay, she is horrified by and outraged at her mother's actions despite her deep hatred for the firescales dragon.

Cliff

Cliff

• Babies Make Everything Better: His birth causes his mother, Ruby, to change for the better, becoming much more motivated and determined.
• Children Are Innocent: For the most part. His desire to see Ruby kill Scarlet aside, he's a very sweet dragonet who wouldn't hurt a fly. Even when he comes across Leaf in Dragonslayer, he acts playfully to him, sings, and eventually persuades Ruby to give him the key to the kitchen cage so Leaf can rescue his friends. Normally, dragons eat scavengers.
• Girl in the Tower: Scarlet locks him in a crematorium tower to keep him imprisoned because he's too young to fly. Except he actually does know how to fly, and lied to Scarlet so he could escape.
• Long Neck: He gets it from his mother.
• Mouthy Kid: He doesn't hesitate to call out Scarlet.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: "I WANT! TO SEE! MOMMY KILL GRANDMA!"

Pyrite

Pyrite

• Dramatic Necklace Removal: Qibli rips off her necklace during the Jade Winglet's battle with Chameleon, even though she says doing so will kill her. It actually turns her back into Hailstorm.
• Extreme Doormat: She is timid, meek, and fully knows exactly how weak and pathetic she is.
• Fantastic Racism: She thinks SkyWings are the best type of dragon because she was programmed to do so by Chameleon.
• Flat Character: Moon notes that she seems to only really have three character traits - Fantastic Racism favoring SkyWings, Undying Loyalty to Queen Scarlet, and being pathetically weak and knowing it.
• Mysterious Waif: She's an exiled female SkyWing dragonet with a mysterious past.
• Shrinking Violet: She doesn't talk to many dragons, and mostly just spends her time thinking of how pathetic she is.
• Undying Loyalty: To Scarlet, to the point of letting herself be exiled from the SkyWing tribe because she refuses to swear an oath to Ruby. Again, because Chameleon made her that way.

Tourmaline

Tourmaline

• Defeating the Undefeatable: Her goal is to kill Queen Scarlet, despite her having killed fourteen challengers and her mother. After seven years, she succeeds.
• Matricide: She wants to kill her mother to free the SkyWings from her tyranny, but Scarlet puts a stop to that when she mysteriously disappears. She does get to kill her seven years later, though.
• Man in the Iron Mask: She is hidden by Scarlet and Chameleon with her mask as Ruby, because of the threat she would pose if she challenged Scarlet.
• Never Found the Body: No one ever discovers her dead, but Ruby assumed Peril killed her on Scarlet's orders.
• Reforged into a Minion: Scarlet and Chameleon try to do this to her. It doesn't work.
• Screw Destiny: She doesn't want to wait for the prophecy to end the war. She would rather challenge Scarlet, since she's the SkyWings' last hope for a good queen.
• Super Mode: When she shows up after Peril destroys the enchanted earring that turned her into Ruby, she is easily able to kill Scarlet, whereas as Ruby she was on the verge of losing the fight.
• Tranquil Fury: When Scarlet tells her that Ruby never existed, she shows no reaction and calmly [ kills her.

Eagle

Eagle

• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: He is aggressive to Hailstorm when they talk to each other and he claims that he was part of his squadron, despite being an IceWing, but when Winter "explains" that he has a head injury, he is sympathetic.

Sky

Sky

A dragonet who was culled for being fireless; for this reason, other dragons call him Ember. In the Dragonslayer book, the scavenger Wren saves him when he's on the verge of death, and afterwards he becomes her constant companion.

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• Boomerang Bigot: All he knows about dragons is that they're the assholes who tried to kill him and his best friend.
• A Dog Named "Dog": He's a SkyWing named Sky, thanks to being named by a scavenger who didn't know that was the name of his tribe. When he eventually meets up with other dragons, they remark upon his unusual name.
• Friend to All Living Things: He utterly loves animals, to the point where he became a vegetarian because he didn't have the heart to eat one.
• Non-Human Sidekick: He considers Wren something like a surrogate mother, and loves her so much that he learned how to speak scavenger language.
• Unknown Relative: He is Peril's twin brother, who she and all the other SkyWings assumed was dead.

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