The Main Guys in the ENDERVERSE
(as described by SPARK NOTES.COM; some character bio's were snagged from wikipedia.)
(note: I tried to 'introduce' the bio's in chronological order based on when you would have first become familiar with each person...if you read the series in order :p)
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Ender - The younger brother of Peter and Valentine, at age six Ender is chosen by Colonel Graff and the International Fleet to help save mankind from the buggers. Ender is afraid of his brother and loves his sister. Wherever he goes, Ender makes things happen, and by age nine he is given his own army to command. Ender is angry at the various people who manipulate him throughout the novel.
As a young child, Ender was sent to a school that orbits the Earth, called Battle School, and was trained to be a very powerful and intelligent commander of armies. While there, Ender commands an army named Dragon Army, later graduating and attending Command School, located on Eros. He plays simulations that allow him to develop strategies to defeat the Formics or "the buggers". Soon after his arrival, a seasoned commander called Mazer Rackham helps to train him using a simulation. Months later, Ender is joined in Command School by his previous companions, Julian Delphiki (Bean), Alai, Shen, Petra Arkanian, Dink Meeker, Crazy Tom, Hot Soup, Fly Molo, Vlad, Dumper, and Carn Carby. With these trusted companions he takes on a grueling series of simulated battles, and though he wins every one, they push him to the edge of his sanity and spirit. The final battle takes place above the buggers' homeworld, which he 'destroys' in an attempt to get them to flunk him. Only then is he told that, in fact, every 'simulated' battle has been real: he has been commanding real men, destroying real fleets, and just now has destroyed the entire race of buggers, an event that eventually becomes known as the Xenocide.
Ender is essentially a religious, quasi-Messianic character, and this quality is developed substantially in the sequels to Ender's Game. Moreover he is a Messiah who is manipulated by the military complex for the execution of their militaristic intentions. Ender comes to regret his victory over the aliens and finds redemption in penitence by telling the story of the aliens.
Despite leaving Earth on a colonization ship after the Formics are destroyed, Ender's legacy lives strongly in both Bean and Peter Wiggin's minds throughout the Shadow series. They continually compare themselves to him, and both emulate him and strive to prove themselves in their own right, apart from any association with him.
The colony ship takes Ender and Valentine to the nearest Formic planet, where he discovers a milieu laid out for him, one taken (evidently telepathically) by the buggers from his dreams and nightmares during Battle School. In the heart of the artificial landscape he finds a cocoon, containing a single bugger Hive Queen. Thus Ender is entrusted with the future of the race he (almost) drove to extinction. Communicating with the Hive Queen telepathically, he tells the story of the Formic race in a short book called The Hive Queen. Later he does the same with his brother Peter, who has since become Hegemon of a united Earth. Both Hive Queen and Hegemon are written with insight and stunning compassion, and they tell their eponymous characters' stories from that person's point of view: who they tried to be, who they wanted to be, why they did what they did. Ender signs these books as Speaker for the Dead, and others are so taken by the idea that they too become Speakers, telling the story of the deceased person's life the way they would have wanted it told.
Eventually, Ender and Val leave the colony and wander the known galaxy as itinerant Speaker and historian errant, while Ender continually searches for a place to awaken the Hive Queen. This journey takes him eventually to the planet of Lusitania, where he and his loved ones are instrumental (over the next three books in the series) in establishing peaceful relations with another alien species and, eventually, preventing a second Xenocide.
Valentine - Ender's older sister is the only person in the world who truly loves him. She protects him from Peter, their sadistic older brother. Along with Peter, Valentine takes an active interest in the world's political situation, and writing under the pseudonym Demosthenes begins to exert influence over the growing situation. Valentine also writes a letter to Ender at one point that helps him get control of himself. At the end of the book, Valentine convinces Ender to go with her to colonize the bugger worlds, and she works on a history of the world on the way there. Later she travels with Ender as he searches for a new world for the buggers.
Valentine was born because the International Fleet decided that the eldest child, Peter, was too brutal for the possiblity of Battle School. The International Fleet then decided to let the Wiggin family bear a girl with the same brilliance as Peter, only milder. However, the girl became too mild and lacked the ability of violence altogether. It was then that they requisitioned Ender.
While Ender was away in Battle School, Valentine was forced to work with Peter to gain influence on the nets. Valentine's pseudonym was Demosthenes, while Peter's was Locke. Demosthenes became a paranoid writer about Russian expansion. Through great pathos and demagoguery, Valentine was able to acquire a vast popularity.
After Ender's victory over the Buggers, Valentine forced Peter to let her go off to space because Peter prevented Ender from coming back to Earth so Ender could be safe. Valentine still wrote with her Demosthenes identity, but instead of being paranoid, she wrote about histories of different cultures on different planets, and in addition, she also applied some concepts to all humankind. Under the Demosthenes pseudonym, Valentine developed the 4-tiered Hierarchy of Alienness.
Valentine Wiggin married Jakt on the planet Trondheim, and 22 years later, she went to Lusitania to help her brother help the Pequeninos.
Physically, Valentine has been described as having blonde hair. She is two years younger than Peter and three years older than Ender.
Peter - Ender's older brother Peter is a cruel and evil child, gifted in manipulation. He has the same ruthlessness that his siblings contain but without any of their compassion. Valentine is able to protect Ender as best she can from Peter until Ender goes away. Peter then decides to take an active role in world affairs and convinces Valentine to help him. Under the pseudonym Locke he begins to gather power, working through the communication nets. After Ender's victory Peter obtains total control of earth and becomes Hegemon, the ruler of the world. His ambition is sated and he actually makes for a good ruler, although he is as amoral is he ever was.
While Ender is away in battle school to be trained to fight the alien Formics, or "buggers", Peter, at the age of 12, convinced Valentine to use their parents' network identities (and eventually their own) to submit to the world great and influential writings under the names of Locke (Peter) and Demosthenes (Valentine).
After the buggers are defeated, Peter influenced the world to send his brother Ender away in order to save Ender from the changing world on Earth: the saviour of the Humankind would slowly become a monster in the eyes of citizens - as they forgot the war, Ender would come to be known as Ender the Xenocide, or Alien killer, as if he was a cruel murderer, even though he had no idea that he was actually in battle.
Peter's role back on earth grew as the war with the Formics ended. When Valentine left with Ender, he was the sole mind behind both Locke and Demosthenes on Earth, and he continued to influence public opinion with the personalities. Eventually he declared that indeed he was behind the writings of these two pen named philosophers. He was subsequently elected Hegemon, though the Hegemony was quite diminished in power from the days of the wars with the Formics. He must work with the few allies he has to try to defeat Achilles de Flandres. Bean and his companion Suriyawong work with him, despite Bean's innate distrust. Eventually when Achilles is captured, Peter decides to offer the brilliant villain a position within his Hegemony, which ends up driving away Bean and marginalizing Suriyawong. As Bean and others realize that Achilles will not reform and plans to subvert the Hegemony, only Peter's parents are able to warn him in time to save him. Peter eventually realizes his errors, and begins plotting ways to take back his Hegemony, which eventually he is able to do with the help of his parents, Bean, and Suriyawong.
Card will undoubtably further explore Peter Wiggin's legacy in the final chapter of the Shadow quartet, Shadow of the Giant, released March 2005. As of February 2005, the first three chapters are available to the public at Card's official web site, Hatrack River (http://www.hatrack.com/).
Before Peter died Ender talked to him (possible because of the relativistic ride to the colony). "Hegemon" explained what Peter's intentions were when he did things that didn't seem like they could be for anybody's good. He signed it as "The Speaker For The Dead", and with this unique way to remember a dead person created a new order of "Speakers", who would eventually become common at every funeral as a person not who made all their acts seem better, but explain the real intentions and the purposes of their lives.
Bean - Ender's last friend at Battle School, Bean is very reminiscent of Ender when he first arrived. Bold and brilliant, Bean helps Ender with Dragon Army and also helps him hold on to his humanity. He is one of Ender's commanders against the buggers.
Bean was born in Rotterdam as the result of an illegal experiment conducted by Volescu, his father's half brother. Bean's parents, Julian and Elena Delphiki, had conceived one child, (Nikolai Delphiki), through in-vitro fertilization. The other embryos were locked away, until they were stolen by Volescu, who turned on the Anton's Key within them. When Bean was only a few months old, the government found out and Volescu killed all of the babies--except Bean, who at his young age realized that he was in danger and crawled into a toilet tank where he hid for days before being rescued by a janitor. After a short while of living with the janitor, Bean wandered out onto the streets of Rotterdam.
Around the age of four, Bean joined Poke's Crew. Poke was very merciful to Bean, and probably saved his life by feeding him. Bean devises a plan to get more food for the crew and recruits a bully with a bad foot, Achilles, to get them into the food shelter. Bean actually advises Poke to kill Achilles, but the same mercy that she showed to Bean came through, and Achilles was saved. Achilles became the crew's "papa" and carried out the plan successfully, allowing all of the orphans to get food. When Achilles begins contemplating killing Bean, however, Poke intervenes, and meets with Achilles at night to make a deal with him. Bean witnesses this and follows them for a while, but he sees the two kissing. Thinking that he was wrong, he starts to walk home. When he realizes his mistake he turns back to try to save her. When he gets there, Achilles is gone, but he sees Poke's body floating in the river. This causes Bean incredible guilt, and losing those that owe him a lot becomes a theme that runs through the book and its sequels.
Meanwhile, Bean and Achilles are noticed by Sister Carlotta, a nun who recruits children for the IF's Battle school. Bean is accepted over Achilles because Achilles is shown to be a psychopath and sociopath. Bean is both the shortest and youngest child in Battle School. He keeps to himself, but shows an intense interest in Ender Wiggin, the top student of Battle School, because Bean is soon compared to Ender. The first friend Bean makes in the school happens to be Nikolai Delphiki.
Bean is soon put into Ender's group, where he meets Petra Arkanian, his future wife. Ender is rather mean to Bean at first, but a partnership emerges between the two geniuses. During his stay at Battle School, Bean explores the school and eavesdrops on teachers where he finds out that Nikolai is his brother.
Bean is picked for Ender's group that will destroy the Buggers. The Buggers are destroyed and the kids are sent back to Earth. Bean is sent to live with the Delphikis. His tranquil life is short lived after his old nemesis Achilles tries to kill his family and kidnaps the ex-battle schoolers for the conquest of Earth. Bean allies himself with Peter Wiggin to combat this threat. After killing Achilles, Bean helps Peter unite the world under the hegemony. From the advice of the Minister of Colonization Graff, Bean follows Mazer Rackham's footsteps to lives a relativistic at light speed in hopes that a cure can be found for his condition.
Petra Arkanian - While in Salamander Army Petra helps Ender learn how to fight in the battleroom. They remain friends through the rest of the book, even though she is upset when his Dragon Army defeats her Phoenix Army. She is one of his commanders in the battles with the buggers.
Han Qing-jao is a major character in the science-fiction novel Xenocide, by Orson Scott Card. She is the sixteen-year-old daughter of Han Fei-tzu, ruler of the colony world of Path. Card had previously stated she is not related to Han Tzu (a minor character from Ender's Game nicknamed "Hot Soup"), but this may be contradicted by hints in Shadow Puppets.
Qing-jao originally appeared in the short story Gloriously Bright which was later expanded into the novel Xenocide.
Si Wang-mu - is a major character in the science fiction novels Xenocide and Children of the Mind by Orson Scott Card. She is named after the Chinese goddess Xi Wangmu, the Royal Mother of the West.
She is a very intelligent and ambitious girl, but because her world has a rigidly stratified social hierarchy and she is the child of lower-class parents, she has not been well educated; it is assumed that the best she can hope for is to be a servant. She approaches the young "godspoken" lady Han Qing-jao while they are doing "righteous labor" in the rice paddies. Qing-jao is pleased with Wang-mu's intelligence and honesty, hires her as her servant and also begins to educate her.
Jane - is an artificial sentience thought to exist within the ansible network by which spaceships and planets communicate in realtime across galactic distances. She has appeared in the novels Speaker for the Dead, Xenocide, and Children of the Mind, and in a short story The Investment Counselor. Her 'face', a computer generated hologram that she uses to talk to Ender, is described as plain and young, and it is illustrated in First Meetings as having a bun.
It is believed she was first formed while Ender played the Fantasy Game in Battle School (it is also quite openly hinted by The Hive Queen in Xenocide that she was created with the aid of The Buggers so that they could reach through to Ender Wiggin). As revealed in Shadow of the Giant, Bean helps bring Jane to her current prowess.
Achilles de Flandres is a character in Orson Scott Card's Shadow series, part of the universe created in the novel and short story Ender's Game. Achilles appears in the novels Ender's Shadow, Shadow of the Hegemon, and Shadow Puppets. He may be considered the villain of these novels, or at least the antagonist.
A native of Belgium, Achilles grows up in the dangerous streets of Rotterdam in the Netherlands. (At the start of the series, the Netherlands is under international jurisdiction during the global emergency of the Formic, or Bugger, Wars. This leads to an influx of refugee children, including Achilles.) As Achilles matures, he is noted for a brilliant mind in tactical matters and a large number of sociopathic and psychopathic tendencies, two traits that will define and characterize his short and brutal life. Achilles' name is pronounced in French, as "ah-SHEEL." This is as opposed to the legendary Greek hero Achilles, pronounced ah-KILL-eeze.
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