The Purloined Letter Characters

Dupin is a young, French, private detective, and the star of "The Purloined Letter." He's from a wealthy family but apparently dropped most of his inheritance on poker and loose women. (Okay, we do...

Monsieur Gā€” is the prefect, or head, of the Paris police. Like Dupin and the narrator, he's in all the three of the Dupin tales of detection. And, like both of them, he's a pretty familiar figure...

The narrator is Dupin's friend and roommate. Like Dupin and Gā€”, the narrator is in all three of the Dupin tales. We're just going to say it: he seems really unimportant. He hardly says anything;...

The minister Dā€” is the official villain of the piece. Just to point out: "Minister" here isn't religious but political; he's a high-ranking public official of some sort. We can assume that he's s...

The royal lady is the victim, right? It's her letter that's stolen; she's the one being blackmailed.Well, let's not take it for granted.Most people assume she represents a queen of France sometime...

Okay, so here we're going to have a clear victim. The other royal person is the guy being lied to and deceived, and he doesn't even get the dignity of a consistent name. He's called "a third person...

Sā€” is one of the biggest mysteries of the story. This whole mess begins when he sends the royal lady a letter. We deduce that this person has a name that begins with an "S" because the purloined...