Richard III Characters

Richard is King Edward IV's youngest brother. At the beginning of the play, he's the Duke of Gloucester. (He's often referred to as just plain "Gloucester" because members of the nobility are nam...

Queen Margaret is the bitter old widow of King Henry VI. Margaret's favorite hobbies include skulking around the castle like an angry ninja and cursing everyone near her for the terrible things th...

Henry, Earl of Richmond (a.k.a. "Richmond") is the guy who bumps Richard off the throne and becomes King Henry VII. He's a curious character in the play. In one sense, when he arrives in Act 5, to...

Lady Anne Neville is Prince Edward's widow and the daughter-in-law of the late King Henry VI. Although she knows Richard is the "fiend" responsible for husband and father-in-law's deaths, she allo...

King Edward IV is the older bro of Richard, Duke of Gloucester (a.k.a. Richard III) and George, Duke of Clarence (a.k.a. Clarence). When the play opens, King Edward IV is ruling over England, but...

Queen Elizabeth is the wife of King Edward IV and the mother of the two young princes and young Elizabeth. Before her marriage to King Edward, she was hitched to a guy named Sir John Gray, which i...

Prince Edward and his little brother the Duke of York (often referred to as "the princes") are the young sons of King Edward IV and Queen Elizabeth. Unfortunately for them, they're also the nephew...

Young Elizabeth's role is small but pretty significant. Elizabeth is the daughter of Queen Elizabeth and King Edward IV. She's also Richard's niece and the sister of the two young princes Richard...

The Duchess of York is Richard's mom. She doesn't exactly have a great relationship with her son. She even curses Richard to "die by God's just ordinance"(4.4.17). But really, who can blame her?...

George, Duke of Clarence (a.k.a. Clarence) is the brother of King Edward IV and Richard III. At the play's beginning, he's accused of treason because someone prophesied that King Edward's heirs wo...

The Duke of Buckingham is Richard's wingman for most of the play. He's greedy and he's willing to lie, cheat, and steal to help his pal Richard get the crown. Like a lot of other characters in t...

Ratcliffe and Catesby are two of Richard's minions. Even though they're noblemen, they act like a couple of thugs. (Actually, let's face it, being noble in this play doesn't mean much.) Basicall...

When Buckingham hesitates to kill the young princes, Richard hires Tyrrell to do the deed. Being a total slime ball, Tyrrell outsources the hit to two murderers, who suffocate the children.

Lord Stanley, Earl of Derby, is Richmond's stepdad. Because of Stanley's relationship to Richmond (who eventually takes Richard's throne and becomes King Henry VII), King Richard tries to keep a c...

Lord Hastings is yet another victim of Richard's quest for the crown. Hastings thinks he's BFFs with Richard, but when he doesn't go along with Richard's plan to snatch the crown from Edward's hei...

Either this guy is the most gullible person in the universe or he's just afraid of crossing Richard. Either way, when Richard tells him that Hastings had to be killed because he confessed to being...

The scrivener (no relationship to Herman Melville's Bartleby) is the guy whose job is to neatly copy Hastings' indictment. The scrivener knows Hastings' death is shady, and he's outraged that Rich...

These two guys are Queen Elizabeth's sons from her first marriage. In the play, Gray is executed by King Richard. Dorset manages to hightail it out of London before Richard can have him offed.

Rivers is Queen Elizabeth's brother and the uncle of Dorset and Gray. Naturally, Richard has him killed.

Sir Thomas Vaughan is pals with Queen Elizabeth, which means (you guessed it) he is executed by Richard.