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 G— 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 G—, 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 D— 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...

S— 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...