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Contents
The play's central figure. Richard is brilliant, funny, and completely without remorse. He narrates his own villainy with obvious pleasure, which makes him compelling even as he does terrible things. His downfall comes not from a single mistake but from the cumulative weight of everyone he's destroyed.
A noblewoman who is manipulated into marrying Richard despite hating him. Her acceptance of Richard's proposal is one of the play's most disturbing moments. She later becomes queen and dies, possibly poisoned. Her arc shows how completely Richard can override someone's better judgment.
Richard's chief ally and political operator. Buckingham does the public work of getting Richard crowned. When he hesitates over the murder of the princes, Richard turns on him. He ends up executed, which makes him a cautionary example of what happens when you help Richard get what he wants.
The widow of Henry VI. She has no political power in the play but enormous dramatic power. She curses Richard and nearly everyone around him, and her curses come true. She functions as a kind of prophet figure, giving voice to the moral accounting the play is running in the background.
Richard's opponent and eventual killer. Richmond is deliberately written as Richard's opposite: calm, virtuous, and supported by the people. He doesn't get much stage time, but his victory is the play's moral resolution. He becomes Henry VII and promises to end the civil war.
Richard's brother, the first major victim of Richard's scheming. Richard has him imprisoned and then murdered. Clarence is loyal and trusting, which makes him easy to destroy. His death signals that Richard will spare no one, not even family.
Edward IV's widow and mother of the two princes. She confronts Richard directly and, in a scene that mirrors the Anne wooing, appears to agree to help him marry her daughter. Unlike Anne, she's playing him. She secretly supports Richmond. Her resistance shows that Richard's manipulation has limits.
Richard's own mother. She explicitly curses him and refuses to give him her blessing before the battle. The fact that his mother has turned against him signals how completely Richard has isolated himself from everyone who might have cared about him.
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