Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Historical Characters

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created at The Broke and the Bookish.

I decided straight away to limit both top tens this week (check YA Contemporary later on for my top ten YA contemporary characters) to one character per book. You can imagine how long my resolve lasted there, can't you? (If you've been reading this blog for more than a few months, then YES, you do know the two I broke it for.)

Other than those final two, who are probably my favourite characters of all-time, this is in alphabetical order by character's first name.

Bilal from A Beautiful Lie by Irfan Master - Bilal, who swears to do whatever he has to in order to stop his dying father from hearing of the Partition of India, to at least allow him to pass away without his heart being broken, is a real hero. 

Daisy from Debutantes by Cora Harrison - Virtually EVERYONE in Debutantes is so utterly charming that it's ridiculously difficult to pick one, but I'll go for Daisy, the aspiring film director, as just edging out her sisters Rose and Poppy here in this wonderful story of Britain in the 1920's.

Hal from VIII by HM Castor – Castor takes one of history’s most infamous characters, King Henry VIII, and creates an utterly compelling life-story for him. Starting as a young boy and taking us right through his reign, his character isn’t particularly likeable but is always fascinating.

Jericho from the Diviners by Libba Bray – Jericho, employed at the Museum of Creepy Crawlies and covering up secrets of his own, is completely intriguing.

Jerome from the Flappers series by Jillian Larkin – Also set in the 1920’s (this time in America in the Prohibition era), like Debutantes I could have picked pretty much any character from this fantastic series. Jerome – a jazz musician who falls for a white high society girl – is just about my favourite, though.

Jonas from What The Day Owes The Night by Yasmina Khadra – Jonas, who narrates Khadra’s stunning story of a group of friends living in Algeria as the country fights for its independence from France, is massively frustrating – he makes some boneheaded decisions at times – but utterly brilliant as a character.

Kat from the Unladylike Adventures of Kat Stephenson series by Stephanie Burgis - loyal, feisty, clever and altogether wonderful.

Luc from The Things We Did For Love by Natasha Farrant - Luc, a teen who's struggling to cope with his feelings for Arianne and his guilt over something he did in the past, is a stunning creation. My heart cried out to him as he got involved in the fight against the Nazis, and as the ending drew closer I got incredibly caught up in his tale and in hoping that he'd survive. 

Maddie and Verity from Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein – As if I could separate these. They are, as we’re told in the novel, a ‘’sensational team.’’ However they’re also a pair of stunningly created individual characters, with real hopes, dreams and fears. There may come a time when I stop raving about these two, and this book in general – but I doubt it’ll be in the next couple of years.