Lorna Doone

Lady Lorna Dugal is first introduced as Lorna Doone. Raised by her kidnappers and treated as the future heiress to the clan, Lorna struggles with being surrounded by violent rogues. These circumstances make her serious, but not cruel, until she is free of them. Even from a young age, she is exceptionally beautiful with pale skin, black hair, and brown eyes.

Lorna is John Ridd’s first love and eventual wife. Lorna and John meet secretly for many years to avoid his death at the hands of the Doones. Eventually, they starve her to force a marriage with the villainous Carver Doone, but Lorna is committed to marry John or no one, even with the threat of death. Fortunately, John rescues her before she dies. After staying with John’s family, her true parentage is discovered—she is not a Doone, but a descendent of the ancient Scottish kings, the Dugals, and the similarly respectable Lornes. With a new name and title, she is swept away to London and separated from her love. Despite her change in circumstances, her love for John is steadfast. She is repeatedly willing to sacrifice her fortune for her relationship with John, though she expects it to come to a tragic end.

Carver Doone is a sharp-shooting, cruel, and vicious man, and the male heir apparent to the Doone family. To solidify his reign, he intends to marry Lorna Doone through force, but Lorna proves that she would rather starve than submit to such a fate. Carver has not only killed John Ridd’s father, but also terrorizes Lorna and makes several attempts on John’s life. Ultimately, he is presented as John’s foil, a sadistic villain for John to defeat as no one else is a match for him. After shooting Lorna at her own wedding, John Ridd chases him and eventually drowns in a bog.

Annie is John’s sister and dearest friend. Aside from Lorna, John considers her to be the most beautiful woman in the area and the kindest. Her compassionate nature and talent for cooking make her extremely popular with everyone she meets. Annie marries her godfather, Tom Faggus, a distant relative and theoretically reformed highwayman. Despite being fooled into enabling the theft of a necklace worth a hundred thousand pounds, Annie proves to be clever when she manipulates the Counsellor into agreeing to a ceasefire to enable her brother to find and rescue her husband when he becomes foolishly entangled with a rebellion against the king.

Tom Faggus is John Ridd’s father’s cousin. Originally a highly educated and famously talented blacksmith, he loses his lands and position through the costs of a lawsuit. As a result, he chooses to rob the rich, making his fortune as a highwayman atop his equally famous strawberry mare, Winnie. Despite the illegality of his profession, he is widely adored by the rich and the poor alike due to his educated, gentlemanly demeanor and polite, non-violent behavior even while robbing coaches. Eventually, he retires from crime and receives a pardon. He then buys land and marries Annie Ridd. While his arrogance and lust for adventure often get him into trouble, his keen intellect, charming affect, uncommonly brilliant horse, and sheer luck often prove enough to get him back out of danger.