List of ''His Dark Materials'' characters

Lyra Belacqua

Lyra Belacqua, later known as Lyra Silvertongue, is the central character of His Dark Materials, a key character in The Book of Dust. Together with her dæmon Pantalaimon, she is introduced as a baby in La Belle Sauvage, where she is being protected from the Magisterium. She is protected by the nuns of the Priory of Saint Rosamund, and then brought up by the scholars of Jordan College. As she leaves Jordan in the company of her mother, Mrs. Coulter, the Master of the college gives her an alethiometer, which allows her to receive answers on any subject. Searching for a kidnapped friend of hers, she ends up travelling to the far north of her world, and then across the multiverse, where she plays a part in a cosmic war between forces led by an angel named The Authority and her father, Lord Asriel. Lyra is prophesied by the witches to play the part of Eve, bringing about a second fall; this is accomplished when she reaches maturity and starts attracting Dust, halting its loss from the multiverse.

By the events of Lyra's Oxford, Lyra is living in Jordan college and studying at St. Sophie's. Pantalaimon has settled into the form of a pine marten. In The Secret Commonwealth, Lyra is 20 and an undergraduate.

In the unabridged audiobooks, Lyra is voiced by Joanna Wyatt, and in the BBC Radio dramatisation she is voiced by Lulu Popplewell.^[1] In the 2008 movie adaption, she is played by Dakota Blue Richards.^[2]

Lord Asriel

Lord Asriel is a member of the English aristocracy and Lyra's father. His dæmon Stelmaria is a snow leopard.

Asriel had an affair with Marisa Coulter, a married woman, leading to Lyra's birth. Asriel kills Mrs. Coulter's husband after he finds out, but is spared imprisonment because of laws allowing self-defense. As a part of his punishment, he is barred from seeing Lyra, but he takes an interest in her raising, delivering her to Jordan College and visiting her.

Asriel is described as being "a tall man with powerful shoulders, a fierce dark face, and eyes that seem to flash and glitter with savage laughter".^[3] Possessed of enormous determination and willpower, he is fierce in nature and commands great respect in both the political and academic spheres, being a military leader and a fellow of Jordan College. In Northern Lights, he is able to build a bridge to another world, where he assembles an army to oppose The Authority, an angel that claims to be God. Asriel dies alongside Mrs. Coulter killing Metatron, the Authority's regent.

In the unabridged audiobooks, Lord Asriel is voiced by Sean Barrett; in the BBC Radio dramatisation he is voiced by Terence Stamp^[1] and in the film he is played by Daniel Craig.^[2]

Mrs Coulter

Marisa Coulter (née Van Zee; ordinarily called Mrs Coulter in the books) is Lyra's mother and a powerful figure in the Magisterium, the organisation of the Church. She founds the League of St. Alexander in La Belle Sauvage, and later heads the General Oblation Board, referred to colloquially as the Gobblers. Her dæmon is a golden-coloured monkey,^[4] who, in the books, is never named and only speaks once (he is called Ozymandias in the BBC Radio adaptations and the character Malcolm Polstead notes in La Belle Sauvage that, "if that monkey had a name it might be 'Malice'"^[5]).

She is cruel and merciless at times, stopping at nothing to get what she wants. She is deceptive, full of grace and beauty, and uses these qualities to get her way. However, when she finds her daughter in peril at Bolvangar, she experiences a sudden realisation of intense love and a wish to care for Lyra which outweighs her previous loyalty to the Church, and thereafter she goes to great lengths in the effort to shield her from the events around her.^[6] She dies alongside Asriel while killing Metatron, the regent of the Authority.

In the unabridged audiobooks, Mrs Coulter is voiced by Alison Dowling; in the BBC Radio dramatisation she is voiced by Emma Fielding;^[1] in the film, The Golden Compass, she is played by Nicole Kidman.^[2]

Gerard Bonneville

Dr. Gerard Bonneville is a disgraced physicist with a hyena dæmon. He studied the Rusakov field, and at some point became involved with Marisa Coulter. After believing he was wronged by her, he seeks to kill her daughter for revenge. He is eventually killed by Malcolm Polstead, who inherits his notes and an alethiometer, the latter of which Malcolm gives to the Master of Jordan College. It is implied that he has paedophilic inclinations: Oakley Street agents discuss using Malcolm as bait to blackmail him and he makes advances towards a fifteen-year-old girl named Alice.

Farder Coram

Coram Van Texel is a gyptian with a large, unusually beautiful, golden-brown cat dæmon named Sophonax. His voice is described as "rich and musical, with as many tones in it as there were colors in his dæmon’s fur." By Northern Lights, he is known as Farder Coram and is a respected, elderly, adviser to the Gyptian King John Faa.

More than fifty years prior to the start of the trilogy, Coram travelled to the north, where he witnessed a witch, Serafina Pekkala, being attacked by another witch's dæmon. Farder Coram shot the rogue dæmon and rescued Serafina, thereafter they became lovers and had a son, who was killed in his youth by a disease from the east. After the son's death, Serafina Pekkala returned to her people as the clan-queen, and Coram returned to the Gyptians. In La Belle Sauvage, Coram is working for Oakley Street, a secret society opposing the influence of the Church. He obtains information about Mrs. Coulter, fights Gerard Bonneville, and warns Malcolm Polstead of the upcoming flood.

He accompanies Lyra to Bolvangar to rescue the captured children and guides her in mastering the alethiometer. Coram re-appears briefly at the conclusion of The Amber Spyglass when he and other Gyptians are drawn into the world of the Mulefa to meet Lyra and bring her home before the worlds separate once again.

'Farder' is possibly a dialect variant of 'Father', honouring his role as 'Elder' to the Gyptians. He is played by Tom Courtenay in the film The Golden Compass. In the film The Golden Compass, his dæmon is a caracal, an African, lynx-like wildcat.

Malcolm Polstead

Malcolm Polstead and his dæmon Asta are eleven at the start of La Belle Sauvage. He is described as "eleven years old, with an inquisitive, kindly disposition, a stocky build, and ginger hair".

By the time of Lyra's Oxford, he is a young scholar at Jordan College.

Alice Parslow

Alice Parslow and her dæmon Ben are 15 at the start of La Belle Sauvage. Her dæmon has not settled into a permanent shape at the time of the story.

Dame Hannah Relf

Dame Hannah Relf and her marmoset dæmon Jesper are scholars at St. Sophia's college. In La Belle Sauvage, she is an alethiometrist and a member of Oakley street, a secret society opposing the Magisterium. By the events of Northern Lights, she is the Mistress of St. Sophia's college. In The Amber Spyglass, she invites Lyra to study at St. Sophia's and learn to read the alethiometer from her.

The Master of Jordan College

The Master of Jordan heads Jordan College, part of Oxford University in Lyra's world. Helped by other Jordan College employees, he is raising the supposedly orphaned Lyra. In La Belle Sauvage, he offers scholastic refuge to Lyra. In Northern lights, he tries unsuccessfully to poison Lord Asriel, hoping that it will protect Lyra and prevent conflict. In The Amber Spyglass, he offers Lyra a place to live at Jordan, and funding for her education.

Iorek Byrnison

Iorek Byrnison is an armoured bear and companion of Lyra's. Armoured bears, also known as panserbjørn in Norwegian, are a race of polar bear-like creatures with human level intelligence and opposable thumbs; they have no dæmons and consider their armour, which is made of meteoric iron, to be their soul.

Before the events of His Dark Materials, Iorek meets and befriends Lee Scoresby. Iorek was king of the armoured bears in Svalbard, but was exiled after killing another bear in a fight. Normally, when a bear realises that they are outmatched, they will surrender, but Iorek's opponent had been drugged by Iofur Raknison, second in line for the throne, to prevent this. Following his exile, the humans of an Arctic port town deceived him by giving him spirits and stealing his armour while he was intoxicated. Lyra finds him in Northern Lights working in a scrap yard for food and board and proceeds to use her alethiometer to help him retrieve his armour. Following this, he helps Lyra, naming her Silvertongue. When Lyra ends up imprisoned by Iofur Raknison, she arranges a fight between Iorek and Iofur for the throne, which Iorek wins.

After the opening of a gate to Cittàgazze changes the climate of Svalbard, Iorek is forced to take his bears on a voyage down to the Himalayas, where he meets Will Parry. When Will breaks the Subtle Knife, Iorek is able to repair it without the aid of specialist equipment. He and a regiment of his subjects fight on Lord Asriel's side in the battle on the plains; as part of this he takes Lyra and Will to find their lost dæmons. At the end of the Amber Spyglass, it is revealed that he returns to Svalbard and reigns as king of the bears.

In the film, he is voiced by Ian McKellen.^[2] In the unabridged audiobooks, Iorek is voiced by Sean Barrett.

John Faa

John Faa, sometimes known as Lord Faa, is the Lord of the western Gyptians. Despite his advancing age, he is a brave warrior, respected by all his followers, open to advice, and considerate of all. He is a good friend of the elderly Farder Coram. His dæmon is a black crow.

When the Oblation Board starts kidnapping children, he leads 170 of his men to save them. He is wounded in an ambush but carries out his mission successfully, retrieving the children Lyra helped rescue, and taking them back to England. Faa re-appears briefly at the conclusion of The Amber Spyglass when he and other Gyptians are briefly drawn into the world of the Mulefa to bring Lyra home before the worlds separate once again.

In the film The Golden Compass, Faa is played by Jim Carter.

Ma Costa

Ma Costa is a Gyptian woman whose son, Billy Costa, is abducted by the "Gobblers" early in Northern Lights. A year before the beginning of the book, Lyra and her friends had "hijacked" her family's boat and sailed it to Abingdon, the next town down river. In spite of this, Ma Costa rescues Lyra and takes her to John Faa.

When Lyra is hiding with the Gyptians, she discovers that Ma Costa had in fact nursed her, when she was a baby. Ma Costa's dæmon is a hawk.

Bernie Johansen

A minor character whose dæmon has the rare quality of being the same sex as himself. Half-gyptian, he was tasked with watching Lyra for Lord Faa while working as a pastry chef at Jordan College.^[7]

Serafina Pekkala

Serafina Pekkala is a witch queen from the tribe at Lake Enara who, along with her grey goose dæmon Kaisa, is closely associated with Lyra and her journey. She assists Lyra in her fight at Bolvangar and throughout His Dark Materials, travelling into other worlds and attempting to heal Will Parry. At the end of The Amber Spyglass, she names Will's dæmon, and encourages Will and Lyra's dæmons to return to them.

Serafina claims to be three hundred years old or more. Before the events of La Belle Sauvage, Farder Coram saved her life from an attack by another witch's dæmon, and they became lovers. They had a son who died from a disease from the East.

Pullman claimed on the BBC World Service programme World Book Club in December 2005, that Serafina's name came from a Finnish telephone directory.^[8] In context, Pullman was teasing the audience, however the claim has since been repeated on several fan-sites. Later in the same programme and in a speech made in Dundee, he said that the name came from a list of politicians living in Copenhagen.

In the film The Golden Compass, Serafina Pekkala is played by Eva Green.

Lee Scoresby

Lee Scoresby is a skilled "aëronaut" balloonist from the country of Texas with an arctic hare dæmon named Hester.

Lee meets Iorek Byrnison in Once Upon a Time in the North when he is twenty-four. In Northern Lights, Lee is hired by John Faa and the Gyptians to aid in their mission to save the kidnapped children; following the rescue, he helps transport Lyra to Svalbard. In The Subtle Knife, he pledges to help the witches in their fight against the Magisterium and sets out to find Stanislaus Grumman. Grumman, also known as Joparri or John Parry, is a shaman and travels with Lee into the world of Cittàgazze. Lee gives his life fighting Magisterium soldiers, allowing John Parry to reach his goal. Following their deaths, Lee and Parry fight Spectres after they are released from the land of the dead. After this task is done, Lee allows himself to dissolve so that his atoms can be mixed with the atoms of Hester and his other loved ones.

Regarding Lee Scoresby's name, Phillip Pullman said "the Lee part comes from the actor Lee Van Cleef ... because I thought my Lee would look like him, and the Scoresby comes from William Scoresby, who was a real Arctic explorer."^[9]

American actor Sam Elliott plays Lee Scoresby in the film The Golden Compass.

Iofur Raknison

Iofur Raknison is an armoured bear who wishes to be equal to a human. After usurping Iorek Byrnison as king of the armoured bears, he commands his subjects to build a palace of stone and wear ornamentation of gold and silver, which had been traditionally despised. He had dealings with the Magisterium and Mrs. Coulter, allowing them access to his kingdom in exchange for the ability to be baptised as a Christian. Lyra is able to trick him into fighting Iorek Byrnison by convincing him that she is herself a dæmon and that she could become his dæmon. Traditionally, armoured bears are unable to be tricked but in his behaving like a human, he loses this ability; Iorek is able to exploit this by feigning injury. After Iofur's defeat, Iorek is proclaimed the king, and his first command is that the bears discard their pseudo-human trinkets and tear down Iofur's palace.

In the 2007 film adaptation, The Golden Compass, the character is renamed Ragnar Sturlusson, to prevent confusion with Iorek Byrnison,^[10] and is voiced by Ian McShane.

The Palmerian Professor

The Palmerian Professor is a minor character, possibly presented as a joke by Pullman: The Professor’s initials, P.P., are the same as Pullman’s. The author thus insinuates himself into the gathering of notables who – at the beginning of the story – have come to Jordan College to hear a presentation by Lord Asriel. Pullman is making a ‘guest appearance’ in his own novel.

Pullman is a graduate of Exeter College of Oxford University. Exeter's distinctive landmark and its oldest building is Palmer’s Tower, hence the name “Palmerian”. The Palmerian Professor is the leading authority on armoured bears. On the acknowledgements page at the end of the trilogy, Pullman facetiously characterises himself as a plagiarist who has “stolen” ideas from many literary sources; in Northern Lights, Professor Jotham Santelia also calls the Palmerian Professor a “plagiarist”.

The Professor’s last name is revealed as Trelawney in Lyra's Oxford, in which a fold-out map shows an advert for a book by Professor P. Trelawney.

Roger Parslow

Roger Parslow, a young kitchen boy and youngest of the Parslow family – who had long been employed as masons for Jordan College – was the best friend of Lyra Belacqua during her early life in Jordan College. Roger's dæmon, named Salcilia, often appears as a terrier.

Roger is kidnapped by the General Oblation Board ("the Gobblers") and taken to their experimental center in Bolvangar. When Lyra arrives there he assists her in helping the children escape and goes on with her to see Lord Asriel in Svalbard. Asriel uses Roger to create a gate between worlds by separating him from Salcillia, killing him in the process of channeling the energy from that separation to create the gate.

In The Amber Spyglass, he appears trapped in the Land of the Dead; Lyra is eventually able to free him and all the other dead souls to merge with the Dust in the living worlds.

Lord Boreal

Lord Carlo Boreal, or Sir Charles Latrom, CBE as he is known as in Will Parry's world, serves as a minor character in Northern Lights, but is a main antagonist in The Subtle Knife. He is an old Englishman, appearing to be in his sixties. He normally wears pale suits and is described as smelling sweetly.

Lord Boreal is first seen in Lyra Belacqua's world at the cocktail party of Mrs. Coulter. He interacts shortly with Lyra. He is also mentioned just before Lord Asriel crosses the bridge to Cittàgazze in Northern Lights as being a lover of Mrs. Coulter's.

In The Subtle Knife, Boreal watches Lyra exploring a museum in Will's world and approaches her, appearing to be a kindly old man whose only interest in her is to discuss the skulls. Lyra remembers seeing him previously, but is unsure of his identity. Later, when Lyra is being chased by the men who are after John Parry's notes, Latrom is in a chauffeured limousine and offers her a lift, at which time he steals her alethiometer. Lord Boreal tells them that they must get the Subtle Knife for him from Cittàgazze and he will return to them the alethiometer. After retrieving the knife, Lyra and Will steal back the alethiometer by cutting through from Cittàgazze into Will's world directly within Boreal's study. During this, they overhear a conversation between Coulter and Boreal, where he explains how he was able to set up a life in that world. Later, Boreal attempts to learn what Mary Malone knows about Dust by offering to continue funding her and her colleague's work.

In a tent in the mountains of Cittàgazze, Mrs. Coulter drugs Boreal's drink in order to make him tell her about the Subtle Knife; he dies shortly thereafter from the poisoned drink.

Boreal's name means "northern" or "related to the north", as in aurora borealis. His pseudonym, Latrom, is "mortal" spelled backwards.

Will Parry

Will Parry is the bearer of the Subtle Knife and a point of view protagonist of The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. He the son of John Parry, an explorer, and of Elaine Parry, a woman who suffers from mental health problems. Will does not remember his father, a former Royal Marine, who has not been heard of since he vanished on an expedition to the Arctic when Will was an infant. It is later revealed that John Parry has wandered into another world and is unable to find his way back. Will becomes the companion of, and ultimately falls in love with, Lyra Belacqua, and also becomes the bearer of the Subtle Knife by winning a fight, in which he loses two fingers on his left hand. At the end of the third book, he must leave Lyra Belacqua and live entirely in his own world, where he is taken care of by Mary Malone and his cat dæmon, Kirjava (which means mottled in Finnish).

In the unabridged audiobooks, Will was voiced by Steven Webb for The Subtle Knife and by Peter England for The Amber Spyglass.^[11]

Dr. Mary Malone

Dr. Mary Malone is a physicist from Will's world investigating dark matter, also known as Dust, and is a point of view protagonist in The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. She is a former nun, and in the witches' prophecy involving Lyra, she plays the part of the serpent to Lyra's Eve.

In The Subtle Knife, Lyra meets her and tells her about her world's research into Dust, which Mary has been researching as dark matter and refers to as Shadows. Lyra demonstrates use of her alethiometer, and Mary is able to program her dark matter detector to function similarly. The Dust instructs her to go through the window into Cittàgazze, which she does, eventually arriving at the world of the Mulefa. There she builds the titular Amber Spyglass, allowing her to see Dust, and investigates the death of the trees that are essential to the Mulefa's environment. She discovers that the Dust is no longer falling from the sky to pollinate the trees, but is instead flowing sideways. When Lyra arrives, a conversation with Mary begins to inspire in her a sexual awakening, leading to her dæmon's shape settling and to her beginning to attract Dust; this action is enough to arrest the loss of Dust and to save the trees, and as such she fulfills the prophecy.

At the end of The Amber Spyglass, the witch Serafina Pekkala reveals to Mary both how to see her dæmon and also its form – that of an alpine chough. She offers to help Will upon their return to their own world.

Mary Malone does not appear in Nicholas Wright's stage adaptation of the novels due to the difficulty of portraying Mulefa onstage. The role of the tempter was given to Serafina Pekkala, who was also the bearer of the spyglass, which had been created by Jopari as a device to view Dust.

John Parry

Colonel John Parry, also known as Dr. Stanislaus Grumman and Jopari, is the father of Will Parry and the husband of Elaine Parry.

Prior to the start of the trilogy, John Parry had been a famous English explorer and a major in the Royal Marines in Will's world. When Will was a small child, he went on an archaeological exploration of Alaska, hoping to find a portal to a different world. He eventually found it during a blizzard, entering the world of Cittàgazze, where his two companions were killed by the Spectres. He continued his travels, arriving in the home world of Lyra Belacqua. There he met his dæmon Sayan Kötör, an Osprey, and assumed the name Stanislaus Grumman. He attended the Berlin Academy, becoming a well-known explorer, and studied Dust. He joined the Yenisei tribe and underwent trepanation of his skull, becoming a shaman of the tribe and taking the name Jopari. He spurned the love of the witch Juta Kamainen because of his continued love for his wife.

In The Subtle Knife, Lee Scoresby is sent to find Grumman. He eventually finds him among the Yenisei tribe, although Grumman claims that it was he who called Lee to find him. Lee takes Grumman to Cittàgazze as Grumman wishes to find the bearer of the Æsahættr ("God-destroyer" in Old Norse).

Grumman finds the bearer, Will, on top of a mountain and fights with him after Will attacks him in the darkness. Grumman uses some bloodmoss (a lichen used to stop bleeding) to heal Will's wound, and informs him of the role of the bearer of the knife. Immediately after the light allows him and Will to see each other's faces and realise their relation, he is killed by an arrow shot by Juta Kamainen.

In The Amber Spyglass, he and Lee Scoresby are set free by Lyra from the world of the Dead. Instead of following the other dead people, they both remain to fight their final battle with the Authority.

Balthamos

Balthamos and his same-sex partner, Baruch, are both angels in rebellion from the Kingdom of Heaven. They seek to become part of Lord Asriel's army of angels and overthrow Metatron, the acting Regent of The Authority. Balthamos has a sarcastic personality, and his relations with Will are conducted with an air of ironic contempt.

Both angels find Will Parry at the end of The Subtle Knife; because Will is the bearer of the subtle knife, they hope to bring him to Lord Asriel. However, Will's companion Lyra Belacqua has been kidnapped and Will refuses to go to Asriel until Lyra is found. The angels agree to accompany Will without question until she is found. When Baruch is killed in The Amber Spyglass, Balthamos, stricken with grief, promises to aid Will in every way possible to honour Baruch's sacrifice. When Balthamos is unable to do so, he runs away, grieving over Baruch's death and feeling guilty about abandoning Will. At the end of the book, he confronts and kills Father Gomez, an assassin hoping to kill Lyra, and dies himself.

As angels of low rank, Balthamos and Baruch's abilities are limited. They appear as luminous humanlike forms, which are barely visible to human eyes even at night. The angels also possess the power to transform, which Balthamos uses to masquerade as Will's dæmon when traveling in Lyra's world. They are capable of flight though their wings do not have a corporeal form.

Baruch

Baruch and his same-sex partner, Balthamos, are both angels in rebellion from the Kingdom of Heaven. They seek to become part of Lord Asriel's army of angels and overthrow Metatron, the acting Regent of The Authority. When he was human, Baruch was brother to Enoch, who would become the angel Metatron.

In The Subtle Knife, he and Balthamos meet Will and Lyra, but as they refuse to go to Lord Asriel right away, Baruch leaves them to bring Asriel the important information he has. In The Amber Spyglass, he dies bringing important information to Lord Asriel

In Arabic-Christian legends, the name Baruch is identified with Zoroaster. The prophecy of the birth of Jesus from a virgin, and of his adoration by the Magi, is also ascribed to this Baruch.^[12]

Chevalier Tialys and Lady Salmakia

The Chevalier Tialys and The Lady Salmakia are Gallivespians, spies, and companions of Lyra and Will. Gallivespians are a race of small humanoid beings about as tall as the length of a human hand from a world where humans, tending to side with the Church, are at war with them, and they serve as spies in Lord Asriel's army. Tialys and Salmakia in particular spy on the Magisterium in Lyra's world, and when the Magisterium sends soldiers to capture and kill Lyra, they are ordered to stow away and follow them. Gallivespians have poison spurs on their feet that can incapacitate a human, and they ride specially bred dragonflies.

They first encounter the children when, along with Lord Asriel's forces, they arrive at Mrs Coulter's cave, under orders to take the children to Lord Asriel. The Gallivespians are forced to go with Lyra and Will when it becomes apparent that they will not go directly to Lord Asriel willingly. They travel together to the land of the dead, helping bargain with the harpies.

Tialys dies when attacking a cliff-ghast, having dug his spurs deep into her neck; Lady Salmakia dies shortly thereafter, her short lifespan having reached its natural end.

Ruta Skadi

Ruta Skadi is the Latvian witch queen, and a lover of Lord Asriel. Her dæmon is a bluethroat named Sergi. She is 416 years old in The Subtle Knife, and makes appearances in The Subtle Knife and The Amber Spyglass. Her second name, "Skadi", is also that of a Nordic winter goddess.

She accompanies Serafina Pekkala and her companions on part of their journey. She leaves, first to see the angels up above her, and she wants to help them because Lord Asriel is with them. She brings news of a mysterious weapon which turns out to be the Subtle Knife after overhearing tell of it from cliff ghasts. She is described as being very passionate, powerful, pitiless and beautiful, and has black hair and large black eyes. She wears a crown made of the teeth of tigers she killed when a tribe that worshiped them offended her. When it is revealed to the witches that Lyra, Lord Asriel and Marisa Coulter's daughter, is to become the second Eve, Ruta laments that as Asriel's lover, she did not become Lyra's mother, reflecting on what Lyra would have been like as a witch.

In the stage adaptation she commits suicide after killing John Parry, who had, in the past, rejected her as a lover. In the book this is done by a more minor character (Juta Kamainen) who does not appear in the adaptation.

Father Gomez

Father Gomez is a priest sent by the Magisterium to assassinate Lyra. The Angel Balthamos kills Gomez before he can reach her. His dæmon is a green-backed beetle. He has spent years doing preemptive penance, allowing the Magisterium to forgive him for his planned crime of killing Lyra.

Fra Pavel

Fra Pavel Rašek is a representative and alethiometrist of the Consistorial Court of Discipline. He is said to be a thorough but sluggish reader of the truth, requiring weeks or months to take an accurate reading. He was, however, successful in obtaining information useful to the Consistorial Court in a relatively short period of time, according to Marisa Coulter. He appears to be uncomfortable when voicing potentially heretical discoveries. His dæmon takes the form of a frog.

The Authority

The Authority was the first angel to come into existence; as did the subsequent angels, he formed and condensed from the substance known as Dust. He led other angels and, later, humanity to believe that he was in fact God the creator of the multiverse. This false claim legitimised his taking political power in the Kingdom of Heaven. The angel Xaphania later found out the truth about him, whereupon he banished her from the Kingdom (a reference to the legend of Lucifer). Xaphania and some other angels later started a rebellion against him. The Authority would assume several names, including "Yahweh", the "Lord", "El", "Adonai", and "the Almighty".

He ruled his various churches, organisations, and universes from the Clouded Mountain, a mobile city believed by many in that universe to be Heaven. As the Authority grew older and weaker, the Mountain became more and more obscured by cloud.

In his old age, the Authority appointed the tyrannical archangel Metatron, to act as Regent of the Kingdom of Heaven. Eventually Metatron grew more powerful than his master. The two are opposed by Lord Asriel, who allies with "fallen" angels such as Xaphania in an attempt to overthrow the divine monarchy and replace it with a Republic of Heaven. During the final battle, the Authority is carried away from the Clouded Mountain on the orders of Metatron. He is imprisoned in a crystal box, which keeps him alive but trapped. Lyra Belacqua and Will Parry free him with the Subtle Knife, not knowing he is too weak to survive outside his box. He drifts apart and dies in a moment of happiness following other characters' precedent by merging with the cosmos.

Metatron

Metatron serves as the Regent of Heaven and is the ultimate antagonist of His Dark Materials. Metatron seeks to supplant the Authority, to destroy Lord Asriel and his army, and to kill the heroine Lyra Belacqua. He has immense personal power, and is shown as descending from the sky at one point to demolish a large area of land. He is betrayed by Mrs. Coulter, who promises herself to him as a prize for his victory over Lord Asriel. However, she conspires with Asriel to destroy him; the two sacrifice their lives to drag Metatron into an abyss between the universes to ensure that he can never threaten Lyra again. Like one version of the traditional Metatron, he is stated to have been the Biblical character Enoch, who is in the line between Adam and Noah. He appears only in The Amber Spyglass. The name Metatron is that of a medieval Judaic Archangel.

Xaphania

Xaphania is the leader of the rebel angels allied with Lord Asriel in the war against The Authority.

Xaphania first appears in the third book of the trilogy, The Amber Spyglass, at a council of Asriel's commanders. Like all Pullman's angels, she appears naked, winged, and luminous; due to her high rank and great age, she is clearly visible to corporeal beings. As is the norm with members of the angelic orders in the novels, there is a certain ambiguity surrounding Xaphania's exact appearance. She appears both ancient and young, compassionate and austere. Her simultaneous age and youth are remarked on by the witch Serafina Pekkala, who herself appears that way to shorter-lived people.

The angel Balthamos is the first character to refer explicitly to Xaphania. As he explains to Will Parry, she discovered that the Authority had lied to the other angels regarding his status as God the original Creator and so was banished from the Clouded Mountain. This was the start of the first struggle against the Kingdom, Xaphania being the leader of the rebel angels who intervened in human evolution to give mankind its present consciousness some thirty thousand years ago.

Towards the end of trilogy, and after the defeat of the Authority's forces, it is Xaphania who explains to Will and Lyra Belacqua that all the windows between the worlds must be sealed to prevent Dust from leaking away into the abyss, and that the Æsahættr (the Subtle Knife) must be destroyed.

Gracious Wings

Gracious Wings, previously called No-Name, is chief of the harpies in the Authority's employment in the Land of the Dead. Before Lyra and Will came, she, along with the other harpies, tormented the ghosts with all the mistakes made by those ghosts when they were alive. At first, she is ready to attack Lyra and Will but later confesses that the wickedness of the ghosts was the only nourishment given to her and the other harpies by the Authority. The Chevalier Tialys and the Lady Salmakia bargain with her that instead of wickedness, the ghosts will tell the harpies true stories from their lives and in exchange will be taken by the harpies to the window Will has opened into the world of the mulefa where the ghosts may peacefully dissolve into particles in the air. The harpies agree to this as, along with nourishment such stories would provide them, they would also keep their honour as they would be performing a useful and respected task. After she saves Lyra's life by stopping her from falling, Lyra names her Gracious Wings.