Uprooted

Sarkan the Dragon is a wizard lord who lives in the isolated tower in the valley. His task is to protect the valley and keep the Wood from encroaching farther into the kingdom. He has lived and worked there for 100 years, having volunteered for the position after the previous Tower wizard, the Raven, died. He is the second major character, fulfilling the roles of sage and mentor as well as being the love interest of the romantic subplot.

All the wizard characters, the Dragon included, highlight the corrupting influence of power; their magic makes them immortal, and the longer they live, the more divorced they become from their humanity and empathy. Agnieszka and the villagers at first see the Dragon only as cold, selfish, and inhuman. Learning to see the Dragon’s human complexity is a major part of Agnieszka’s arc, as she learns he is also introverted, awkward, brilliant, and a lover of beauty. He follows a strict moral code and is thus horrified when he learns that the villagers believe he assaults the girls he takes; likewise, he is shaken by Agnieszka’s accusation of cruelty. At the same time, he is pragmatic, unwilling to risk many lives to save one. As Agnieszka’s mentor, he contributes to her character development and coming-of-age narrative. However, his interactions with her change him as well, forcing him to rediscover his humility and humanity.

Kasia, a third major character, is Agnieszka’s closest friend. She is beautiful, intelligent, brave, and elegant. Given these qualities, every villager expects the Dragon to take her when she turns 17, and she tries to be brave about her assumed fate. However, just as Agnieszka envies Kasia’s talents and attributes, Kasia secretly envies Agnieszka—both the love she receives from her parents and the magical power she discovers with the Dragon. Kasia’s mother raised her to be the perfect servant for the Dragon, as if she wanted Kasia to be taken so that she would one day return wealthy and bring the family success and pride. This leads to resentment that only deepens when Kasia is not chosen after all.

Kasia is changed by her experience trapped in a heart-tree in the Wood. Though she still looks human, her body becomes hard and indestructible. Though her character development is not the novel’s primary focus, she grows over the rest of the narrative, becoming increasingly outspoken. She eventually becomes a fighter and the new king’s captain of the guard at the conclusion of the novel. Like Agnieska, her character tacitly critiques restrictive female gender norms, as the attributes that everyone prizes in Kasia turn out not to matter to her at all.

Prince Marek is the younger son of the King of Polnya and one of the novel’s antagonists. He is handsome and heroic, famous for fighting monsters and leading battles against the neighboring kingdom of Rosya. He is obsessed with saving his mother, Queen Hanna, from her captivity in the Wood, and he uses any means at his disposal to manipulate, threaten, and force others to comply with his wishes. He is self-centered, self-righteous, and entitled. As the narrative progresses, he is corrupted by the Wood’s influence and becomes its unwitting ally, using his political and military power to claim the throne and attack the tower. In this way, he is a primary example of power’s corrupting effects. However, he is also deeply motivated by love for his mother, underscoring What One Will Risk for Love. This makes him a foil for Agnieszka, as the two characters mirror each other in their willingness to risk danger and death to save a loved one from the Wood.

Queen Hanna is primarily a plot device. She was seduced by a prince of Rosya 20 years before the novel begins, ran away from her husband, and became lost in the Wood trying to escape to Rosya. Most believe she is dead. However, the Dragon knows she is still alive, though beyond saving, and her younger son, Marek, is obsessed with rescuing her. When Marek organizes an expedition to retrieve Queen Hanna from the Wood, she returns empty of soul, alive but unreachable. Her body becomes a tool for the novel’s primary antagonist: the Wood-queen, the power and intelligence within the Wood. In the guise of Queen Hanna, the Wood-queen corrupts the kingdom, manipulates Marek, orchestrates the deaths of the king and Crown Prince Sigmund, and incites the final battle at the tower.

Yet even the Wood-queen’s role as a villain is complicated by the revelation of her tragic origins. The Wood-queen was once part of a race of tree-people. She married a human king, hoping to forge a peaceful alliance between their peoples, but the humans betrayed her and buried her in the crypt beneath the tower. She did not die but became the living embodiment of dark magic and hatred in the Wood. The Wood-queen, like Marek, represents power’s potential to corrupt, especially when it is fueled by hatred.

Solya is the second most powerful wizard in Polnya, after the Dragon. He is thin with salt-and-pepper hair and wears a long white cloak. He is jealous of the Dragon’s power and obsequiously supports Marek’s plans in an effort to fortify his own political position. He has a theatrical quality and shifts roles depending on what he believes will be most beneficial in a given situation. Little of his past is known, and the novel reveals neither his age, family, nor origins.

Solya’s willingness to sacrifice Kasia and do whatever Marek requires of him makes him a secondary antagonist. He disregards the dangers of the Wood to fulfill Marek’s desire to save the queen, and he supports Marek’s attack on the Dragon’s Tower despite the evidence that Marek is behaving irrationally and Agnieszka’s warning that the Wood has taken control of the queen. However, while his powers make him dangerous, he is merely a follower. When the tide turns back in the Dragon and Agnieszka’s favor, he changes sides as well, proving his moral flexibility.

Alosha is a senior wizard whose abilities have allowed her to rise from humble origins (her mother was enslaved). She is a tall woman with dark skin who dresses in men’s clothing and uses magic to forge powerful weapons. She has spent 100 years forging a special magical sword meant to kill whatever evil force lives in the Wood, and she gives this weapon to Agnieszka after she herself is wounded. Alosha is one of the oldest wizards in the country: Her husband has been dead for 140 years, and she has 67 great-great-grandchildren, most of whom do not know her.

Meeting Alosha deepens Agnieszka’s understanding of what it means to be a wizard or witch. She explains to Agnieszka that she has taken lovers of the years but that once a wizard has been alive long enough, everyone seems to die quickly. She therefore recommends finding something besides love to live for. Agnieszka takes a different lesson from this interaction, however, concluding that immortality has divorced Alosha from what it means to be alive and human, leading her to become callous and willing to throw human lives away like disposable pawns, despite her good intentions. She thus serves as another example of corruption, although Agnieszka also develops a kind of friendship with her.