Jacin is Winter’s love interest and an important secondary character. Where Winter resists openly, Jacin survives by making himself useful to the very system she refuses. Though he wanted to become a doctor, Levana forces him to become a royal guard. There, he learns that obedience can keep people alive. He goes through the motions as a soldier, but his loyalty belongs to Winter. He promised to protect her when they were children, and that promise shapes many of his choices. He seems cold or selfish, but he cooperates with Levana’s system because he sees no other way to keep Winter safe.

Their conflict comes from these opposite survival strategies. Winter resists by refusing control, even when it damages her mind. Jacin adapts, lies, and stays close to power because he fears open resistance will get her killed. He encourages Winter to follow his example, and she does so for most of the series. When Winter takes a larger role in the rebellion, the risk she takes on distresses Jacin, who wants only to protect Winter and sees her hallucinations and scars as proof of his failures.

Their bond rests on deep trust. Winter believes in Jacin’s goodness, and Jacin gradually learns to support her choices instead of only trying to shield her. He encourages her to serve as a Lunar ambassador on Earth and eventually accepts her desire to be the first test subject of the Lunar gift shielding device. Together, they show that resistance can take different forms, but real freedom requires both courage and sacrifice.

Cinder—based on the fairy-tale heroine Cinderella—begins life as Princess Selene, but Levana’s attempt to murder her leaves her scarred, orphaned, and presumed dead. Linh Garan later adopts her, names her Cinder, and saves her life by replacing the damaged parts of her body with robotic parts, making her a cyborg. On Earth, however, cyborgs have little status, and Cinder’s stepfamily treats her like a servant. Cinder internalizes these prejudices and experiences lasting. By the end of the novel, she throws away her old cyborg foot, recognizing it as “a burden” and a reminder that she once saw herself as “worthless” and “nothing but a cyborg” (571). After overthrowing Levana, Cinder has the chance to reclaim her rightful place as queen, but instead she chooses to help her friends in their fight for democracy. She rejects not only Levana’s cruelty but the monarchy itself, dismantling the system rather than simply replacing its ruler.

Kai is Cinder’s love interest and an important secondary character. His story runs parallel to Cinder’s in important ways. He begins the series as a beloved prince and becomes emperor after his parents die from letumosis. Like Cinder, he suffers under Levana’s rule, and like her, he accepts painful sacrifice as part of what leadership demands. He despises Levana but marries her to secure the letumosis antidote for his people. In Winter, Cinder and Kai move beyond their uncertain beginning and become genuine partners. The novel reverses the traditional fairy-tale rescue trope. Rather than Kai saving the princess, Cinder repeatedly risks herself to save him and overthrow Levana.

Kai creates a contingency plan to bomb Artemisia if Cinder fails, showing a willingness to sacrifice himself, Levana, and everyone in the palace. He reveals his strategic thinking and his complete commitment to a future worth dying for. When Cinder refuses to participate in monarchy, Kai respects her choice rather than pressuring her to become his empress, demonstrating that their relationship is built on genuine partnership rather than possession. Their story supports the novel’s larger argument that love and leadership should empower others rather than control them.

Scarlet—based on the fairy-tale heroine Little Red Riding Hood—is the pragmatic, sharp-tongued protagonist of Scarlet and an important secondary character in Winter. After Levana’s forces capture and torture her, Levana confines Scarlet in the menagerie as Winter’s “pet.” This experience weakens Scarlet, but it does not break her. She remains resourceful, emotionally honest, and fiercely loyal.

Her storyline in Winter revolves around her unbreakable bond with Wolf, who is both her romantic partner and her closest partner in the fight against Levana’s tyranny. Although Wolf questions his humanity after Levana has him transformed into a wolf soldier, Scarlet never does. Her acceptance of him after his transformation becomes one of the novel’s clearest examples of compassion. She refuses to define him by his body or by actions committed under mind control. Together, Scarlet and Wolf show that identity can survive even violent attempts to erase it. Scarlet’s use of his real name, “Ze’ev,” reinforces his need to reclaim his human self. Their plan to return to her farm suggests hope, and when Scarlet contacts her friend Émilie near the novel’s end, her longing to go home makes clear what she is ultimately fighting to recover her freedom, and the ordinary life Levana took from her.

Wolf’s arc also explores survival under Levana’s cruelty. In Scarlet, readers learn that he was taken from his parents as a child and is partially mutated into one of Levana’s wolf soldiers. Sent to Earth to find Scarlet Benoit’s grandmother, who was mysteriously immune to Lunar magic, he fell in love with Scarlet and eventually joined Cinder’s rebellion.

In Winter, Wolf’s love for Scarlet helps anchor his humanity. Their separation reveals his vulnerability. He barely eats or sleeps without her, and his joy when he finds her on RM-9 proves that loving Scarlet is the clearest evidence he has that he is more than a weapon. This becomes even clearer after Wolf is captured and fully transformed into a Wolf soldier, controlled by a Thaumaturge. The Thaumaturge alters Wolf’s memories, trying to make him forget everything that makes him human. For a time, Wolf no longer knows who he is. However, when he is reunited with Scarlet, their love overcomes his captors’ manipulation. Scarlet insists that he is the same person despite his altered form, and her belief in his humanity helps him to see this humanity in himself.

Cress—based on the fairy-tale heroine Rapunzel—begins the series as an isolated Lunar shell, hidden away in a satellite and raised on screens, stories, and daydreams. Because of that isolation, she first sees Carswell Thorne as a perfect hero. In Winter, that view changes. She still loves him, but she begins to see him more clearly as a flawed person, not a fantasy. Younger than the other heroes of the series, she is in the midst of a coming-of-age story. As she gradually stops idealizing her male love interest, she simultaneously comes into her own as a political activist, learning to trust herself as she overcomes challenges. Cress becomes braver and more confident, moving from the background to the center of the rebellion.

Their relationship grows from admiration into partnership. Thorne, meanwhile, takes Kai’s words seriously and tries to become the better man Cress believes he can be. Together, their arcs show that identity is not fixed. People can grow into stronger versions of themselves through choice, courage, and love.

Thorne is Cress’s love interest, a major character in Cress, and a minor character in Winter. In Cress, he hides behind charm, jokes, and false confidence. He follows only his own moral compass, ignoring the law and any moral or ethical expectations that don’t align with his own views. His roguish disposition leads him to a life of theft and deception, but in the series’ dystopian world, where the law serves only the powerful, Thorne’s disregard for authority often puts him on the side of justice. Formally a soldier, Thorne deserts the military and steals the Rampion, making him a powerful ally for Cinder’s rebellion.  

His temporary blindness in Winter forces him to rely on others and face his own vulnerability. Once his sight returns, he also has to deal with being truly seen by Cress. Her faith in him matters, but it no longer lets him avoid responsibility.

Iko’s role in Winter explores identity, humanity, and what it means to be “real.” She is an android whose “faulty” personality chip once belonged to a full-service companion model, but Linh Adri sells her for parts, leaving only the chip behind. That chip becomes the core of who Iko is, and it houses the Lunar protection device, making her essential to the rebellion’s success. Her identity and her plot function are inseparable.

In Winter, Iko receives a new body that allows her to move, fight, and interact with the world in ways she could not before. Though she loves her physical upgrade, Iko already has a strong sense of self long before she gains a body that reflects it. Iko’s loyalty, humor, and empathy are not glitches or simulations. They are genuinely her own. As Cinder tells her, “That’s not programming, you wing nut. That’s friendship” (367). Though Iko struggles to accept her humanity, her companions recognize it without question.

Those qualities extend the novel’s exploration of identity. Iko experiences fear, excitement, affection, and insecurity, especially about how others perceive her. She wants to be valued not as a tool but as a person, and she consistently acts with more compassion and emotional honesty than many of the human characters around her. Through Iko, Winter challenges the idea that humanity is tied to biology. Her story suggests that identity comes from choice, connection, and the capacity to care for others.

Queen Levana Blackburn is the ruler of Luna and the series’ central antagonist. As the most powerful Lunar, she can control hundreds of minds at once, shaping perception, emotion, and memory. She builds her rule on that power, using it to maintain loyalty and silence dissent. Even so, her control has limits, and those limits become the rebellion’s weapon. Cameras reveal what her power hides, and when Cress broadcasts her true face across Luna, the illusion she has spent a lifetime constructing collapses.

Levana’s obsession with beauty drives much of her behavior. After her sister Channary shoves her into a fire, Levana is left with severe burn scars. In response, she creates a flawless image of herself through magic and removes mirrors from Artemisia so she never has to see her real face. Beauty becomes her armor and weapon. She uses it to command devotion and convince herself that she is worthy of love and power. Her need for external validation shapes everything, including how she understands love itself. She believes that “Love is a conquest. Love is a war,” and that belief explains her failures (517). She mistakes fear for loyalty and control for devotion. She cannot imagine another way, so she cannot build anything that lasts.

In Winter, Levana’s identity begins to fracture under pressure. The broadcast strips away her public image, and without it, her emotional instability weakens her grip on those around her. She retreats into the palace, abandons the battlefield, and tries to bargain her way out of defeat by asking only to keep her beauty. Even at her surrender, she cannot let go of the illusion. She drives a knife into Cinder’s chest rather than accept that she lost control.

Levana shows the danger of building identity on control and deception. She believes she acts in her people’s best interests, but her need for power overrides any genuine compassion. In contrast to Cinder and Winter, who accept vulnerability and grow from it, Levana denies reality and collapses when it finally breaks through.

Aimery Park, Levana’s head thaumaturge, represents the calculated cruelty of her regime. He presents himself as controlled and precise, but beneath that surface lies an obsession with dominance. Aimery serves as Levana’s primary enforcer, using his gift to force those she views as threats to kill themselves. He fixates on Winter because he wants to prove that he can break even someone as beloved and seemingly untouchable as she is. When she refuses him, his anger becomes personal. “You should have accepted me when you had the chance,” he tells her, revealing that his cruelty comes as much from wounded pride as political loyalty (505).

Aimery’s obsession shapes the method he uses to destroy her. He breaks Winter by forcing her into the act she fears most. Under his manipulation, she nearly kills Jacin by choking him. To save Jacin, Winter takes control of Scarlet’s body and forces her to stab Aimery repeatedly. This moment shatters Winter’s sense of self because her identity rests on compassion and restraint, and Aimery forces her to violate both. The result is a complete mental collapse.

Yet Aimery does not gain what he wants. He proves that he can break Winter, but he cannot control what follows. Her breakdown makes her unpredictable rather than obedient, and her collapse ultimately draws others toward her rather than away. His success exposes the limits of his methods and, more broadly, Levana’s regime. He can destroy, but he cannot rebuild.