List of Fables characters
This article is a list of characters in the comic book series Fables and its spin-offs published by Vertigo Comics.
New York Fables
Bigby Wolf
Snow White
Snow White is a major character in Fables. She is based on two stories recorded by the Brothers Grimm, Snow-White and Rose-Red and the more famous Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.Snow White was born in a small cottage and lived there with her younger twin sister Rose Red. In their youth, they were inseparable, swearing to each other that nothing would ever come between them, but they later had a falling out. Snow eventually married Prince Charming, but they divorced after she found him in bed with Rose. As revealed late in the series' run, she and Rose Red are part of a deeply magical bloodline in which all the sisters of each generation must attempt to kill each other, the sole survivor inheriting all of the family's power. Their mother, Lauda, had attempted to end the cycle by having only one child, but she was confounded when she gave birth to twins.
As of the beginning of the story, Snow White has been a long time member of Fabletown government, where she gradually climbed in ranks to become deputy major. She has a sharp, no-nonsense personality and expresses a distaste for "playing games" in preference of people being direct about their motives. During the run of Fables, she contends with Fabletown's enemies, has children with and eventually marries Bigby Wolf, and lives through a rivalry with her sister, Rose Red. Snow's seven children are born at the same time, and only one of them can pass for fully human at that time. By Fabletown law, she is required to move with them to the Farm, so she leaves her position as deputy mayor and is succeeded by Beauty. Nonetheless, Snow helps organize the conflict with the Adversary and Mr. Dark in War and Pieces and The Dark Ages. The last few series of Fables focus on the growing conflict between Snow and Red as their ancestral power begins to demand confrontation. Other characters take side and divide into factions. Instead of fighting to the death, however, Snow and Rose decide to at least attempt to defy the compulsion to kill each other. One of the last scenes in Fables shows Rose Red coming to visit Snow and Bigby after centuries of successful peace.
Jason Marc Harris, writing in a special issue of Humanities, contrasted the chapters that covered the war against the Adversary, which are generally considered either examples or deconstructions of masculine ideas of warfare, with the female-led final arc, which focused heavily on the increasingly military rivalry between Snow White and Rose Red: "The martial prowess that Bigby, Prince Charming, and Boy Blue once represented becomes overshadowed by the enduring connections of the extended Fables family, a community where Rose and Snow reconcile".
Snow White also appears in the 2013 video game adaptation of Fables, The Wolf Among Us, which is canon to the comics and serves as the prequel. She is voiced by Erin Yvette.
The Beauty and the Beast
Still together after nearly one thousand years, Beauty and Beast escaped from the Homelands with barely more than the clothes they were wearing. Both take relatively low-paid jobs, Beast maintaining the Fabletown buildings and Beauty working in a bookshop, earning between them enough to make ends meet. Their lives are hampered by Beast's tendency to shift back and forth between his human and beastly forms depending on his wife's mood towards him, but the two are nevertheless a loving couple. With the election of Prince Charming to Mayor of Fabletown during the events of "The Mean Seasons", their lives take a turn for the better. As neither Bigby Wolf or Snow White are willing to work alongside Charming, they resign, and the Prince offers Beauty and Beast the available jobs.Beast, now sheriff, allied himself with Frau Totenkinder and finally had his curse fixed, allowing him to transform into his Beast form at will. Whether he was aware that it was Totenkinder who inflicted the curse on him in the first place is unknown; this occurred pre-amnesty, so he is legally unable to retaliate. While initially overwhelmed by the complexities of the job, he eventually grows into the role.
Beauty takes Snow's position as deputy mayor, and also learns to cope with all of the responsibility. Early in her tenure, Prince Charming tries to seduce her, but she rebuffs him, threatening to send her husband after him if he tries again. It is notable that Beauty realizes, as a result of remarks made by Prince Charming during this seduction attempt, that her actions and words toward her husband are not generally as kind as she herself perceived; she subsequently resolves to be nicer to Beast.
After the arrival in Fabletown of the Imperial Emissary, Lord Hansel, during the "Sons of Empire" story-arc, and the subsequent need to keep track of both him and his staff, Beast asks for, and is given, additional funding and manpower. This includes the zephyrs, provided by Bigby Wolf's father, the North Wind, which act as spies. During the war against the Empire, as depicted in the "War and Pieces" arc, Beast remains in Fabletown, commanding the troops stationed there in case of a retaliatory assault by the Empire.
According to the answers given in the "Burning Questions" issue, the couple ask Frau Totenkinder what it is she is always knitting. Totenkinder responds that it is a garment for their firstborn child. Though Beauty laughs, saying she's not even expecting, Frau answer "All things in time" and shows them the progress of her knitting: a pair of footed pajamas with a lion head sewn on the front, and four arms, two legs, and a place for a tail. Beast and Beauty are left flabbergasted by the implications.
As shown in the "Great Fables Cross Over", after having a brief argument with Beast about his behavior with Bigby, Beauty and her husband retire to a tent for makeup sex. Afterwards, Beauty feels that there was something magical about this sex. In a subsequent, Beauty reveals she is pregnant. The child is born premature, but there are no apparent complications. The child, a little girl, is named Bliss, and seems normal. As Frau had predicted, though, there is a complication: when Bliss becomes angry, she transforms into a six-limbed, tailed beast. Since the birth of little Bliss, her father is unable to transform into his beastly form. When Beast is examined by Ozma she is unable to detect any trace of his ancient curse. In Fables #143, it is confirmed that Bliss has adopted his curse as her own.
In the Fairest story "Lamia", it is revealed that Beauty hides a dark secret. She is, in fact, a lamia who was driven from her home after a man got her in the family way. The man's wife had some friends run Lamia out of town. They followed her to another world, where Lamia met a beautiful woman. Lamia, having so recently been abused for beauty's sake, hated the woman on sight and killed her, because "everything beautiful leads to ruin in the end". Lamia then took the woman's form in order to adopt her peaceful and simple way of life. She kept the form so long that the woman's personality became her. She met Beast, and they fell in love. Every few decades, Beauty becomes herself Lamia again. When this happens, Beast tries to catch her in time and lock her away. Sometimes she escapes, and embarks on a killing rampage, targeting rapists and men who abuse women. Beast then assumes the identities of famous heroes of detective fiction and has to stop her before the mundy authorities can catch her. Bigby Wolf has threatened Beast to deal with the matter permanently - even if it means killing Beast as well. Beauty never remembers the incidents afterward and Beast never tells her the truth.
Beast is considering making a new home for himself, his wife and their daughter in Flycatcher's kingdom in the Homelands, because Beauty will be safer there, as the "mundy" police keeps getting better and better at investigating and collecting evidence, and will catch Beauty sooner or later. The story's ending suggests that Beauty may be turning into Lamia again sometime in the near future. In the Fairest graphic novel Fairest In All The Lands, Lamia is gone for good: Beauty becomes the victim of a serial killer, and even though Beauty is brought back to life, Lamia is not. Beast is ultimately killed by a feral, controlled resurrected Bigby Wolf. It remains to be seen if he will stay dead. In the final story, it reveals that years later, a grown up Bliss and Beauty have a business where they solve the problems of people using Bliss' beastly abilities.
Trusty John
The doorman at the Woodland building, Trusty John was almost universally popular. Amiable and good-natured, John enjoyed his job and was always pleased to see everybody. As such, it came as a complete shock to everyone when Kay unmasked John as a spy for the Adversary. Baffled as to how the 'most faithful Fable in history' could turn against them, John was interrogated by Prince Charming, Beauty and Beast; he explained to them that, long before signing up to the Fabletown compact, he had sworn an unbreakable vow of loyalty to his King, who he believed had been killed leading his forces against the Adversary. It turned out that this had not been the case, that his King, now working for the Adversary, had contacted John and ordered him to spy on his fellow Fables. Bound by his vow, which overruled the later compact, John had no choice but to obey and spent the next four years passing information to the enemy before Kay, with newly regrown eyes, caught him. Despite being sorely tempted to forgive him, given the circumstances, Charming realised that treason, no matter what the situation, must be dealt with harshly. Hardening his heart, he gave John the option to jump down the Witching Well under his own power as a gesture of mercy, the alternative being that he would be executed on the spot and his corpse put down there anyway. John accepted the former offer. Few people explicitly know what happened to him, as revealing such a beloved Fable to be a traitor was deemed to be bad for the morale of Fabletown.On his mission into The Witching Well, as depicted in the story-arc The Good Prince, Flycatcher recruited John as his squire, offering him the possibility of redemption by accompanying him. Following the completion of his quest, Flycatcher, now King Ambrose of Haven, announced that John would henceforth be known as Trusty John once more, and appointed him to be Lord High Chancellor of the kingdom, putting him in charge of the day-to-day running of the new realm.