Characters

This section will contain information about the characters in the series. The nature of an alternative history is that one starts with a point in time, a point in history, and adds something new to the mix. In the case of the Hidden Angels Series, what was added is the man who became known as Matthew West. His actions changed history. The addition of his genes to the human gene pool changed history even more. By the nature of the genre, there are many types of characters: real people whose lives are influenced by the chanaged events, normal non-famous fictional people because the normal people seldom get recorded in history so an author has to make them up, and the fictional people who shake everything up, like the character known as Matthew West.

Fictional Characters

As things progress in the series, it becomes more common to use terms to designate whether people are descended from Matthew West on both sides (Angels or Two-Siders), on one side (One-Siders), or not at all (Norms or No-Siders). The Ramseys are also a separate category, since they have a dominant gene for mild psychic ability. People like the Ramseys come to be known as “Naturals.” Some of the one-siders were also naturals. Also in the Fictional Characters List, we include general information about families as another column in the table below.

Angels	One-Siders	Norms	Naturals	Family Info
Matthew West	Benjamin Thaddeus West (I4295)	Solvathius Forbes, IV	Thomas Ramsey	The Descendants of Matthew West
		Walton Wouldhave, Sr.		The Descendants of Thomas Ramsey
				Noble Titles in The Series
				The Shadow Lords

Real People Used as Characters

The Hidden Angels Series is set in a world similar to our own except for the changes that happen due to Matthew West and his progeny. As those changes spread out, it becomes less and less likely that something or someone corresponds exactly to who was there and what happened in the real world. For instance, we might meet Karl Marx, but he might be a lawyer and committed monarchist. Or Nietsche might have different forenames (since he was named for his king whose birthday he was born on) and he might be a Lutheran minister and theologian because his father lived to guide him to adulthood. But by about 1900, it is unlikely that anyone born will be the same as in the real world, unaffected by the changes induced by Matthew West and his progeny.

That said, there are many historical characters who make cameos or have greater appearances in the series. Robert Walpole, the first British Prime Minister, appears briefly. Many nobles appear or are referenced since Matthew West becomes a nobleman, which means his children are more likely to marry into other noble families. The Duke of Shrewsbury and Earl of Derby are examples who appear in the first volume of the series. George III appears in several chapters in multiple volumes, as does his uncle, the Prince William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, etc.

By the third book, Matthew West has taken a new identity and purposefully faded into the background. He will still appear now and then, but he becomes a fairly minor character, just one among many Angels in the series. Instead, there is a new character who comes to the fore, a character who was real, but whose life has already started veering from his original path before he even appears in the third book. His path will continue to diverge from the original, and he will be a central character moving to the peripheral as time goes on in the series until 1845. The upcoming volumes will still be constructed of many independent or semi-independent stories with a large number of characters, but the events around this one character will become central.

Part of the reason that most of the real characters have been cameos up to this point is that it is difficult to say what a real person would or would not do. It’s like using characters that another author created. (In this case, the author is God.) People who read the original author have very strong opinions about what a character would or would not do. Readers might even get irate if they feel some character has been corrupted from the original into something unrecognizable. So it might be with historians when historical personages are made to do the will of some hack fiction writer. As an author, I am trying to avoid such things. If a historical person is used relatively extensively, it is only if their lives have already been significantly altered.

For instance, let’s look at King George III. In real history, he started showing the first signs of some sort of disease that affected his mind, possibly porphyria, in 1765. It will be revealed in 1787, presently intended for the fourth volume, that Matthew West healed him and his family at that point, cleaning up the genetic diseases. Of course, Matthew West had already been changing things and interacting with the House of Guelph for more than forty years. So by that point the changes are so great that George III would not be the same man he would have been in our universe. The same is true of his uncle, the Duke of Cumberland. William Augustus first meets Matthew West when he is only a boy, and then he goes to the military university Matthew West started and continues to be mentored by West. West even counsels him on his diet and exercise regimen, which leads to his living a longer life than he did in reality.

Person	Actual	Fictionalized
Carlos de Bragança, Infante of Portugal (I3981)	Father’s Page, Carlos died at 13	Altered
Frederick Calvert, 6th Baron Baltimore (I8362)	Real	Altered
George III of Great Britain (I426)	Real	Altered
	Real	Altered

Non-Human Characters

Several intelligent and quasi-intelligent beings created by the Angels appear in the series.

The Dragons of Gath

Westron Roans

The Frog Men

The Races of the Sea of Ice