Midnight for Charlie Bone: The Children of the Red King #1

Emma Tolly, otherwise known as Emilia Moon, is a supporting character in the novel and the person at the heart of the book’s mystery. While Emma is always blonde and blue-eyed, the other characters note the difference in her appearance from when she was Emilia. Once with her aunt at the end, she is described as having her hair “tied in a bouncing ponytail and her cheeks were flushed with excitement” (400).

As a baby, she was traded to the Bloor’s by her inventor father, Dr. Tolly, in exchange for a statue of his knightly ancestor that he wanted to bring to life. He later regretted his actions, but by then, the Bloors would not give her back. Emma was adopted by a cold and unloving couple, the Moons, who renamed her Emilia and kept her with a financial incentive from the Bloors. Emma is endowed with the ability to fly, later revealed to be the ability to shapeshift into birds, and is an exceptionally gifted artist; she is trapped in a state of passivity by Manfred’s hypnotism. Once the children realize who she is and her connection to Tolly Twelve Bells, they befriend her and use the device to “wake her up” (276). While the good characters succeed in freeing her from her hypnotized state and confirming Miss Ingledew as her legal guardian by the end of the book, she still decides to return to Bloor’s Academy following the holiday break. She says that despite the Bloors, the school is good for artists, and she wants to help other children there the same way Charlie and his friends helped her.

Uncle Paton is Charlie’s great uncle and the only good Yewbeam in the book. He is described as tall, with dark eyes and black hair like his sister, Venetia. However, unlike his sisters, Paton refuses to participate in the family’s schemes or adopt their cruel attitudes. Instead, he stays secluded in his room to work on writing the history of the Yewbeam family and only ventures out at night. The reason for his isolation is his endowment: the ability to brighten lights, sometimes to the point of shattering, triggered by strong emotions. For most of his life and the book, he views it as a curse. He becomes romantically interested in Miss Ingledew, even taking her out to dinner, only to run away when he accidentally makes a lightbulb explode.

His isolation due to his abilities doesn’t only extend to the world outside; despite living in the same house as Charlie for years before the beginning of the first book, they only really begin to interact once Charlie’s endowment presents itself. When telling his great-nephew how he survived Bloor’s Academy, he says “I kept my head down” (143). The statement shows the crux of Paton’s character arc: becoming less passive and taking a stand against his sisters’ schemes. While he refuses to participate in their actions, he is too afraid to go against them, either. He notes that one of his greatest regrets is that he wasn’t there when his nephew, Lyell, went missing. He had promised to be but was too distracted by his own concerns. Once Paton bonds with Charlie, and the Bloors and Yewbeams take escalatingly drastic actions, his conscience finally gets the better of him. His arc of becoming braver and more willing to act culminates in Chapter 20 when he takes the issue of Emma’s custody into his own hands by using his endowment to shatter the windows of Bloor’s Academy, thereby forcing the Bloors to give up her legal paperwork.

Manfred Bloor is the primary antagonist of Midnight for Charlie Bone. He is the 17-year-old son of the Headmaster of Bloor’s Academy, Dr. Bloor, and the school’s head boy. He is described as tall, with a ponytail, and “a long, narrow face and a wispy mustache grew above his thin upper lip” (14). Like Charlie, Manfred is one of the endowed, although one of the evil ones. He can hypnotize those who look into his coal-black eyes. The hypnosis can be temporary, such as when Charlie meets him on the way to Miss Ingledew’s bookshop. However, he can also use his powers to force people under permanent enchantments, as in the case of Emma Tolly and Lyell Bone. Only the sound of Tolly Twelve Bells, created to mimic the sounds from the cathedral at the exact moment their enchantment began, can free them.

Beyond his hypnotic powers, Manfred possesses the cruelty that defines the Bloor family. He works with them and the Yewbeams to stop Charlie from using Tolly Twelve Bells to free Emma. Despite his literal and figurative power within the school, Manfred is not invulnerable. Charlie using his ability to read faces to fight the hypnotism causes Manfred’s usually controlled demeanor to crack as he yells at the younger boy and throws things at him, only stopping when ordered to by his father.

Benjamin Brown is Charlie’s best friend and neighbor across the street. He is the only child in the book who is neither endowed nor a student at Bloor’s Academy. Benjamin is a small boy with dirty blond hair and a dog named Runner Bean with fur the same color. Unlike Charlie, whose family history is magical and mysterious, his background is relatively ordinary as his parents are private detectives. Despite his ordinariness when compared to the rest of the characters, Benjamin is still critical to the story. He is the first person that Charlie confides in about hearing the voices from the pictures, and the Brown house is where the boys first keep the case containing Tolly Twelve Bells since it wouldn’t be safe in Charlie’s home. He is upset by the feeling that Charlie is abandoning him to go to Bloor’s Academy, as Charlie is his only friend, demonstrated by his two-person 10th birthday party. However, once Charlie explains the situation with his family, Benjamin quickly forgives him and returns to being supportive. This support is crucial as Charlie becomes more enmeshed in the conflicts at Bloor’s. Benjamin remains an anchor of normalcy outside the magical struggles he faces.

Billy Raven is the youngest child at Bloor’s Academy at only seven years old, and he’s one of the endowed children with the ability to communicate with animals. He is a morally gray character due to his actions in the second half of the book.

Billy is physically set apart from the other students due to his albinism, and his pale skin and white hair mark him as a target for bullying by other students. However, he notes that his red eyes make him invulnerable to Manfred’s hypnotism. Billy’s isolation is compounded by the fact that he is an orphan. While other children at Bloor’s Academy can go home on the weekends, Billy is forced to stay behind at the school. The combination of physical difference and lack of a support system leads him to seek acceptance and love wherever he can find it. The Bloors use it to their advantage when they want information on Charlie. They dangle the prospect of adoption before him in exchange for being their spy. Despite wanting Charlie’s friendship, Billy’s actions often undermine his chances. By the end of the book, their friendship is broken because Charlie realizes Billy was the one who betrayed them, and later, Billy abandons Charlie in the ruins.