10 Character Recs Based On Your Favourite Shade of Morally Grey

Hafsah Faizal’s exquisite debut plants a conflicted assassin and a huntress disguising her identity in the middle of a kingdom encircled by a deadly forest. Nasir is known far and wide as the Prince of Death, but he takes no pleasure in the title. The reality is that he’s the hitman for his father, the Sultan, and has had to do away with everyone his father wants gone. This isn’t a role Nasir plays willingly and one that he wishes he could escape. That chance comes when he’s sent on a mission to bring back a long-lost artifact and kill off an infamous archer known as the Hunter. Little does he know that said Hunter is the girl he’s starting to have feelings for.

Despite all the death Nasir’s dealt out, he’s an assassin with a conscience and a deeply empathetic man who fears the consequences of his father discovering that he has a heart—not to himself but to those he cares for. Faizal’s duology paints the portrait of a man struggling with what he has done and who he wants to be. He’s grey, but he never wanted the colour.

Slight, reserved, and brilliant, Inej Ghafa is often considered the beating heart of The Six of Crows. She may carry fourteen knives on her person, but holds deep moral convictions about how she uses them, despite working as a spy for Kaz’s gang, the Crows. Inej’s friendship is hard won but deeply felt, and she’s violently protective of the other Crows, especially her leader and her love interest, Kaz. 

Nicknamed, the Wraith, Inej is familiar with the scent of death and has doled it out often. Yet, her motivations are always fair, and Bardugo brilliantly conveys that she only operates outside the law, because the law itself is not willing to correct injustice. She’s impossible not to love.

To call Galadriel a hothead in her younger years would be the understatement of the millennia. Long before she was the regal elven queen of LOTR fame, she was 3,400 years old and a military commander with an enemy to grind to dust—Morgoth, the orcs who formed his army, and his righthand man, Sauron (who’s going to be relevant pretty soon). And Galadriel does this so well that her elven compatriots start having difficulty distinguishing her from the evil they’re fighting.

She has a kill count higher than the population of a small country, and the fact that she’s eradicating an entire species in the name of fighting evil doesn’t entirely hit her until later on—a deliciously nuanced incorporation by the showrunners. Galadriel is vengeful, prideful, and determined to prove that she’s right to her fellow elves, but she’s also deeply compassionate, kind, and fair. All of which makes her a fascinating character, lovingly brought to life by Morfydd Clark.

There are men, and there is Connor Rogan. Nevada Baylor, private investigator, learns that the day she takes on a run-of-the-mill assignment for a House—egomaniacal, magical dynasties with their own armies, global corporations, and deeply entrenched corruption—and runs afoul of the man who’ll change her life. Connor Rogan aka Mad Rogan earned his nickname as a military vet, and compounds it every day by keeping powerful Houses in check. As a Prime—a rare magic user with an ungodly quantity of magic—and the head of a House himself, he has it all, wealth, power, and looks. And he decides he wants Nevada.

What follows is no billionaire-seeking-to-wear-down-a-woman, but rather a game of intellect and strength between two equally matched individuals who give as good as they get. Connor is ruthless, driven, has decimated entire cities with sheer power, and is a mass murderer who thinks nothing of dropping a building on those in his way. But he’s also one of the most deeply-devoted men ever written and would drop a building on himself for Nevada in a heartbeat. Impossible not to stan.

Lanfear is the very definition of “black cat energy.” Competent, power-hungry, and consistently inconsistent in her loyalties, she’s one of the thirteen Forsaken—a group of magic-users who had dedicated themselves to darkness and got themselves imprisoned for it. When released back into the world, Lanfear takes immense joy in destabilizing it and seeking out her former lover’s reincarnation thousands of years since, because she never did get over him dumping her.

Lanfear will gladly kill everything in sight between her and her goals (having the world at her feet), but she’s also hilariously petulant, gorgeous, has an incredible wardrobe, and is an occasional ally to the good guys when it suits her. She’s pretty hard to dislike. Trusting her is a terrible idea, but you can bet that she’ll make even falling off a cliff a rollicking good time.

Hornfels rock is a unique sight. Smooth and fine-grained yet extremely durable, with natural striations of grey and white throughout. So is the Stranger, who could be the finest Sith Star Wars has ever seen. In addition to having a delicious penchant for wearing a mask and a voice modulator and being a ruthless killing machine, the Stranger has a hero’s quest of his own and subscribes to a philosophy that doesn’t seem too off-base.

Convinced that “the Jedi justify their galactic dominance in the name of peace,” the Stranger seeks to train a powerful acolyte of his own, who can take on the Jedi’s quasi-colonial empire and disrupt their forcible training of children to suppress emotion in the name of learning control. Is he a mass murderer who has killed innocents and corrupt Jedi alike? Absolutely. But it’s hard to dislike him when the Jedi keep proving him right by focusing more on the threat he poses rather than the evil within their ranks. And look at his arms? Who wouldn’t follow those anywhere?

Part lead and part silver, galena is a mesmerizing mineral not unlike Drenevan bu Kadra, the enigmatic Tetrarch at the heart of my debut, This Monster of Mine. One of the four judges ruling the country and a monstrously powerful magic-user to boot, Kadra is renowned for his commitment to justice and eradicating corruption—the brutal way with beheadings and burnings. Naturally, when a rash of deaths plague the capital, Kadra becomes suspect #1. And no one is more convinced that he did it than the new prosecutor assigned to work with him: Sarai. Four years after being pushed off a tower and left for dead, Sarai is back with a new face, a new identity, and deep determination to hunt down the man responsible for her near-death. When Kadra’s voice matches the bits she remembers of her assailant’s, she’s determined to see him ruined. But nothing is truly as it seems in the capital, and Kadra may be the biggest surprise of all.

I’m quite biased about this one, but Kadra’s a lovely dark gray. Few hard lines in the way of morality? Check. A kill count in the thousands? Absolutely. Ice-cold and in control? Almost always. If you’re curious, you know where to find him!

No good list of morally grey men is complete without the Darkling. Leigh Bardugo’s Shadow and Bone trilogy and Six of Crows duology hosts some of recent fiction’s most memorable characters, but none as beloved as the Darkling. General Kirigan is a Shadow Summoner and a reminder of a problem that plagues the country: the Fold—a swath of impenetrable darkness that splits the land in half and within which monstrous creatures reside.

Being descended from the man who created the Fold, the Darkling despairs of putting things to rights until he meets Alina Starkov, Shadow and Bone’s heroine, a rare Sun Summoner and who seems the answer to his every dream. But few of those dreams are benign and the Darkling keeps dangerous secrets as Alina rapidly finds out. Played to perfection by Ben Barnes in the Netflix adaptation, the Darkling is a complex, unforgettable experience, megalomania and all.

I could go on about hot Sauron for the next two eons, but suffice it to say that the Dark Lord is seriously smoking. Fans of The Lord of the Rings books will know that Sauron was never actually a giant eye atop a tower as depicted in the movies but rather a stunning demigod who fell from grace, and warped his body into a monstrous form during his quest for power (Sauron means “the Abhorred”). The show took that portion of the lore quite seriously.

Sauron’s as power-hungry as most of the people on this list, but for a different reason. This demigod loves order. His entire plan for world domination revolves around healing the world of chaos and misery. By taking away everyone’s free will of course, but no more war and no one has to pay for clean water. It’s quite a compelling argument at times. Sauron isn’t without some humanity, as demonstrated in the show’s depiction of the fact that he felt something for Galadriel. But his narcissism, devaluing of anyone he deems as beneath him, ruthless manipulation of everything and everyone around him, and remorseless constant murder make experiencing him like entering the depths of a silver mine. Sure, it glitters, but it’s primarily just darkness.

If “the bar is the floor” was a person, that person would be Brother Day. Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series posits what would happen if one man, Cleon, sought to keep his rule infinite by cloning himself over and over. The result is a ruling trio of Cleon clones, also known as Empire—Brother Dawn (teenage Cleon aka emperor-in-training), Brother Day (the currently reigning Cleon), and Brother Dusk (retiree-age Cleon who serves as an advisor to Brother Day).

Of these, Brother Day, played to the hilt by the impeccable Lee Pace, is utterly magnetic. Alternatingly narcissistic, vicious, and maniacal but deeply insecure and occasionally fearful, Day is a brilliant depiction of a man who truly has it all and will do anything for more. Unlike Sauron, he has his Empire, but it’ll never be enough. The man simply is cancerous craving, and it’s still impossible to take your eyes off him. It’s no wonder he’s been called “Intergalactic Emperor Daddy.”

And that’s a wrap on this morally grey list! If you’re also a fan of every shade, then there’s loads to binge and read here. And if you’re interested in Kadra, you can also pick up a copy of my book THIS MONSTER OF MINE, available everywhere now!