The Dragon Republic (The Poppy War, #2)

Kitay is Rin’s best friend and foil. Whereas most characters are ruled by greed, ambition, or emotions, Kitay is fueled by logic. This makes him an invaluable wartime leader, but it also makes him realistic about The Destruction and Inhumanity of War, including his allies’ lack of morality. He begins the novel estranged from Rin for this reason. Kitay is affected by the trauma of surviving the Massacre of Golyn Niis, which is based on the real-life Nanjing Massacre. Despite this, he knows that many of the people Rin killed in Mugen were innocents. He cannot stop thinking about how they felt in “the moment that it happened. In their very last seconds” (59). The scars on his arms—self-inflicted burns that he gave himself to understand the Mugenese’s suffering—are symbols of his capacity for empathy and compassion.

As Kitay gets unwillingly absorbed by Vaisra’s revolution, he continues to battle with “the contradiction between loyalty and justice” (92), first by betraying the Empire and then by beginning to question Vaisra’s cause. Kitay is mocked by Vaisra’s generals due to his youth. When he offers strategies, the generals tell Vaisra to “[d]iscipline this boy” (212), disparaging him based on his age. However, Kitay’s objections to Vaisra and Jinzha’s strategies are based on his ethical stance. He argues that “you don’t unite a country by starving innocent people to death” (213), showing the combination of his logic and compassion.

While Kitay is driven by logic and conscience, Rin is driven by emotion (usually fear and rage), which makes them foils. Their status as foils is literalized as Kitay becomes Rin’s anchor bond. After the Sorqan Sira explains the process of forming the anchor bond, Kitay agrees immediately: “‘I’ll do it,’ Kitay said firmly. ‘Just tell me how’” (413). His lack of hesitation shows his loyalty to Rin.

Rin initially worries that she’ll “overpower” Kitay in their bond, but gaining Rin’s knowledge of the gods ends up making Kitay’s mental faculties even stronger. Afterward, he spends time with Chaghan discussing “the metaphysical nature of the cosmos” (425), and when Rin jokingly asks him if he has figured it out, he unironically says, “Not yet. […] But give me a year or two. I’m close” (427). The bond benefits both of them, highlighting how their friendship is a positive one for both. Kitay remains the moral center of their relationship. He does not hesitate to join Rin’s rebellion, even though he is a northerner. He faces the upcoming war with “grim resignation” rather than with Rin’s eagerness for vengeance.

For most of the novel, Nezha is Rin’s ally: He is a trusted friend and potential romantic interest. At the end of the novel, however, Nezha betrays Rin and becomes her enemy.

Nezha is described as being a head taller than Rin, with pale skin, dark hair, and a beautiful face. He was captured by the Mugenese in The Poppy War. As a result, half his face is covered in a web of scars, which sometimes look like “angry red lines,” and at other times look like “a delicately painted crosshatch of brush ink” (117). As a child, Nezha encountered a dragon in a grotto who “claimed” Nezha as his own, giving him shamanistic powers. The dragon killed his little brother Mingzha, and Nezha blames himself for this. He also does not know if his father Vaisra orchestrated the situation so he’d have a shaman in his family.

Nezha’s main internal conflict is that he is torn between his relationship with Rin and his sense of allegiance and duty to his family. Nezha offers Rin support and training. He encourages her to leave behind Altan’s trident and the legacy it represents, instead embracing her individual talents. After Rin finds out about his shamanistic powers, he tries to confide in her and explain the differences between their powers. He explains that when he was a child, the Dragon “touched him.” Though Rin is afraid to ask what that means, it implies that the Dragon sexually abused him. Nezha fears the Dragon’s power, which causes him great pain and suffering. However, Rin grows frustrated by Nezha’s resistance to engage the Dragon’s powers, creating an irreconcilable rift between them, as Nezha refuses to “worship” his abuser.

Nezha is seen as the “inferior brother” compared to his older brother Jinzha, and Nezha believes he is the reason for Mingzha’s death. Kitay notes that Nezha’s unquestioning support of Vaisra and Jinzha is about “pride” and family loyalty rather than “strategy.” The only time Nezha talks back to Vaisra is to argue that it is “horrific” when Vaisra wants to leave the southern Nikara to die. Despite this, Nezha supports the vision of Vaisra’s Republic. Rin’s refusal to conform to the Hesperians’ new rules for the country—combined with Nezha’s desire to prove himself and his fear of his own powers—leads to him betraying her.

Vaisra is the Warlord of Dragon Province and Nezha and Jinzha’s father. He wants to form a republic based on democratic principles with the military aid of the Hesperians, who played an indirect role in the First and Second Poppy Wars. Initially, Rin sees him as a benefactor and father figure. As the novel progresses and Vaisra’s manipulation and brutality grow more obvious, Rin begins to question his motivations and his vision.

Vaisra’s abusive manipulation of Rin begins immediately after they first meet, though she doesn’t recognize it then. When she begs for opium, he “slam[s] the back of his hand across her face” (99). Since Vaisra’s immediate goal is to get Rin off opium, she thinks he is hurting her for her benefit and that she needs someone who can “control” her. Vaisra alternates this abuse with praise. Rin confuses this form of weaponized praise with real love and care, and Vaisra uses this tactic to control her actions. Rin thinks that his praise “[feels] better than anything she’d smoked in months” (123), and she initially obeys him because she seeks his praise.

Vaisra’s manipulative tactics extend to the Nikara and the warlords. As Jinzha goes upriver, conquering villages, Vaisra gives civilians a supposed “vote” on whether they want to join the Republic. If they don’t vote yes, however, “[t]hey’ll die.” This false choice establishes coercion and intimidation as the foundation of his Republic. The southern warlords tell Rin that Vaisra is “an opportunist building his throne with Nikara blood” (508). After the war, he becomes a “puppet Emperor” for Hesperia. He imprisons Rin and kills her Cike members, the southern Warlords, and the southern war refugees who fled to Arlong for shelter. This betrayal makes Rin realize that the real war will be between the “privileged aristocracy” of the north and the “stark poverty” of the south (653), which will be taken up in The Burning God.

Venka is Rin’s ally. She is a northern noblewoman from Sinegard, a former Sinegard Military Academy student, and a childhood friend of Kitay and Nezha. In The Poppy War, she was forced into involuntary sex work by Mugenese soldiers. She was raped and abused by many men, resulting in a permanent disability in her arms. Venka’s personality is “angry, impatient, abrasive” (198). Rather than silencing the trauma she experienced, Venka gives “voice to the raw anger that everyone else seem[s] to have patched over” (198). Rin enjoys Venka’s company for this reason.

Venka argues with her father, who would prefer if she was a “lifeless corpse” rather than a living rape survivor who, in his words, has lost her “dignity.” When the Republic won’t let Venka fight due to her disability, she designs a mounted crossbow that she can easily control. Even after this, Nezha won’t let Venka fight alongside them. Venka says that he is treating her as if “once you’re raped you can’t be a soldier” (250). This shows that the real reason the Republican army won’t allow her to join—they hold the fact that she was raped against her.

However, Rin supports Venka and recruits her into the Cike to be her “air support.” Rin’s acceptance wins her Venka’s eternal support, and  Venka decides to join Rin and Kitay in their defection from the Republic.

Chaghan is the Cike’s second in command. During the throes of Rin’s substance use disorder, Chaghan takes charge. Though he and Rin are allies, they have an antagonistic relationship and often argue about Altan. Chaghan and Rin both disparage the other for their feelings toward Altan, and they each blame the other for his death. This prevents them from fully realizing that they are both survivors of Altan’s abuse.

Though Chaghan’s physical body is that of a “skeletal waif,” his spiritual body emanates “raw power” (159). Rin does not understand his power, as he does not call down gods, but somehow works within “the center of her mind” (159). Only later will Rin find out this is because Chaghan and his twin, Qara, are Naimads, a steppe clan who do not engage with the gods as Nikara shamans do.

Qara is a quiet shaman who prefers to communicate with animals rather than people. While Chaghan’s personality is “overbearing,” Rin has “never heard [Qara] express an opinion that wasn’t her brother’s” (426). Qara educates Rin on the nature of the anchor bond since she shares one with Chaghan, and she reassures Rin that she and Kitay can handle it.

When Rin’s team is captured by the Ketreyids, Chaghan and Qara’s true “experiment” is revealed: In penance for their mother Kalagan’s creation of the Cike, they were tasked with spying for the Ketreyids and culling any members who lost control of their powers. Chaghan and Qara are hated by the Ketreyids and bound only by their relation to the Sorqan Sira. In the coup that follows, Qara takes the bullet intended for Chaghan. Qara’s last wish is to dissolve their anchor bond so Chaghan can continue living. She tells him that his role in the future of the world is “[t]oo important” for him to die, foreshadowing his appearance in The Burning God.

Sister Petra is a leader in the Hesperians’ missionary group, the Gray Company. Her gray eyes and pale skin are uncanny to Rin, who has never seen a white person before. Her actions help explain the theme of The Impact of Religion on Conflict and Conquest, especially how Hesperian Makerism is furnished by scientific racism and provides false justification for violent colonialism. Petra does medical experimentation on Rin to try and find out how Rin’s powers work. Notably, she never accepts Rin’s own accounts of how her power works but wants to find answers that validate her Makerist religion.

Petra is a compelling speaker. She compares the world to a timepiece that only works because it has a maker, implying that the world works because it has a “Divine Architect.” Rin is tempted by the simplicity of believing that an agent called “Chaos” is responsible for her power and pain because that means she might one day be able to be free of it.