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Dramatis Personae: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
From Latin, "the masks of the drama." A list of characters at the beginning or at the end of a work of fiction.
This stemmed from the necessity of casting a play, and has somehow drifted into fiction from there; the end credits roll of a movie or TV show evolved from this practice too. Usually lists them by name with a short description, most often relaying who is related to whom. In works which fit into a large continuity with [[Loads and Loads of Characters]] (such as comic books), this helps the reader keep up with the characters involved in the work.
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* [[Mahou Sensei Negima]] essentially starts off with one in the form of the class roster, introducing all of the girls in Negi's class. As the manga goes on, it also has brief character introductions at the beginning of each chapter.
* Every volume of [[Battle Royale]] opens with a page showing the full class roster, with the faces of the dead marked off. The list of names not greyed out gets very short, very quickly. This is largely necessary due to the [[Loads and Loads of Characters]], it can be hard to keep up.
* ''[[Durarara!!]]'' and ''[[Baccano!]]'' both throw a list of the characters over the opening. {{spoiler|They also play around with this a bit - certain important characters are shown, but the names are withheld.}} Baccano {{spoiler|gives [[Axe Crazy|Claire]] [[Crazy Awesome|Stanfield]] [[Badass Nickname|aka]] [[Heroic Sociopath|The]] [[Shrouded in Myth|Rail]] [[The Dreaded|Tracer]] [[I Have Many Names|aka]] [[Psycho for Hire|Vino]] [[Two Aliases One Character|aka]] [[Sacrificial Lamb|The]] [[Beware the Nice Ones|Young Conductor]] the same amount of screen time as every other character, but withholds his name and successfully tricks the audience into assuming he's just an extra.}} Something similar is true for ''Durarara'''s first opening, which {{spoiler|withholds the name of another character, but this time it clearly shows that the character will be important - it does the same freeze frame that the other characters get, but leaves out the name. This is promptly subject to [[Fridge Brilliance]] followed by a [[Subverted Trope|subversion]]: At first we think her name isn't listed because it's already been shown for another character, then we realize that isn't actually true. The second opening shows her actual name.}}
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* ''[[X-Men (Comic Book)|X-Men]]'' occasionally did this during the 70s and 80s as their cast of characters expanded. Same for ''[[The Avengers (Comic Book)|The Avengers]]''.
** In fact, a variation on this was used in every Marvel comic published for a while in the late 90s.
** During the 1980s, when Marvel placed a picture of a character in a box in the upper left-hand corner of the cover (Different, but issue-specific pics of Spider-Man, for example, or the faces of each member of the X-Men), that box on an ''[[Alpha Flight]]'' cover only pictured the characters appearing in that issue (Most of the John Byrne issues, especially No.s 1-11, focused on specific characters).
** Modern Marvel comics tend to open with a page giving a brief text recap of the comic's premise and the story to this point, along with portraits of the major characters involved.
* The [[Justice League of America]] and [[Justice Society of America]] have also had Roll Calls, similar to the Legion version. In the Silver Age, the League was more likely to have each character's title appear next to them after they'd separated into two-person teams (which they did a lot). At least one book during the Ligntning Saga (a JLA/JSA crossover which reintroduced the pre-Zero Hour Legion) gave all three teams a separate roll call.
* The Archie-published [[Sonic the Hedgehog (comics)|Sonic the Hedgehog]] comics generally do a quick list of all the characters who feature in each particular issue.
* After finishing a story, the Belgian/Dutch daily newspaper comic [[Suske en Wiske]] announces the following story with a short strip mentioning the main characters - which always includes the famous five (Suske, Wiske, Aunt Sidonia, Lambik and Jerom), and occasionally includes a few more important extras, though that is not always so. It also gives a short indication about the story to come, though it omits any twists and turns.
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* ''[[The Royal Tenenbaums]]'' combines this with an [[Age Cut]]: the prologue shows the Tenenbaum siblings as children, and the Dramatis Personae credits introduce the actors playing them as adults.
* In ''[[Snatch]]'' a montage of short vignettes introduces each character, with freeze frames giving their names. The whole thing is set to Klint's "Diamond."
* All of the ''[[Pusher]]'' films begin with a montage of the major characters and their names, set to a pounding rock beat. Each character is harshly lit from above as they glare at the camera.
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* Her more theatrically minded contemporary Ngaio Marsh did this with ''every'' novel.
* Novels by Erle Stanley Gardner (aka A. A. Fair).
* Harry Turtledove's ''Into the Darkness''.
** Most of Harry Turtledove's work. This is actually ''necessary'', because Turtledove likes to write large novels with several intertwining plotlines seen from the viewpoint of different characters. So the book will have, say, six major protagonists. And each of them has several family members or comrades-in-arms. Plus a lot of throwaway characters that you only see once. The [[Dramatis Personae]] list runs for pages.
* Lindsey Davis's [[Marcus Didius Falco]] novels. She says she does it because Roman names follow such similar patterns that she gets confused herself.
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* When the number of characters grew very large, the ''[[Left Behind]]'' novels began inserting a dramatis personae, divided handily into [[Designated Hero|Good]], Undecided, and [[Designated Villain|Bad]], at the beginning of each book.
* K.P. Bath's ''Escape From Castle Cant'' has this at the beginning, most likely because it's a sequel with ''lots'' of backstory.
* ''[[Malazan Book of the Fallen]]'' and its related side stories by Steven Erikson and Ian Cameron Esslemont each open with a Dramatis Personae (explicitly labelled as such). In the later books of the series, [[Loads and Loads of Characters|these can stretch over many pages]].
* Given the [[Loads and Loads of Characters]] in George RR Martin's ''[[A Song of Ice and Fire]]'', the epic Dramatis Personae at the end of each volume is very helpful.
* [[Tad Williams]]' ''[[Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn]]'' has this for all its many, many characters from main protagonist to minor support who's been mentioned in two sentences.
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* ''[[Warrior Cats]]'' by Erin Hunter lists all the clan cats, and some cats outside the clans at the beginning of each book.
** Sometimes including characters that never appear. Ever.
** The character list is also a common source of small continuity errors. The greatest victims of these errors are the unfortunate extras that appear only on the list and thus have their entire lives <s>mangled</s> played out on the list. Some don't age, others live for far too long, others have physical descriptions that change constantly, some go through [[Gender Bender|genderbenders]], dead [[Red Shirts]] mysteriously come back to life...
* Rather bizarrely, and for reasons unknown, [[Dashiell Hammett]]'s hardboiled noir ''The Glass Key'' does this.
* ''The Case of the Seven of Calvary'' by Anthony Boucher, a mystery novel with a tendency to [[Lampshade Hanging|hang lampshades]] on the then-current mystery novel tropes, begins with a list of the dramatis personae that explicitly divides the characters into 'people to whom you need to pay attention if you're trying to solve the mystery' and 'people who can be safely ignored'.
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* ''The Colonel's Bequest'', being constructed as a stage play, introduces the characters this way.
* ''[[The Warriors (video game)|The Warriors]]'' introduces characters and gangs with a freeze-frame featuring their name.
* A tait of Suda51 is to introduce characters this way. One of the most memorable is ''[[
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