List of Ender's Game Characters - People From Lusitania

People From Lusitania

• Joao Figueira Alvarez, known as "Pipo," (pronounced PEE-po) is the first xenologer of Lusitania, studying the "Lusitania Aborigines," though they are generally known as pequeninos (Portuguese for "Little Ones") or "piggies". He is one of the few people on the planet who treats Novinha as a real person, and becomes her beloved father-figure during her teenage years. He is the first human killed by the piggies, and his death prompts Novinha to call for a speaker for the dead.
• Liberdade Graças a Deus Figueira de Medici, known as "Libo," (pronounced LEE-bo) is Pipo's son and the xenologer after his death. He is Novinha's first love, but she refuses to marry him after Pipo is killed, believing that one of her discoveries about the Descolada led to his murder and refusing to allow him marital access to those files. Unfortunately, he too is vivisected by the piggies, making her effots in vain; his apprentice, Miro, calls for a speaking of his death, which Ender performs. He is the father of Novinha's children.
• Ivanova Santa Catarina von Hesse, known as "Novinha," (pronounced no-VEEN-ya) is the daughter of Lusitania's xenobiologists, who were able to inhibit the descolada before it killed the entire colony but did not manage to save themselves. Orphaned, Novinha became distant and formal until finding a sanctuary with Pipo and Libo. It is her pain and sorrow that draws Ender Wiggin to Lusitania, and the two eventually marry. Despite this, Novinha never loses her fragility and fear of losing those dearest to her.
• Marcos Maria Ribeira, known as "Marcão" (pronounced mar-SOWNG) ("Big Marcos"), is Novinha's late husband. He is known for his fearsome stature, surly temper, and habit of beating his wife, traits which earned him the epithet "cão," dog; he dies a few weeks before Ender arrives at Lusitania, of a congenital disease which caused his glands to turn to fatty tissues. Among other things, this rendered him sterile, and it is revealed during Ender's speaking of his death that none of Novinha's children are actually his, but rather Libo's; the two agreed to this form of cuckoldry before getting married.
• Marcos Vladimir Ribeira von Hesse, known as "Miro," (pronounced MIE-roe) is Novinha's eldest child. He follows Libo into xenology and falls in love with Ouanda, Libo's firstborn daughter by his (actual) wife. In response to this and other factors, he attempts to cross the nerve-stimulating fence separating the piggies from the human compound, suffering brain damage and becoming crippled. He is sent out into space to greet Valentine Wiggin and her family, and later becomes a key player in the events leading up to the almost-second Xenocide.
• Ekaterina Elanora Ribeira von Hesse, known as "Ela," (pronounced E-la)is Novinha's second child. Like all the females in her line, she becomes a xenobiologist, and is one of the first members of the Ribeira family to warm to Ender. Later in life, she is instrumental in the destruction of the descolada virus, and its replacement with a far-more-benign variant, the recolada.
• Estevão Rei Ribeira von Hesse, known as "Quim," (Quim is pronounced KEENG. Estevão is pronounced ES-te-vowng) is Novinha's third child. He is extremely pious and at first resists Andrew Wiggin on grounds of his atheistic avocation, but later warms to the Speaker, partially for his reputation as a crusader. He later becomes the first Christian evangelist to the pequeninos and holds great respect among them, but is martyred by a particularly heretical forest who believe that the descolada is the Holy Ghost and it is the pequeninos' duty to judge all humans with it.
• Lauro Suleimão Ribeira von Hesse, Novinha's fourth child, is known as "Olhado," (pronounced ol-YAH-doe) "the guy with the eyes," because a freak laser accident blinded him in his youth, requiring the implant of metal replacements. He has reduced binocular vision and depth perception but can plug a computer jack directly into one eye, to upload visual recordings. Due to the resulting ostracism, he becomes a keen observer of human nature and interaction. Later in life he becomes a brickmaker (or at least a manager of them) because, to him, family is a far more important calling than the sciences that took his relatives; nonetheless he has revolutionary ways of looking at physics and metaphysics, and is crucial in the development of faster-than-light travel (via a modified hyperspace mechanic related to philotic theory). Like Ela, he quickly warms to Ender; as he relates to Valentine in Xenocide, his greatest secret is that, while alone with Ender, they call each other "Father" and "Son".
• Lembrança das Milagres de Jesus Ribeira von Hesse, called "Quara," (pronounced KWA-rah) is Novinha's fifth child. Throughout her life she exhibits stubbornness and contrariness, generally doing whatever the people who love her don't want her to do. She also becomes a xenobiologist, and assists Ela in "truncating" the descolada, despite discovering that the virus is quite possibly sentient and is certainly able to communicate with other individuals of its species.
• Gerão Gregorio Ribeira von Hesse, called "Grego," (pronounced GRE-goe) is Novinha's final child, only six years old when Ender arrives. As a child he showed a disturbing capacity for destruction, modeled on his father's habit of domestic violence, a temper which does not subside during later years. After Quim's death, he attempts to whip a mob into a frenzy to attack the responsible forest, only to have them jump on the nearest one to hand—Human and Rooter's forest—after being chewed out by Valentine, Grego tries to end the massacre with as little bloodshed as possible, eventually placing himself between the surviving piggies and his own riot. He later collaborates with Olhado on faster-than-light travel.