Michael Anthony Palgrave

Who he was. A destitute early-20th-century English aristocrat (1930s by internal evidence: H. G. Wells, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Aleister Crowley, Madame Blavatsky), sickly, thin, gaunt, drinking cheap gin before noon in a manor that had largely ceased supporting him. Illness forced him out of university, the Army refused him on medical grounds, and his beloved Cecily left him for a more prosperous surgeon. He belonged to a clandestine occult society that conducted trance work at "thirteen and a half hours, local sidereal time" and believed humanity emigrated from Mars to Antarctica over a hundred thousand years ago. Voice: bitter, mystical, pedantic, lonely, resentful of ordinary life. Still a virgin at death. Unique knowledge: Latin, Shakespeare, early-20th-century English occult lore, mystical-scientific theories, Terran cultural ephemera.

Book 13 (Footwizard): First utility. "It was a vivid memory of Palgrave, the mystic, who had given me the idea" of showing the Kilnusk an extra tablet-displayed design (an escalator mechanism) that lets the Anghysbel evacuees move through the underground passages. Jointly cited with Andrews as the source.

Book 14.5 (Mad Mage): "Palgrave. Today I had the depressing Englishman in my head. That's rarely a good thing." Under his influence Minalan turns short and awkward with Alya, indifferent to the children, and retreats to his workshop to drink ("Tonight I will get drunk, because that is Palgrave's natural response to a stressful situation"). Utility: Palgrave's era had "started to be understood that time was far more complicated," which helps Minalan revise the snowstone-spell equations to include local sidereal time.

Book 16 (Preceptor): His critical moment. When the Vundel/Seamage delegation arrives and Minalan decides to bluff that he knows where the last Celestial Mother's Egg is, "I don't know which of the ancient memories whirling around in my head decided to exert their influence, perhaps the petty vindictiveness of Palgrave, the Englishman, but I saw room for a play I had been hesitant to make." The bluff forces the Vundel to the negotiating table and is one of the most consequential deceptions of the series.

Book 17 (Practical Adept): His headline contribution is the "Fly at once" ploy in Farise. Inspired by his fellow countryman Sir Arthur Conan Doyle: Minalan sends twenty-five notes to suspected Farisian collaborators of Count Cingaran, each reading "All is discovered! Fly at once! Signed, Your Friend." Of the twenty-five, six sail immediately, nineteen vanish by the second night, two fall ill, one commits suicide. Mavone calls it "the cheapest influence operation I've ever seen." Palgrave also recognizes Shakespeare references when Minalan names Ariel (his CI3), supplies the Latin translation of "We Watch The World" on Master Bartharis's window legend ("Palgrave's memory assured me, and he'd leaned the ancient language in his youth"), and is "useless" during Paranchek engagements.