The following is a list of characters from Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy.
Lyra Belacqua, who later acquires the surname Silvertongue given to her by Iorek Byrnison, is a young girl who inhabits a universe parallel to our own. She is the daughter of Lord Asriel and Marisa Coulter. Brought up in the cloistered world of Jordan College, Oxford, she finds herself embroiled in a cosmic war between angels and a pseudo-deity called The Authority when she prevents Lord Asriel's death and allows him to further his studies on Dust. She is able to read the Alethiometer (an instrument of divination), and is known to the witches as "Eve, the mother of all", who will eventually "bring about the end of destiny". In the end, Lyra is forced to separate from Will Parry (her beloved and bearer of the Subtle Knife), returning to her own world in order to, in her father's footsteps, build the 'Republic of Heaven'. Lyra's dæmon, Pantalaimon, changes shape throughout the majority of the trilogy, but eventually settles as a pine marten.
In the unabridged audiobooks, Lyra is voiced by Joanna Wyatt, and in the BBC Radio dramatisation she is voiced by Lulu Popplewell. In the 2008 movie adaption, she is played by Dakota Blue Richards.
Will Parry is the son of John Parry, an explorer, and of Elaine Parry, a woman who suffers from mental problems including obsessive-compulsive disorder and paranoid schizophrenia. Will does not remember his father, a former Royal Marine, who has not been heard of since he vanished on an expedition to the Arctic when Will was an infant, and who we later learn has wandered into another world and is unable to find his way back. Will becomes the companion of, and ultimately falls in love with, Lyra Belacqua, and also becomes the bearer of the Subtle Knife by winning a fight, in which he loses two fingers on his left hand. At the end of the third book, he must leave Lyra Belacqua and live entirely in his own world, where he is taken care of by Mary Malone and his cat dæmon, Kirjava (which means mottled in Finnish).