The Stolen Queen

Annie is an important secondary character in the novel. While she sometimes fulfills the role of sidekick in Charlotte’s quest to solve the theft of the Cerulean Queen, Annie also has her distinct character arc and development, making her a dynamic character. Significant sections of the novel are also narrated from her point of view. At the beginning of the novel, Annie is a dissatisfied young woman who is not living up to her potential. She is intelligent and ambitious, but she is held back from pursuing her dreams because of her toxic relationship with her mother, Joyce. Joyce puts Annie in a position of responsibility as a parentified child and subtly undermines Annie’s confidence and self-worth with perpetual criticism. Because of her relationship with her mother, Annie is often unsure and self-critical.

Annie’s character begins to experience growth when she encounters Diana Vreeland and becomes curious about the Met Gala. The glamorous world of high-end fashion is far from anything Annie has experienced, but she is immediately intrigued. Annie displays her tendency to take risks and sometimes behaves impulsively when she decides to pursue a job with Diana; she continues this tendency as she becomes increasingly enmeshed in Charlotte’s attempts to solve the mystery of the gold collar necklace and the stolen statue. Annie becomes helpful because she is brave and astute and notices small details. Time after time, Annie picks up on clues either at the same time or even before Charlotte does. Annie is also staunchly loyal and bolsters Charlotte’s self-confidence. Because Annie is much younger than Charlotte, she brings indefatigable energy and optimism to their quest.

By working alongside Charlotte, Annie gains a mentor and surrogate maternal figure. Unlike Joyce, Charlotte models what a confident and self-reliant woman can achieve. Because of this relationship, Annie is exposed to new experiences, such as traveling to a foreign country for the first time. By the end of the novel, Annie has regained her job working with Diana and established a lifelong friendship with Charlotte. With these new presences in her life, she can look forward to an exciting future and begin to chart her own course rather than respond to pressure from others.

Henry is a British archaeologist who works alongside Charlotte on an excavation in 1936; at that time, he is in his early twenties. He and Charlotte fall in love, conceive a child, and get married, but he vanishes from her life after the shipwreck and is presumed dead. Henry is only present in the narrative in the retrospective portion recounting Charlotte’s life in Egypt and toward the end of the novel when he reunites with her and explains what has happened in the decades that they have been apart. Nonetheless, Henry is a major part of the plot because his actions set in motion significant inciting events, and he contributes to the conclusion by finally narrating his version of events.

Henry is initially sensitive and caring toward Charlotte, but he falls prey to expectations around masculinity and financial stability, which leave him vulnerable. Henry is early in his career when he and Charlotte marry, and he worries about his ability to provide for her and their child even though Charlotte has hopes of pursuing her career. These insecurities make him easy prey when Leon asks for help smuggling artifacts (like the gold collar) out of Egypt in exchange for a cut of the profits. He later explains his motivations by saying, “I was desperate to make something of myself, prove to you and your parents that I was worthy of you” (317). Henry does try to locate Charlotte after the shipwreck, and as soon as he learns that she is alive, he rushes to New York. Davis shows Henry as a flawed but not irredeemable character who made a terrible mistake for which he was never able to atone.

Fatima is the woman who the narrative eventually reveals is Henry and Charlotte’s lost daughter, Layla. She first appears in the narrative at the Winter Garden Hotel in Cairo when Charlotte and Annie stay there and eventually reunites with Henry, Charlotte, and Annie when they come to meet her in the small Egyptian village where she grew up. Fatima is in her forties and is a beautiful woman “with narrow shoulders. Her eyes [a]re a golden brown” (327). Fatima was raised by Egyptian parents and an Egyptian grandmother, but she eventually ascertained that she was adopted and traced her birth parents. Despite Fatima having lived her entire life immersed in Egyptian culture, she is not ethnically Egyptian (her mother is American, and her father is British).

Fatima’s character is not developed extensively because her identity remains a mystery for most of the plot, but her ability to uncover her parents’ identities suggests that she is intelligent and resourceful. She is also caring and empathetic since she went to great lengths to protect her birth parents. She explains, “[M]y parents were still alive and I decided to forget about [finding my birth parents] so as not to cause them any hurt or get myself into trouble” (329). Finally, Fatima demonstrates her caring and open-hearted nature by agreeing to get to know Charlotte and Henry.