Gideon and the Cavs:
a shallow and uncited characterization compare/contrast that I might expand on later when I have more time and energy. this much alone has already taken me multiple hours, so...
Marta Dyas: The soldier, the perfect cav, the woman Gideon could never be. The woman Aiglamene could have been proud of without reservation. Similar to Gideon, she masks her personality behind the uniform of her house. Unlike Gideon, she is willing and able to maintain this mask longterm. Like Gideon, she dies Badly and leaves her necromancer devastated.
Naberius Tern: The twisted mirror-self, the perfect tool, born to be used for a Higher Purpose and then discarded. Like Gideon, he's lonely, socially inept, and sword-obsessed. Unlike Gideon, he has no sense of humor and can't acknowledge his own faults. Like Gideon, he is stabbed through the heart so that his necromancer can ascend as a lyctor. (I have written extensively on Babs' additional parallels with Gideon. I shan't rehash it all here. Check his tag on my blog if you want to know more [and/or if you want to point and laugh at me over the affliction I suffer])
Jeannemary Chatur: The kid Gideon would have wanted to be, the kid who wants to be Gideon. She is the impetus for Gideon starting to understand that the entire empire is fucked up, if a kid as young as Jeanne could be sent to war. Her reaction to Isaac's death plants the seeds of horror in Gideon's mind at the idea of seeing her own necromancer killed before her.
Magnus Quinn: The first person (besides Teacher) to be friendly to Gideon, like, Ever. Her introduction to the concept that a cav could be romantically involved with their necro, and also to the fact that being a "good cavalier" can be about more than just one's ability with the rapier. He, like Gideon, thinks puns are automatically funny. Unlike Gideon, he is very good at weaponizing jokes and self-deprecation to get people to respond exactly how he wants them to. (I could see Gideon learning this skill with time).
Camilla Hect: In many ways the cav most similar to Gideon (from a materially poor house, not trained as a duelist, not accustomed to using a rapier but pretty damned skilled with it anyway, not afraid to fight dirty, status as "a real cav" called into question), while in other ways she is the most dissimilar (unconditional trust in her necromancer, has perhaps the narrowest necro-cav power-differential present at Canaan House [while demonstrating that it is impossible to achieve full equality in this relationship under existing power structures], seemingly content with her positioning in life). We are yet to see how her merger with Pal will go on to affect Gideon's character arc, but I am Sure that it Will.
Protesilaus Ebdoma: Here's the thing. The real Protesilaus is Ortus' foil, not Gideon's. HOWEVER, if you squint, there's something to be gleaned of Gideon's circumstances and the societal place of The Cavalier in the beguiling corpse. The Pro-construct is reflective of a cav's loss of bodily autonomy, the threat manifest of Crux reclaiming Gideon's bones to work the snowleek fields, the foreshadowing of her Coming Back Wrong.
Colum Asht: If Babs is Gideon's twisted mirror, Colum is her photo-negative. Where Gideon was never supposed to be a cav and only wound up as one because no one else was capable, Colum was raised knowing he had a 1/3 chance of being a cavalier primary, and wouldn't find out that it would be him until his late teens or early twenties. His relationship with his necromancer seems to have started out with mutual respect, but deteriorated as he was stripped of humanity--very much the opposite of Gideon's relationship arc with Harrow over the first book. Colum, it initially appears, has been trained into very much the sort of person that the Ninth House would have wanted Gideon to be. Like Gideon, he favors a heavier sword. Like Gideon, he has had to tolerate a degree of suffering that none of the other cavs present have likely ever faced. Unlike Gideon, he is not nigh-on indestructible, and it is clearly having an effect on his physical condition, to say nothing of his neurological or mental health. Like Gideon, he tries to assert his bodily autonomy in the moments before his death. Unlike Gideon, he is fully denied that agency.
Ortus Nigenad: This one's fairly obvious as he was Gideon's main point of comparison as a cav for the first section of the book. He is the only cav we meet who seems to have no desire at all to play the role he's been given. Though his presence in GtN is fleeting, that attitude influences Gideon's own perception of what it is to be a cav, particularly a Ninth cav, and is likely responsible for much of her impulse to rebel against that image.
Bonus: Pyrrha Dve: Missed potential as mentor-figure for Gideon as lyctor cav in body-timeshare situation. Could have been the Mom That Stepped Up. Alas.
