Assassin's Apprentice

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death, child abuse, and suicidal ideation.

Fitz is the protagonist, hero, and narrator of the novel. We see the entire novel through his first-person perspective—sometimes affected by his bonded animals, Nosy or Smithy—and are invited into his complex inner life. Fitz was born outside of marriage to Prince Chivalry, the heir to the throne before Fitz’s discovery and Chivalry’s subsequent abdication; while Chivalry is never part of the narrative directly, he haunts Fitz in many ways. Fitz’s behavior is held to Chivalry’s standard without regard for Fitz’s nature or feelings, and Fitz’s dark-haired appearance is repeatedly said to resemble Chivalry to an almost eerie degree. 

Fitz is desperately lonely, contemplative, and analytical, with a deep understanding of human wants and needs despite his disconnect from others, the result of the trauma and repression of his childhood. He transforms throughout the book from a confused six-year-old, abandoned and functionally parentless, into a determined 16-year-old trying to navigate his uncertain place in the world. While the first novel alone does not answer Fitz’s intense questions about his identity and value, the relationships he builds and the character he develops through those relationships—for better or for worse—set him on the path to more intense self-discovery in later works in the series.