The king
The character with the most power in "The Lady, or The Tiger?" is the king. He is described by the story's narrator as being "semi-barbaric." He comes from a long line of barbaric ancestors but has also been educated by his Latin neighbors. This leads to certain contradictions in the way that he thinks. The narrator explains that the king's ideas, "though somewhat polished and sharpened by the progressiveness of distant Latin neighbors, were still large, florid, and untrammeled" (45). The king is prone to "exuberant fancy" and has so much power that he can often turn his "varied fancies into facts" (45). The king does not ask others for advice and instead merely clears his decisions with himself: "when he and himself agreed upon any thing, the thing was done" (45).
The king's character is "bland and genial" no matter what happens in the kingdom, even when things are going wrong (45). This is because even when things are off-course, nothing pleases the king so much as to make things right.
The king is fond of the idea of the public arena, an idea which has come from the kingdom's Latin neighbors. The king has built an enormous arena in his kingdom where he tries men who have been accused of a crime. Those men, who are important enough to interest the king, must choose between two doors: one of which hides a tiger that will eat him and the other of which hides a lady whom the man will immediately marry. The king's power is so absolute that it does not matter if the man is already married or does not want to marry the maiden. The king does not let anything come in the way of his form of justice: "the king allowed no such subordinate arrangements to interfere with his great scheme of retribution and reward" (46).
When the king finds out that his daughter is in love with a courtier, he sends his courtier to trial in the public arena. The king, as well as the rest of the kingdom, knows that the courtier has already committed the crime of loving the princess. However, the king will not let anything interfere with his tribunal, "in which he [takes] such great delight and satisfaction" (48).
The princess
The princess is the beautiful daughter of the king. Like her father, she is half barbaric and half civilized. She is like her father in character; the narrator notes that she has "a soul as fervent and imperious as [the king's] own" (47). The king loves his daughter more than any other person.
The princess falls in love with a member of the king's court who is below her in status. She sees very many good qualities in her lover and loves him "with an ardor that had enough of barbarism in it to make it exceedingly warm and strong" (47).
When the king finds out about their affair and sentences the princess's lover to trial, her character compels her to find out what is hiding behind each door in the arena. Her barbarism also draws her to watch the event herself: "her intense and fervid soul would not allow her to be absent on an occasion in which she was so terribly interested" (48). The princess has been consumed with thoughts about the trial and has not thought of anything else for several nights and several days.
Not only does the princess discover which door is hiding the lady and which the tiger, but she also finds out the identity of the lady whom her lover would be forced to marry. As it happens, the princess despises this lady: "with the intensity of the savage blood transmitted to her through long lines of wholly barbaric ancestors, she hated the woman who blushed and trembled behind that silent door" (49).
Ultimately, the princess's lover asks her with a glance which door he should choose. She subtly points towards the door on the right. The princess's choice—whether to send her lover to his death or to be forced to watch him marry another—is at the center of the psychological question posed by "The Lady, or The Tiger?" The princess has lost her lover forever, but will she allow another to have him? Knowing what you know about the princess, what do you think?
The courtier
The young man with whom the princess falls in love is a member of the king's court. He is handsome and brave. As the narrator of the story notes, his character is very similar to the love interest found in countless romances throughout history: "Among [the king's] courtiers was a young man of that fineness of blood and lowness of station common to the conventional heroes of romance who love royal maidens" (47).
This young man has done something that no other person in his kingdom has ever done before: he dared to love the princess. As a result of his crimes, he is sent to trial, where he must choose a door hiding a lady or a tiger. The king thinks this is an appropriate solution to the courtier's crime—even though the whole kingdom knows what he did—because either way the problem of the courtier will be solved. Either he will be killed, or he will be married to another.
The lady behind the door
When the princess's lover enters the arena, he must choose one of two doors. One of them hides a lady whom the princess knows and hates. She is "one of the fairest and loveliest of the damsels of the court" (49). Not only is she incredibly beautiful, but she has also demonstrated interest in the courtier in the past. The princess has "seen, or imagined that she had seen, this fair creature throwing glances of admiration" towards the courtier (49).
