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People
- Bae Ryeon 裴蓮
- Ten. A captive scribe in the prince’s library.
- Bae Gu 裴璆
- Her father. Balhae’s most famous envoy to Japan.
- Yelü Bei, the prince
- King of Dongdan (his title is the Human King); eldest son of the late Khitan emperor. Paints horses.
- Ruan 阮
- The prince’s son. Ten. Also called the young lord, and once, Wuyu.
- The Emperor
- Deguang, the prince’s younger brother, chosen over him in 927. In this book the Emperor means him unless another is named.
- The old empress
- The prince’s mother, the Empress Dowager. She cut off her own hand at her husband’s funeral.
- Lady Xiao
- The prince’s Khitan wife; Ruan’s mother.
- Lady Gao
- The prince’s Balhae-born favourite.
- Yelü Yuzhi
- Chief minister of Dongdan. Keeps very good lists.
- Hulan 忽蘭
- Lady Gao’s Khitan maid. Fifteen.
- Choe Ung
- A Silla sea merchant.
- Fujiwara no Masakazu
- A Japanese court official sent to examine the envoy.
Places and peoples
- Balhae 渤海
- A kingdom (698–926) in what is now north-east China, northern Korea and the Russian Far East; heir to Goguryeo. Its old families spoke “the speech of the capital”; most of its people were Malgal and spoke Malgal.
- The Khitan
- A steppe people. Their empire conquered Balhae in 926.
- Dongdan 東丹
- “Eastern Khitan”: what the Khitan renamed conquered Balhae, with the prince as its king.
- Sanggyeong
- Balhae’s capital, taken by the Khitan in 926.
- Dongping
- Dongdan’s new capital, east of the Liao River (today’s Liaoyang).
- Tango
- A province on Japan’s north coast, where Balhae’s ships came in.
- The Tang
- The court at Luoyang, which calls itself Tang; historians call it the Later Tang.
- Silla and Goryeo
- Kingdoms of the Korean peninsula to the south. Silla is old and failing; Goryeo is new and rising.