One of the city’s most beloved and reviled heroes, Blackjack is more of a symbol than anything else—a legendary masked hero who has fought for Korvosa’s downtrodden for hundreds of years.

After his long absence from the public stage, the people of Korvosa had been pleading for their hero to deliver them from the troubled times that had followed King Eodred II’s death.

But it was not until the execution of the King’s alleged murderer, the poor painter Trinia Sabor, that he chose to return, snatched her from the axeman’s block, and disappeared with her.

His reasons remain obscure, though it is clear that he objects to the new monarch, Queen Ileosa Arabasti, claiming that true justice can only be gained if she abdicates (or is made to do so).

When Blackjack was fighting the axeman over Trinia, he had almost been struck down if an arrow shot by Sav had not alerted him to the attacker behind him.