Alexander

"'I said yes and, under the all-seeing gaze of those green eyes, became Alexander, as far from The Great as could be, the eternal shadow, the ever-ready pair of hands. I tried.'" "- Book Two, p. 303"

Appearance
"Thin and covered in freckles. Old battered jacket, patched-up homemade sweater, jeans fraying at the knees... Long, slender fingers gnawed raw". Long hair, partially obscuring his face. He grabs the sleeves of the sweaters from inside, to hide the fingers. His "heroic" nick is given to him by Tabaqui by way of contrast (just as Black is Black because of the blond hair).undefined

Before the House
Alexander is probably the character that has the most extensive backstory, told in his own voice. We can conclude that he lived for most of his childhood with his mother, as his father was probably very briefly, if ever married to her (he has another family, where the oldest child is very close in age to Alexander). Something happened to her so that Alexander was sent to live with the paternal grandfather, who concocted the scheme of using him as an "angel" for the cult he organized, promising the "devout" a chance of "sharing in the divine grace". Whether this was the result or the cause of Alexander starting to exhibit miraculous abilities is not clear (see the first entry of the Allusions section), but he became aware of them, and after many attempts to free himself from the constant abuse at the hands of the grandfather eventually performed what he dubbed "the first real miracle" - "a simple enchanted fish bone that’s done its job" of choking the old man to death during dinner. He was then taken to live with his father's new family, but couldn't conform to their way of life. The situation was exacerbated by the fact that the former cult members, after learning of his new whereabouts, were constantly accosting him any time he went outdoors, and the "miracles" continued - "things appearing and disappearing" in his presence, television sets exploding, and the cat "went mad" and ran away. As a result he was brought to the House, and placed with the Fourth.

On the Other Side
We only see him there once, in the roadside cafe on the border, where he appears to Sphinx as an emaciated angel with broken wings and in chains - offering Sphinx to chain him up for the sin of allowing his curse to kill Wolf. In the alternate version of the last talk between Sphinx and Blind from Mariam's archives (included in the enhanced Russian edition) it is clear that Blind lists him as one of the House's Striders ("another needs to run off atoning for some imaginary guilt or other") - a contention not supported by the canon, where we simply don't know where Alexander went on the night of graduation.

Quotes

 * " He likes honey and walnuts. Likes seltzer, stray dogs, striped awnings, round stones, worn-out clothes, no sugar in his coffee, telescopes, and a pillow on his face when he’s asleep. He doesn’t like when people look him in the eye or stare at his hands. Doesn’t like strong wind and flying cottonwood fluff, can’t stand white clothing, lemons, and the scent of chamomile. All of that would be obvious to anyone with a working pair of eyes." undefined - Sphinx

Allusions
Ray Bradbury is one of Mariam's favorite writers; one of his short story collections, "The Martian Chronicles", contains a story titled "The Martian (September 2005)". In it, an older couple in one of the human colonies on Mars, now almost completely devoid of its native inhabitants (who have died off earlier from an epidemic of chickenpox, brought by early expeditions from Earth, to which they had no immunity), imagine that they see their long-dead son Tom standing outside their house in the driving rain. The next morning they wake up to find him in the house, exactly the way he was many years ago; he behaves as if nothing happened, and the wife has seemingly forgotten that he was ever gone. The husband, however, has not; he confronts the boy and learns that he is a Martian whose empathic abilities allow him to appear to them in this shape. He only asks them not to doubt his presence. Later, the couple persuade him to go to the town with them for the fair, brushing aside his protestations. They get separated in the crowd; soon it becomes known that a daughter of another couple, thought missing, returned to them. The husband tries to convince her that she is actually Tom, and succeeds; the Martian again assumes his form, but as they run back to their boat to leave the town they are pursued by a mob, with everyone seeing different people and shouting their names. The Martian morphs before their eyes, trying to become all of them at once, until he finally falls down and dies from exhaustion.

Mariam gave Alexander the same ability to empathically respond to the people around him. He explicitly states that he "always morphed into whatever was needed". His House persona has been shaped in large part by Sphinx, and Wolf's demands would have created a different one, a "demon", "Alexander would be no more. Someone else would take his place". Later, when Blind visits him after his second suicide attempt, Alexander expects that Blind will "make a razor blade out of" him. He also tries to avoid contact with the Devout, admitting that "their presence changes" him.

- In "I Shall Wear Midnight", one of Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, witch Tiffany lifts pain with her hands from another character and collects it into a hot ball, of which she disposes - just as Alexander recalls how his "hands acted by themselves, quietly stealing their pain. I carried it, burning hot, and washed it off under the tap". Pratchett's book came out in 2010 (a year after the "House" first printing; Alexander's chapter has been actually written well before that).

Le Macédonien