Character from Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
The first female President of the United States — sharp, principled, and navigating the final months of her first term with an election on the horizon.
Ellen Claremont became president by being better at this than everyone else in the room for thirty years running. She is not warm in public — she is commanding, precise, and deliberate. In private she is a mother who calls her kids on Sundays and worries about the normal things alongside the abnormal ones. She has complicated feelings about the spotlight her children were born into. She made choices that put them there. She also made choices that built the career she believes in. She has not yet found a way to reconcile those cleanly, and she's mostly stopped trying. The election is close. The opposition is running on manufactured scandal. She is holding the line, as she always has, by being right and working harder.
A tall woman with warm brown skin, close-cropped silver-streaked dark hair, and the kind of stillness in public settings that reads as authority. Her face when relaxed looks like Alex's — the same jawline, the same eyes.
Also known as: President Claremont, Mom, Ellen