Meet the Main Characters.

Get to know the main characters of Where Roses Die, and a special glimpse of their visuals.

Aliel Han [韩阿良Hán Āliáng]

  • Age: 26

  • Heritage: Chinese

  • Languages: Mandarin, Spanish

  • Occupation: Restaurant worker; hopes to continue his family’s culinary legacy

  • Personality: Gentle, observant, hardworking, reserved, deeply loyal

  • Goal: To build a peaceful life of his own and preserve the heritage his family carried with them from China

Aliel Han has learned that survival sometimes means making himself less noticeable. His family comes from a restaurant background in China, and food remains one of his strongest connections to home, family, and cultural memory. But his life in Mexico has also been marked by racial violence. Having survived the 1911 Torreón Massacre when he was young, Aliel carries memories of anti-Chinese hatred that have made him cautious without extinguishing his capacity for tenderness. Early in the novel, this restraint is reflected even in his appearance: he frequently wears the simple shirts, waistcoats, and Western-style clothing common around him, adapting outwardly to Mexican society while retaining his Chinese identity privately. His greatest desire is not wealth or status, but permanence—a home, meaningful work, and a future with Areli.

That fragile sense of security is destroyed when Esteban and his men ambush Aliel and leave him for dead. Instead of dying, Aliel awakens transformed into a vampire and spends the following seven months isolated, traumatized, and terrified of what his new hunger could make him capable of doing. When he eventually returns, the physical transformation accompanies an internal one. His crimson eyes and supernatural features make hiding impossible, while his elegant black-and-gold changshan represents something more deliberate: Aliel is no longer as willing to diminish himself for the comfort of others. His vampirism does not erase the gentle man he was, but grief, rage, and survival have hardened him. He returns stronger and more openly rooted in his culture—yet still struggling to believe that the man he has become deserves the life and love he once dreamed of.

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Areli Marquez

  • Age: 25

  • Heritage: Mexican

  • Faith: Catholic

  • Occupation: Helps at her uncle’s coffee and pan dulce bakery

  • Personality: Warm, inquisitive, romantic, compassionate, quietly stubborn

  • Goal: To own a bakery and build a life chosen for herself rather than one dictated by her family

Areli Márquez was raised within the comfort of a prosperous hacienda family, but privilege has never meant freedom. Her mother is emotionally and physically abusive, her father values family reputation and obedience, and her brother Rafael receives freedoms that Areli is denied simply because he is a man. Her refuge is her paternal uncle’s bakery, where she discovers both her love of baking and an alternative vision of adulthood: a life built around honest work, community, faith, and hospitality rather than social advancement. Areli dreams of opening a bakery of her own, and her relationship with Aliel strengthens that dream. Curious about his culture rather than threatened by it, she becomes increasingly willing to question the prejudices and expectations she was raised around.

Aliel’s disappearance profoundly changes her. After believing for seven months that the man she intended to marry abandoned her without explanation, Areli becomes more guarded and increasingly vulnerable to her family’s pressure to accept Esteban as the sensible choice for her future. Her faith also becomes more dangerous as the Cristero conflict intensifies; the veiled woman slipping through the rain to attend a secret Mass is the same woman who once stood safely behind a bakery counter. Areli’s arc is therefore not about becoming fearless. It is about learning to act while afraid. As the truths surrounding Aliel, Esteban, her family, and her country begin unraveling, the obedient daughter expected to accept the life chosen for her gradually becomes a woman prepared to decide what—and whom—she is willing to risk everything for.

Esteban Ricardo Barrientos

  • Age: 27

  • Heritage: Mexican

  • Status: Wealthy member of Jalisco society

  • Occupation: Connected to his family’s hacienda and business interests

  • Personality: Charismatic, proud, calculating, possessive, volatile beneath a polished exterior

  • Goal: To secure the status, marriage, and future he believes are rightfully his

Esteban Barrientos has been raised to understand the world through hierarchy: wealth, family name, race, and social standing determine where a person belongs. Handsome, affluent, and socially polished, he appears to be precisely the kind of man the Márquez family would want for their daughter. Esteban knows how to perform that role well. Beneath his charm, however, lies profound entitlement and prejudice. He is accustomed to being respected and obeyed, making Areli’s rejection of him—and particularly her love for a Chinese immigrant—both a romantic humiliation and an affront to the social order Esteban believes should favor men like himself. Where Aliel dreams of earning a future through work and Areli dreams of choosing one for herself, Esteban begins the story believing his future is something he is entitled to possess.

That entitlement ultimately becomes violence. Esteban’s role in the attack that leaves Aliel for dead exposes the brutality beneath his cultivated appearance, but Aliel’s disappearance initially allows Esteban to continue presenting himself as respectable. His greatest danger is therefore not that he looks monstrous; it is that he does not. He can return to the hacienda, straighten his suit, and remain the wealthy gentleman society recognizes while another man bears the physical consequences of his cruelty. Yet Esteban is not static. His obsession with controlling Areli, his hatred of Aliel, and the increasingly unstable world surrounding them gradually strip away that polished façade. As Aliel becomes outwardly monstrous while fighting to preserve his humanity, Esteban moves in the opposite direction: remaining outwardly human while revealing how monstrous an ordinary man can choose to become.