The best kind of ancillary character?

What’s the best kind of ancillary female character? Those that get on with their lives off the page. While the hero’s busy saving the world, getting thrown into dungeons, beaten up and starved, they don’t sit around mooning for him. They pick themselves up, deal with the consequences of the unplanned pregnancy and move on. Robin Hobb’s Molly is a classic from her Assassins trilogy. She rises from a battered beginning, marries another man whom she grows to love, creates her own business and has a large family. While the books only touch on her life without Fitz, they are enough to see the strong, capable and feisty woman that’s she’s grown into and yet she can still retain her soft spot for him. What isn’t there to love?