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Character analysis

Jordie Brekker

in Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Jordie Brekker is Kaz Brekker's older brother, and while he never appears alive in the present timeline of the novel, he is arguably the most significant character in the whole story. A farm boy from Lij, Jordie brought a young Kaz (then known as Kaz Rietvelt) to Ketterdam with dreams of striking it rich. He was tricked by Pekka Rollins in a fraudulent investment scheme called Hertzoon, losing all the money the brothers had. When the Kerch Fever swept through the city, Jordie fell victim to the plague on Reaper's Barge, and Kaz—forced to use his brother's body as a flotation device to reach the shore—was left both physically and psychologically scarred for life.

Jordie serves as the novel's moral ghost: trusting, optimistic, and tragically naïve, he represents everything that Ketterdam destroys. His death creates a wound that never heals for Kaz, explaining the older Brekker's pathological hatred of Pekka Rollins, his compulsive need for control, his aversion to being touched, and his relentless drive to gain power so that no one can exploit him again. Every scheme Kaz undertakes, including the Ice Court heist, is shadowed by Jordie's memory—Kaz even frames the entire Dregs operation as part of a long quest for revenge against Rollins. Jordie's story is thus reflective: presented entirely through Kaz's fragmented flashbacks, he evolves from a minor backstory detail into the emotional core of the novel.

About this character

Form
Novel
Author
Leigh Bardugo
First published
2015

The person01–03

01·Who they are

Who is Jordie Brekker?

Jordie Brekker, born Jordie Rietvelt, is a farm boy from the rural town of Lij who appears in Six of Crows exclusively through Kaz's fragmented flashback memories. He is older than Kaz, serving as a surrogate parent after the deaths of their family, and embodies the earnest optimism of someone yet to learn that Ketterdam punishes hope as a weakness. He arrives in the city with genuine ambition and a brother to protect, but he is ultimately undone not by moral failure but by misplaced trust—qualities that establish him as one of the novel's most quietly devastating figures. Although he never speaks a single line in the present timeline, Jordie serves as the novel's moral baseline: a portrait of uncorrupted humanity against which all corrupt, hardened Ketterdam survivors are implicitly measured.

02·Arc & motivation

What is Jordie Brekker's arc and motivation?

Jordie's arc is brief, linear, and complete before the novel's first chapter begins. He travels from Lij to Ketterdam driven by the classic immigrant dream—enough money to build something lasting and sufficient security to keep his younger brother safe. His downfall arrives when Pekka Rollins engineers the Hertzoon investment fraud, a scheme designed to exploit men like Jordie: credulous, cash-poor, and hungry for legitimacy. The con strips the brothers of every kruge they possess. Destitute and unable to leave the city, they fall victim to Kerch Fever, and Jordie dies aboard Reaper's Barge—the plague ship where the city disposes of its expendable poor. His motivation remains pure; he is destroyed while still trying to do right by Kaz, making his death a tragedy rather than a cautionary tale about greed.

03·Key moments

What are Jordie Brekker's key moments?

The defining scene is Kaz's harbor flashback, revealed in stages throughout the novel: after Jordie's death on Reaper's Barge, a young Kaz uses his brother's bloating corpse as a flotation device to swim to shore. Bardugo renders this with clinical precision—Kaz perceives the texture of dead flesh against his skin, the smell, the mechanical necessity of it—and the passage serves as an origin myth. Every aspect of Kaz Brekker's adult psychology (the leather gloves, the refusal to be touched, the cane, the name change from Rietvelt to Brekker) crystallizes in this singular act of survival. A second significant moment occurs when Kaz shares parts of Jordie's story with Inej. This partial disclosure—rare, reluctant, and never fully complete—represents Kaz's closest approach to grieving openly in this novel. The reader understands that speaking Jordie's name aloud to someone he trusts costs Kaz something genuine.

The cast04–05

04·Relationships

What are Jordie Brekker's most important relationships?

Kaz Brekker. The relationship forms the novel's emotional core. Jordie represents Kaz's lost innocence, his lost family, and the foundation of every defense mechanism he has developed. Kaz's aversion to skin contact is not a quirk but a somatic memory: touching another person’s bare skin evokes the harbor, recalls Jordie's body. His obsession with never being outmaneuvered—the relentless contingency planning, the refusal to trust—directly responds to Jordie's fatal trust. Even Kaz’s rebranding from Rietvelt to Brekker functions as a burial: he interred the boy who was Jordie's brother and reconstructed his identity around that wound.

Pekka Rollins. Rollins never encounters Jordie as an individual; Jordie exists solely as one of many marks in the Hertzoon scheme. This asymmetry amplifies the tragedy. For Rollins, Jordie was a transaction, while for Kaz, Jordie represented everything. The Ice Court heist is framed in the novel as a financial operation, but Bardugo infuses enough of Kaz's interiority to clarify that every move against Rollins also serves as a conversation Kaz is having with Jordie's ghost.

Inej Ghafa. Inej learns more of Jordie's story than anyone else in the Dregs, and the intimacy of that disclosure highlights her significance to Kaz. Jordie acts as a threshold: the extent of Kaz's sharing of his brother's story with Inej precisely measures how much of himself he is willing to risk.

05·Connected characters

How is Jordie Brekker connected to the other characters?

Kaz Brekker

Jordie is Kaz's older brother and surrogate father figure after their parents' deaths.

Full commentary

Jordie is Kaz's older brother and surrogate father figure after their parents' deaths. He brought Kaz to Ketterdam, tried to protect him, and died of the Kerch Fever after being ruined by Rollins's con. His death is the defining trauma of Kaz's life: Kaz's phobia of skin-to-skin contact, his ruthlessness, and his obsession with revenge all trace directly back to the moment he clung to Jordie's corpse in the harbor. Kaz's entire identity as a criminal mastermind is built on the promise never to be as vulnerable as Jordie was.

Pekka Rollins

Rollins is directly responsible for Jordie's ruin and, by extension, his death. The Hertzoon scheme stripped the Brekker brothers of everything, leaving them destitute and unable to escape the plague. Jordie's fate is the root cause of Kaz's vendetta against Rollins, making their rivalry the novel's deepest personal conflict.

Inej Ghafa

Inej is the only member of the Dregs who glimpses the grief beneath Kaz's armor. When Kaz shares fragments of Jordie's story with her, it represents his closest approach to emotional vulnerability, underscoring how Jordie's memory both isolates Kaz and draws him toward Inej.

Per Haskell

Per Haskell leads the Dregs that the orphaned, revenge-driven Kaz eventually joined after Jordie's death. Jordie's loss is the catalyst that sent Kaz into the criminal underworld Haskell controls, making Haskell an indirect beneficiary of the tragedy.

Study06–07

06·Questions

Questions readers ask about Jordie Brekker

Who is Jordie Brekker in Six of Crows?

Jordie Brekker, born Jordie Rietvelt, is Kaz Brekker's older brother—a farm boy from Lij who brought a young Kaz to Ketterdam hoping to make their fortune. He never appears alive in the present timeline; everything readers learn about him comes through Kaz's fragmented flashback memories. Despite his absence, he is arguably the novel's most consequential figure, as his death shapes every aspect of Kaz's identity and motivation.

How does Jordie Brekker die in Six of Crows?

Jordie dies of Kerch Fever aboard Reaper's Barge, the plague ship where Ketterdam discards its expendable poor. After Pekka Rollins's Hertzoon investment fraud strips the brothers of all their money, they are left destitute and unable to leave the city. When the plague sweeps through, Jordie falls victim to it, and a young Kaz is forced to use his brother's corpse as a flotation device to swim to shore—a moment that scars him for life.

What is Jordie Brekker's relationship with Kaz?

Jordie is Kaz's older brother and surrogate father figure after the deaths of their family. He brought Kaz to Ketterdam to protect him and build a better life, but his fatal trust in Pekka Rollins's con destroyed them both. Kaz's phobia of skin-to-skin contact, his ruthlessness, his obsession with control, and his vendetta against Rollins all trace directly back to Jordie—making their relationship the emotional core of the entire novel.

What is the Hertzoon scheme and how does it connect to Jordie?

The Hertzoon scheme is a fraudulent investment operation engineered by Pekka Rollins to prey on men like Jordie: credulous, cash-poor, and hungry for a legitimate path to wealth. Rollins strips the Brekker brothers of every kruge they possess, leaving them stranded in Ketterdam with no means of escape. Jordie's ruin through Hertzoon is the root cause of Kaz's lifelong vendetta against Rollins and the defining disaster of both brothers' lives.

Why does Kaz Brekker refuse to let anyone touch him, and how does Jordie explain that?

Kaz's aversion to skin contact is a somatic memory of the harbor scene: clinging to Jordie's bloating corpse to survive left him with a deep-seated association between bare touch and death. The trauma is a physical manifestation of grief—touching another person's skin evokes the texture and smell of his brother's body in the water. His signature leather gloves are a direct, daily monument to Jordie's death.

Why does Kaz change his name from Rietvelt to Brekker, and what does Jordie have to do with it?

The name change functions as a symbolic burial of the boy who was Jordie's brother. By discarding "Rietvelt" and becoming "Brekker," Kaz interred the identity built around family and trust, and rebuilt himself around the wound Jordie's death left behind. The novel implies this reinvention serves both as an act of survival and a form of denial—Kaz erases his former self rather than fully grieving the brother he lost.

What is Jordie Brekker's relationship with Inej Ghafa?

Jordie and Inej never interact, but Jordie's memory serves as a measure of how much Kaz trusts her. Inej is the only member of the Dregs who glimpses fragments of Jordie's story, and Kaz's rare, reluctant disclosures to her represent his closest approach to open grief in the novel. The extent to which Kaz shares his brother's fate with Inej precisely maps how much of himself he is willing to risk with her.

Is Jordie Brekker naïve or simply unlucky in Six of Crows?

Bardugo frames Jordie as tragically naïve rather than simply unlucky—his downfall stems from misplaced trust in a system rigged against people like him. He arrives in Ketterdam with genuine ambition and pure motives, yet the city punishes hope as a weakness. Because his motivation remains uncorrupted even as he is destroyed, his death reads as a tragedy rather than a cautionary tale about greed, making him the novel's moral baseline against which all hardened survivors are measured.

07·Essay angles

Use this in your essay

Tool · Essay angles

  • Absence as presence: Argue that Jordie, despite never featuring in the present narrative, functions as the novel's true protagonist by influencing every choice Kaz makes. How does Bardugo create a character entirely through another character's trauma?

  • The cost of optimism: Examine Jordie as a critique of the Ketterdam economic myth—the belief that ambition and hard work guarantee reward. What does his fate reveal about who the city's systems are designed to serve?

  • Embodied grief: Analyze the harbor scene as Bardugo's central metaphor for how trauma resides in the body. How does Kaz's aversion to touch serve as a literal manifestation of grief?

  • Identity and renaming: The transition from Rietvelt to Brekker signals Kaz's symbolic erasure of his pre-Jordie-loss self. What does the novel imply about whether reinvention constitutes liberation or denial?

  • Revenge as devotion: Consider whether Kaz's vendetta against Rollins represents a form of loyalty to Jordie, and whether the novel frames that loyalty as heroic, pathological, or both.

Six of Crows

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