I'm going to think about this for myself because - after a certain age - I'm not sure if I have book characters who I'd list as favorites. And my old favorites are, unsurprisingly, ones that I saw myself as or at the time were in one way or another aspirational.

I suspect a lot of my favourites are that way for me. I am in no way like Una (she's so closed off and guarded, whereas I — as you can probably tell from my entire blog, basically have no filter when it comes to talking about myself and my interior life), but I admire her a lot. There are elements of me in Pagan and Mai, but probably more aspiration than reality, as you say.

It's rare that I end up having a single favourite character in new canons, but I often end up liking a handful of them more than the entire ensemble, and wanting to read/write/focus on those characters.