Manfred is the lord of Otranto. He has two children with his wife, Hippolita: Matilda, for whom he shows little compassion, and Conrad, who Manfred believes will carry on his legacy. When Conrad is killed, Manfred becomes obsessed with protecting his family’s claim to Otranto. To sire another son, he decides to divorce Hippolita and marry Conrad’s fiancée Isabella. Valuing power, control, and patriarchy over morality and submission to divine power, Manfred ignores supernatural warnings about his coming fall from power and schemes to circumvent the prophecy that the ruler of Otranto will eventually outgrow the castle, and thus lose it.

Manfred is the novella’s antagonist. He symbolizes greed, hunger for power and prestige, and illegitimacy; his rejection of the Christian virtues of faith and family loyalty mark him as irredeemably evil. All of his actions are motivated by selfishness and his eventual unmasking as the grandson of a usurper underscores the novella’s political view that autocratic rule works well when the right nobleman is in charge.

Manfred’s wife, Hippolita, is a compassionate and pious woman who is submissive to Manfred. When Manfred expresses his wishes to divorce her, Hippolita, acting against her faith and own wishes, agrees to allow him to pursue Isabella to save his ownership of Otranto.