Character Analysis
Bradley Pearson's parents aren't living characters in The Black Prince, but Bradley mentions them in more than one of his many reflections throughout the novel, and their quirks, foibles, anxieties, ambitions, and failings have obviously made impacts on his own opinions, actions, and ideas.
As Bradley tells us early on: "My parents kept a shop, a sort of paper shop, down in Croydon. The shop sold daily papers and magazines, writing paper and so on, and horrible 'gifts'. […] It was a shabby unsuccessful shop. Our parents were shabby unsuccessful people." (Bradley Pearson's Foreword: par. 6).
Ouch. Don't hold back, Bradley—tell us how you really feel.
From Bradley's various comments, we can gather that his parents had an unhappy marriage, on top of everything else. According to Bradley, his mother felt like she could have done better, whereas his father felt that his wife was kind of misguided and silly.
By the time Bradley's narrative begins, both of his parents are gone. ("To lose one parent," as Oscar Wilde's Lady Bracknell remarks in The Importance of Being Earnest, "may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness" (source).)
As Bradley tells us: "They both died when I was in my twenties, my father first, my mother not long after" (Bradley Pearson's Foreword: par. 6). Only his mother lived to see Bradley's first book in print, and according to Bradley, she was the only one of the two of them that he actually loved.