Foil

Character Role Analysis

Sans Foy, Sans Loy, Sans Joy and Redcrosse

Even though technically these brothers are three different characters, as their name suggests, they're pretty indistinguishable from one another. Instead, we can think of them as an unholy trio each embodying a lack of a quality that Redcrosse has.

"Sans" in French means "without" so they are respectively without faith, loyalty, and joy. As characters that are quite explicitly defined by being the absence of something our protagonist has, the Sans-brothers get the role of the foil. They are technically knights like Redcrosse, and are clearly skilled at fighting, but have chosen the exact opposite path of knighthood that Redcrosse has.