Editing John Carter of Mars (section)

==Character biography==
[[File:Martian Family of John Carter from Edgar Rice Burroughs Barsoom Novels.jpg|right|400px|John Carter's descendants]]
On Mars, which its natives call [[Barsoom]], Carter encounters both formidable alien creatures resembling the beasts of ancient myth, and various humanoids. He finds his true calling in life as a warlord who strives to save the planet's inhabitants. He wins the hand of a Martian princess, [[Dejah Thoris]] of Helium, but after several years of marriage he sacrifices himself to save Barsoom from the loss of its atmosphere. Awakening again after this second death he finds he has been miraculously transported back to Earth, into his original body. Carter then collects the wealth that resulted from his discovery of a rich vein of [[gold]] [[ore]] right before his original passage to Barsoom. Unable to return to Mars, he spends several more years in a small [[cottage]] on the [[Hudson River]] in [[New York (state)|New York]], where he once more appears to die on March 4, 1886. In his first appearance, he refers to the fact that he does not actually know how old he is or when or where he was born. He further states that he has been a fighting man for a very long time, by implication far longer than a single human lifetime.

Again, Carter's apparent demise is not a true death; rather, he is restored to Barsoom, where after more adventures he rises to the position of Warlord of Mars, having played an instrumental role in creating alliances among many of the sentient races of Barsoom. He returns to Earth on a number of occasions afterward to relate his adventures to his nephew ("Burroughs"), revealing that he has mastered the process of astral travel between the two worlds. During his adventures on Mars his earthly body reposes in a special tomb that can only be opened from the inside.

John Carter and Dejah Thoris become the parents of a son, Carthoris, and daughter, Tara. Carthoris plays a secondary role in ''The Gods of Mars'' and ''The Warlord of Mars'', and is the protagonist of ''Thuvia, Maid of Mars''. Tara is the heroine of ''[[The Chessmen of Mars]]'' (1922), and the mother of Carter's granddaughter Llana, heroine of ''[[Llana of Gathol]]''.

Only one other Earthman, [[Ulysses Paxton]] is able to travel to Mars via the method Carter used.

A complete list of characters is given at the end of ''Thuvia, Maid of Mars''.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.gutenberg.org/files/72/72-h/72-h.htm|title=The Project Gutenberg E-text of Thuvia, Maid of Mars, by Edgar Rice Burroughs|access-date=13 October 2014}}</ref>