John Paul Wiggin

John Paul Wiggin ( _pl. Jan Paweł Wieczorek) is a fictional character from Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game series. He has appeared in novels "Ender's Game", "Shadow of the Hegemon", and "Shadow Puppets", and is a central character in a prequel to "Ender's Game" - short story "The Polish Boy".

John Paul is the father of Peter, Valentine and Ender Wiggin, and the husband of Theresa Wiggin. He is named after "the great Pope, Saint John Paul II".

John Paul was the seventh child born to a family of nine in Poland, which at the time, during the Formic Wars, was against the Hegemony's overpopulation control laws. This caused his family to be labeled non-compliants, because they had more than the maximum of two children. However, they felt that staying true to their Catholic faith, which stated that each child sent to them was a gift from God, was more important than listening to any government, including the international Hegemon. In spite of this noncompliance, he was tested and considered for Battle School.

After being tested, he was introduced to then-Captain Graff as a leading candidate for the role which Ender would later play, but his personality was judged too set in anti-authority patterns. He arranged a deal through which his family would be moved to America and given exemption from the population laws in exchange for a modicum of guaranteed service, which both he and Graff knew he had no intention of fulfilling. His purpose was to get his family out of its repressive circumstances; Graff's purpose was to allow him to have a child in America who could be more carefully monitored and introduced to Battle School without John Paul's prejudices, as told in the short story "The Polish Boy".

John Paul came to the United States and lived there as a student, separating from his family. He changed his last name to "Wiggin" and his academic background states that he graduated with valedictorian honors. In his classes, he meets Theresa Brown, a teacher. He successfully courts her and they later marry.

It is implied that the Wiggin children acquired their aptitude for understanding human nature from John Paul in Graff's original assessment of his capabilities, while their logistical brilliance likely came from Theresa Wiggin, whose father was a renowned military genius, as told in "Teacher's Pest".