History Literature / Sandokan

* {{Flynning}}: {{Averted}} in the books (not so much in the adaptations): sword and knifw fights are short and tend to end with someone stabbed in the guts or the chest, and when Sandokan fights a tiger with a knife he doesn't wrestle the beast (as happens in other series where someone knife-fights a dangerous animal) but waits for it to jump and jumps under it with his knife held high, disemboweling the tiger.

* GreatWhiteHunter: A few tiger hunts are shown. Sandokan, Tremal Naik and Kammamuri fail to qualify due not being white (even if Tremal Naik [[{{Badass}} used to hunt tigers for a living]]), but we still have lord Guillonk, Yanez (who will ''mock'' the tiger before shooting it if he deems it safe), ''Marianna'', and others.

** Yanez's improbable survival of his initial encounter with the pirates is [[LampshadeHanging lampshaded]] when he explains Kammamuri that the Tigers of Mompracem never spares white men and he notes that Yanez, while white, has just led the pirates that attacked the ship he was on. [[HandWaved Yanez replied he was a special case]].

** ChildSoldier: Marianna first embarked on a warship when she was 10, and stayed there until she was 13. It's implied that lord Guillonk settled down with her because he had suddenly realized what he had done.

* AuthorExistenceFailure: Salgari killed himself in 1911, after completing ''An Empire Crumbles'' (intented to be a single novel with ''The Brahman'' but published in two parts) and writing the first draft of ''Yanez's Revenge''. The two novels were published posthumously, and ''Yanez's Revenge'' contains a few plot holes.

* CoolGuns: In the final novel Sandokan shows up with twelve [[CoolGuns/MachineGuns Maxim]] [[MoreDakka machine guns]].

* [[{{Mook}} Mooks]]: Various, depending on the novel. Bonus point for the Thuggee cultists in ''The Mistery of the Black Jungle'' and ''The Two Tigers'' for being the origin of the word 'thug' and actually be called thugs by the author.

* NoKillLikeOverkill: Salgari ''loves'' this trope, and anyone with half a brain tend to bring as much firepower as they can. One example from ''The Pirates of Malaysia'': to fight Sandokan's single ship ''Pearl of Labuan'' (an oversized praho modified for superior speed and carrying more guns than normal prahos) James Brooke deployed four normal prahos (each with about three quarters of Sandokan's firepower) and his personal ship ''Royalist'', that was a match for ''Pearl''. It's hinted that James Brooke was improvising, and that he would have used more ships had he been faster at recognizing ''Marianna'' as a pirate ship or Sandokan slower at realizing what Brooke was doing.
** An example from ''Yanez's Revenge'': when facing about a thousand badly trained enemies armed with antique muzzle-loaders Sandokan opened fire with two hundreds repeating rifles and ''twelve [[MoreDakka Maxim machine guns]]'' while charging at them on top of ''elephants''. Very few enemies survived long enough to [[OhCrap realized how badly outgunned, outmanouvered and outclassed they were]] and [[ScrewThisImOuttaHere run the hell away from there]].

* RetCon: A few. It's mainly with the dates, that in the first novels are changed to fit the historical events Salgari is mentioning (novels following ''The Two Tigers'', whose finale is set in late september-early october 1857, respect real world history), but Sambigliong was switched from Dayak (''The Pirates of Malaysia'' and ''The Two Tigers'') to Malayan (from ''The King of the Sea'' onward), and in ''The Tigers of Mompracem'' Sandokan was not the dispossessed son of the murdered rajah Kaidagan (first mentioned in ''Sandokan Fights Back'', when Sandokan finally kills his murderer) but the dispossessed rajah of Lake Kini Balù.

* SacredHospitality: [[SubvertedTrope Subverted]] by lord Guillonk: when he learns that the guest he had healed was actually Sandokan he kicked him out of his house and prepared an ambush against him. Sandokan seems to play it straight: while never tested on it he knows well the code, and took offense on the ambush (only the ambush: as a pirate he ''was'' Guillonk's enemy, and having fully recovered he admitted he was fair game for being kicked out).

* [[SpotlightStealingSquad Spotlight Stealing Character]]: Yanez had a role as big if not bigger than Sandokan from ''The King of the Sea'' to ''An Empire Crumbles'', with ''The Brahman'' and ''An Empire Crumbles'' actually having him as the declared protagonist. Ironically, ''Yanez's Revenge'' is the novel in which Sandokan takes back the spotlight.

* [[WhereTheHellIsSpringfield Where The Hell Is Mompracem?]]: Salgari chose Sandokan's base on an old map, but the island isn't shown on maps since before Salgari started writing, and the main candidate of Keraman is mentioned in the novels as a separate island.

* AnimalMotifs: [[CaptainObvious A lot]]. Apart the tiger motif, explicitly used with Sandokan (the Tiger of Malaysia), Yanez (sometimes called the White Tiger, as he's a white man and Sandokan's [[BashBrothers brother in everything but blood]]), their pirates (the Tigers of Mompracem) and Suyodhana (the Tiger of India. Bonus point for him and Sandokan having been represented with the bodies of actual tigers in the cover of the first edition of ''The Two Tigers'') and implicitly for Marianna (implied by Sandokan's flag, that changed from a single head of tiger in red field in ''The Tigers of Mompracem'' to three heads of tiger in the other novels, representing Sandokan, Yanez and the now late Marianna), TheBritishEmpire has both a lion and leopard motif, to the point that Sandokan and Yanez often use 'lion' and 'leopard' in place of 'Englishman'.

* TheBritishEmpire: A frequent early opponent of Sandokan due him being a very successful pirate. It's implied that, after Sandokan's ''epic'' RoaringRampageOfRevenge in ''The King of the Sea'', he and the British Empire have an informal agreement that allows Sandokan and Yanez to do as they wish (even buying weapons from them) as long as they won't damage the British interests (Yanez even carved out a nice empire for himself right in the real-life Raj, with the Brits not interfering because he had deposed a corrupted prince and opened his country to trade).

* {{Cliffhanger}}: Three novels end into one. ''The Mystery of the Black Jungle'' ends with Tremal Naik and the British troops freeing Ada from the Thuggee and escaping their temple while Suyodhana says [[BadassBoast "Go! We'll meet again in the jungle!"]], and it isn't until ''The Pirates of Malaysia'' that we find out what happened (Suyodhana and the Thuggee ambushed the British troops in the jungle and exterminated them, recapturing Ada and [[{{Irony}} framing Tremal Naik for being a Thuggee]]. Kammamuri succeeds in freeing Ada, but the Thuggee drove her into madness and their ship was caught in a storm and [[ThisIsGonnaSuck shipwrecked on Mompracem]]. ''An Empire Crumbles'' resumes from the scene that ended ''The Brahman'', as the two novels had originally been written as one and published separated by decision of the publisher. Finally, the final scene of ''An Empire Crumbles'' is the first scene of ''Yanez's Revenge'', but with the point of view switched from Yanez to Sandokan.

BadassDamsel: Marianna. She can be kidnapped, as her physical strength is that of a young and very short woman, but she knows how to use guns (normally a muzzle-loader hunting carbine, but she even manned a ''cannon'', in the tv movies), and has no qualms at using them. Heck, her first reaction at Sandokan announcing his intention to kill a tiger with a knife to gift her the skin was to grab a gun to try and ''hunt down the tiger to prevent Sandokan from risking his life''. Part of why she fell for Sandokan was that he was the first man other than her uncle (who taught her how to shoot) who accepted that side of her.

** BadassDamsel: Marianna. She can be kidnapped, as her physical strength is that of a young and very short woman, but she knows how to use guns (normally a muzzle-loader hunting carbine, but she even manned a ''cannon'', in the tv movies), and has no qualms at using them. Heck, her first reaction at Sandokan announcing his intention to kill a tiger with a knife to gift her the skin was to grab a gun to try and ''hunt down the tiger to prevent Sandokan from risking his life''. Part of why she fell for Sandokan was that he was the first man other than her uncle (who actually taught her how to shoot) who accepted that side of her.
*** In ''The King of the Sea'' Darma, Tremal Naik's daughter, proves she has grown into this when her reaction to attacking Dayaks is to use them to prove herself a crack shot. She still got kidnapped by overwhelming numbers, but she made them pay for that in blood.

* NoKillLikeOverkill: Salgari ''loves'' this trope, and anyone with half a brain tend to bring as much firepower as they can. One example from ''The Pirates of Malaysia'': to fight Sandokan's single ship ''Pearl of Labuan'' (an oversized praho modified for superior speed and carrying more guns than normal prahos) James Brooke deployed four normal prahos (each with about three quarters of Sandokan's firepower) and his personal ship ''Royalist'', that was a match for ''Pearl''. It's hinted that James Brooke was improvising, and that he would have used more ships had he been faster at recognizing ''Marianna'' as a pirate ship.

* PlagueMaster: In ''Yanez's Revenge'' Sandokan shows up with a biologist specialized in biological warfare. The enemy army literally craps itself to death after said biologist caused an epidemics of ''cholera'' among them.

Sandokan is the [[CharacterTitle eponymous protagonist]] of a series of novels from Italian writer Emilio Salgari. Set in and around the Indian Ocean, the novels [[CaptainObvious tell Sandokan's story]], starting from his pirate career to avenge his father, a Bornean rajah [[YouKilledMyFather killed by a British-sponsored white man]]. Alongside him we find Yanez de Gomera ([[MightyWhitey the only white man of Sandokan's pirate gang and his second in command]]), Tremal Naik (a former [[{{Badass}} professional tiger hunter]] with the Thuggee cult), Kammamuri (Tremal Naik's servant) and Sambigliong (the most important of the pirates after Sandokan and Yanez).
The novels enjoy great popularity in Italy, and there are various animated and live action movies and series inspired to it (plus a great number of novels written by other authors).

* LostLenore: Sandokan's dead relatives and (from ''The Pirates of Malaysia'') are this for Sandokan, who tend to mention both at least once for novel (Marianna even had three ships [[MeaningfulName named after her]]). Ada Corishant becomes this for Tremal Naik but in a lesser way, as he still has a daughter from her.

*** The Royal Navy too. One of their officers, after having captured Sandokan and put him in chains, approached him with two rifle-armed sailors and fully armed, even without knowing that Sandokan had broken the chains just to prove he could to one of his pirates captured with him.

* RedShirtArmy: Averted ''hard'' by the British military of all people. Their ground forces may have worn their famous red coats for most of the series (in real-life the Indian Army was switching to khaki in that very period, but most of them were still using red as late as ''The Two Tigers''), but they always show more competence than other Sandokan's enemies and the smarts to try and keep distance and use their superior firepower against Sandokan (who was firepower-heavy for a Indian Ocean pirate or warlord of his time, but never even close to the British military).

* BigDamnHeroes: In more than one occasion the heroes or an ally is in serious trouble when someone arrives and rescue them. The most impressive example is from ''The King of the Sea'': Yanez and seven Tigers of Mompracem were on a ship about to be boarded by an horde of Dayaks when [[DidntSeeThatComing an ironclad warship that was passing by witnessed an European in trouble and sank the Dayaks]].

* DidntSeeThatComing: Sometimes a character is faced with something he couldn't have possibly anticipated, like the Dayaks being attacked by an ironclad warship (''The King of the Sea'') or Sandokan using [[ThePlague cholera]] against Yanez's enemies (''Yanez's Revenge'').

** Italian media of the time tended to praise brawn over brain. Salgari had the habit of thrusting Sandokan into situations where Yanez's smarts were more useful than his considerable strength and skill, and in ''The Tigers of Mompracem'' used Marianna and Yanez to call him an idiot when he decided to kill a tiger with a knife (Marianna tried and shot the tiger to prevent Sandokan from facing a tiger in melee combat, and told him to his face) and wait the dawn to crippe a British cruiser because he wanted to show off his wife (Yanez pestered him to hurry up and shoot the damn cruiser, as he was good enough a shot to it with the moonlight, and continued 'till dawn). Thankfully with time Sandokan smarted up, to the point that by ''Yanez's Revenge'' he kept an [[ThePlagueMaster expert of biological weapons]] in case the British Empire decided to invade his new country or some idiot tried to dethrone Yanez (said idiot saw his army literally shit itself to death when the expert caused a [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholera Cholera]] epidemics. Sandokan and Yanez's troops were vaccinated).

* ShallowLoveInterest: Baronet William Rosenthal, a character in ''The Tigers of Mompracem'', exists only to be Sandokan's rival for Marianna's love, and his only chance to marry her was to have lord Guillonk force his niece.

* NotSoHarmless: At first baronet William Rosenthal seems to be just an obnoxious and racist young noble who planned to make a career in the Royal Navy thanks to his nobility and hated lord Guillonk's guest (actually Sandokan, found near dead and healed by Guillonk and family after a bad run-in with a British cruiser) because he wasn't English. He's in fact obnoxious and a little racist even for the European norm of the time, but he's the captain of the cruiser that had nearly killed Sandokan, and that didn't actually hate him until he realized ''where'' he had already seen him. There's even a good chance he had been the one who actually wounded Sandokan in that battle...

* RememberTheNewGuy: Sambigliong, a Tiger of Mompracem that debuted in ''The Pirates of Malaysia'' and Sandokan's third in command since that novel, is mentioned as one of the then-unnamed pirates that ambushed lord Guillonk in ''The Tigers of Mompracem''.

* CrazyPrepared: Sandokan and his crew tend to prepare for anything. They are imprisoned in a chamber being filled with water? Instant bomb to open the way. The Royal Navy is about to attack Mompracem? Royal Navy, meet ''King of the Sea'', Sandokan's new ironclad warship that outguns anything in the East Indies Station. East Indies Station has surrounded Sandokan's ironclad with ''five'' warships on par with the ''King of the Se''-HOLY CRAP, HOW DID THAT BRITISH SHIP EXPLODE WITH NO CAUSE?!

* AscendedExtra: James Brooke, the historical first White Rajah of Sarawak, was a minor character in the novels, being only mentioned in ''The Tigers of Mompracem'' (with a possible apparition, as his personal ship is among the fleet that attacks Mompracem) and the villain in ''The Pirates of Malaysia''. The various animated series and live action series and movies make him Sandokan's main adversary.

** ProperlyParanoid and SeenItAll: the Tigers are CrazyPrepared because they have seen or read what modern (for the time) technology could do and expect the Royal Navy to attack them in any moment (even when they have no more reason to do it), and tend to collect anything that could be useful, like the ''King of the Sea'' (bought by Yanez when he encountered her by chance) or a mad scientist claiming his electrical device can blow up enemy ships' magazines (guess what blew up that ship...), even if they don't really believe in it (the mad scientist. Yanez was skeptical, but suggested to keep him just in case).