History Literature / TheBelgariad

* UnknowinglyInLove: Relg and Taiba both take quite a while to figure out that they're actually in love with each other, even though they're instinctively drawn to each other's company right from the start.

* SkunkStripe: Polgara has one. As noted in ''Belgarath the Sorcerer'', the snow-white lock appeared when Belgarath laid his hand on her head in an ancient ritual of benediction from his homeland. Polgara's hair was raven black through and through when she was born. Since the stripe resists any attempt to remove it or dye it for more than a moment, the sorcerers sometimes takes steps to encourage skunk stripes being a fashionable trend so Polgara can't be quite as easily identified when she's moving around.

* ActuallyPrettyFunny: The Purpose Of The Universe gets cranky if you ask it "why me". Near the end, Garion asks "why me?" in the most annoying, immature, whiny tone he can muster. The Purpose cracks up.

* AdultFear: ''The Malloreon'' is basically fuelled by this- having your infant son abducted by your arch-enemy, and being faced with the very real prospect of having to fight him to save the world

That's the plot of Creator/DavidEddings's ''The Belgariad''...[[TheHerosJourney and a whole lot of]] other stories as well.

* SneakingOutAtNight: In Polgara the Sorceress, many of the adolescent heirs to the Rivan throne down through the centuries suddenly developed a habit of trying to sneak out at night once they met their future wives. In a few extreme cases either Polgara or the girl's parents had to resort to putting bars on the youngsters' windows until the wedding day, just so the adults could get some sleep.

** In ''The Malloreon'', Garion [[GotVolunteered has to]] stop a [[ChivalricRomance war]] threatening to [[ChronicHeroSyndrome engulf]] the entire kingdom of Arendia. He magically summons a [[DramaticThunder storm]] that helps him single-handedly stop two charging armies in their tracks, force an [[KnightInShiningArmour old friend]] to [[ArrangedMarriage marry]] the love of his life and resolve the dispute. He’s very [[TemptingFate pleased]] with his hard day’s work. A few chapters later he [[GoneHorriblyRight finds out]] that he sparked off blizzards, hurricanes, droughts and tornadoes right around the world, and even triggered a new ice age. It took the combined efforts of the Gods themselves and two of the most powerful sorcerers alive over six months to fix it. Needless to say, Garion is [[YouAreNotReady banned]] from touching the weather again for two thousand years. When he protests that he just needs to "make time" to practice, he is promptly told by a startled Belgarath -- who takes him literally -- to leave time alone as well since even all the gods together [[TimeIsDangerous wouldn't be able to fix that.]]

* NamedAfterTheInjury: The evil god Torak, who lost half his face in the ancient DivineConflict he instigated, is sometimes called "One-Eye" or "old burnt-face" by his more irreverent enemies.

** Garion isn't bad either, demonstrating an analytical mind that impresses Beldin (the series' resident SmartGuy) and political smoothness that impresses Brador, the GoodChancellor to 'Zakath. The latter works all the better since, as Garion drily points out, he looks like "an unlettered country oaf."

* IgnoranceIsBliss: Garion, deliberately. Also played with in Errand/Eriond.

* BloodKnight: [[TheBerserker Taur]] [[AxeCrazy Urgas]]. He sleeps in his armour, plays war music wherever he goes, and actually orders his elite guard to ''clear the way for Cho-Hag'' so that he can fight him. His [[FamousLastWords last words]] as he dies? "Come back Cho-Hag. Come back and fight!" Many Mimbrate and Cherek characters approach this trope as well, although they're generally closer to BoisterousBruiser, as do lots and lots of Murgos.

* AnAstralProjectionNotAGhost: Poledra appears occasionally as a ghost to aid the main characters, having died in childbirth some three thousand years previously. At the end of ''The Malloreon'', she reveals she never really died at all, but faked it in order to carry out a [[OmniscientMoralityLicense vague plan]] to help uphold TheProphecy. Belgarath, it has to be said, was not especially pleased (though his mood was somewhat attenuated by the fact that he had his wife back).

* AwesomeMomentOfCrowning: The Rivan King, of course. A sword drawn from stone? Check. Heralded as such by a keystone of creation? Check. Massive numbers of people bowing? Check. BigNo from the girl who realized this means she has to marry you, even though she secretly wants to? Check. Awakening of a God, the God he is destined to duel? Big Goddamned Check.

** In ''The Malloreon'', the three women in the party: Velvet (blonde), Polgara (brunette), and Ce'Nedra (redhead).

* BroughtDownToNormal: The possibility of this happening is enough to keep Belgarath LockedOutOfTheLoop in the fourth book after his nearly fatal duel with Ctuchik. Later, Polgara is threatened with this as a condition of [[spoiler:having Durnik brought back to life]] -- fortunately, the Gods have a sense of humour and [[spoiler: were testing her]]. Lastly, Cyradis in the final book of ''The Malloreon'' must be stripped of her powers of prophecy into order to [[spoiler:make the final choice between Light and Dark]]. It's strongly implied, towards the end of ''The Malloreon'', that she may not have lost them. In any case, the Light Prophecy explicitly tells Garion that she was no longer a seer... but that she ''had'' looked into the future, and she has a ''very'' good memory.

* CryCute: Pointedly averted. When the initially waspish Ce'Nedra finally breaks down in tears, Polgara tells her it's best that she doesn't cry like that in future as she doesn't have the complexion to pull it off.

** After Sadi joins the party, it becomes a plot point that the Murgos consider Nyissan drugs illegal, despite gleefully participating in the slave trade. Sadi himself is an example, as he regarded many aspects of the slave trade to be repulsive. And although Silk isn't evil, there's a hilarious {{Lampshading}} when Sadi points out that Silk has no qualms against swindling people or murdering them in cold blood but baulks at dealing in drugs. Interestingly, Silk is often the only person to express shock or horror at the [[ProtagonistCenteredMorality more dubious actions]] of the rest of the group -- Belgarath [[spoiler:entombing Zedar in stone for all eternity]] springs to mind (though that might be because of [[spoiler: his spectacular claustrophobia]] rather than moral considerations).

* EvilCounterpart
** Most obviously Zedar (and to a lesser degree, [[ArchEnemy Ctuchik]]) to Belgarath (Garion even briefly mistakes Zedar for Belgarath, they look that much alike), a few others crop up. Like the whole Child of Light/Child of Dark thing. Urvon is likely the EvilCounterpart to Beldin: both are disfigured, both are the disciple of a major god, and they hate each other almost as much as their respective masters do. A case could be made that 'Zakath is originally Garion's EvilCounterpart: they're both the rulers of half the world, but Garion is a decent king and his position of Overlord of the West is mostly a formality (though as Garion sourly notes, the other monarchs seem to enjoy bringing him their most absurdly difficult problems for him to solve), where as 'Zakath is TheEmperor and is totally obsessed with power and revenging himself on Taur Urgas. This, of course, changes in ''The Malloreon'', and gets heavily {{Lampshaded}} to boot.
** The Sardion (Cthrag Sardius) is the Evil Counterpart to the Orb of Aldur (Cthrag Yaska). One could argue that Torak's black sword, Cthrek Goru, is the Evil Counterpart to the Sword of the Rivan King.

* EvilIsSterile: By the ''Malloreon'', Eddings had decided that the difference between the two competing Prophecies was less "good vs. evil", because those are subjective, than "evolution vs. stagnation". As such, the conflict in that series boils down to one prophecy wanting new things to happen, and the other wanting everything to stay the same, whether it wants to or not.

* FantasticTimeManagement: When Garion says he'll "make time" to do something, Belgarath warns him against using [[spoiler: his sorcery]] to create time, because there's no way to predict what the results would be if he tries.

* FateWorseThanDeath: Zedar gets buried alive forever. Excuse me, [[AndIMustScream I Must Scream]]. And then there's Urvon and Chabat who lose their souls to Demons, and Zandramas who may have suffered from the same thing, or may simply have ceased to exist when she got dissolved and used to fill a hole in the galaxy. Don't forget the Grolim who was [[spoiler:providing innocent women to bear demonic children of Nahaz]], who Polgara [[spoiler:gives eternal life, but curses with his every word being disbelieved.]]

* FirstGirlWins: Averted. Garion's sudden departure on the Orb quest leaves his childhood sweetheart, Zubrette, behind; by the time he makes it back to Sendaria, she's engaged one of his friends and he makes sure to give off a JustFriends vibe, on the grounds that his own circumstances make a marriage both impractical and unfair on her (he doesn't know who he really is yet, and spends most of his time trailing around after Polgara and Belgarath). He doesn't meet his own destined bride until the middle of the *second* book in the series.

* GodIsFlawed: The gods (except Torak, of course) are all on the side of good, but they are capable of doing things out of spite and regretting their actions later.

* HealingFactor: Averted, the gods have no healing ability whatsoever, because in theory they can't be hurt in the first place. This means that when Torak was grievously maimed by the Orb, he was forced to live in terrible pain for millennia.

[[folder:Tropes I to R]]

* NoodleIncident:
** Silk gets several, including but not limited to: interfering with a ploy of Bethra's involving the Nadrak ambassador, causing her to attempt to have him killed; being smuggled out of Cthol Murgos by a Thullish lady of high station, possibly for reasons related to the also-never-clearly-explained incident which led to the death of the Murgo crown prince; and fleeing Tol Honeth "posing as an acrobat in a travelling circus, and about one jump ahead of the police".
** On a meta-level, the Accident which created the two Prophecies and put the wrong God in place.

* PhysicalGod: Eight of them, at least in the BackStory. After Torak used the Orb of Aldur to break the world, the other seven agreed not to directly intervene lest such a catastrophe happen again. Except for UL, all of them are portrayed as fairly human. The real gods, by a more modern definition, are the two competing Purposes of the Universe, who can't fight directly and thus have to play out their conflict using the characters.

** Even more egregious example that no one seems to remember: there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it passage in ''Pawn of Prophecy'' where a sleepy Garion overhears Polgara talking to...someone...and saying that she was not prepared for the task that they've set her, because what did she know about raising little boys? This makes it sounds like she only had to start caring for the last heir of Riva recently. I'm not sure when exactly it first changed to "Polgara has been caring for the children of the line of Riva for centuries..."
*** Not really as egregious as one might think: recall, Geran and Ildera, Garion's parents, were murdered by Asharak when Garion was just an infant, forcing Polgara to take a far more direct hand in raising him than she normally would.
** Polgara's character was retconned to be much more reasonable in the prequels. In ''Queen of Sorcery'' especialy, she's a {{jerkass}} {{My Beloved Smother}} to the point of being [[AbusiveParents psychologically abusive]]. After [[spoiler:horribly murdering a man with magical fire]], the last thing a traumatised 15-year-old boy needs is his mother figure suddenly insisting on calling him a different name with no further explanation, and then start invading his thoughts and tampering with his mind by giving him smug advice telepathically and making him write his "new name" instead of his real one when he's learning to write.
*** On the other hand, a lot of her behaviour can be explained by several important facts: Garion is TheChosenOne and less than a year away from going up against the resident GodOfEvil. He therefore needs to get used to the idea of both his vast powers and his name (both are tied together), because his powers are finding their way out in lots of little ways that he can't control and are making a lot of 'noise', drawing exactly the wrong sort of attention. Moreover, Polgara is especially protective of Garion out of guilt, because Asharak/Chamdar successfully lured her away from Geran and Ildera when he was born, and then grabbed Garion - and would have got away clean if it wasn't for the arrival of a homicidal Belgarath. In other words, she's terrified about what might happen if she takes her eye off him again (and considering the amount of trouble he gets into, this isn't entirely unreasonable).

* SpaceJews: The series has a number of stereotypical fantasy cultures that basically boil down to the good European cultures fighting against evil Asian cultures whose battle tactics typically consist of [[WeHaveReserves flooding the defenses with expendable conscripts]].