History Literature / TheEyesOfTheDragon

* DeathByChildbirth: Sasha, while giving birth to Thomas. [[spoiler:At least, that's what Flagg set it up to ''look'' like. She was actually murdered by the midwife, who was in Flagg's debt because he cured her only son of a deadly illness.]]

* EvilChancellor: Flagg is this, first to Roland and then to a bigger extent, Thomas.

* MaternalDeathBlameTheChild: Thomas imagines that not only his father, but pretty much everyone in the kingdom is thinking, "We lost your mother, and we got you instead?"
** In something of a subversion of the trope, it's not clear that anyone ''actually'' thinks this -- just that Thomas ''believes'' they do. Roland at least certainly doesn't.

* {{Necronomicon}}: Flagg has one.

* RightfulKingReturns: The plot in the latter half of the novel.
* SequelHook:
** The novel ends [[spoiler:with the statement that Dennis and Thomas eventually found and confronted Flagg, but that it is a tale for another day. ''Literature/TheDrawingOfTheThree'' makes reference to this, but almost three decades after the novel's initial publication the plotline is still dangling.]]
** Also, see HeroOfAnotherStory above.

* SpareToTheThrone: Thomas is a textbook case.

* UniversallyBelovedLeader: Sasha, as well as Peter [[spoiler: before he is framed.]]

* HundredPercentAdorationRating: Sasha, as well as Peter [[spoiler: before he is framed.]]

* KingOnHisDeathbed

* GoodPeopleHaveGoodSex: Complicated example with Roland and Sasha, and it actually affects the disposition of their children. They have a mostly loving and satisfying relationship, but Roland is older and not particularly interested in sex, so he makes frequent use of [[LovePotion Love Potions]] to be able to perform. The only time he doesn't need one - his moment of glory after slaying the last dragon - is the time Peter is conceived. Thomas, on the other hand, is conceived after Roland drinks an extra strong potion and engages in a violent, joyless moment of what is possibly marital rape.

* Lighter and Softer: By Stephen King standards, anyway. It's still pretty dark, but it's written for a slightly younger audience than King's normal work.

* {{Sleepwalking}}: Thomas suffers from this after Flagg is away from the castle for a week, depriving him of the sleeping potion. During his sleepwalk, he ends up accidentally showing Dennis the secret passage to behind the dragons' head and [[TalkingInYourSleep confesses that he knows]] it was Flagg who killed king Roland.

** In Franchise/TheDarkTower series, Roland mentions that he met Thomas and his butler Dennis [[spoiler: during their pursuit of Flagg after the end of the book.]]
** In a later scene in Franchise/TheDarkTower, Roland mentions that his grandfather Alaric "Henry" Deschain had once traveled to Delain to slay the last dragon, only to discover that another king had already beaten him to it.

* AllMenArePerverts / AllWomenArePrudes: Entirely inverted with Roland and Sasha. [[{{Asexuality}} Not only does he have little interest in sex]] (and usually needs Flagg's potions to have it in the first place), but when he does sleep with his wife it is for ''her'' pleasure, not his own. It's not specified whether or not Roland might be asexual (the concept barely existed when the novel was written) and the narration shows it as being related to Roland's spotty health. The one time he engaged in sex out of his own desire was when he was hopped up on adrenaline and testosterone after killing a dragon.
--> '''Narrator''': That he had never met the woman of his fancy because he has never really fancied women at all. Women worried him. And he had never fancied the act that put babies in the bellies of women. That act worried him too.

* IAmTheNoun: After Peter escapes from the Needle, a group of guards tries to stop him and his band, saying: "Halt in the name of the King!" Peter responds: "Halt in the name of the King, you say. And yet I tell you, goshawk: ''I am the King''.”

* IAmTheX: After Peter escapes from the Needle, a group of guards tries to stop him and his band, saying: "Halt in the name of the King!" Peter responds: "Halt in the name of the King, you say. And yet I tell you, goshawk: ''I am the King''.”

* BedsheetLadder: [[spoiler:Peter manages to make one out of threads plucked from the embroidered napkins given to him daily and woven together on the tiny but functional loom in the dollhouse he requested to keep in his cell over the span of several years. [[RealityEnsues It breaks.]]]]

* RealityEnsues: [[spoiler: As Peter learns the hard way, {{bedsheet ladder}}s don’t actually work. The longer they are, the greater the chance of their breaking strain being exceeded.]]

* UnexpectedSuccessor: [[spoiler:Thomas]]

* TomeOfEldritchLore: Flagg's spell book. It is [[HumanResources bound in human skin]], and contains spells [[WithGreatPowerComesGreatInsanity so terrible that even Flagg won't use them]].

* RealityEnsues: [[spoiler: As Peter learns the hard way, {{bedsheet ladder}}s don’t actually work.]]

* PuppetKing: [[spoiler: both Thomas and his father were this.]]

* EvilChancellor: Flagg.

** In Franchise/TheDarkTower series, Roland mentions that he met Thomas and his steward Dennis [[spoiler: during their pursuit of Flagg after the end of the book.]]

* HumanoidAbomination: Flagg is ''not'' human, he's one of several incarnations of the same being that exists throughout King's multiverse (it's not revealed whether or not Flagg is aware of this). When Thomas confronts him at the end, he even calls him a "thing" and points out that Flagg's inability to deviate from his preferred patterns in his manipulations over the course of centuries shows how inhuman he is.

* LetsGetDangerous: [[spoiler: King Roland, of all people]]. He's a balding, bandy-legged, paunchy, bumbling fool in his early sixties whose low self-esteeem makes him easily manipulable by his [[BigBad evil advisor]]. He's also [[spoiler: the world's best hunter, one who calmly one-shots a ''dragon'' that was already about to breathe fire on him]], and even [[spoiler: ''Flagg'']] is actually ''[[BewareTheNiceOnes scared shitless]]'' of what [[spoiler: Roland]] [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge would do]] if ever [[PapaWolf decided]] to hunt ''him.''

** In something of a subversion of the trope, it's not clear that anyone ''actually'' thinks this- just that Thomas ''believes'' they do. Roland at least certainly doesn't.

* NeverWakeUpASleepwalker: Discussed and averted. During the night Peter attempts his escape, Thomas sleepwalks again and ends up in the secret passage, where he wakes up due to a tower named The Church of the Gods collapsing because of the storm. The narrator points out that in Delain people still believe that waking a sleepwalker before they get back to their bed will cause them to go mad, but Thomas proves this is not the case since he only has a bad scare about waking up in the passage but quickly realizes where he is.

* RealityEnsues: [[spoiler: As Peter learns the hard way, [[BedsheetLadder Bedsheet Ladders don’t actually work.]]]]

* ShoutOut: Flagg's spellbook, which drives you mad if you read it too long, was written by [[Creator/HPLovecraft Alhazred, in the land of Leng]].