Headscratchers / The Belgariad

One does not need the use of first-person pronouns to speculate upon this page. "One" is an ambiguous exception.

Belgarath

It has always been a headscratcher that Begarath would have a wolf (Poledra) accompanying him for a few hundred years, and NOT REALIZE something funny was going on. Oh, sure, he said he thought about it once or twice...over a few centuries. What, is he that obtuse?

• No, he's just unspeakably old by human standards already at this point, and as such doesn't neccessarily have a normal person's perception of time.
• All the sorcerers except Polgara and Durnik are usually like that.
  • Even Polgara isn't immune. In Queen of Sorcery as they're waiting in the ruins of Vo Wacune, she bemoans that the trees have "already" come back so soon. Belgarath points out that it was almost two thousand years ago.
  Sadi: "It chills my blood, the way you people just shrug off eons like that."
• And Belgarath's tendency to lose track of time and not pay attention to what is going on around him is lampshaded several times. So part of it probably is that he's that obtuse.
• At one point, Belgarath mentions that he realized something funny was going on when he actually thought about just how long the wolf had been hanging around. Being, as others have said, a bit out of touch with the passage of time and having a tendency to not pay attention to what is going on around him, it took a while for him to get to that.
• It was also implied that the Voice of the Prophecy was influencing his brain away from such thoughts so he didn't think about it too much.
  • He lampshades this himself in his memoirs, but simply says that he disregarded it as unimportant, same as when he began his relationship with Poledra, and it was pretty obvious who she really was. Belgarath knew, he just didn't see fit to vocalize his thoughts.
• The problem is that the length of time cuts both ways. Belgarath might not intuitively feel that a couple centuries is a lot of time, but he's still thinking as much as someone would in two centuries. Without some sort of outside mental engineering, he'd almost certainly connect the dots. Especially with Beltira, Belkira, and Beldin dropping by occasionally, since for them the wolf won't just be part of the background.
• At the battle of Vo Mimbre, Polgara and Polgara were merged together in the form of a snowy owl during the meeting between Kal Torak and Brand. The scream of defiance their owl issued in response to Torak's proposal of marriage between himself and Polgara "carried overtones of the voice of Aldur, and it also was the voice of UL" ("Polgara the Sorceress") and was enough to defy his will and cause him confusion. Thus, setting aside Belgarath's own perception of time as well as direct action taken by the Prophecy to keep him from thinking too hard about the wolf at his side, it's entirely possible that Poledra herself was keeping Belgarath from realizing that anything was amiss given she'd already demonstrated her capacity to effectively attack a god.

Beldin

Why the heck didn't he just transform into a more attractive man? We've seen Belgarath take all kinds of other human forms.

• He could have, but he would have known it was a lie. It's why Beldin and Polgara greet each other with horrific insults, since Polgara saying "You look well," could only sound like an insult. But taking an animal form wouldn't feel like lying to him, since it was something completely different, and he felt free in his hawk form.
  • Did Belgarath ever actually take a human form? Pretty sure he used illusions to make himself look different, and Beldin did as well, but it's not likely that anyone ever actually transformed into another human.
    • Yes. It's mentioned in "Belgarath the Sorcerer" a couple of times.
    • There's a thought it was actually transforming, especially since that's the subtly stated/heavily implied answer as to why Polgara looks young while Belgarath looks old, that the sorcerers could subconsciously choose their appearances. But even if they can't actually transform and Belgarath was only using illusions, the same answer would apply to "why didn't Beldin cast an illusion of himself as a more attractive man?". Because it would have been lying, and he's too blunt and too defiant to cave to others' expectations.
    • It's interesting to note that it extends to more than just their outward appearance, because they're both physically very strong, even without enhancing themselves sorcerously. They look like old men but they're as fit as young ones.
    • "Asharak snarled and struck the bowman a crushing blow to the side of the head. The bowman fell twitching to the stone floor." Hardly evidence by itself, but it also supports the theory, since Asharak is a Grolim priest, and is unlikely to have received any 'job perks' Aldur might have handed out. One has never actually tested it, she assumes you would have to be pretty strong to do that to an armoured Cherek warrior (do they wear helmets?) and the choice in language implies the same.
    • They can change their physical appearance—Beldin does it for a prolonged period of time in the Malloreon—but it takes significant effort to maintain. (When he's intoxicated, Beldin nearly reverts to his own form.) That might be why Polgara never changed HER physical appearance while hiding the heirs of the Rivan King, but instead tried (unsuccessfully) to use mundane disguises like hair dye.
    • At one point in the Malloreon, Polgara takes wolf form and the white lock carries over. We never see Garion's forepaw to see if his birthmark appears in other forms, but it's certainly possible that Polgara's stuck with that lock no matter what form she takes.
    • Here's a thought: why doesn't she change the colour of the rest of her hair, instead? The lock wouldn't be nearly so suspicious when combined with white-blonde hair instead. Even Polgara would agree that the safety of the Rivan line is more important than any personal ego issues she may have about changing her appearance. Of course, logic exists in the Belgariad-verse only when Eddings thinks he can make it do something for him.
  • Actually the books do mention that it's difficult to magically alter your hair color because you need to focus on each strand. EVERY STRAND. You don't blame her for not being thrilled at the thought.
    • That specific passage refers to turning hair grey, since the "grey" colour is the result of a mixture of normal-coloured and white-coloured hairs together.
    • But given even in the REAL world, taking dark hair white/gray/blond is incredibly difficult, why wouldn't the same restrictions apply to trying to turn black hair platinum? Polgara would still have to change every strand, and focus on keeping it pale. Throw in that Aldur himself apparently changed her in the womb from being an identical blonde twin to Beldaran, meaning her dark hair is a literal act of god, trying to change it may have taken more energy than she could spare.
• Why did Beldin transform him and his new... wife? into a hawk at the end of the Malloreon? Why would they never see them again? What was the point of that part of the story? Were they incapable of having a fufilling relationship without forever forsaking their human forms and cutting every relationship they ever had forever? That is something that's annoyed some that Eddings ended his works with such asspulling actions, with no rime or background.
  • Because Beldin can fly - flight is usually used as a metaphor for people who wish for freedom to escape their living situations and Vella, despite being fairly independent by Nadrak standards, was tired of being owned.
  • It's assumed that it was because what really attracted Vella to Beldin was that he could fly. Turning them both into hawks worked because Beldin wouldn't be ugly and Vella would get to fly again. As for why they were never seen again- they probably lived as hawks for the rest of their lives and weren't easy to find.

• He answers this in the book: he prefers to stay ugly because people underestimate him. They don't expect him to be as brilliant as he is. Plus, people are much less likely to notice him.
• It was mentioned that Belgarath and Belzedar were almost indistinguishable from Aldur due to their long association, could we expect that Beldin may have actually grown better looking by slowly taking on Aldur's appearance? His hunched form, of course, would remain intact.
• It is stated in the same general area of text as their human-to-hawk transformation that the animal forms they take when they change shape immediately (albeit slowly) begin to take over their awareness. This is supported by Garion's numerous transformations into the forms of both a wolf and a falcon (at Kell?) and his associated distraction by the form's idiosyncrasies and peculiarities. If they never changed back from their hawk form eventually neither of them would ever remember having been human, a sorcerer, their companions and loved ones, or (presumably) anything they had done during the entire course of the books. Taken in that light their choice makes even less sense than it did before, especially given Beldin's own certain knowledge that this would be the case!
  • It may be that he willingly decided to give himself up. He's lived for millennia (probably five or six ish, since he was already an established sorcerer when the twins were born), and with the Prophecy fulfilled, feels like he has no real need to keep on going. So, he'll spend some time with his beloved, and then pass on peacefully. To the well-organized mind, after all, death is but the next great adventure.
    • It's foreshadowed earlier, when Garion refers to Beldin's other form (the hawk) as his "true" form.

The entire Belgariad was pretty much a Foregone Conclusion, wasn't it?

The way the books were written, Garion had to win at Cthol Mishrak or otherwise the Prophecy would never be completed. Throughout the Malloreon we're basically given to understand that Geran was always destined to be the Ultimate Child of Dark, who had an equal chance of becoming God of Angarak. But if Garion had lost, Geran would never have been born, Torak would still have been running around (and what would have happened to him had Cyradis chosen Geran?) there would be no king of Riva, the West would pretty much collapse, and Durnik would never have been raised from the dead. In other words, was there ever a doubt that Garion would win? Especially when Polgara says that 'the Mrin Codex doesn't stop at Cthol Mishrak'?

• Remember, the bad guys have their own prophecy too, and it's just as powerful and accurate as the good guys'. The prophecy and the dark prophecy have been at it for milennia with each trying to become the sole destiny of the universe- the things in, say, the Mrin Codex therefore aren't absolutely perfect predictions of what will happen no matter what, they're checklists of what has to be accomplished if the Light wants to win.
  • That was an interpretation as well; we're following one side of the equation, watching as their prophecies are fulfilled. What we don't get to see is the bad guys running around fulfilling their prophecies, or watching them go up in smoke.
  • There was also a brief moment near the end where the King of Hell could have created a third option. Accidents can happen again, too, which throws the whole universe out of whack.
  • While Belgarath admits that a lot of his "third option" rhetoric was insubstantial, we do know that human (or divine) error could have screwed things up immensely; it's why the Prophecies panicked when Torak tried to recover the orb himself, and hastily negotiated a suspension of the rules (the theft itself wasn't an EVENT, and therefore was supposed to be predetermined). The Prophecy also mentions offhand once, to Belgarath's question, that their side typically wins about half of the EVENTs that occur...most losses are simply off-screen.
  • Not only does the other side have their own prophecies, it's hinted in Belgarath the Sorcerer that the prophecies only reveal details when they're necessary. This lets the two sides react to victories and losses and alter their plans accordingly. Given the chess motif of the whole series, it's not a stretch to say that some of the events as they happen in the novels were not in the Light Prophecy's original plans and had to be changed as a result of the Dark Prophecy winning an EVENT offscreen.
• We do also have an implicit mention of where the Dark Prophecy was working with no counter. While the Light Prophecy fully expected and planned for the assassination of Gorek (and the hiding of the Rivan line), how everyone responded wasn't part of it. Zedar's method for the assassination was partly to try killing the line, but mostly to keep Belgarath and the other sorcerers from responding to events in Mallorea (the unification of the empire was very much a prophesied thing).

• Then again, it's also explicitly mentioned that had the battle of Vo Mimbre not ended on a certain day (the third), events favoring the Dark Prophecy would have gone forward instead. It's possible that either the Mrin could be wrong, or it had contingency prophecies embedded in it (and more for the Light Prophecy itself).
  • At one point Ctuchik comments to Belgarath about how he finds it interesting the way that he's interpreted the prophecy, and several Grolims refer to Polgara as "The Queen of the World". It's likey that they have their own versions of the prophecy that they're following, which has some occasional overlap. That's why both Polgara and Ce'Nedra had to be present during the duel between Torak and Garion: both prophecies called for their repsective "Queens Of The World" to be there. Heck the Grolims might even be working off the Mrin or Darine Codex's, and finding their own people who fit the various titles from the prophecy (who knows what Ctuchik or Zedar, or any of the other main villains may have been referenced as).
  • If Torak had won at the end of the Belgariad, Geran would still have to come into existance. The Dark Prophecy would know that the final meeting needed Eriond and Geran, therefore it would make sure that Geran would still be born so he could play his part.
    • Geran himself could never have been born had Garion failed at Cthol Misrak; he would have been dead and Geran was conceived years after that Event. However, Torak had intended to marry Polgara if he had won. Given that Torak was the Child of Dark and that that was always the case, and also that a Child of Light had to exist at the final meeting between the Prophecies at Korim, it's reasonable to suggest that Geran, or more accurately the spirit of Geran that held the potential to be raised into godhood, would have instead been born to Torak and :Polgara and been the new Child of Light.
  • Torak wasn't destined to kill Garion, but to have him submit to him. If that had happened, Pol would have married Torak, and Garion would probably still have been with Ce'Nedra.
    • Nightmare fuel - what if instead of Geran, it would have been Torak and Polgara's.... offspring? (though admittedly, if that were possible Belar would have probably already accomplished it, based on Belgarath's accounts.)
• Re-read The Malloreon, specifically the last chapter of Melcena in Book 4: Torak leaves a message for Belgarion at the end of The Ashabine Chronicles that pretty much makes it clear that, had Belgarion failed, Torak would have been the new Child of Light, with Polgara as his wife and either Belgarion or Errand/Eriond becoming their "son".
  • Additionally, the Dark Prophecy DOES have it's own, um, prophecies, which are equal to the prophecies of the Light.
  • Remember that throughout Belgarath the Sorcerer, Torak is shown to repeatedly rewrite the prophecies to show him in a better light. So whilst he might have believed that he would become the Child of Light had he won, the two Voices of Prophecy would have had different ideas. Therefore, it is most likely that had Torak won, part of the deal the Voices of Prophecy had would be that Garion and Ce'Nedra would have to be spared so they could successfully have Geran, so both he and Errand/Eriond could play their roles later on.
    • On the other hand, Garion is given to understand (in "Sorceress of Darshiva" it's the very first time Garion learns he may have to kill Geran) that Torak passes the torch of duty to stop Zandramas' quest to his "hated brother" Garion in the sequence of Events that led to the Choice. Had Garion lost at Cthol Mishrak he would have been dead and no child between himself and Ce'Nedra would ever have been born (it was stated repeatedly that the meeting at Cthol Misrak was a fight to the death). In that case Torak would have remained the Child of Dark and it's possible, and given the perverse sense of humor of both Prophecies even intended, that the child born of a union between himself and Polgara would have been the Child of Light (Torak would have remained the Child of Dark and it's implied elsewhere that that never changes). This idea is supported by the knowledge among the Dals that Cyradis' choice was a choice between the Light and the Dark, which implies that a Child of Light must exist at that later date regardless of Garion's success or failure at the City of Endless Night.
  • However, the above example is an stated exception to the above rules. The text of the original Ashabine Oracles that Garion reads is the part that Torak did not edit. Torak actually was the Voice of Dark Prophecy (as the Mrin Prophet's counterpart) instead of the Child of Darkness (as Garion's counterpart) for a brief time, with grolims writting up what he said in a trance; and when he woke up from that trance, he did READ a LOT of things he didn't like - such as that he was an "interin god", was not to be the ultimate Child of Darkness (it being Zandramas instead), what was to happen with the Universe if the Dark Prophecy were to win (something which scared him sane), and that -should he win his battle with Garion- he would wind up as the Child of Light. He was so horrorized by it all that, in his only moment of sanity of the whole series, wrote a personal letter to Garion ("hated brother") encouraging him to prevent that from happening... and then is when he relapsed into his usual habits of deleting and rewritting to his taste the texts he passed down to his grolims.
• Of course it's a foregone conclusion. In the preword of the Belgariad books (the ones where books 1-3 and 4-5 are combined), the author straight up tells the reader that the hero wins, and it's not really much of a spoiler, is it? Still, Garion still has to ACTUALLY go through the journey and face Torak, which is what we read.

Polgara and Ce'Nedra

• What is up with that conversation about the tree in the woods? The women said that yes, it's still a sound, which is fine ... but their answers were based around the fact that trees and animals can hear, too. A much better answer would have been if Polgara had said "Yes, because a sound is simply vibrations in the air caused by the tree hitting the ground, and those vibrations will occur whether or not there is anything to hear them. If you think it shouldn't be called a sound unless there's someone to hear it, then you are discussing semantics, not physics".
  • Durnik had already been arguing the fact that a sound is a sound. Beldin wasn't taking any of it, so it fell on the one who talks with birds and the one who talks with trees to present the facts that small critters, birds, and trees can all hear sounds too. Also, you seem to be forgetting that the world of The Belgariad and The Mallorean is basically Medieval times. Even if the Melcenes had discovered what is now common knowledge regarding the physics of sound, it is unlikely anyone else would know or care about it, especially when you factor in most of the Kingdoms of the West lumping all of Mallorea under the same heading as the Murgos, Nadraks, and Thulls.
• Here's a buggy bit: there's a part in Queen of Sorcery where Ce'Nedra was teaching Garion to read. Polgara sees them and tells Garion to pay attention, because knowledge was important and he should learn as much as he can. Well, uh...if she thought learning to read was so important, why didn't she teach him before that?
  • Well, that was discussed in "Polgara the Sorceress", when she tells Belgarath that she'll solve the issue of the child Garion accidentally learning who he is before the time is right by not teaching him how to read; when Belgarath blusters about how necessary it would be for the Godslayer to be able to read the Prophecies, Pol reminds him that she didn't learn how to read until she was 18.
  • Or Polgara planned it this way - the business of teaching Garion to read would keep Ce'Nedra occupied, and would also give them another reason to relate to each other.
• If one assumed to have read Polgara the Sorceress, as maybe this is discussed there, but something that's always gets in Pawn of Prophecy is how, in Val Alorn, Polgara just destroys Martje's ability to see the future so casually and in such a high-handed manner. It's a serious case of her being arrogant. Suppose it's a good example of a character flaw, which most good characters need, but... We wish we had seen the consequences, or something, anything that resulted from that. Besides further establishing Polgara as incredibly arrogant, the act seems worthless.
  • It's a serious case of Protagonist-Centered Morality - Martje might have been annoying, and she shouldn't have kept harassing Barak, but that's no excuse for Polgara to just fuck her over like that. (BTW, no, it's not mentioned in Polgara the Sorceress- the book ends before Pawn of Prophecy.)
  • Garion reacts to this event pretty negatively. It's one of the things he mulls over at the beginning of the next book when he's dealing with the isolation that comes with learning that both Polgara and Belgarath aren't the "Aunt Pol" and "Mister Wolf" he grew up with. Polgara is a callous person from time to time, but that comes from thousands of years of watching loved ones and family members die and being forced to harden her heart in the name of the mission.
  • To recall, Martje had just noticed Garion and was about to blow his cover, tell all about his role in the prophecy. So curing Martje may have been cruel, but necessary.
    • The above. Remember, Martje isn't just harassing Barak about his "doom", she's twice now directly addressed Garion as if he were a king and is standing in a literal public square in front of anyone listening (and we JUST got rid of Chereks who were directly working with the enemy, so it's not like it's guaranteed to be friendly ears only) blabbing about his "inheritance.' For all Polgara's kept him under wraps, it doesn't take much for people familiar with the prophecy to put two and two together—Anheg, remember, just did and makes it clear to Polgara and Belgarath that he knows who Garion is. Even if there isn't a Murgo spy for a hundred miles in any direction, Cherek are sailors and sailors talk. Ever yammering about Barak's "doom" could be dangerous to the wrong ears, since he's singled out in the Prophecies as the Dreadful Bear. It wasn't nice, but since they couldn't force Martje to keep her mouth shut, it was necessary.
• One thing that's confusing in Pawn of Prophecy specifically and to a lesser extent in the others extent is how Polgara is on a first name relationship with the queens. She'd been undercover for nearly fifteen years raising Garion. Would she have even had a chance to even meet some of them?
  • The whole world knows who Polgara is and Belgarath properly kept her up to date on current events during his various visits to the farms, such as various royal marriages. Plus, you have to bear in mind that this world they live in is based on a medieval society, where people didn't really have last names. So the concept of "first name basis" didn't really exist then. The only other thing Polgara could have called the Queens is "Your Majesty", and as we have seen in the series, she doesn't really pay attention to titles.
  • In addition, look at the personality of the queens in particular. Layla is super-friendly, completely non-haughty, and on a first-name basis with damn near everyone anyway. Islena is haughty and formal, but is also a sorceress-wannabe and total Polgara fangirl — she's just happy Polgara is talking to her at all. Porenn, like all other Drasnian royals, is a trained spymaster; she's far too professional to risk alienating someone of Polgara's power over something as trivial as forms of address (and in addition, finds Polgara personally amusing because she appreciates sarcastic wit). And Silar is not only The Stoic but is from Algaria, where they place the least emphasis on pomp and circumstance out of all the Alorn kingdoms. Not a single one of them has any reason to give a damn that Polgara speaks to them informally. And this is entirely aside from the political consideration that when someone is capable of single-handedly nuking your capital city with their mind, they can offend you all they want and you have two options; nothing and like it.
• In Polgara the Sorceress, Polgara mentions early on that she had to hide her signature white lock of hair with a bow so no one could recognize her. So why didn't she do that throughout the whole time hiding the heirs. It can't have been difficult to just put a bow in her hair every time she had to go outside
  • It actually says that she created a hairstyle involving white satin ribbons and a lot of elaborate braiding. That would have been trickier to maintain over a long period of time.
  • Further on that lots of white ribbons hairstyle: for most of her stint raising/bodyguarding the Rivan line, Polgara was usually in villages or small towns. Ribbon is a luxury item in such places, especially in a colour like white, and so is the time needed to make elaborate hairstyles like that. Constantly walking around with a hairstyle like that would be considered grand-level showing off; exactly the sort of thing that breeds dangerous resentment, or gets you noticed and remembered. Polgara spent all those several thousand years being as inconspicuous as possible.
• Isn't Polgara's treatment of Garion in The Queen of Sorcery firmly in Abusive Parents territory? After her ward kills a man in a pretty terrible way and is traumatised by it, Polgara starts pretending that his given name isn't really his name with no further explanation. Then she starts to telepathically deliver smug advice to him and tamper with his mind (making him write "Belgarion" instead of his real name when Ce'Nedra is teaching him to write). Not to mention that previously when Durnik, a grown-ass man, had a similar incident of killing a man for the first time and was very distraught by it, Polgara behaved very differently.
  • Not to say Polgara's behavior around Garion at this time is correct, but there are several things wrong with this statement and several points to consider. First, Polgara's (and the others') main concern is that Garion does not want to learn how to control his magic, which is extremely dangerous—many sorcerers in this series have accidentally unmade themselves because they didn't know any better. And these concerns are shared with Garion, by the way. Telepathically invading his mind and calling him "Belgarion" are her trying getting him to accept his destiny and learn to control his magic after his refusal to do so (again, not saying it was right of her). Second, Asharak murdered Garion's parents, who Polgara had also watched over, so she would naturally feel pretty righteous and unsympathetic about his death, versus the Mook Durnik killed. Overall, the situation is both a highly personal one to Polgara and one where her nephew is unnecessarily endangering himself and everyone around him, and those are the things she focuses on more than his trauma from burning Asharak alive.
    • She is still going beyond tough love and beyond harsh and into pure abusive. We've a sixteen year old boy, still more boyish than man, who she kept ignorant his entire life, who was raised in sensible Sendarian mannerisms and she treats him like a five year old sometimes and a manchild other times. It had not been more than a few hours after he first killed a man that she's already berating him and pestering him for being melancholy over it. She controls every aspect of his life, regardless what he wanted. Items that did not depend on the supposed prophecy, such as shaving his own face, she immediately decides for him without any discussion. She is the very definition of a helicopter parent who doesn't allow their child to do anything without them being present. I honestly was surprised she let him wipe himself.

The Orb of Aldur

The Sardion/Cthrag Sardius was called 'one half of the stone that was divided' by Cyradis. The Orb/Cthrag Yaska, we are given to understand, was the other half. So why does everyone keep saying that the Orb was an ordinary stone until Aldur picked it up, or created by Aldur?

• It's a Retcon. In story explanation, Aldur knew its true nature and was studying it, but his disciples were confused. They naturally thought their god and master was responsible for all the awesome going on and they taught Garion wrong.
• Understand that the in-universe book excerpts at the beginning of each book are written by people who don't really have the whole story, and neither do some of the protagonists. Cyradis is right, the others are wrong.
• Another example of the Prophecies tampering, maybe. If they can make the entire world change the pronunciation of Korim to Turim then tinkering with a few authors to obscure the truth and not point every single would be Ruler of the World to the "other" stone of power would be child's play.
  • Better question: if they're both half of the stone, why is the Sardion explicitly described as being larger than the Orb?
    • Two easy answers: The half is metaphorical - Yaska is the Light Half, Sardius is the Dark Half. Or the polishing process Aldur put it through condensed it. The Sardius was relatively untouched.
    • There's a thought that maybe the Orb was the 'heart' of the whole stone, and the Sardion was the hollow exterior. They are magic stones, we wouldn't necessarily have to see a hole in the Sardion.

Torak

One gets that gods can't heal naturally and that Torak was asleep, so he couldn't wake up and heal himself... but why didn't Urvon or Zedar try to heal him?

• Because he's a god maimed by the Orb; that's far too much injury for a pair of human wizards to even make a dent on. If all it took was magic, he could have magically healed himself even without a natural healing system.
• The only part the Orb played was that it was one of few things in the Universe able to actually wound a god. If UL or the Universe created a super-powered thorn which would be able to scratch the gods, they still wouldn't heal. No matter how much healing magic you throw at the gods, they just won't heal. Period. And, there seems to be not much, if any, healing magic in the books, anyway.
• Also explicitly pointed out, the only thing that could heal Torak was the thing that had hurt him in the first place, ie. the Orb of Aldur - and it was angry about Torak's misuse. At the end of the Belgariad, it did heal Torak, albeit posthumously.
• Perhaps it has to do with the nature of the pain - bring struck by Torak is, in a sense, natural. Being burned by the Orb, not so much.

The other sorcerers

So what exactly was the point of Beldin, Belsambar and Belmakor? Belgarath says that Beltira and Belkira were basically the translators of the Mrin/Darine Codexes, but it's never really mentioned what the others were meant to do.

• Belsambar and Belmakor both committed suicide after the first Angarak war, so they never got a chance to achieve their purposes. As a Mallorean Angarak and a Melcene respectively, they were probably intended for operations on the Mallorean continent — instead, Aldur had to yield that field of play entirely to Torak for about three millenia.
  • Thank you. Thank you. THANK YOU! One could, no joke, read the Belgariad and the Malloreon more than thirty times, but never once put together Belksambar and Belmakor's particular significance with respect to specific theaters of the War of the Gods. That makes such great sense now!
    • It's also possible that with Belmakor and Belsambar dead, Beldin had to pick up some of the slack with regards to Mallorean operations. He spent a lot of time over there, for one, while Belgarath and Polgara had to do most of the heavy lifting on the western continent instead, possibly doing what Beldin had been intended to do. After all, we didn't get the prophecies until after Belmakor and Belsambar were dead, so the Prophecy Of Light may have done some reshuffling of roles in the wake of their deaths.
  • It occurred to such to wonder the same thing about Belmakor, although she couldn't come up with any answers, except maybe that he was there to invent catapults (which seemed like a stupid purpose, since Beldin probably could have managed that on his own). With Belsambar, she just figured he was there to show them how to beat Torak in the first war.
  • A rather depressing theory, but it is quite possible that Belmakor and Belsambar's entire Purpose *was* to die, for two reasons: 1/ Having known how it felt to lose those special brothers stayed Belgarath's hand during the EVENT that pitted him and Zedar in the Morindland wastes while he was on his way to retrieve the Orb. He even states he'd lost too many brothers to do that to Zedar, even after his betrayal. Since Zedar is necessary later on, to find Eriond and to steal the Orb (again) it is imperative that Belgarath NOT kill him. 2/ Their deaths prepared Beldin to deal with Belgarath's reaction to Poledra's apparent death. We know that Beldin and the twins watched him carefully and stopped him a few times as he gathered his will to obliterate himself while he was chained to his bed.
• As for Beldin, note that he was the one who guarded Torak's slumbering body against premature awakening for the entire duration between his defeat at Vo Mimbre and the start of the Belgariad. (Remember how Belsambar was introduced? He basically sat outside Aldur's tower for months and waited until Aldur came out to him. Guarding Torak was probably meant to be his job) Also, Belgarath called on him for support several times, or to check things out in one part of the world while he was busy in another.
• Beldin was basically there to be The Lancer for Belgarath.
  • He was pretty awesome in that, too.
• Here's a thought: Remember those EVENTs the Prophecy of Light mentioned they lost?
  • This actually makes a lot of sense. The consequence of losing some EVENT or another costs the Prophecy of Light two sorcerers. It fits in with the chess motif of the series and how the two Destinies are playing the very long game. It also makes to wonder if it was an intentional sacrifice on the part of the Light to set up Belgarath's hatred of Zedar and the apostate's eventual fate.

General morality

In this as well as in other works of Eddings the brutal punishments dished out to bad guys. For example, what Belgarath did to Zedar which was implied would go on forever? That's just not cool, especially when it's never pointed out as being problematic in the text at all.

• There is a quote floating around from Belgarath about Zedar. Something along the lines of "Every once in a while I feel guilty, but then one remembers all the horrible things he did." And to remember correctly, Garion has nightmares about how he burned his parents' murderer alive. It seems brutal to our society, but it's probably less so for a medieval-esque society that's been engaged in divine warfare for a few hundred centuries.
  • What had Zedar done that was worse than some of the things Belgarath and co had done over the years? Besides, just look at him - it's pretty obvious he was broken by Torak as soon as they met - pretty much everything he says in Enchanter's Endgame is tinged with regret, and he has that breakdown in Belgarath the Sorcerer that cements him as someone hating his job but who is literally incapable of going against the god who mind-raped him in any way.
    • This argument is sliding into Draco in Leather Pants territory. Even if you believe that Zedar was broken by Torak, it was entirely his own fault. Zedar betrayed his brothers and his God, entirely of his own volition, simply because his impulsiveness and hubris led him to go off half-cocked and try to outsmart Torak. Not even Belgarath was so arrogant as to believe he could outwit a God, even one as single-minded as Torak. It wasn't even about good intentions, because Zedar was also shown to have an unhealthy obsession with the Orb long before he turned heel; Belgarath notes it several times in Belgarath the Sorcerer, and the other disciples saw it too. It was also implied that Zedar's betrayal was one of the major factors in the depression that led to Belmakor committing suicide. And if we're talking about regret? Despite everything Zedar did, Belgarath does admit to feeling a great deal of guilt over what he did to him on some level.
    • IS it his fault? Or was it due to the prophecies? Everything major event that happens has to happen per one or the other or both. Zedar going over to Torak was most certainly one of these events and not by his own choice. Would Zedar have found Errond regardless which side he played for or did it absolutely require him to be on Torak's side? Being that Zedar having Errond steal the Orb is what sets off the events of the story in the first place, I'm inclined to believe he absolutely HAD to betray Aldur or neither prophecy wouldn't work as written. In that light, being sentenced to a fate worse than death for fulfilling your purpose is absolutely a crapshoot deal.
• One thinks she recalls that, at some point, Belgarath points out that it's not exactly a Good vs. Evil fight. It's more like Us vs. Them, and the protagonists will occasionally have to do bad things.
  • One thing that has always struck this one about Belgarath is his ability to commit unthinkable crimes in furtherance of his divine mission. There's a scene in Demon Lord of Karanda where he and Silk waylay and butcher a few townspeople just to get regional dress to move around in. It makes an interesting point: if the fate of the universe were at stake, how far would YOU go?
    • Re-read Demon Lord of Karanda. Belgarath and Silk don't waylay and butcher any townspeople. Silk just goes off, knocks out some demon-worshiping religious fanatics, and steals their clothes. The protagonists only kill when necessary. Or when Zandramas threatens Geran.
    • Not entirely true, or even remotely. At several points in the Belgariad the protagonists go out of their way to kill Murgos, even when it would have been simpler to keep going. They will often make smug and gleeful remarks about killing people.
    • Several hundred years of near constant warfare, with atrocities committed by both sides (we get a pretty good description of some from the Murgo side, though it's heavily implied that the Alorns are capable of being plenty nasty themselves) does a lot to build up hatred. In The Malloreon, Silk mentions the instinctive Alorn hatred of Murgos when talking to Urgit, who's desperately seeking an alliance with Belgarion against 'Zakath, about how even if Belgarion was up for the idea, a lot of the rest of Alorns really, really wouldn't be. While he's dissembling at the time, there is something to what he's saying. Additionally, the three who are generally enthusiastic about the idea are Hettar, Barak, and Mandorallen. Hettar's a Blood Knight on a lifelong Roaring Rampage of Revenge which, while initially treated as a Running Gag, is also portrayed as an unhealthy obsession. Barak has the Alorn prejudice against Murgos and is a Blood Knight, mostly enjoying a good fight. And Mandorallen just enjoys a good fight.
    • Additionally, the main point of The Malloreon is to twist previous expectations, expanding on the one-dimensional impression of the Murgos and, to a lesser extent, other Angaraks. Nadraks were already fairly sympathetically depicted as the Punch-Clock Villain version of the Drasnians, Thulls are depicted pretty much universally as the poor downtrodden victims of the Grolims, and we don't really see much of the Malloreons in The Belgariad, save briefly for 'Zakath. At the same time, it shows the less savoury side of the Alorns, dialling the Bear-Cult up from 'annoyance' to 'raving psychotic fanatics', being nearly as bad as the Grolims. The fact that the person leading them around by the nose is a Grolim himself is treated as incidental.
    • On the other hand, Belgarath himself points out in Belgarath the Sorcerer that he spent a few hundred years (if not more) running around the west making sure to always arrange marriages, ensure people survived (even leading them away from the battlefield if necessary, to prevent them from encountering people they shouldn't), and assassinate some. He makes no pretext of being a saint, and does what is necessary. He doesn't necessarily like doing it (although he's probably demolished quite a few Grolims in his time, even then he doesn't take pleasure in slaughtering them), but he'll do it all the same.
    • In the same book, while sneaking into Ctuchik's tower, he knocks out a Grolim guard to steal his robe, and briefly contemplates shoving him over the cliff nearby...before deciding the guy hadn't done anything and wasn't dangerous unconscious, and left him alive where others could find him. He notes that he's not above necessary killing (assassinations or lethal self-defense), but he doesn't like random murder.
• Still, in difficulty sympathising with the characters a lot of the time, because their extreme Protagonist-Centered Morality effectively alienated them. And since she's here, she'll mention Beldin. Everyone says that he's actually very gentle - but he's one of the most violent and vindictive of the 'good guys'. He thinks Zedar got off too easy (It falls into the 'feels sorry for Zedar' camp). One is supposed to believe he's a sweet and caring guy? One could see why he became that way, sure, but... get real.
  • Remember, most of the people who view Beldin as gentle are fellow sorcerers who a) have known both Beldin and Zedar for a long time, and b) have had to deal with everything Zedar has done. They know how Beldin feels about himself, they know the problems he has had to face, and based on that, along with all the bad shit Zedar did, they're more inclined to view Beldin as the gentle one who does what he has to do in the service of Aldur and Zedar as the monster.
  • Which doesn't help any, since not knowing Beldin and Zedar for eons, and being told this stuff by people whose own morality (or rather, the lack thereof) is also alienating. Their opinions about Beldin may be justified, or at least understandable, but anyone can't share them and that limits how much anyone can sympathise. One could enjoy the books, but often when reading them, there's a wanting to shake the characters and scream "It's not all about you! Other people matter! Just because you don't personally know and like someone, doesn't mean they're not important! YOU AREN'T THE CENTRE OF THE WORLD!" Also, what Belgarath did to Zedar was both stupid and unnecessary. Kill him, sure; it's impractical to leave one of your greatest enemies around to stab you in the back (though it's not likey Zedar would have bothered unless Torak told him to, and he probably would've been quite relieved if the boss kicked it). It was vengeance, pure and simple, for a murder of a guy who was asking for it, which he regretted. A guy who didn't even stay dead. Yes, in-story it was revenge for a whole heap of other stuff as well, but nothing that we the audience get to see. Which means that he hasn't really done enough for us to take a twisted, sadistic pleasure in his suffering, and the whole thing reflects poorly on Belgarath. Which also means that it's sloppy story-telling on behalf of David Eddings, since he's made no secret that this is meant to be the literary equivalent of peddling dope, and so he should be trying to entertain and connect with the reader. That should take priority over Belgarath getting his vengeance on. Note: as much as one could feel sorry for Zedar, under the circumstances it would not have blamed Belgarath for killing him. The old guy just takes it too far.
    • Remember, though, that it's determined that during major EVENTs, people tend to go off their rockers. What Belgarath does to Zedar is even used as an example of that insanity when they're discussing it in Seeress of Kell. Yes, that doesn't excuse his not returning to undo what he did, but after all, it's never denied that "'Grat is not nice."
    • Belgarath the Sorcerer gives a great deal of context to the entire backstory with Aldur's disciples, and spells out just why Zedar's actions were so inexcusable. Belgarath never claims to be a saint but he does deeply regret that whole situation and wishes he could have stopped it from ever escalating that far (he even goes so far as to admit he probably shouldn't blame Zedar for his actions, Because Destiny Says So, though plain old human weakness gets to him). That said, where these Belgarath the Death-Eater arguments fall flat is that Aldur's disciples live almost in an entirely different world because of their roles as the Chosen Ones. They really are the Center of the World, as instruments of the Light Prophecy—right along with the Dark Prophecy's Rogues Gallery. That's the one of the major points of the series, the whole story revolves around their dueling, eons-long plans. Belgarath freely cops to his Jerkass tendencies all throughout the books, and says point blank that Good Is Not Nice because it can't afford to be; being driven by Necessity inherently means being somewhat of a Magnificent Bastard at times, and you have to harden yourself on some level to be able to do your job properly (those who still lambaste Polgara for refusing to coddle Garion, take note.). Not only that, sorcerers' immortality means they relate to each other on a far deeper level than ordinary people do, particularly Aldur's disciples. They'd been a family for thousands of years, and lived through all kinds of traumas, including their Master's grief over being betrayed by His brother, countless wars (the original cracking of the world foremost among them), and so on. They'd already lost two brothers to suicide, and it's heavily implied that Belmakor caught onto Zedar's Mole turn before the rest of them, contributing to the depression that ultimately killed him. Given all of this, it becomes much clearer just how deeply Zedar's betrayal affected them all, but none so great as Belgarath, who was the eldest of them all and who clearly was still carrying several eons worth of survivor's guilt with him despite appearances. Belgarath himself notes the intensity of their bonds in his book, when he discusses the aftermath of Belsambar's suicide. Combine that with the above point about people having a tendency to go nuts during EVENTs and it starts to become blindingly obvious what Belgarath was going through during that final confrontation.
    Belgarath: "Ordinary people who live ordinary lives can't begin to understand just how deeply you can become involved with another person over the course of thousands of years. In a peculiar sort of way, Belsambar's self-obliteration maimed me. I think I'd have preferred to lose an arm or a leg rather than my mystic Angarak brother, and I know that my other brothers felt much the same."
    • The prequel book also makes it clear that they were bonded on some sort of mental and spiritual level. They probably were maimed spiritually, and not the metaphorical kind. Belsambar's death was something that every single disciple of Aldur felt, even the ones who were almost literally on the other side of the planet and couldn't possibly have sensed any build-up of his Will. They knew that he had died in the exact instant Belgarath knew, and for the rest of their (more or less immortal) lives they have to carry a giant hole in their mind/spirit/heart that was once their brother. And Belgarath, as the eldest of them and the one who taught the vast majority of the other disciples at one point or another, would carry that even more heavily than the others.
    • Actually, in a non-trivial way, they are the center of the world. Strike that: they're the center of the universe. Their entire existences drive the Prophecy of Light to set the entire Universe back on its proper course.
• The morality question is something that makes the series more "realistic". The characters are three dimensional characters that have the drives and failings of real people rather than being "good" or "evil". They live in the far more densely populated gray area between those extremes. Basically, bad people do good things and good people do bad things. Then, when you add in all the extraordinary things that these good and bad people do, you have a whole different scale of morality. If you have it in your power to trap someone in a wall for eternity because they helped kill your brothers or because they caused countless deaths then wouldn't you do it? Part of the love of the Belgariad stems from the deep characterisations in the whole tale and the fact that it highlights the rashness of an action and the consequences for that person when the cold light of day hits. It Is Written that Garion agonised for decades about what he did to Asharak, and that Belgarath was still guilty about what he did to Zedar two decades after he did it. David Eddings was aware that morality is a thin veneer of civilisation that we all cover ourselves in, and that comes through in how he writes his characters.
  • Eddings was all over the map on morality. Garion has personally killed hundreds by the end of the series and the other characters are shown on multiple occasions to go out of their way to kill Angaraks. Its not even portrayed as a moral conflict since everything is waved away as "they were bad people", ignoring the fact that most were just foot soldiers who had the bad luck to be born on the wrong side of a border.
    • This is fixed somewhat in The Malloreon, which depicts Angaraks, primarily Murgos and Malloreons (Nadraks and Thulls were already pretty sympathetically treated) as being much more than just the one-dimensional impression we get of them in The Belgariad, and ultimately, people more or less like any others. This also makes much more sense, because the first series is primarily set in the Alorn kingdoms, which all have every reason to have a massive grudge against Murgos in particular, and we don't actually see many individual Murgos who aren't human-sacrificing Grolims, a Dagashi like Brill, or the infamously psychotic Taur Urgas - people in positions of power who make impressions and command their people to do their will, giving rise to an opinion akin to All Germans Are Nazis. The Malloreon, set heavily in the Angarak kingdoms, neatly deconstructs this by showing that, shockingly, Angaraks, Murgos in particular, are just people like anyone else.

Garion's I Just Want to Be Normal

Whenever Garion gets upset, everyone else is just like 'Garion, stop whining and live with it. You're being immature.' Why couldn't someone just try comforting him and explaining things to him instead of being snarky bitches all the time?

• No one else in the party has ever been "normal" (even if Polgara's intimately familiar with how a normal life progresses), nor have they ever particularly wanted to be. Their lack of empathy with Garion's desires is entirely understandable, and even Garion stops wanting to be normal eventually.
  • Also, the two people in the group who would normally be most inclined to be sympathetic to him — Belgarath & Polgara — are also intimately aware that the fate of the entire universe literally hangs on Garion learning how to be as abnormal as possible, and right quickly. Hence their repeatedly kicking him in the pants.
    • Belgareth does want to explain things to Garion, but he gave complete control over raising him to Polgara who doesn't understand that life would be simpler if she explained things to Garion.
    • Polgara's trying to hurry him into learning how to be abnormal, and keep him completely ignorant and under her thumb. She seems dead set on having him as her puppet.
    • The last time one of the Rivan heirs had been told how important he was, he turned into a retarded egomaniac that Asharak almost manipulated into leading a resurgence of the Bear-Cult. Polgara and Belgarath were seriously discussing mindwiping him, they were that desperate. Polgara's reaction to that near-miss was 'Never again!'. And so, enforced normality and major humility lifestyles.
    • Actually, even before and after that they did tell the heirs (and their wives) the truth, but it was only after they became adults because, as is clearly stated in at least Belgarath's book, kids and teenagers tend to go off and blab about shit, especially shit that's supposed to stay SECRET. Garion was still too young, and, as is stated countless times in The Belgariad, a lot of their foes had the ability to pluck the truth right out from someone's mind. That's why not even the Companions save Belgarath and Polgara know the truth.
  • Roughly half of the problems with Garion would have been avoided if Polgara would just explain things to him rather than keep him in the dark. Ironically, Asharak/Chamdar is absolutely right. She has kept Garion in the dark just for the sake of keeping a secret and continues to do so throughout most of the story. It helps when you understand that Polgara is incompetent at parenting and her Informed Ability at child-rearing is a result of unreliable witnesses and people who don't have all the facts. To her credit she does admit in the beginning that she is unsuited to the task the other sorcerers have given her and all the evidence suggests that everyone really should take her at her word. She seems to do well with toddlers but is utterly out of her depth when the child starts to understand and inquire about the world around them. Belgarath and Durnik actually do a pretty decent job of explaining things to Garion as soon as they figure out what's bugging him, but Polgara is still his guardian and as such has all the authority when it comes to raising him. Belgarath even calls her out on her lack of parenting skills and especially the patience required a few times in the beginning. The problems usually rise when Belgarath isn't around to explain things to Garion and Polgara is left alone with the responsibility. The reason everyone treats Polgara as a model parent is because Garion doesn't turn out half-bad. The thing is that outsiders don't know that she didn't raise him on her own and that his best qualities come from sources other than Polgara. It is stated outright in the first book that Durnik is responsible for his strong moral core, humility and Sendarian values. Belgarath is responsible for making him understand and accept who he is and learning the importance of studying. Polgara is actually only responsible for Garions worst qualities like his insecurity, reliance on other people, naiveté and lack of formal education. She just gets the credit because those who don't know better assume all that is good about him comes from her and those who know better i.e. Garion, Durnik and Belgarath all love her too much to see her in anything but the best possible light.
• Crash courses into badass are rarely very kind.
• How about when Garion kills Asharak? When he burns another human being alive? Yes, Asharak probably deserved it, but it's still a big thing, and Polgara brushes off his guilt like it's nothing. In her defense, they didn't have much time, but surely things would go faster if she helped him work through that, instead of belittling his feelings and glorifying his act.
  • Until you realize that Polgara is essentially centuries old and has seen many, many people die. Plus Asharak killed Garion's parents (and tried to kill Garion), a family she has been protecting for a number of said centuries and the only connection she had left to her beloved sister. To Garion, his parents were people he never met, having been raised by Polgara. To Polgara they were people she helped raise and protect their entire lives. Of course she's less than inclined to be kind to their murderer.
    • But she should have been kinder to Garion, or at least actually considered that he wouldn't feel the same way as her.
  • Also keep in mind that Asharak/Chamdar had been Ctuchik's errand boy for centuries before this. He's got a lot of innocent blood on his hands, directly or indirectly.
    • Which would not have changed how Garion felt, since Polgara refused to tell him anything and so he couldn't have known about everything Asharak got up to.
    • The series always tries to justify things by saying they were bad people. But that's not even remotely the point, when you burn a man alive with your mind it should traumatize you because you performed a really gruesome act. Regardless of whether or not your victim deserved, it is a seriously messed up thing to do.
  • Might not help Garion, but from Polgara's perspective the man richly deserved what he got, which would make the whole situation rather difficult for her to deal with.
    • It seems that one of Polgara's most glaring flaws is her inability to relate to the concerns of ordinary people, so there is a reason, just not an excuse.
  • Something that just occurred— do kings in this world have the right of "high justice"? There's the knowing of the cultures Eddings based everything on did, but it doesn't recall it coming up in the novels. If so, then Garion got a solid lesson on the death penalty in the course of killing Asharak. Granted, he doesn't know at the time he's gonna need that lesson later on.
    • The kings do have the right of High Justice, as Anheg has the Earl of Javik executed in Pawn of Prophecy.
• Immortality does weird things to your ability to relate to mortals. Much of the good the prequel books do is humanize Belgarath and Polgara. You see how much hardship and loss the two characters have to soldier through in service to Destiny, so it's no wonder that they don't tolerate the "Why me?"s from Garion, very much in a "Life isn't fair. Get used to it." kind of vein. Plus, Destiny rewards those who do their jobs and Garion is happy by the end of the story.
  • Immortality did not do enough "weird things" to Polgara to keep her from recognizing Durnik's distress after first killing another man, and comforting him. Her failure to do so for Garion indicates either a serious continuity error or a flaw in her character verging on a spiritual disfigurement. Given that no one (not even Durnik) calls her out on this, the flaw lay with the preconceptions of the author(s) (including Leigh here) - somehow the storytellers felt that Durnik's distress "deserved" such comfort, and Garion's did not. Given that both characters have are "plain folk" Sendarian in outlook, One can only think that the difference lay either in their age (Durnik being an adult, Garion being a teen) or in Garion being "really" a destined king. So, in the view of the author(s), either the moral distress of smiths is important while the moral distress of kings is not, or the moral distress of adults is important while the moral distress of teenagers is not. Both possibilities raise somewhat disturbing questions. We'd best chalk it up to some serious Values Dissonance between readers and authors on this matter.
    • The difference is that she's in love with Durnik, which the story makes relatively clear pretty early on. The only other time we see her in love, she's preparing to abandon everything to go down fighting with the Wacites. It fits her characterization that her feelings for Durnik get him special attention that Garion does not. For Durnik's part, it's not likely he'd gotten over his worship of her enough to call her out on much of anything.
    • Durnik at this point is also, as far as Polgara knows, the ordinary nice guy blacksmith who's very sweet and wants to protect them but ultimately isn't a warrior or even someone like Silk who's been professionally trained to kill. He just wanted to go along to protect "Mistress Pol" and now a guy who probably has never harmed a fly had to straight-up kill someone. In a way that's basically using the trade skills he's honed to bash a guy's head in. Garion's a future sorcerer-king who is going to have to literally KILL A GOD soon or die and who's also the only person (other than Errand, whom they don't know about yet) who can pick up and use the magical equivalent of a WMD. He has very limited time to be coddled. Durnik's the kind blacksmith along for the ride who just got a horribly rude awakening about what he's volunteered for. She has no idea at this point he'll ever be anything but a Sendarian blacksmith.
    • There's also several professional warriors and his Grandfather available to counsel Garion - although it seems they don't bother - and guide him in the course of what it means to hold a position in life that will inevitably lead to having to kill your enemies. But Durnik (possibly due to toxic masculinity about what a 'proper man' behaves like) would probably only respond to Polgara in this situation.
    • Belgarath seems more concerned with how Garion takes it, and is mostly concerned that getting the revenge he's been actively craving and saying he's going to get (remember Garion's been saying since he found out that he's going to kill the man who killed his parents) doesn't actually seem fun. He lets him learn the same lesson about justice in the Mallorean when Garion hunts down the deserters for "justice." In both cases Garion ultimately realizes it wasn't wrong to kill them, but he didn't like it. But being a wangsty teen, he has to rebel about it the first time.

The linguistic situation

In an otherwise good series this is one that sticks out a bit. Everyone in the world seems to be speak the same language (except the Ulgos) but there are strange inconsistencies along the way. Given that Torak like setting himself and his people apart it makes sense for Angaraks to speak a separate language (referenced as Old Angarak) to the other people of the world but why do modern Angaraks speak the same language as the Kingdoms of the West? Also the Proto-Ulgos spoke a different language to everyone else as well and this state of affairs pre-dated the first Gorim getting them accepted by UL. Also fair enough but then why do the Melcenes, the Dals, the Morindim and the Karands all speak the communal language?

• The Murgos etc are said to speak the Western tongue with a "harsh accent". Since the only Murgos we really interact with are a) high-ranking, or b) Grolims, they've probably learned the language so as to communicate with Westerners.
  • Torak, his disciples (sans Urvon post-Cthol Mishrak), and the various Angarak Kings aren't morons. They all knew they'd eventually have to be diplomatic with the West, however reluctantly, in order to further their goals of killing off the line of Riva and stealing the Orb. Makes sense that they would adopt the language of the West, and force it on their subject peoples (Dals, Melcenes, Karands). Morindim probably picked it up from the Nadraks.
• We know Torak banned the teaching of Old Angarak (presumably the Grolims got an exemption, since every copy of the Book of Torak we encounter is written in Old Angarak). Simply altering the language a bit wouldn't have taken care of matters from his viewpoint; 21st century English-speakers can still read Shakespeare and get most of the jokes, and one can get most of the sense of Chaucer in the original. A hypothetical "New Angarak" language would still have allowed anyone literate to read and comprehend Old Angarak. He could have devised a completely unrelated language, but using the common tongue of the West was probably simpler. As for the Dals, in one of the prequel novels Polgara greets the Gorim in Dalish, because she hasn't studied the Ulgo language yet. The Dals probably switched languages to make their tasks easier.
  • As far as English comparisons, Old English is the language of Beowulf, and is practically a separate language (especially the older runic script). If the comparison holds true, speakers of "New Angarak" would be unable to read Old Angarak, protecting Torak's writings and edict. That being said, Anheg learned to at least read Old Angarak, so presumably there's some sort of written translation somewhere - the King of Cherek seems unlikely to take a Grolim tutor.

Lelldorin

Seriously, dear young, useless Lelldorin. If you think about it a little, the whole saga could have been written even without him and still being perfectly working. Not that there's a dislike to Eddings or anything, but come on! All he did was drop out of nowhere near the beginning of the second book, chat with Garion and provide some firepower in a couple of battles and then being Put on a Bus and making mess offscreen. Seriously, why he even bothere putting him as one of the prophetized warriors in the first place!?

• While Leldorin did not really contribute to the Quest, his friendship with Mandorallen may and certainly will contribute to removing grudges and hatred between Asturians and Mimbrates. It is the same with Relg and Taiba, Purpose of the Universe stated that their courtship and marriage have very little to do with Garion but is very important nonetheless.
  • Lelldorin's primary purpose seems to be to help Ce'Nedra's first recruitment speech in Asturia go well. Seriously, it's the only thing he does in the whole series that couldn't just as easily have been done by someone else.
    • Well, for one, he's good comic relief; his sheer stupidity actually makes him funny without being insufferable (mostly). Besides that, he's related to prominent Asturian nobility, so his frienship and marriage to two prominent Mimbrates will help bridge the gap between the two regions, and his realization of the flaws of Arendia's serfdom might become important to the kingdom later on (it likely would have helped if Eddings brought this stuff up like he did with Taiba and Relg). Finally, he participate a little more in the Mallorean. That said, it's true he's definitely not a main character, even though he seems to be billed as such, since he's mentioned in the Prophecy and all.
    • Remember, as the Prophecy tells Garion, not everything is about him. The Prophecy is setting up the whole world for the long game and people like Lelldorin, Relg, and Taiba have their parts to play but aren't necessarily part of the main struggle. It's heavily hinted that Lelldorin and Mandorallen's friendship will help to close the breach between the Mimbrates and Asturians.
    • There's also that Lelldorin has another piece of the main plot; he's part of the Grolim-manipulated plot to assassinate the Mimbrate royal family, and so he's the only one who can tell Garion about it. Which leads to the first great act of courage Garion does without either lucking into it or having someone else encourage him to do it, an important step in Garion's character development. Lelldorin might only have had one or two little pieces of the Prophecy, but they were not optional pieces.

Silk and Chamdar

Given his cameo towards the end of Belgarath the Sorcerer, shouldn't Silk have known who Chamdar was? He explicitly knows that Asharak is an alias of Chamdar's, and that Belgarath was (and presumably still is) interested in Chamdar's movements.

• It's explicitly stated by Belgarath that Chamdar subtly influenced Silk's mind, much like he did with Garion's, to keep him from putting two and two together.

Eriond the non-character

Eriond turns into a bit of a non-character in the latter half of the Malloreon. Not simply that he doesn't do anything, but rather that every time he's mentioned it evokes a "Oh, I forgot about him" response. Given how important he is to the story, and that he's the protagonist of the Malloreon's opening chapters, his extended period Out of Focus makes the ending feel almost (but not quite) like a Deus ex Machina.

• It's a bit of a quick and dirty way of springing the choice as something other than a no-brainer. On a first read, his odd behavior in the first two books can easily be forgotten as he's shunted to the background (though there are still plenty of clues thrust through out the last 3), and are even passed off by the characters as possibly a side effect of his long contact with the Orb. Belgarath shows signs of curiosity about Eriond's abilities, but he even says that every time he wants to investigate it he gets "neatly diverted." The Prophecy of the Light is purposefully trying to downplay Eriond in that respect. On a re-read, knowing the turnout, all the clues pop out in glaring relief, but pushing him to the back gives the ending some suspense instead of zero.
• There are also more clues, when you go back and know what you're looking at. It's established that even the Orb alone isn't necessarily enough to deal with a demon and not enough for a demon lord—it takes a god's help. When Nahaz decides to back off the first confrontation, it's not just that he's facing Belgarath, Beldin, Polgara, Garion, Durnik, and the Orb-if you read carefully, Garion notices that Eriond has joined them, too. In retrospect, knowing what we know after the end, that Eriond has always been the potential god who was meant to be, it's foreshadowed: the sorcerers DID have a god's assistance.

The stars

In The Mallorean, the possible outcome is supposed to be 50/50, right? Nobody knows ahead of time which side will win. The loser will become the stars to fill in the gap caused by the original accident. Afterward, Garion is told by the Purpose that if he had lost, he and the Orb would be heading for a new address. So... how come only Zandramas started looking starry throughout the series? Shouldn't they both have? It makes it seem like there was only one possible outcome, and the heroes needn't have worried.

• The Purpose was just messing with Garion when he said that him and the Orb would be heading for a new address if Cyradis has chosen differently (or it is a mistake on Eddings part). Part of the Mallorean Gospels states how the Child of Dark will look as though "all the stary universe was contained within", the Codex said no such thing since it didn't apply to the Child of Light. Plus, Cyradis said that Zandramas would have the same fate regardless of her choice.
• The heroes didn't know about this, but do know that the other side is working off its own set of prophecies. Starry Zandramas could've been for another purpose had she won. It might've just been a thing to point her out as the Child of Dark, like Garion's mark did for him.
• It could be that Zandramas' skin becoming starry but not Belgarion's is a side-effect of the Child of Light winning the most recent previous round, and had Garion lost that battle, he (or whoever the Child of Light would have been) would have become all starry as the Malloreon progressed.
• The Child of Light's skin didn't need to become starry because the Orb already contained the needed stars. Its mentioned a couple times throughout both series how the Orb's shine has a star-like glimmer to them. The Dark Prophecy's stone, though, did not contain the stars within it and so that task fell on the Child of Darkness. Therefore, either stone + Child pair could fill in the void left by the supernova.

Salmissra's Lifespan

Salmissra had sorcerous power. Shouldn't that have made her immortal, thus rendering both the youth-giving drugs and her scheming unnecessary?

• It seems to be a matter of power, or maybe of divine intervention. If you think about it, the only immortal sorcerers have been the disciples of Aldur and the most powerful Grolims, who are all either Torak's disciples or the disciples of Torak's disciples (Asharak). Failing that, it could easily be that they simply live that long because the Prophecy needs them to, which is hinted at in the story. Salmissra, on the other hand, has relatively minor powers and isn't necessary to the prophecy (well, this particular one isn't, because as Polgara states, all Salmissra's are basically the same and thus the Prophecy needn't bother preserving her).
• Salmissra never demonstrated sorcery, just a disciple's ability to summon her god. It is mentioned that Issa forgot to give her immortality, and failed to notice because the priests kept installing look-alikes.
  • Polgara the Sorceress mentions quite a few times that the various Salmissra's do have some gifts in that area, it just isn't on the scale that the Disciples have. The only one we really see is a form of seeing into the future since it specifically mentions that Salmissra knows that at some point Polgara will do something to one of them
• The alchemist that accidentally discovered sorcery became long lived. The experiment to test for actually immortality through defenestration was unable to be completed.
• Do the books specifically state that Salmissra is a sorceress? If she has that power, she'd have immortality. Beldin and Belgarath state that other sorcerers crop up from time to time and gain immortality because of it. Senji is a notable example, though most seem to remove themselves from the equation by trying to unmake something. This suggests that there's nothing else required to become an immortal, that if Salmissra were a proper sorceress, Issa wouldn't have had to do anything else to her. Given the other forms of "magic" beyond Will and the Word sorcery that exist in the world such as magic, witchcraft, divination, and such perhaps one of these is where her powers come from.
  • She's not a sorceress, but there's one scene where she manages to summon the spirit of Issa. No idea if that's a witch power or something every Salmissra is taught to do.
  • Salmissra explicitly uses sorcery in the book. Garion notes that it's like a snake striking, rather than the slow build of will he's used to.
• There is one explanation offered by Belgarath's book, though it's somewhat problematic: ordinary people can be trained to use sorcery, but they must have the patronage of a god to do so. This is how the Grolims can do basic tricks. For such people, sorcery can only be used in an area where their god is worshiped, which is supposedly why Torak sent all those Angaraks onto the western continent: so that his Grolims could continue to do their work. And only a high priest or disciple of a god has true immortality. This explains the line about Issa "forgetting" to make Salmissra immortal. By contrast, some people, such as Belgarath or Senji, have innate sorcery, and only need to unlock it. Their gift is far more powerful, so they naturally live much longer.
  • Queen of Sorcery explicitly mentions that the drugs she's taking to look young are killing her thats why Polgara had to turn her into a snake to make her immortal.

Mordja and the Sardion

The purpose of the Demon Lords, Nahaz and Mordja, was to try to get their hands on the stones of power, the Orb and the Sardion. Mordja was able to enter the cave where the Sardion was waiting, and seems to have been in there for some time (having apparently been sent in by Zandramas to possess the dragon and ambush the good guys). Why didn't he just take the Sardion then?

• It is properly a rule of the cosmos that states that a human has to be the first one to touch it. Mordja specifically states that the Sardion will only be taken once Zandramas has touched it.

Torak and Aldur

It's mentioned that Torak felt the fire of the Orb from the moment he cracked the world until the moment of his death, because Gods aren't capable of healing. But there's no mention of Aldur suffering for a similar amount of time, despite the fact that Torak punched him to get the Orb in the first place. Why?

• Because Aldur was attacked by another god, equal to him in strength, and Torak was attacked by the Orb, which was far, far stronger than he was. Plus, getting punched is like, a bruise. Getting set on fire? Worse.
• Or, could it be that Aldur simply used some makeup?
• For that matter, pain is biological warning system to help an organism avoid injury or avoid making an injury worse. If gods aren't capable of healing because they're not able to be injured, they should also have no ability to feel pain. To put it another way, when UL was creating his children, why would he include 'can feel pain' without including 'can heal'? Is he a complete sadist? It's probably more likely that either gods can heal or gods cannot feel pain, and Torak's condition either way is solely the result of the Orb being very upset with him.

Red Gold

In the very first book, it's mentioned that the red gold of Cthol Murgos calls to itself - the more you have, the more you want. This is how the Earl of Jarvik was subverted into treason. But later on we're shown people who have large amounts of the stuff with no visible effects. Ctuchick had a room full of the stuff and had no reputation for wanting more. In "King of the Murgos", the party ends up with half a bucket of Murgo gold, and nobody goes super-greedy lusting for more. The Dagashi they got the gold from also didn't seem affected. Does this property of red gold only apply to specially treated coins that are distributed to the in the West for purposes of subversion?

• A personal explanation is plain Gold Fever and that the quasi-magical properties of Murgo are a folkloric fiction to explain away why people who were to all appearances loyal and trusted have been taking massive and highly obvious bribes.
  • After Garion and Belgarath meet Asharak for the first time in Pawn of Prophecy, we have Belgarath saying that Grolims can put magic on coins. So the idea that most red gold is normal alloy and that the Grolims enchant coins to corrupt difficult targets is plausible.

The New Generation of Sorcerers

Both Garion and Durnik are considered disciples of Aldur. Garion gets his Bel. It's not mentioned if Durnik officially gets one, but he does get called a disciple. They're both sorcerers. Does this mean they live forever? Garion would eventually pass the Rivan throne onto his son, but does that mean his son is immortal? Will he outlive Ce'Nedra and his kids? Are Durnik and Polgara's kids immortal? The only reason asking this is several times throughout the story, its mentioned that the Light Destiny rewards the people it uses for its purposes with happiness. One can't imagine outliving your non-sorcerous loved ones is much of a reward in the end.

• It is established that Dryads live as long as their tree does, which can be for centuries. It's uncertain if Garion will outlive his children, but considering that Belgarath had a sorceress, daughter, it's not too far of a stretch to assume that even if most of the kids aren't immortal, at least some of them will be.
  • But Polgara isn't immortal because her father's a sorcerer, she's immortal because SHE is a sorceress. It's not automatically inherited; Polgara had to learn sorcery and her twin sister never did (and died). Belgarion's children won't have immortality unless he teaches them the will and the word.
    • If its true that the female descendants of Dryads are Dryads (which is almost explicitly said a couple of times), then the only one Garion would need to teach for a long life would be Geran, as Garion's going to possibly have more daughters.
• Beldurnik sounds kind of wrong, It's not like Durnik would wear that sort of nonsense.
  • Time has a way of influencing things. Belgarath is almost surprised when he's reminded that his name was originally Garath, having forgotten his name before his Master's blessing. Even Garion isn't quite comfortable with his Bel yet. (One line from either the books or a fic had Belgarath joking that Garion's 'Bel-' still squeaks when he goes around corners.) Give it a few hundred years and Belgarion and Beldurnik will probably be far more comfortable.

Durnik's title

Durnik is 'The Man With Two Lives'. At the end of the series, all the Gods and Garion have to work together to bring him back. But if Torak had won, then why the hell would he have wanted to bring Durnik back? Torak specifically wanted to marry Polgara, so why wouldn't he just leave Durnik dead?

• Polgara is referred to by a different title in the Angarak prophecies. Perhaps all of them are? The only people who ever refer to Durnik as the Man With Two Lives are familiar with the Western prophecies.
  • Correct. The two different Prophecies do not always use the same names for the same people. For example, Polgara is referred to as 'The Queen of the World' in the Prophecy of Dark because she's intended to marry Torak but the Prophecy of Light uses that same title for Ce'Nedra, because she's intended to marry Garion. Likewise, Ctuchik refers to Silk as the "Nimble Thief" (which is presumably Silk's designation in the Prophecy of Dark), while the Prophecy of Light calls him "The Guide".
    • Silk actually gets three prophecy titles, since Asharak refers to him as "The Rat" at one point.
  • One could imagine Durnik's title in the Dark Prophecies is something like "The Man Who Stays Alive".

Dryads

The trope page says this:

• One-Gender Race: The nonhuman Dryads. They kidnap human men and force them to father children. This goes one of two ways: a girl will always be a Dryad, and a boy will be human with Dryad genes lying dormant. These Dryad genes can then be passed on to the children of that male — and they are, resulting in Ce'Nedra, who, thanks to dilution, is half Dryad. Pure dryads don't have male children. In "Belgarath the Sorcerer", Belgarath notes that crossbreeding dryads with the House of Borune did some odd things, since a pure dryad "would never give birth to a male child".
  • How is the part in bold compatible with the what precedes? It would means for the first "a boy will be human with Dryad genes lying dormant" (and thus, the first person capable of fathering a half-dryad) you need the mother to be a half-dryad in the first place, which is a chicken-and-egg paradox!
  • Agreed. It doesn't make any sense. Nothing's going on with the Borune Dryads that doesn't equally apply to ALL Dryad genealogy. Every one of them has a human father. However, it might have something to do with them living so far from their tree and/or people. Dryad tree pollen prevents male children from fertilizing?

Ce'Nedra's War

What was the point of Ce'Nedra's War? Up front, the reason was to prevent a significant Mallorean presence in the West. The goal was to get ships into the Sea of the East, and sink Mallorean troop transports and wreck supply lines. Going around the mostly uncharted coast of Cthol Murgos was deemed too risky or too long. The goal was met, but abandoned in about a month once word got out that Torak had been slain, and so presumably all the ships took this route back anyways, despite earlier mentions that their insertion into the Sea of the East was effectively a suicide run. Furthermore, since 'Zakath continued to make headway in his war for the next decade, he's clearly continuing to land more troops, and far more than were seen at Thull Mardu. From this perspective, the entire campaign was pointless.

Ce'Nedra's personal reasons are even more vague. There's the idea that the idea was a rehash of the Lord of the Rings. March the Armies of the West to distract attention from what Garion et al were up to. However, the way things were set up didn't have any of the the elements that made that plan make sense. Torak knew he was coming anyway, and no one involved in the Angarak side of the war would have been in the way to begin with.

Prophetic reasons were... to get Ce'Nedra, Polgara, Durnik, and Eriond to Cthol Mishrak? That seems excessive for even the Prophecies, given that their presence still didn't flow naturally from the events leading up to it. They all had to be kidnapped out of their tent and shipped across the Sea of the East. If anything, the presence of the Cherek fleet was working against them getting to Chthol Mishrak. There had to have been a way of making that happen that didn't uproot half the West and made a little more sense.

Miscellaneous

If Adara's rose can heal about any known and unknown disease, why didn't they use it on the plague victims of Mal Zeth?

• It was a cure for poison, not disease.
  • Exactly. Sovereign SPECIFIC. That's telling everyone that it's a "cure-all" for poison. It would imagine Polgara did a lot of research and testing after the adventures, though, after finding out how to actually administer it.
  • Not to mention even if it did work against the plague, you're talking about an extremely rare flower only found in Algaria. Look how much effort it took to grow just enough in time to heal Zakath. If it was the only cure, three quarters of Mal Zeth would be dead by the time you had enough to cure three or four people.

A headscratcher - we are told Silk's mother was once a famous beauty whose face was hideously disfigured by disease. However, as it also rendered her blind, she is unaware that her beauty is gone and everyone around her keeps up the pretence to spare her the knowledge. Well...she has hands, still, doesn't she? Are we supposed to believe, in all these years, she never touched her face?

• It's easy to assume that something that can cause blindness might also cause nerve damage, making her hands less sensitive. Or that it 'disfigured' her by blanching/staining portions of her skin horribly, or somehow making blood vessels suddenly more visible (Like in severely sun-damaged skin.) None of those would probably feel different.
• It's also possible that she was entirely aware of her disfigurement the whole time. She may have realized that everyone is tip-toeing around it to spare her feelings, and that her husband and Silk are doing it out of love, and played along for their sake. I

• In a world where sorcerers can transmute living creatures into something else, and sometimes even create things from thin air, they spend a great deal of time pitying the only remaining dragon yet not creating a mate for her and claiming they can't do anything for. One do not recall at any point in the story the Gods forbidding another dragon from being made for her to mate with. Hell, Sorcerers can transform into other creatures. Some Grolim didn't think they could get on Torak's good side by repopulating the world with Dragons?
  • To successfully transform something into something else, you have to be intimately familiar with it's biology. That's why Aldur had his disciples studying various disciplines for millennia. Zandramas' dragon transformation was likely either illusion or a close approximation to what she thought the dragon was. But unless they had a full male specimen to dissect and study, they'd never had been able to recreate a male dragon to have the female mate with. Recall in Belgarath's recounting how he decided to take the form of an owl to fly silently behind Zedar and he accidentally made himself female? It's because he took from what his knowledge base was...that being Poledra's owl form. Garion was able to take the shape of a wolf without study because he had Belgarath all up in his brain telling him what to do, and it still took hours to get right.
  • Grolims are generally seen as being not nearly as skillful as Belgarath, Polgara, Beldin, etc. They may not have had the ability to do so.
    • There was at least one Grolim with the ability to change into a dragon. Zandramas is shown to do this transformation twice in the Malloreon (the first was when she sensed Wolf!Garion was near her position, and the second was just before she killed Agachak) and an earlier appearance of the dragon was attributed to being Dragon!Zandramas. Granted, she obviously couldn't have mated with the dragon since they're both female, but still...

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