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Before we get into this entry, I'd like to tell a story. A story of swords and sorcery.

Once upon a time, a stone which possessed the power to change destiny was stolen. If this Orb, belonging to the benevolent god Aldur, ever fell into the hands of the evil, maimed god Torak, the peaceful kingdoms of the west would fall to his might. In pursuit of the Orb followed the legendary sorcerer Belgarath, his gorgeous and powerful daughter Polgara, and the humble farmboy Garion, along with many other colorful allies: a simple blacksmith, a notorious thief, a berserker, a princely horseman, a paladin, a noble outlaw, a snotty princess, and so on. The companions encountered kings, wizards, dryads, politics and treachery. Ultimately, Garion's true identity was revealed. And so Garion took up the massive sword of his destiny to save the world...

That's the plot of David Eddings's The Belgariad... and a whole lot of other stories as well.

David Eddings wrote the series after taking a course on literary criticism, digging out all the tropes he could find, and deciding to build a world that was simultaneously Strictly Formula and really, really good — because Tropes Are Not Bad. He also deliberately focused on the characters rather than the tropes, injecting liveliness and sardonic humor into stock situations.

The original books were followed up with a sequel series, The Malloreon (which is basically "The Belgariad all over again but everyone is older", as the characters themselves quickly notice). Much later, the series was followed by two standalone prequels, Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress, which tell the life stories of the title characters. All of Eddings' works can be seen as Spiritual Successors of this one.

Books in the series:

  • The Belgariad
    • Pawn of Prophecy (April 1982)
    • Queen of Sorcery (November 1982)
    • Magician's Gambit (June 1983)
    • Castle of Wizardry (May 1984)
    • Enchanter's End Game (December 1984)

  • The Malloreon
    • Guardians of the West (April 1987)
    • King of the Murgos (April 1988)
    • Demon Lord of Karanda (September 1988)
    • Sorceress of Darshiva (December 1989)
    • Seeress of Kell (May 1991)

  • Prequels and companion works
    • Belgarath the Sorcerer (a prequel from Belgarath's perspective) (1995)
    • Polgara the Sorceress (another prequel from Polgara's perspective) (1997)
    • The Rivan Codex (a commentary and analysis) (1998)

See also The Elenium, Eddings' third series and Spiritual Successor to The Belgariad and The Malloreon, albeit with a much stronger focus on over-the-top battles and Bond One-Liners.


The Belgariad provides examples of:

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    Tropes A 
  • Above Good and Evil: Ctuchik claims he and Belgarath have gone beyond restrictions of morality when the latter mildly objects to his love for torture.
  • Above the Gods: UL and the two opposing Destinies are much more powerful than the gods. The Destinies are equal in power, but how they stack up to UL is unknown.
  • Achievements in Ignorance:
    • Garion succeeds in bringing a horse back to life, simply because he doesn't know that it's supposed to be impossible.
      • Deconstructed later in the same novel when Belgarath explains, in detail, why it was so dangerous and stupid to attempt. He then proceeds to lecture Garion a bit on the rules of using the series' magic, including the requirement that the person has to fully understand the mechanics of what he or she is doing.
      • The deconstruction gets reconstructed itself later on, when it is discussed how one of Garion's skills is "being able to visualize highly complicated concepts reduced to very simple terms" — which means he is actually able to "gloss over" most of the finer points of the more complicated things when working his magic and still get the desired effect.
    • Neat subversion with Queen Islena, when she makes her High Priest choose between joining the army or getting thrown into the dungeon. The king could never have made that threat to a priest because there's specific laws about evidence and proper treatment regarding priests, which would be politically scandalous for the king to ignore. Islena got away with it because everyone thought her too stupid to know better. The subversion is that the whole thing was planned by her smarter advisors, taking advantage of both her ignorant reputation and her actual ignorance. Had anyone else tried that, it would have been only an ineffective bluff. But coming from Islena, the threat was believable, since she really was unaware that she wasn't allowed to do what she threatened when she made the threat; she really would have had the priest chained to the wall in the deepest dungeon she could find before anyone got around to telling her it was illegal.
    • Lampshaded by Polgara in Polgara the Sorceress as she muses over the idea that simply being ignorant of a task's impossibility might, however improbably, let someone perform impossible feats.
  • Actually Pretty Funny:
    • The Purpose Of The Universe gets cranky if you ask it "why me". Near the end, Garion asks "why me?" in the most annoying, immature, whiny tone he can muster. The Purpose cracks up.
    • There's another one in the Malloreon, when the heroes end up roped into doing a job for the Dagashi, and ask for money to cover expenses. The Dagashi leader shows them a chest full of gold and invites them to take some, but no more than two hands can hold. Sadi sends up Toth, who has hands the size of saucepans, who scoops out about a quarter of the gold in the chest. Sadi then asks if he should put some back, since he (for many reasons) has no desire to piss off the Dagashi more than necessary, but their leader laughs and waves it off, stating the errand would make them earn the money and the demonstration of cleverness pleases him.
  • A-Cup Angst: Ce'Nedra complains of her small bust, and when she commissions armor for herself, has the chest "enhanced". The narration notes that her figure fills out quite a bit after her first pregnancy.
  • Adipose Rex: Subverted and later deconstructed by King Rhodar of Drasnia. He is extremely obese, yes, but subverts the trope by being the best-read king in the West, and the best strategist, along with being a compassionate and competent ruler, with a little help from his loving and similarly-clever wife. Deconstruction rears its ugly head when his girth ultimately shortens his life.
  • Advantage Ball: How Garion's fight with Torak ends up: Garion manages to secure victory by the mere fact of his own continued defiance.
  • The Ageless: The sorcerers. Their appearance ages up to the point that matches what they think they should look like then they stop, but they remain physically in the prime of life. So Belgarath looks like an old man, but Polgara stays a young and beautiful woman as she has no desire to look like an old crone.
  • Alien Geometries: Beldin has a stick with only one end. He uses it to keep children occupied so they don't bother him. It later ends up in among Belgarath's things.
  • All Animals Are Dogs
    • The Horse that Garion resurrects has a notably puppy-like demeanor.
    • Later, the snake Zith shows an astonishing number of cat-like traits, including purring when happy, shivering in the cold, and giving birth to live young.
  • All Deaths Final: Due to universal agreement of the Gods, with two notable exceptions.
  • All-Powerful Bystander: Both Prophecies by mutual agreement. If they directly clashed, they would blot out entire tracts of existence.
  • All There in the Manual: The Rivan Codex serves as additional content composed of background information, inspiration, and lore for the series.
  • Altar Diplomacy: Garion and Ce'Nedra are betrothed by a five-hundred-year-old treaty between their countries, not to mention that prophecy thing. True to the trope, they engage in quite a bit of Slap-Slap-Kiss, but also played with in that neither knew about the arrangementnote  until after they'd gotten acquainted and fallen in love anyway. This also happens for some background characters like Barak and his wife, but that's what you get when most of the characters belong to the aristocratic class in a medieval fantasy book.
  • Always Chaotic Evil
    • Angaraks are portrayed this way in The Belgariad at first, but they get a less black and white treatment as time goes on — the Thulls are portrayed from the beginning as victims of Angarak society more than anything else and in The Belgariad the Nadraks are presented as the Angarak counterpart of the Drasnians — with the similarity between the two peoples noted on a number of occasions by both Drasnians and Nadraks. Additionally, they play a pivotal role in preventing the armies of the West from being massacred at Thull Mardu. The Malloreans, meanwhile, are portrayed as generally polite and Affably Evil at worst... with the exception of Zakath, and even he mellows eventually. Even the Murgos, who're almost universally depicted as this trope get a makeover in The Malloreon — in large part because we actually get to see Murgos who aren't Grolims or their agents, outside of wartime. In general, the main problem seems to be the fact their god was a narcissistic megalomaniac obsessed with human sacrifice, allowing the Grolims, the somewhat deranged priesthood, to gain an iron grip over the population.
    • The demons are Always Chaotic Evil in both series, but justified because, well, demons.
    • Nyissa was portrayed as a nation of Smug Snakes in The Belgariad, the pragmatic assassin Issus excepted. In The Malloreon, this, like the Angarak example, is made much less black and white as Sadi becomes a major character — and the fact that previous scenes in Nyissa were mostly restricted to the Decadent Court didn't help.
  • Ambiguous Syntax: Lots of it, in the various written prophecies both sides are using. Also, deliberately used on Polgara by Aldur, when he says that the Gods will bring Durnik back to life so they can marrynote , if she'll agree to live the rest of her life with no more magical power than he has. She assumes they mean that she'll be stripped of her power. In actuality, he is given equivalent magical power to her though he uses it much less often.
  • Amnesiac God: Eriond
  • And I Must Scream: Zedar gets buried alive... forever. His fate is given an extra dose of horror when Belgarath later reveals that Zedar is and always was afraid of the dark.
  • Anger Born of Worry: Pretty much standard for Polgara. Her usual targets are her father, Garion, and Durnik, but anyone she cares for who scares her is usually in for a telling-off.
  • Animal Motifs: Each of the gods has a totemic signature, and they and their chosen race mimic these animals in a characteristic, if not always physical, way. More directly, each of the sorcerers trained by Aldur has a preferred alternate form: the women like the owl (Aldur's own totem, although it could be argued that Poledra's favourite alternate form is actually that of a human since she was born a wolf), while Belgarath takes the form of a wolf so often that he's introduced as 'Old Wolf'. He's the only one of Aldur's disciples who favours a land animal as his alternate form — Beldin is addicted to flying (as a blue-banded hawk) and the twins prefer doves. Belgarath points out several times in his prequel book that he never really learned to fly very well, although he can cover vast distances in the air when he has to — he just doesn't enjoy it like Beldin and Polgara do.
  • Animal Talk: Sorcerers instantly learn the language of an animal on assuming its shape, and can even understand and use it on transforming back.
  • Annoying Arrows: Played With. In the second book, an arrow shatters on Barak's mail shirt, but on other occasions, major characters are nearly killed by well-aimed arrows, and Asturian archers — especially Lelldorin — are depicted as being absolutely lethal, even against the heavily armoured Mimbrate knights.
  • The Antichrist: The Child of Dark. It's Torak for the first series, and Zandramas for most of the second.
  • Arbitrary Skepticism: The series has many examples of this.
    • It's implied that at least in the West, magic of any kind is very rare and that while religion and superstitious beliefs are commonplace, many people will regard actual displays of magic with either indignant annoyance or an outright refusal to believe their eyes.
    • While a common attitude everywhere in the West, especially stubborn skepticism is presented as a cultural trait of the Tolnedrans and to a much lesser degree the Sendars and Alorns. In the case of the former, their refusal to believe in anything "unnatural" can verge on suicidal, and even after being presented with ironclad proof they still like to pretend magic doesn't exist so they don't have to change their deeply rooted cultural (dis)belief.
  • Arcadia: The Rivan Pasturelands and The Vale of Aldur count as one.
  • Arch-Enemy: The Prophecy of Light and the Dark Prophecy, The Child of Light and The Child of Dark (on a personal level, Garion and Torak), Belgarath and Ctuchik/Zedar, Beldin and Urvon, Nahaz and Mordja, and, in the backstory, UL and The King of Hell. Zandramas and Poledra also have shades of this.
  • Archetypal Characters: Ubiquitously and deliberately, as noted above.
  • The Archmage:
    • Belgarath is the closest to the ideal of the archmage: he is the senior Disciple of Aldur, the oldest and most experienced sorcerer in the world, and possibly the most powerful after Belgarion. He is a master of sorcery, a decent alchemist, and a fair-to-good magician. He also has a mix of pragmatism and determination that enables him to take on any necessary task, no matter how difficult or morally abhorrent.
    • The other Disciples of Aldur also qualify, particularly Beldin and Polgara. Beldin is the most intelligent of the lot, with the best theoretical understanding of sorcery, while Polgara is a master of medicine and how to manipulate people.
    • One of Torak's disciples, Ctuchik, is an example of an evil Archmage. He's nearly Belgarath's equal in power and knowledge, and he rules Cthol Murgos with an iron fist.
    • Torak's other two disciples, Zedar and Urvon, are subversions. As Disciples of a God, they should qualify, but Zedar doesn't get many chances to show what he can do, and when he does, he's handicapped by the fact that he's always on the wrong side of prophecied events. Urvon is shown to be more of an arch-butt kisser than a genuine magic-worker, relying on his authority as a Disciple and his competent underlings to accomplish his goals.
  • Aristocrat Team: Most of the Companions have aristocratic backgrounds: Barak is an earl, Kheldar the thief and spy is also a prince, Hettar is the son of a king, Mandorallen is a baron, Ce'Nedra a princess, and Polgara is the Duchess of Erat and possibly the richest of the entire lot. The sequel series adds the Margravine Liselle and Emperor Kal Zakath of Mallorea.
  • Armor Is Useless: Zig-Zagged. Armour is portrayed somewhat realistically, in that it is very useful for protecting people but it doesn't make them invincible. For instance, Mandorallean's plate armour deflects swords and arrows, but a heavy blow from a club caves in his breastplate and injures his ribs, similarly, chain mail deflects blades pretty well, but a determined thrust or a razor-sharp throwing knife can cut through.
  • Arranged Marriage:
    • Garion and Ce'Nedra, centuries before they're born. Note to the Tolnedran Empire: Signing a marriage contract for 'when the lost heir of Riva returns', when you don't really believe that day will ever come, can and will come back to bite you.
    • The prequels Belgarath the Sorcerer and Polgara the Sorceress reveal that there have been many arranged marriages down through the centuries, as the Gods and the Prophecies arranged things so that Garion and his friends would be born at the right time and be where they needed to be when they needed to be there.
  • Artifact Alias: We first meet a certain Drasnian as "Silk", and he's called Silk for ten novels even though we've learned long ago that his birth name is Kheldar. This is justified since it's from Garion's POV we talk to him most of the time and Garion tends to stick with the name he first uses with a person (he calls Belgarath "Mister Wolf" and "Grandfather" for a long time) unless given a good reason otherwise.
  • Artifact of Doom: The Sardion. The Orb of Aldur shares some of this as well; anyone not expressly permitted to touch it will be obliterated, since it rebelled against Torak's misuse.
  • Artistic License: In regards to armor, at least the full plate worn by Mimbrate knights. Eddings gets its protective abilities more or less correct, without exaggeration, but defaults to popular misconception in regards to its weight; a medieval knight in full field plate carried less weight over his whole body than a modern infantry soldier carries on his back. The misconception arises because people confuse tournament armor worn for jousting matches—armor that was so heavy a knight had to be lifted by a winch onto his horse—with field plate worn in actual combat. Eddings's reasons may stem from believing the misconception (many do) or just finding it amusing to have the culturally dunderheadeed Mimbrates wearing armor so heavy they can barely move.
  • An Astral Projection, Not a Ghost: Poledra appears occasionally as a ghost to aid the main characters, having died in childbirth some three thousand years previously. At the end of The Malloreon, she reveals she never really died at all, but faked it in order to carry out a vague plan to help uphold The Prophecy. Belgarath, it has to be said, was not especially pleased (though his mood was somewhat attenuated by the fact that he had his wife back).
    • It was even more complicated in that Poledra, despite not actually being dead seems to think she will be when her task is completed. Belgarath, on hearing this, seems determined to die with her this time. The God Eriond intervenes, using some pretty impressive Bunny-Ears Lawyer logic to justify why he's not bound to obey UL's will, since UL didn't consult him, what with him not being a god at the time. And then of course it turns out that's exactly what UL intended with this plan all along: to force Eriond to make unilateral decisions. Belgarath, hearing his three thousand years of grief were a test, is a bit put out.
  • Astral Projection: Garion does this in Queen of Sorcery to tell Pol and Barak where he is so that he'll be rescued.
  • Astrologer: The leaders of the Dal race.
  • Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever
    • Garion and Torak both become enormous for the final battle.
    • In Queen of Sorcery, Polgara becomes a giant when she's facing down Salmissra and the animated statue of Issa the Snake Goddoes it herself earlier.
    • Also Durnik when he banishes the Demon Lord Nahaz and Poledra when she fights as a wolf against Zandramas who is in the form of a dragon, both in The Malloreon.
  • Awesome Moment of Crowning: The Rivan King, of course. A sword drawn from stone? Check. Heralded as such by a keystone of creation? Check. Massive numbers of people bowing? Check. Big "NO!" from the girl who realized this means she has to marry you, even though she secretly wants to? Check. Awakening of a God, the God he is destined to duel? Big Damned Check.
  • Axe-Crazy: Urvon, Taur Urgas, and possibly Torak.
  • "Awkward Silence" Entrance: In The Malloreon, Belgarath the Sorcerer, the Dreaded Time Abyss Archmage, fiercest opponent of Mallorea's patron God of Evil for five millennia, grandfather (several dozen generations removed) of the slayer of said God of Evil, walks into a Mallorean royal banquet... and takes advantage of the horrified silence to eye up a young lady, smirk, and compliment her dress.

    Tropes B 
  • Babies Ever After: For, with the exception of Sadi the eunuch, everyone. Even the snake has babies in the end. Even the couples who do not explicitly have children by the end of the story (Cyradis and Zakath, and Liselle and Kheldar) are clearly going to (And Liselle and Kheldar are expecting their first in the epilogue of Polgara the Sorceress). Apparently, it's the Purpose's way of saying "thank you". And possibly "sorry for screwing you over."
  • Babies Make Everything Better: Well, not babies as such. Barak and Merel already had several daughters. It's only when she has a son that their marriage gets better.
  • Baby-Doll Baby: In The Malloreon, Ce'Nedra is put into a hallucinatory state by the villain, Zandramas, who had previously abducted her baby. In order to find out where the good guys are headed, Zandramas pretends to be a friend of Ce'Nedra and to return her baby, but what she actually gives is a bundle of rags. Ce'Nedra is left crooning over the bundle and trying to show her compatriots how beautiful it is. In order to save her from undue stress, Polgara erases her memory of the event.
  • Back from the Dead: Durnik and Horse.
  • Badass Army: The Algars — a culture of horse riding nomads who have trained themselves for centuries specifically to fight the Murgos. They are extremely good at it. Then there are the Mimbrate knights, who combine ridiculous combat prowess with utter fearlessness (which is routinely suspected to be the result of a complete lack of common sense). And the Asturian archers, who can mow down opposing armies like wheat with a storm of arrows. Then there are the Tolnedran legions, the only professional fighting force in the armies of the West, who are reputed to be able to kick the asses of any of the abovenote , and the Cherek "navy", who pretty much can rule the seas if they want. Let's face it, most of the Western armies are badass to one extent or another — which has a lot to do with the fact that Tolnedrans excepted, they've spent several centuries preparing to take on the Torak led Angaraks.
    • Even Drasnia, while mostly famous for its vast spy network, supposedly possesses the best infantry and spearmen in the world.
  • Badass Normal
    • Mandorallen, Lelldorin, Silk, Liselle, Sadi and Durnik pre-resurrection are among the few characters who aren't using magic, turning into bears, talking to horses, or at least making use of magically enhanced weaponry.
    • It's worth mentioning that Sadi can likely be said to have a knowledge of poisons and pharmacology which surpasses even Polgara, who spent centuries in study of medicine, and has millennia of generalised medical experience. Much of this would come, of course, both from his native culture and that he is a specialist in the field rather than general medicine. (Though in The Malloreon, he still intelligently often defers to Polgara in her decisions of what drugs to administer, while she, sensibly, takes his advice, even if she does make the final decision.)
    • And Ce'Nedra may be a Non-Action Guy, but she did raise a truly vast army and has proven a highly capable manipulator and political player.
  • Bad Boss: Zandramas, Torak, reportedly Ctuchik, Taur Urgas, heck, the Dark Prophecy in and of itself, which tends to discard its pawns once it doesn't need them anymore.
  • Bargain with Heaven: The big one is Polgara's bargain with Aldur to restore Durnik (which includes a second, internal one when Belgarath bargains with Mara to get its cooperation in the venture.) There are several others scattered through the series, though, since the Gods have a physical presence in the world.
  • Bastard Understudy: Harakan/Mengha to Urvon.
  • Bathe Her and Bring Her to Me: In a rare gender flip, Salmissra has this done to Garion. Plus lots of drugs and poisons to make him compliant. Oh, and he's about fifteen. In accordance with the gender flip, the Roaring Rampage of Rescue is performed by Polgara, Garion's Parental Substitute.
  • Bavarian Fire Drill: Silk, frequently. The best example is when, as the party is escaping from Rak Cthol after Ctuchik's death, he gets them past several Grolim search parties by pretending to be a higher ranking Grolim and ordering them to move their search elsewhere.
  • Beat Still, My Heart: The standard form of sacrifice to Torak involves cutting out the victim's heart and burning it.
  • Because Destiny Says So: Literally. Expect the voice of destiny to get cranky at times.
    • Especially if you ask it "why me?"
    • Or get stubborn, as Belgarath usually does.
  • Beer Goggles: In Sorceress of Darshiva, a noblewoman is drunk enough to make advances towards Beldin. Beldin is an elderly foul-mouthed hunchback with questionable standards of personal hygine.
  • Belligerent Sexual Tension: Garion and Ce'Nedra practically spit this trope at each other in the first few books. They settle down eventually though, to no-one's surprise. While they wait outside the door to make their entrance in their formal betrothal ceremony, Ce'Nedra even laments how many chances to fool around they had on the journey, if they hadn't been so adversarial with each other.
  • Beneath Suspicion: The protagonists don't want to attract attention to themselves, so they disguise themselves as commoners driving a few wagons. One of their number, who goes by the name Silk, actually makes a point of making money by using these wagons to transport common goods like turnips and wool, even though the group doesn't really need the money, and they're mostly taking the goods on to avert suspicion.
  • The Berserker: Barak's an unwilling heroic example. Apparently this kind of thing is common in Cherek warriors, even the ones who don't turn into bears. Taur Urgas is an evil example.
  • Best Served Cold: Belgarath buries the traitorous Zedar alive because of the astonishing number of atrocities he'd committed over the past, oh, four thousand years, including causing the death of Durnik (in self-defense). Let's also not forget Beldin's long standing grudge against Urvon, which causes the latter to erect Wanted Posters across half of Mallorea in a desperate attempt to keep him at bay. In fact, Urvon's terror is so strong that it snaps him briefly back to reality when he's Brainwashed and Crazy.
  • Bewitched Amphibians: People are constantly suggesting this to Polgara, Belgarath and their kin, but in the entire series it only happens once, in Polgara the Sorceress, when she turns a Cherek king into a (man-sized) frog so that he will take her seriously. More often are people turned into other animals such as pigs.
  • BFS: The Sword of the Rivan King. At six feet long, and made of Thunderbolt Iron to boot, it would be impossible to lift without the Orb helping. The Orb also gives the sword its own personal Weirdness Censor, at least when it isn't covering it in blue flames. The monstrous broadsword 'Zakath gets in Dal Perivor also counts; being mundane, Garion has to ask the Orb to help him lift it too.
  • Big Bad: Torak in the first series and Zandramas in the second. Of course, the real villain is the Dark Prophecy itself.
  • Big Damn Heroes: The Big Guys that are left behind in The Malloreon get an illusory Big Damn Heroes moment. They also try to manufacture a coincidental version of this, and end up wandering around Mallorea like a loose (and hilarious) siege weapon.
  • Big Good: The Prophecy of Light. It can defeat Gods, and alter the fabric of reality, but is restrained by the rules that it and its counterpart the Dark Prophecy laid out. If they ever fought directly it would destroy the Universe (or at least pose a very large risk of causing a third Prophecy to arise just as the Accident caused the original Purpose of the Universe to split into the Light and Dark Prophecies).
  • The Big Guy: Several characters in the (slightly more than)-five-man Band could qualify, but the standouts are Mandorallen in The Belgariad and Toth in The Malloreon. When the Big Band (Barak, Hettar, Mandorallen, Relg, and Lelldorin) get together, Mandorallen is the only one who doesn't assume another role in the group. That's right: he's The Big Guys' Big Guy.
  • Binding Ancient Treaty: The Treaty of Vo Mimbre
  • "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word
    • Pretty much every conversation with Silk has a variant... Though as the following shows, half the time he doesn't even bother to mask it with humour:
    Silk: I'm sure she'd be fascinated by that last observation, old friend.
    Belgarath: I don't know that's it's necessary to repeat it to her, Silk.
    Silk: You never know. I might need something from you someday.
    Belgarath: That's disgusting.
    Silk: I know. (grins)
    • Also subverted by Yarblek, who answers an accusation of blackmail with "Some call it that, yes."
  • Blind Seer: Martje in Val Alorn; in the first book, Polgara "cures" her by restoring her sight. The Dalasian Seers are merely blind-folded.
  • Blindfolded Vision:
    • The Seers of Kell in fact rely on the blindfolds to maintain their powers.
    • The Belgariad is Relg's First Time in the Sun, and the only way he can really see during the day is to keep himself blindfolded.
  • Blonde, Brunette, Redhead:
    • Ariana, Adara, and Ce'Nedra respectively. They fit the stereotypical personality traits as well; Ariana is a typically romantic, ditzy Mimbrate maiden (though one that is also very good at healing), Adara is a calm and poised Algar lady, while Tolnedran Princess Ce'Nedra is the bossy and impulsive leader of the trio during their misadventures together.
    • In The Malloreon, the three women in the party: Velvet (blonde), Polgara (brunette), and Ce'Nedra (redhead). They are later joined by two other blondes, Cyradis and Poledra, who themselves form this with Velvet: Poledra is reddish-blonde, Cyradis is dark blonde, and Velvet is honey blonde.
  • Blood Bath: Both Zandramas and Chabat are Evil Sorceresses and priestesses of a Religion of Evil; in fact, aside from a couple unnamed characters, they are the only female priestesses devoted to Torak that are shown in the entire series. Each one is described by priests in their temples as showing an almost unseemly enjoyment in performing the Grolim rite of cutting out people's hearts. Both are also described by those same priests as bathing in their victims' blood. The ritual evisceration doesn't turn any Grolim's hair, but the whole bathing-in-the-blood part is atypical enough that it squicks out even other Angarak priests of Torak.
  • Blood Knight: Taur Urgas. He sleeps in his armour, plays war music wherever he goes, and actually orders his elite guard to clear the way for Cho-Hag so that he can fight him. His last words as he dies? "Come back Cho-Hag. Come back and fight!" Many Mimbrate and Cherek characters approach this trope as well, although they're generally closer to Boisterous Bruiser, as do lots and lots of Murgos.
  • Body Horror: The woman carrying Nahaz's offspring.
  • Bodyguard Legacy: Barak is already a mighty Alorn warrior, but he is also the Mighty Bear of prophecy who will physically turn into a bear when Garion's life is in danger. His son Unrak turns out to have inherited this trait, making him the protector of Garion's son, Geran.
  • Boisterous Bruiser: Mandorallen, and most of the Mimbrate knights.
  • Brainwashed and Crazy
    • Ce'Nedra, in The Malloreon, due to Zandramas's sorcery. And Harakan's. She's kind of a magnet for this stuff.
    • Ce'Nedra's is apparently innately vulnerable to this stuff. Ctuchik was explicitly banking on it in book three, and Belgarath had already figured this out and didn't bring her along for that one. Seeing as all "Monsters" went mad when Torak broke the world — except (mysteriously) the dryads recovered, it might well be that dryads indeed have a bit less sanity to go around, making her more susceptible to mind-affecting meddling.
    • Garion gets hit with a mild version of this early on, suddenly seeing his allies as malicious strangers that he must escape from. In a later book Zandramas manages to make him go berserk and attack her Grolim rivals subtly influencing his mind over a considerable length of time before triggering his rampage.
  • Brainwashed Bride
    • Discussed regarding the Mad God Torak's obsession with marrying Polgara the Sorceress. She says that if she ever fell under his will, he'd see to it that she was deliriously happy to become his bride — except for the part deep down that would be screaming in horror forever.
    • Polgara is famous in history for having rejected Torak's command to come marry him during the battle of Vo Mimbre. The prequel eventually reveals how she resisted: She didn't. Her secretly-not-dead mother was possessing her at the time, specifically to protect her from mind control, and did the rejecting for her.
  • Breaching the Wall: In Guardians of the West:
    • When Belgarion leads an assault on a fortified city that's been taken over by Bear-Cult rebels, he uses sorcery to break down the city gates. He forgets that he's holding the Orb of Aldur, a tremendously powerful Amplifier Artifact that's quite enthusiastic about helping him, so the spell instead vaporizes the gates and sends chunks of gate tower flying miles away.
    • Having learned a bit of subtlety, the next time Belgarion goes up against a Bear-Cult stronghold, he uses his sorcery to breach an aquifer under the city and raise the water table. After a night, the walls anticlimactically fall over in a minor mudslide and his forces march in.
  • Break His Heart to Save Him: Garion realizes after returning to Faldor's farm that he can't stay and that his childhood sweetheart, Zubrette, isn't cut out for whatever destiny has in store for him. When she approaches, Garion feigns an expression of nothing but friendship. Zubrette is devastated at the implied rejection and runs away.
  • Breaking Speech: Justified — in the final battle of The Belgariad, Garion delivers one of these to Torak, after he comes to realize that the true reason for their confrontation is not to fight Torak, but to reject him.
  • Breeding Slave: The Dryads, who have only females, capture human males to reproduce with.
  • Brick Joke: In the first series, one of the reasons Relg is such a zealot is that at one point it was prophesied that he would be the one to reveal the next Gorim (the Ulgo's equivalent of the Pope and Dalai Lama rolled into one), and it's gone to his head. This is never mentioned again. In Enchanter's End Game it pretty much takes a command from UL to get Relg to admit he loves Taiba, lay aside his hysterical reactions to anything remotely sexual, and just marry her already. In Guardians of the West it turns out that that new Gorim is Relg's firstborn son. When told of this, Belgarath laughs like a drain and remarks that UL really does have a sense of humor after all.
  • Brought Down to Normal:
    • The possibility of this happening is enough to keep Belgarath Locked Out of the Loop in the fourth book after his nearly fatal duel with Ctuchik.
    • Later, Polgara is threatened with this as a condition of having Durnik brought back to life — fortunately, the Gods have a sense of humour and were testing her.
    • Cyradis in the final book of The Malloreon must be stripped of her powers of prophecy into order to make the final choice between Light and Dark. However, the Light Prophecy explicitly tells Garion that while she is no longer a seer... she ha looked into the future, and she has a very good memory.
  • Burning the Ships: In Belgarath the Sorcerer, a very drunk Riva orders the ships that carried the settlers to the Isle of the Winds burned. His logic being that it will take a lot of hard work to build the fortress-city, and he doesn't want anyone deciding it's too much work and leaving. Belgarath, who was planning to leave, is not pleased.

    Tropes C 
  • Can't Kill You, Still Need You: Downplayed; Relg was on the verge of becoming a Sinister Minister to a genuinely good Physical God named UL. UL had no plans or even desire to kill Relg, but he did find Relg's actions annoying and disappointing and told Relg as much. Then he commanded Relg to travel with The Hero and his True Companions. Relg was terrified of this journey, but told UL he'd go, even if it killed him. UL responded that he had plans for Relg after the journey, so it wouldn't kill him.
  • Capital Letters Are Magic: The word EVENT, rendered in small capitals, refers specifically to an event required for the fulfillment of prophecy. These EVENTS are in essence instantaneous conflict between the two opposing Wills of the Universe, settled by a choice made by a mortal. The reason that they are instantaneous is that longer conflicts would destroy the universe. Also UL, father of the gods. Oddly, the habit of capitalizing his name originated in a printing error that Eddings thought looked good.
  • Cast from Stamina: Sorcery is exhausting; Beldin teleports a bunch of loose rocks from a riverbed into a pile to use as building material for a tower and it's all he can do to walk the next day.
  • Catchphrase
    • Garion: "Why me?"
    • Poledra and Polgara (on occasion): "How remarkable."
    • Silk: "Trust me."
    • Anyone and everyone, when the verbal sparring gets out of hand: "Be nice."
    • The Alorn characters, whenever they hear a snappy comeback: "(That's) One for your side." (One of the characters who says this even says that this is an inside joke among the Alorns.)
  • Cessation of Existence: Attempting to use the Will and the Word to erase something from existence massively offends the universe, such that the power inevitably backfires and erases you instead. Cthucik ends up confirming this, much to their detriment. Notably, this means that technically you can erase yourself with no interference, which some sorcerers use as a suicide method.
  • Chainmail Bikini: Invoked and Lampshaded for laughs in Book 4, when Ce'Nedra insists that her ceremonial plate armor have cleavage, to the armorer's disgust. She explains that she's recruiting an army and needs to be seen as a queen, while proper armor on her petite frame would make her look like a young boy. The armorer grouses about the mechanical disadvantages but eventually concedes — though not without asking what she intends to put in the cleavage.
  • Charm Person: Asharak the Murgo's favourite trick, pulled liberally on Garion practically since birth. He stops when Garion decides to set him on fire.
  • Chekhov's Gun: Sprinkled liberally throughout the series, but most obviously in The Malloreon. Examples include Zith, Sadi's pet snake, whom Velvet uses to kill Harakan; the whole business with the Grolims being afraid to go near Kell; the subtle cannon at the beginning, where Garion says 'Fortune tellers are never right — one of them once predicted Durnik will live twice. How silly is that?'; and most especially the frequent references to the Turim reef, which ends up being The Place Which Is No More, but nobody noticed due to language drift.
  • The Chessmaster: Both the Light and Dark Prophecies. Having eons to prepare helps. Zandramas is also a decent Chessmaster, although whether it's personal skill, or the result of having been infused with the Spirit of Dark is up for debate. She certainly manages to plan ahead, with each of her moves ready to fall into place the minute that a previous one fails.
  • Chess Motifs
    • Pawn of Prophecy, Queen of Sorcery, Magician's Gambit, Castle of Wizardry, Enchanter's End Game. Averted in the sequel series. The motifs weren't Eddings' idea — he'd originally conceived a trilogy titled Garion, Ce'Nedra and Torak but was overridden by his publisher who explained that (at the time) books in the genre had a maximum page limit that meant he couldn't cram the story into three volumes. The titles came afterwards.
    • Occasionally, Garion is given glimpses of a chess-like game being played by the rival Destinies.
  • Chevalier vs. Rogue: In the backstory, Arendia spent centuries mired in a bloody civil war between the knights of Vo Mimbre and the rogues of Vo Astur.
  • Child by Rape: Sadly, more frequent than you'd think, thanks to a mixture of Deliberate Values Dissonance, Blue-and-Orange Morality, and the fact that High Fantasy or not, it is a medieval world.
    • Unrak, son of Barak and Merel, is, at the very least, heavily implied to have been conceived due to the latter demanding his "rights" (while it's never exactly stated, the implications are heavy enough that at the very least, it's a case of dubious consent) — though it's quietly ignored afterwards, and filed under Early-Installment Weirdness.
    • All of the Dryads, too, since they're conceived with captured human men.
    • Taiba had twin daughters this way, due to a fellow slave having gotten her as a "gift" from the Murgos — it wasn't the first time. This one is played for horror.
  • Childless Dystopia: As a child, in his prequel, Belgarath notes he spent a very depressing winter in a town cursed with sterility — at first, he enjoyed it, because they spoiled him rotten, but later it became depressing.
  • The Chooser of the One: Each Prophecy has its own Chosen One, and Cyradis has the responsibility of deciding which Prophecy ultimately remains valid.
  • The Chosen One: Whoever the Child of Light and Child of Dark are at the time.
  • The Chosen People: The Ulgos. Rejected by all of the other gods, their leader appealed to UL, the creator of the gods, and successfully convinced Him to adopt his people. Incidentally, the Ulgo religion is heavily inspired by traditional Judaism.
  • Chromatic Arrangement: Each of the Seven Gods is associated with a colour, while their father, the Top God UL, manifests as pure white.
  • Church Militant: The Bear-Cult, and many, many factions of the Grolim Priesthood, which includes: Evil Sorcerers galore, The Hounds of Torak, the Chandim (Hounds who've changed back into humans) and the Temple Guardsmen (evil knights sworn to Torak and Urvon).
  • Citadel City:
    • The city of Riva is built around a cove that is the only viable landing site for an army on the island of Riva; it is constructed such that each successive row of buildings can function as a city wall in case the previous wall is breached, to protect the Orb of Aldur in the castle of Riva.
    • The Stronghold of the Algars is nothing but citadel. The Algars are nomadic horsemen who have spent centuries building the place up in the middle of a huge grassland. It doesn't protect anything—rather, it gives invading armies a tangible target to go for. When they do, the Algar horsemen can destroy their supply lines, while archers within the citadel can have a field day picking off the attackers.
  • Cliché Storm: Deliberately invoked by the author.
  • Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Aldur and anything associated with him, including his disciples (the various sorcerers) and his Orb, is blue. Torak is fond of black and red.
  • Combat Pragmatist
    • Silk, Liselle, and Sadi do not believe in a fair fight. Garion and 'Zakath aren't much better, cheating their way to victory in a joust.
    • Zakath is a minor subversion in that instance. Garion magically cheats, Zakath refuses to... only a minor subversion, because he does improvise an unusual jousting technique that works to perfection.
  • Coming of Age Story: Especially in the first couple books.
  • Cool Horse:
    • Horse, a stallion who can jump through space and traverse great distances in a short time.
    • 'Zakath gives Garion his own Cool Horse.
  • Cool Old Guy: Belgarath. Being the first disciple, he's the designated "old" one, even though Beldin and the twins are also several thousand years old.
  • Cosmic Flaw: Basically, a star died in the wrong place. This caused a chain reaction that destroyed an entire galactic cluster outside of schedule. The result was that the purpose of the universe, the force of destiny, was divided into two opposing awarenesses. The contention between them causes everything that happens in the series.
  • Courtly Love: Overlapping with Love Triangle. Mandorallen is deeply in love with Nerina, the young wife of his Parental Substitute, and she with him. The problem is that he is too noble to go behind the back of his for-all-practical-purposes father, she is too noble to betray her husband, and said husband knows all about their love, and has taken up dangerous hobbies like dragon-hunting, warfare, and running through those who badmouth his wife and protege with a lance, to get himself out of the way. Generations of Mimbrate women have wept tender tears at the pure, tragic nobility of it all.
    • Hilariously, when he eventually passes away, Mandorallen and Nerina are so wrapped up in their tragic romance that they're initially reluctant to get together. Garion, having absolutely no patience for any of this, has them married. At swordpoint.
  • Covers Always Lie: Averted, at least for the paperbacks; you can match the cover images to exact moments in the books. That said, some covers depict Belgarath as a "stock" sorcerer with long, flowing hair and beard — the text makes it clear that he keeps both his hair and beard short.
  • Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass
    • Hey, remember Brill, The Mole from the very first book? It turns out, he's this setting's equivalent of a Ninja.
    • Belgarath gets this all the time. Indeed, Belgarath The Sorcerer reveals that it takes a LOT of work for him to build up his crouching itinerant storyteller persona, including clothes specially tailored to look like they're falling apart at the seams, and boots designed to fit well, but explicitly not match. He may look scruffy and listless, but he's actually very practically dressed most of the time.
    • Beldin exploits assumptions made based on his short, hunchbacked appearance, and is more of a slob than Belgarath could ever hope to be. He's also smarter than Belgarath could ever hope to be, something Belgarath himself acknowledges, but often pretends otherwise.
  • Cryptic Conversation
    • Each and every damn prophecy. In the case of the Mrin Codex, this turns out to be only because the oracle was stark raving mad; the Voice of the Universe tells Garion that unfortunately, this nutcase was all he had to work with.
    • That and the reader will eventually get the feeling that the Voice did it that way because it annoys Belgarath so very, very much.
    • Two other reasons are eventually raised. One is that it's part of the balance between the two Prophecies (it would be possible for one Prophecy to give much clearer, understandable prophecies to its side, but that would allow the other Prophecy to do the same for its side). The other is that it is a safety measure of sorts — prophecies aren't meant to be really understood by anyone at any time, and the cryptic phrasing makes it easier to keep understanding to the right people at the right time.
  • Curiosity Is a Crapshoot: Something that Belgarath is all-too aware of, which causes him to butt heads with the Constantly Curious Silk when the party find themselves sheltering in the cave where the gods used to meet when creating the world. Silk very much wants to know what the fruit on the table in the cave tastes like, but Belgarath warns him to stick to just looking at it. When Silk asks why he can't just find out, Belgarath tells him "Looking won't kill you. Knowing might."
  • Cursed with Awesome
    • Barak's "curse" is to turn into a bear when Garion (heir to the long-empty throne of Riva and Overlord of the West by treaty) is threatened. A rampaging, unstoppable bear. At first he thinks it's just a progressive ailment and attempts suicide, but once he gets filled in on the trigger conditions (i.e., his family is now the hereditary protector's of Garion's), he contemplates tasteful ways to work it into his coat of arms. Who wouldn't want to advertise that?
    • The second series shows that it's hereditary when Barak's son turns into a bear during the final EVENT. A shame it did nobody any good at all since he wasn't actually present at the time.
  • Cute Monster Girl: The Dryads are technically a race of this, but look identical to humans.
  • Cute Mute: Errand, at least until The Malloreon, and Lampshaded there: "I see you've learned to talk, boy."

    Tropes D 
  • Dangerous Deserter: The heroes encounter a farm raided and with its inhabitants killed by a roving band of these in the Malloreon. Garion goes off on his own and kills them, the farm having reminded him of Faldor's.
  • Dark Messiah: Zandramas to many Grolims, and the people of Darshiva. Harakan also enjoys playing this role, as evidenced by his Ulfgar and Mengha personas, which he uses to subvert the Bear-Cult and the Karands respectively. Neither one of them really cares about the people that they're supposedly representing, and are only using it for power.
  • Dashed Plot Line: The prequels can skip centuries between chapters. Having main characters who are immortal makes this almost essential — a biography of Polgara that tried to cover everything would make the Oxford English Dictionary look small, and her father's more than twice as old as her.
  • Day Hurts Dark-Adjusted Eyes: Ulgos, thanks to their nature as a society that lives entirely underground. It takes Relg years to adjust on a permanent basis.
  • Dead Man Writing: In The Malloreon, the message from Torak to Belgarion they find in an uncorrupted copy of the Ashabine Oracles is one of these.
  • Deadpan Snarker
    • Everyone to an extent — one of the big draws of the series is reading the characters' often clever back-and-forth banter. This is epitomized, however, by the Purpose of the Friggin' Universe, who takes up residence as a snarky voice in Garion's consciousness and comes across as nothing so much as a long-suffering Game Master constantly annoyed that his players won't follow the script.
      Purpose: I love to watch his expression when he loses one of these arguments.
    • When warned by Garion that Belgarath won't like what the Purpose intends in a certain situation, the voice responds with something along the lines of, "I can bear that prospect with enormous fortitude." In general, it seems to enjoy annoying Belgarath through Garion.
    • Even the impartial, third person narration (that usually averts Lemony Narrator very hard) becomes this when talking about Garion's first shave.
      The shaving proceeded with a great deal of advice, and on the whole it did not turn out too badly. Most of the bleeding stopped after a few minutes, and, aside from the fact that his face felt as if it had been peeled, Garion was quite satisfied with the results.
  • Death Before Dishonor: Relg and Taiba debate this topic several times in Castle of Wizardry. Taiba is a rescued slave woman who had been raped on multiple occasions. Relg, a morally strict religious zealot, insists that she should have fought to the death or even killed herself instead of submitting to her attackers because giving herself up to it was sinful. She pointedly tells him she wasn't ready to die yet, and that while she believes cruelty and lack of compassion are sins, doing something you've been forced into when there's no possible way to avoid it is not.
  • Death by Childbirth: Poledra subverts it.
    • Justified by the woman who is giving birth to Nahaz's offspring. Garion gets a look at her and realizes there is no way she'd survive the birth.
  • Death Seeker: Garion strongly suspects 'Zakath of being one of these in The Malloreon.
  • Death Wail: Polgara lets one loose when Durnik is killed.
  • Deconfirmed Bachelor: Silk, especially in The Malloreon when he trades out his Unrequited Love for Queen Porenn to catching the eye of wily up-and-coming Lady-Spy Liselle. From the last few pages of The Belgariad:
    Garion: Is everybody getting married?
    Silk: Not me, my young friend. In spite of this universal plunge towards matrimony, I still haven't lost my senses. If worse comes to worse, I still know how to run."
  • Default to Good: Cyradis at the end of The Malloreon.
  • Defeat Means Friendship: Zakath is one of the rare pre-emptive examples of this trope, in that after finally dawning after Garion remarks how hideous it would be to have his name literally written in the night sky, and Garion then scolds the Orb that it was an example, not a request! to just how thoroughly the odds are against him he decides to just skip the "defeat" and go straight to the "friendship".
    Zakath : You know something, Garion? I've always believed that someday you and I would go to war with each other. Would you be terribly disappointed if I decided not to show up?
  • Deliberate Values Dissonance: A number of cases, both In-Universe and out-of-universe; the most glaring case of the latter is the way that one exercise of the Marital Rape License on a drunken Barak's part in the first book of the Belgariad is largely brushed over. There's a brief scene when he's ashamed, and his wife, Merel, pointedly calls him out for it in veiled language (it goes straight over Garion's head), but that's all there is to it — Polgara is actually amused when she realises that Merel is pregnant (granted, she might not know the circumstances) and the resulting child, Unrak, is presented as making everything better between the two of them. Beyond that, it's never mentioned again, and quietly filed under Early-Installment Weirdness). At first, this might be startling, but considering that Barak's a Cherek, and it's repeatedly noted that even by the standards of the other medieval-ish Alorn kingdoms the Chereks — a Viking Fantasy Counterpart Culture (or at least, counterparts of what most people imagine as Vikings) — hold the most sexist attitudes (though in Anheg's case, it's mostly an act for political purposes), with Silk's wry observation that they haven't yet quite worked out that women are human.
    • Hettar's murderous attitude to Murgos following his parents being killed in a Murgo raid when he was a child, which is mostly presented in the first series as a personal quirk/product of his backstory/occasional inconvenience, save for when Garion wonders at the Power Of Hate that could drive a seven year old boy to survive being left for dead and result in, well, Hettar. Considering that most of the Murgos encountered are soldiers or spies/assassins, the protagonists are Alorns, big on vengeance, and hating Murgos, it's not surprising that most of them don't really think it's worth mentioning. That said, in Belgarath's prequel, Polgara grimly remarks that she's afraid that a young Hettar could be growing into "a proper monster", so it's not completely overlooked.
    • The Nadrak custom of women technically being owned by men is regarded as this In-Universe, with most who aren't familiar with it being somewhere between bemused by and horrified at it. The reactions are at least partially ameliorated by the crucial part, which is that the woman retains the rights to their person, meaning that any man who is so unwise as to touch a Nadrak woman without her express consent, even if he is her nominal owner, is very quickly going to regret it. Said skills mean that a woman can always 'persuade' an owner to sell her if she doesn't like him, regardless of her treatment. There's also the part where every time a Nadrak woman is sold, she gets to keep half the money. So not only are Nadrak women better at haggling and sales pitches, they tend to have a wider variety of skills to up their sale prices. It's implied that among the 'elderly' Nadraks, the women are generally much, much wealthier than the men. And added to all that, as Polgara observes in her prequel, for the most part Nadrak women actually have more actual freedom and independence than most 'free' women elsewhere in the world.
    • In general, most of the examples filed under Protagonist-Centred Morality also qualify.
  • Demanding Their Head: In The Seeress of Kell, when Queen Salmissra's then-Chief Eunuch Adiss informs her of a problem with a minor government official called The Satrap, Salmissra dismisses it as a completely unimportant matter and tells Adiss to solve the problem by hiring an assassin to cut off The Satrap's head. When Adiss protests, she repeats her order and also tells him to bring her the head afterward as proof of his obedience.
  • Demon Lords And Arch Devils: In The Malloreon, it's revealed that Demons/Devil-Spirits, have rank the same way that people do. Nahaz and Mordja are the two that Garion and co. encounter.
  • Den of Iniquity: Several of the rooms in Ctuchik's tower in Magician's Gambit.
  • Despair Event Horizon: Mara (God of the Marags) reaches it when the Tolnedrans finally swarm into Maragor to get at the gold that the Marags themselves didn't value at all, apparently killing the entire race. In response, Mara turns the entire country into a haunted land that drives anyone who even thinks about the gold hopelessly insane, often to the point of suicide, and Mara himself stays in the center of the capital city expressing his grief. This goes on for several thousand years until it's revealed that some of the Marag race was sold into slavery and still lived.
  • Despair Gambit: The Dark Prophecy uses these on occasion, especially when it's getting desperate and running out of mooks to throw at the goodies. Silk and Garion employ their own Gambits at the final meeting, to greater effect.
  • Destination Defenestration: Comes up several times, most notably when Silk fights Brill at Rak Cthol, and then again in The Malloreon when Senji relates to Belgarath and Garion how the Melcene University tried to "test" his immortality.
  • Determined Expression: This occasionally graces the faces of such stoic characters as Eriond and Durnik, especially when they're doing something major.
  • Devious Daggers: Silk is a Lovable Rogue, a Living Legend in the Drasnian Intelligence Agency, and an expert knife fighter. He keeps a bewildering number of daggers secreted on his person at all times.
  • The Devil Is a Loser:
    • Torak. Sure, he's the resident evil god of the setting, but he spends all of the series and most of the backstory horribly maimed because of several monumentally stupid decisions; the main characters have absolutely no respect for him and regularly refer to him by such epithets as "Burnt-face" and "One-eye"; he has no ability to either anticipate or cope with change in the world; and he has absolutely no subtlety, sense of military tactics, or awareness of human nature whatsoever, relying entirely on brute force. One gets the impression that the only reason he was ever a credible threat was that, as a god, he has a lot of brute force to throw around, and Garion wins their final battle by pointing out how very pathetic he is behind all the bluster.
    • It's revealed in The Malloreon that it isn't entirely his fault — Much of Torak's mindset is influenced by the fact that he was, for a very long time, the host of the Spirit of Dark, which is flat-out described as being completely unable to change, thus the above inabilities to cope with change, as Darkness is constant, inflexible. Light is change in its nature. Also, it turns out that he was never supposed to be a God at all. The same thing that split the two Purposes created him as the wrong god. Eriond is the God who was supposed to be.
  • Dick Dastardly Stops to Cheat: Zandramas' efforts to sway events to her favour ultimately hasten the Event she is trying to avoid. And, probably, bias the Choice against her. This gets repeatedly pointed out to her, by several people.
  • Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: When he gets tired of Torak's mind games, Garion makes it a point to tell him off.
    Garion: I know you now. You might as well give up trying to win me over to your side, because I'm not going to change my mind. Aunt Pol is not your wife, and I'm not your son. You'd better stop trying to play games with my thoughts and get ready, because I'm coming to kill you.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Garion gets to add Godslayer to his constellation of grandiose titles at the end of the fifth book. Of course, this is explicitly justified as his purpose for existing in the first place, and he's aided by a power a wee bit higher than Torak.
  • Diminishing Villain Threat: Inverted with respect to Ctuchik, who is portrayed by Belgarath as barely competent until the two actually meet face to face, and it turns out that they are nearly equal.note  Belgarath is possibly an Unreliable Narrator in this case. The prequels also invert this with Zedar. Beyond stealing the Orb and killing Durnik, he doesn't do a whole lot in the main series, but the prequels show why this guy was considered bad news and deserved a Fate Worse than Death.
  • Dirty Coward: Zandramas. Half the action in The Malloreon derives from her desperate attempts at avoiding the CHOICE. She never confronts the heroes directly either, and inevitably runs whenever they start catching up with her.
  • Disposable Woman: Hilariously and spectacularly subverted at the climax of book three. Grolim High Priest Ctuchik is ecstatic at having lured the heroes into coming after him in his fastness, gloating that he need merely kill any one of the party to stop the Prophecy from coming true, only to be somewhat disconcerted to find out that the only member of the group vulnerable enough that he actually can kill them before Belgarath and Polgara can finish blocking Ctuchik's attack — Ce'Nedra — is not only not there, but has been safely left a thousand miles away. In a hidden city buried underneath a continental shelf. With the over-deity UL as her personal bodyguard. As Belgarath made sure to point out, Ctuchik really should have taken a headcount first before allowing the group inside.
  • Disproportionate Retribution: Belgarath's punishment of Zedar is viewed by several of the heroes as this, as the majority of his villainy was conducted offscreen, until the release of the prequels. Belgarath, however, was a firsthand witness to it and Zedar's protestations of I Did What I Had to Do fall on deaf ears. Belgarath briefly muses on whether the punishment was indeed too harsh later on, only for Beldin (who was also a first-hand witness) to state that if Belgarath ever released Zedar, Beldin would put him straight back.
  • Distressed Woodchopping: Invoked in the Malloreon sequel series. When Ce'Nedra goes into labour, Polgara takes one look at her Panicky Expectant Father Garion and tells him to go chop some wood to keep his wife warm. His fugue state ends sometime after he's collected two cords of firewood and Ce'Nedra has safely delivered.
  • Divided Deity: Two opposed Sentient Cosmic Forces of Prophecy exist Above the Gods and drive the main conflict. They were created when an ancient cataclysm divided the consciousness of the Universe itself, and each is competing to defeat the other and become the Universe's guiding force.
  • Diversionary Foreign Policy: Discussed in Polgara the Sorceress. During the time when Nerasin is consolidating his power in Asturia, Polgara points out at a conference between the other Arendish dukes that rulers with a shaky grasp on power at home often try to start wars with their neighbors to redirect their subjects’ hatreds, and that the rest of them need to present a united front to discourage Nerasin from doing the same.
  • Divine Chessboard: Everyone is guided by one of two opposing Purposes of the Universe.
  • The Dog Bites Back: The Thulls are the Big Guy of the Angarak races, characterized as slow-witted and cowardly, and are kept in perpetual thrall by the Grolims. Life for a Thull is a neverending scene of terror, as at any moment they could be sacrificed to Torak by one of the steel-masked priests, who can read minds so that even the thought of rebellion is pointless. Once Torak is dead, however, Silk notes that the Thulls are collectively taking great delight in finding every single Grolim they can get their hands on and finding new, creative ways to kill them.
  • Doomy Dooms of Doom: Martje of Val Alorn likes to talk about Barak's Doom.
    Durnik: What was all that talk about Doom?
  • Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Vella and Yarblek, Played for Laughs, and justified by Nadrak culture, in which all women are property of a man, but own the rights to their person, and are free to cut up any man who tries to take advantage.
  • Double Standard Rape: Female on Male: It's casually mentioned that all Dryads are conceived with captured human men used as breeding slaves. No characters express opposition to this.
    • Noticably averted when Polgara goes on a Rampage through Salmissa's palace with Barak expressly to stop this.
  • The Dragon: The hierarchy of evil's leadership across both series goes, roughly, Disciple (Ctuchik, Zedar, and Urvon for Torak; Naradas for Zandramas), Child of Dark (Torak, Zandramas), Dark Prophecy. In The Belgariad Ctuchik and Zedar play Dragon to Torak (not that he especially needs protecting), while Asharak and Brill are Ctuchik's Co-Dragons; Brill may have been Asharak's Dragon as well, although he was strangely absent during the latter's final moments; the details of the relationship are never fully explored. In The Malloreon Zandramas has Naradas, Mordja, and an actual Dragon, while Urvon has Nahaz and Harakan. Most of those in The Malloreon have their own agendas.
  • Dragon with an Agenda: The Demon Lords Nahaz and Mordja to Urvon and Zandramas respectively. Nahaz doubles as a Dragon-in-Chief, after brainwashing Urvon into insanity; Urvon's second Dragon, Harakan/Mengha, is also conspiring against him, with the help of Nahaz, who he believes he has under his control, allowing Nahaz to be Dragon with an Agenda/ Dragon-in-Chief to both of them.
  • Driven to Suicide: Belsambar and Belmakor. In the prequel, Belgarath expresses a suspicion that Zedar had somehow played a part in the latter (though he never explains how), and goes on to say that if he ever discovers proof, he'll go back and put Zedar somewhere even worse.
    • a Played for Laughs version (for the readers, anyway) in the early stages of Guardians of the West. During That Mess in Arendia, Nerina comes up with the perfect idea to stop the war - all she has to do is "cast myself from the window of this tower". Belgarion is about to tell her what a breathtakingly stupid idea this is, then rolls his eyes and basically says, "Fine. It'll take you about two days to reach the ground, so you can think it over. You'll look pretty silly though." It takes Nerina a moment to realize - "Thou wouldst not use sorcery to foil my most excellent solution!"
    • After their Roaring Rampageof Rescue of Garion in Nyssa, Barak threatens to commit suicide, thinking he's a dangerous monster and will eventually be trapped as a bear forever. Polgara (who knows why he's transforming, but can't say yet because Garion's identity is still a secret) stops him with a combination of reverse psychology and by revealing that Barak's wife back home is pregnant with his first son.
  • Driven to Villainy: Zedar claims this, although the prequels undermine his position. He initially joined Torak of his own free will, intending to act as a Fake Defector, and then Torak's touch on his mind obliterated his ability to resist. The implication is that pride was his Fatal Flaw for assuming that he, or any mortal, could mount that kind of deception against a god. At the end, Zedar tries to shrug off responsibility by arguing that he was merely playing his role in the prophecy, but Belgarath doesn't buy it.
  • Duel to the Death: Garion vs. Torak.
  • Dye or Die: Zakath grows a beard after joining the heroes in The Malloreon to avoid being recognized as Emperor. Ce'Nedra also dyes her hair temporarily after running away.
    • Played with in the prequel novels. Polgara has a distinctive white lock in her dark hair that will not take dye. At one point while she's in hiding protecting the Rivan heirs, Belgarath breaks out his "wandering storyteller" persona and assures women across several kingdoms that the very latest fashion at court is for dark-haired women to bleach/dye a white streak into their hair. At a different period during the in-hiding centuries, Polgara invents a style of braiding that conceals the white lock.

    Tropes E 
  • Easily Elected: Deconstructed. Sendaria's attempts to create a democracy got off to a rough start, as they allowed anyone to run for the throne, and everyone was given one vote. The first election took seven years and ultimately crowned a rutabaga farmer who had long since forgotten he was on the ballot. Nonetheless, he was The Good King.
  • Eat the Summoner: Demon summoners have to keep the demons under constant strict control or face this. Garion watches one of them challenge Belgarath, but make a mistake in forming the shape that he forces the demon into, allowing it to burst free and slaughter both the summoner and his clan. Note that it didn't bother to chase down Belgarath or Garion, since they weren't the ones who tried to enslave it.
  • Eccentric Mentor: Belgarath has several bad habits- the stealing and overimbibing and all that business in Maragor after Poledra's death — and he generally looks like a tramp, but he is still Aldur's first disciple and quite capable of demonstrating why all the Grolims are terrified of him. Of course, he got his tramp costume specially made and it's lasted him five hundred years.
  • Either/Or Prophecy: Technically, two prophecies that are actually divided halves of the original Purpose of the Universe.
  • Elective Monarchy: Sendaria chose its first king like this, and everyone could vote. Also, the winning candidate had to have a majority of the votes rather than simply the most votes. It took six years and twenty-two ballots to winnow the 724 candidates down to a single winner, a rutabaga farmer named Fundor. As a result, nobody takes the monarchy all that seriously—not even the monarch. Also, the Empire of Tolnedra elects a new Emperor if the old one dies without an heir.
  • Empathic Weapon: The Orb definitely has a personality of its own, but it's not very developed. As Belgarion says, it's "closer to a horse or dog..." It tends to get very enthusiastic when it "lends a hand" to Garion's sorcery, leading to some rather spectacular effects, and sometimes gives him unsolicited advice. For example, when he offhandedly mentions to Zakath that it could write his name in the stars, it starts to twitch, as if excited at the prospect that Garion wants it to do something for him. Zakath gets a bit wild-eyed and Garion immediately has to explain to the Orb it was only an example. It's implied that part of the reason Garion — and, indeed his ultimate ancestor Riva Iron-Grip — was chosen to bear the Orb is his basic humility; he's not subject to the temptation to use the Orb for the sake of power.
    • Another great example of this is when Zakath is virtually holding Garion & his crew prisoner in Rak Hagga. Garion and Zakath get into a heated argument, in which Garion informs Zakath that he can leave anytime he wants. When Zakath asks just how he proposes to do that, Garion loses his temper, uses his BFS to focus his will on the door and shouts "BURST!". The Orb, a bit startled by all this and wanting to help sink Garion's point, blows the 2-foot thick stone wall to fine gravel in addition to blasting the door to splinters. Zakath gets the point almost immediately.
  • The Emperor: Zakath has this tendency in The Belgariad. In The Malloreon he gets better.
  • Empty Shell: 'Zakath misses this trope by milimetres during The Belgariad and the start of The Malloreon. The prophecy outright refers to him as "The Empty One".
  • Enchanted Forest: The Wood of the Dryads is home to a race of Nature Spirits/Plant People. Cutting down trees is strictly forbidden, and punishment will be dealt out by the inhabitants. The Dryads and the nearby Borune family have a long standing treaty that no logging will take place in their land, or else all the wives, mothers and daughters of the Borune family will pack up and return to the Wood of the Dryads, since they're all Dryads.
  • Encyclopedia Exposita: Many of the novels start with an excerpt from a historical or religious text that provides relevant Back Story for the book in question. Humourously, the excerpts often reference the same event, with completely different interpretations.
  • Enemy Civil War
    • Much of The Malloreon is composed of a huge Mêlée à Trois between 'Zakath, Zandramas and Urvon for control of the Sardion, with Mengha and Agachak looking to get involved from the outside, and the Demons working for whoever summons them. Ultimately Mengha allies with Urvon (who he and Nahaz start plotting against), 'Zakath Heel Face Turns and Zandramas secures her position as the Big Bad with the deaths of Urvon, Agachak, and Mengha, and the banishment of Nahaz, in one of the most stunning examples of Eviler than Thou in fiction. Whew.
    • Also at the climax of The Belgariad, when after Torak's death the Angarak invasion of the West degenerates into a decades-long war between Mallorea and Cthol Murgos.
    • Urgit's struggle to ascend the throne of Cthol Murgos after the death of Taur Urgas.
  • Epic Fail
    • In The Belgariad, Lelldorin manages to extend an epic fail over the course of a week. When he announces that he's going to get back to the main group, his beloved refuses to stay behind. During the departure and trip he manages to break her older brother's leg, run his cousin through the leg "just a little bit", punch out all of a priest's teeth, and cause enough assorted mayhem to get a bounty put on his head by the crown. And all of this was without trying. This is also an example of Disaster Dominoes. He did successfully marry the girl in the process, though! (Supposedly because travelling alone with her would cause more trouble — which Lelldorin probably meant, despite his genuine love for her, but said girl is immediately noted by Garion as not just seeing it as a formality.)
    • In The Malloreon, Garion has to stop a war threatening to engulf the entire kingdom of Arendia. He magically summons a storm that helps him single-handedly stop two charging armies in their tracks, force an old friend to marry the love of his life and resolve the dispute. He's very pleased with his hard day's work. A few chapters later he finds out that he sparked off blizzards, hurricanes, droughts and tornadoes right around the world, and even triggered a new ice age. It took the combined efforts of the Gods themselves and two of the most powerful sorcerers alive over six months to fix it. Needless to say, Garion is banned from touching the weather again for two thousand years. When he protests that he just needs to "make time" to practice, he is promptly told by a startled Belgarath — who takes him literally — to leave time alone as well since even all the gods together wouldn't be able to fix that.
  • Equivalent Exchange: Spells require that a sorcerer draw energy from things around them, or when creating things, themselves.
  • Ethnic God: Seven of the eight gods are associated with a race and vice-versa. Both also have associated Animal Motifs. Aldur refused to choose a people, as initially did UL, the father of the other gods. The remaining peoples, who called themselves Dals, divided into several groups and left to search for gods to worship while some remained behind as Dals. Only one group, the Ulgo, found a god, while the others mostly became demon worshippers.
  • Eunuchs Are Evil: The kingdom of Nyissa seems to have a lot of evil eunuchs. Considering that you have to be a eunuch to work at the royal palacenote , and the palace is filled with intrigue, this is a Justified Trope. Remedied in the second series when Sadi, formerly seen as an Affably Evil Chancellor, turns out to be arguably no worse than the protagonists, drug dealing aside.
  • Even Evil Has Standards
    • The Malloreon has a deeply chilling example in the fourth book, where Garion finds a prophecy written by Torak in which the Dark God begs his archenemy to prevent the horror that will come if Zandramas succeeds in elevating the Dark Prophecy. Belgarath remarks that it may have been Torak's one moment of sanity.
    • After Sadi joins the party, it becomes a plot point that the Murgos consider Nyissan drugs illegal, despite gleefully participating in the slave trade. Sadi himself is an example, as he regarded many aspects of the slave trade to be repulsive.
    • Although Silk isn't evil, there's a hilarious Lampshading when Sadi points out that Silk has no qualms against swindling people or murdering them in cold blood but baulks at dealing in drugs.
  • Everybody Knew Already: Much of the Drasnian spy network's doings. Nobody is surprised whenever a lowly Drasnian merchant turns out to be a top spy, and it seems everyone and his brother knows the secret sign language. However, the Drasnian leadership's attitude toward this situation suggests that this may all be part of their operational procedure, allowing some secrets to slip out in order to better spread disinformation, or that it's simply an indication of just how widespread the Drasnian intelligence network is. By the end of the series, the reader is left wondering if there are any Drasnians outside the country who don't report back to to the Intelligence Service, or at least, to someone who does.
    • They even weaponize this during Torak's invasion in the backstory. Rather than try to get the notoriously skeptical Tolnedrans to believe that they could get actionable intelligence from prophecies (which, to be fair, were the barely coherent ramblings of assorted madmen who had been dead for twenty-five centuries at this point), they just turned the information they wanted the General Staff to have into a plausible-sounding report and presented it to them as a recent dispatch from Drasnian Intelligence.
  • Everyone Can See It: Eddings does not tend to be subtle with his romances — in-universe or out.
    • Literally everyone knows how Garion and Ce'Nedra feel about each other before they do. (But then, they are teenagers.)
    • It is painfully obvious from the word 'go' that Durnik is deeply, if quietly, in love with Polgara. Her own feelings are less obvious, but not that much less obvious.
  • Everything's Deader with Zombies: The Raveners in the Southern Forest are slow, rotting, of human form, and scavenge from graves. Except when there's a war going on nearby when they become a lot faster, and inclined to chase down the living. There is a war going on nearby when the heroes have to pass through, and the Southern Forest is the size of Arendia, and is in between them and their destination...
  • Evil Counterpart:
    • Most obviously Zedar (and to a lesser degree, Ctuchik) to Belgarath (Garion even briefly mistakes Zedar for Belgarath, they look that much alike).
    • Urvon is likely the Evil Counterpart to Beldin: both are disfigured, both are the disciple of a major god, and they hate each other almost as much as their respective masters do.
    • A case could be made that 'Zakath is originally Garion's Evil Counterpart: they're both the rulers of half the world, but Garion is a decent king and his position of Overlord of the West is mostly a formality (though as Garion sourly notes, the other monarchs seem to enjoy bringing him their most absurdly difficult problems for him to solve), where as 'Zakath is The Emperor and is totally obsessed with power and revenging himself on Taur Urgas. This, of course, changes with 'Zakath's Heel–Face Turn in The Malloreon, and gets heavily Lampshaded to boot.
    • The Sardion (Cthrag Sardius) is the Evil Counterpart to the Orb of Aldur (Cthrag Yaska). One could argue that Torak's black sword, Cthrek Goru, is the Evil Counterpart to the Sword of the Rivan King.
  • Evil Takes a Nap: The evil god Torak spent five centuries in a prolonged coma to recover from being stabbed through the head during his bid for world domination. During Belgarath's prequel story, he is also forced to sleep while Belgarath and company enter his room to retrieve the orb.
  • Eviler than Thou: Zandramas vs Urvon vs Agachak vs Mengha vs (pre-Heel–Face Turn) 'Zakath. Also, Nahaz vs Mordja for the favour of The King of Hell. See Enemy Civil War above.
  • Evil Is Not a Toy: When dealing with demons, the question isn't if you'll get screwed, but when. Just ask Urvon. Or Chabat. Or Zandramas. Or any number of unnamed Morind magicians who got eaten by creatures they thought they had under control. Belgarath is able to control his summoned demon in The Belgariad to intimidate the Morindim, but he is very careful to play by the rules and banish it when he's done with it. Nobody in their right mind ever deals with a Demon Lord.
  • Evil Is Sterile: The Prophecy of Light explains that this is the difference between it and the Prophecy of Dark—it wants new things to happen and evolve, while the Prophecy of Dark wants to keep things stagnant.
  • Evil Smells Bad: The areas corrupted by the presence of the Child of Dark both have this as a defining trait.
    • Justified in both cases by the Child of Dark summoning eternal fog and cloud cover to blot out the Sun. The bad smell is, at least in part, mold and mildew.
  • Evil Sorcerer: Ctuchik, Zedar, Urvon, Chamdar, Zandramas, Naradas, the vast majority of unnamed Grolims, and pretty much every single Morind magician and Karandese wizard.
  • Evil Tower of Ominousness: Ctuchik's tower atop Rak Cthol, and Torak's giant iron tower in Cthol Mishrak. Torak's tower was so tall that a noticeable chunk of a 24-hour day can be spent going up the stairs to the top, doing something which takes maybe five minutes, and then going back down. When he invades the West, he has a giant wheeled iron tower pulled about by his army for him to live in. Lampshaded by Belgarath, who mentions that all sorcerers seem to have a pathological drive to live in towers.
  • Expansion Pack World: Eddings added the south & east of the second continent and the bottom of the first one only after The Malloreon was a go.
  • Expressive Mask: After Torak becomes maimed, he takes to wearing a steel mask which covers his face and moves as his unburned face would.
  • Extended Disarming: Silk, numerous times, pulls daggers out of every conceivable hiding place. Plus a few that could only be explained by Hammerspace.
  • Extreme Libido: The Nyissan queens suffer this as a side effect of their youth-enhancing drugs (themselves taken to prolong the Queen's resemblance to the original Salmissra, who was the lover of the Nyissan god Issa), to the extent that the palace has to be staffed by eunuchs. After the last Queen Salmissra is turned into a serpent by Polgara, she's quite relieved to be free of the mess of hormones.

    Tropes F 
  • Face–Heel Turn: Zedar in the backstory.
  • Fake Town: The Citadel of Algaria is a huge, imposing Citadel City and the Born in the Saddle Algars' only permanent settlement. In fact, it's Schmuck Bait for the enemy Murgos that invade from time to time; the entire city is nothing but a death-trap maze that's optimized for Urban Warfare. The Murgos keep attacking it because they can't believe that there's nothing of value inside, which saves the Algars the trouble of hunting them down in their vast prairies.
  • Fake Wizardry: Not stage magic proper, but at one point in The Malloreon a Grolim sorcerer uses a fake demon invocation plus an illusion spell as Step One in taking over a Karand kingdom. Belgarath counters with a fake invocation of his own and a far scarier illusion that sends the Karands fleeing for their lives.
  • Fallen Hero: Zedar.
  • Famed In-Story: Belgarath and Polgara are generally either this or The Dreaded, depending on the audience.
    • Belgarion also becomes this following his Awesome Moment of Crowning and slaying of Torak in single combat towards the end of the first series. Zakath greets him by remarking that his exploits 'have shaken the world.'
  • Family Extermination: In the Malloreon, emperor 'Zakath vows to wipe out the entire bloodline of Murgo King Taur Urgas after a scheme of the latter's got his fiancee executed. This started with him rounding up every Urga family member in Mallorea and periodically sending bits of them back to Taur Urgas with highly insulting notes attached. The only way to stop him from killing the surviving Prince (later King), Urgit, is revealing that the Queen cheated on Urgas with a Drasnian emissary, and the reason he was the surviving "son" was the mental advantage of being the only one not Royally Screwed Up. 'Zakath, who'd spent the best part of a decade or so waging a war on Murgo soil and depopulating entire districts just to try and get his revenge, has a spectacular breakdown.
  • Fantasy Counterpart Culture
    • Almost everywhere. Eddings mined real-world cultures almost exclusively when populating the world of The Belgariad. Word of God states in The Rivan Codex: "The Sendars correspond to rural Englishmen, the Arends to Norman French, the Tolnedrans to Romans, The Chereks to Vikings, the Algars to Cossacks, the Ulgos to Jews, and the Angaraks to Hunnish-Mongolian-Muslim-Visigoths out to convert the world by sword. I didn't really have correspondences in mind for the Drasnians, Rivans, Marags, and Nyissans. They're story elements and don't need to derive from this world."
    • The rural Drasnians bear a strong resemblance to the Sami people (particularly the reindeer herding culture) with some influence from the old Swiss (i.e. pikemen as a military speciality), including the long and harsh winters. The Nyissans have strong resemblance to both the ancient Egyptian and ancient Central American cultures in dress, politics, and rulership. (And while the rainforests aren't swampy jungles, they come close environmentally.) The Rivans could be said to be a melding of classic generic "fantasy human" (particularly the Dunedain from The Lord of the Rings) with the old world Eastern Europeans. (Stoic, steadfast, conforming by necessity on the outside but very family oriented, bright and colorful, and warm on the inside... as shown physically by their homes and attire, and personally by their attitude.)
    • Some felt that Eddings may have been referring only to the Mimbrates when he mentioned the Arends — the Asturians seem more English than French: they were famed for their use of the longbow, they pass off their banditry as Robin Hood-like, and they mowed down a very musical culture when they destroyed the Wacites. Compare the relations between the two cultures to those of Normans and Saxons in most Robin Hood tales, and it's not hard to see.
    • The Sendars seem to have aspects of the Midwestern US mixed in: a society made up of immigrants from the rest of the world where hard work was the most respected trait. Plus, they make a big deal about their democratically elected government (though, being a monarchy, that bears more resemblance to post-Magna Carta England).
    • The Marags are almost certainly based on Ancient Greece, from what is shown in Belgarath the Sorcerer.
    • The Wacite Arends (who are extinct, and appear only in Polgara the Sorceress) have certain similarities to the Welsh, Irish and Scots - especially given what the Saxon like Asturians did to them. Among other things, they possess the only accent in the world described as a brogue.
  • Fantastic Racism: Torak is a narcissistic, literal God of Evil whose Religion of Evil demands sacrifice in the form of still-beating human hearts freshly carved out of people's chests. Torak also believes himself superior to all the other gods and encourages his people — the Angaraks — to feel the same about themselves in relation to the other peoples of the world. Torak also attempted to conquer the world 500 years before the events of Pawn of Prophecy and wasn't that far from achieving his goals. In addition, the Angaraks have a history of stirring up shit in the western kingdoms, the destruction of Vo Wacune and the assassination of the Rivan royal family being some of the major events they had a hand in. Due to the aforementioned reasons and the almost complete lack of cultural exchange with the isolationist Angarak society, anti-Angarak sentiment is quite strong in many of the western kingdoms. Any Angarak in the west, of course, will deny everything and claim everyone's just prejudiced towards them.
  • Fantastic Time Management: When Garion says he'll "make time" to do something, Belgarath warns him against using his sorcery to create time, because there's no way to predict what the results would be if he tries.
  • Farmboy: Garion is one, but only technically. He lived on a farm, but mostly worked in his aunt's kitchen... as a dishwasher.
  • Fate Worse than Death:
    • Zedar gets buried alive forever. Excuse me, I Must Scream.
    • And then there's Urvon and Chabat, who lose their souls to Demons.
    • Zandramas may have suffered from the same thing as Urvon and Chabat, or may simply have ceased to exist when she got dissolved and used to fill a hole in the galaxy.
    • Don't forget the Grolim who was providing innocent women to bear demonic children of Nahaz, who Polgara gives eternal life, but curses with his every word being disbelieved.
    • When Cthuchik panics and tries to un-make the Orb, he has just long enough to realize what he's done before his "be not" rebounds on him and ''even the matter that formed him is completely destroyed. The next book even opens " Cthuchik was dead, and more than dead."
  • Fat Idiot: Rhodar isn't one. In fact, he is fat because he loves to sit and read, and is one of the best educated people in the world.
  • Fear Is Normal: Mandorallen has never felt fear before. During a fight with unusual clay and mud monsters, he feels fear for the first time and is ashamed. He also thinks his companions won't be able to rely on him in the future. Durnik comforts him with the idea that everyone feels fear.
  • Fetus Terrible: Justified in The Malloreon, because a woman is about to give birth to the child of a Demon Lord. Neither child nor mother survive.
  • Fiery Redhead: Ce'Nedra. Oh good gods, Ce'Nedra - the girl/woman with a temper that could give almost every Anime Tsundere lessons, prior to her mellowing out (and even then, it still makes the occasional appearance).
  • First Period Panic: In Polgara the Sorceress, Polgara and Beldaran freak when they find bloodstains on their bedding. Polgara narrates the moment when she and Beldaran became women overnight, of which there was "fairly visible evidence all over the bedsheets". Their mother died when they were born, and that's not really something you can discuss with your uncle. Poledra, their mother, isn't really dead, and explains matters to them. Why she didn't plan ahead isn't answered, but she might not have thought about it — wolves don't menstruate.
  • First Time in the Sun: Relg. He doesn't take it well.
  • Flat-Earth Atheist: The Tolnedrans worship a god that loves money, which sent them down a road to love money more than Gods, so that they're effectively atheist merchants, and their god couldn't be happier with them. Most Tolnedran characters will cling to their atheism no matter how much the world's supernatural elements prod at them, including a scene where General Varana spends a tactical meeting facing away from the other commanders so that he won't have to see the sorcerers he's working with shapeshifting and casting spells. However, many acknowledge these things do exist, they just "officially" disbelieve them.
    • Further proof of this trope by the Tolnedrans: according to any Tolnedran, and the entire Tolnedran government, there is no such thing as magic, yet there are also specific laws making it illegal to use the very magic the law makers agree does not exist.
    • Inverted by Brador, the chief of the Mallorean Empire's Bureau of Internal Affairs. He is a Melcene, who, like the Tolnedrans, don't believe in anything supernatural. Along comes Book 3 of the Malloreon, at which point demons start butchering whole cities under the command of a Grolim priest. Brador not only doesn't seem to have any trouble believing demons exist, but he begs Belgarath and Belgarion to help him convince his even more skeptical emperor to call off his Roaring Rampageof Revenge so they can go back and deal with the situation.
    • The Melcenes as a culture are the polar opposite of the Tolnedrans. They not only believe in magic but actually have their scholars study things like spiritism and alchemy (they even have their own sorcerer, though he's seen as a bit of an oddball). However, they don't believe in the gods, and consider other cultures' religions as proof of how backwards and superstitious all non-Melcenes are.
  • Flaying Alive: Taur Urgas' response to his guards' inability to prevent the unavoidable. Also a favoured method by Silk, alongside boiling, for implied past events upon which he didn't elaborate.
  • Flowery Elizabethan English: Arendish folks talk like this, particularly the Mimbrates... though the Asturians deliberately change accents out of their contempt for the Mimbrates. One (non-Arendish) character trying to sound intelligent speaks like this for a few pages, before being explicitly told that she sounds ridiculous. Thoroughly and hilariously lampshaded in The Malloreon when Poledra remarks that if they stick around the Arends long enough, everyone will be doing it. For his part, Eddings not only does the style grammatically, but (in The Rivan Codex) is highly critical of those who try but get it wrong. Subverted in the first series when the kings have a war council and one of them starts the meeting speaking this way (with difficulty). Belgarath asks what he thinks he's doing, and then tells him to get on with it and let the historians insert the thee's and thou's.
    • Mandorallen is considered, even In-Universe, to be excessive at this. Since he's pretty much an up to eleven example of the Mimbrates, this is perhaps not entirely surprising.
    "Lord King," Mandorallen said in his resonant voice, bowing to the throne, "gladly do I greet thee and the members of thy court, and dare to call ye all kinsmen. I presume to bear thee warmest greetings from their Majesties, King Korodullin and Queen Mayaserana, monarchs of well-loved Arendia, for, doubtless, as soon as I return to Vo Mimbre and reveal that those who were once lost are now joyfully found again, their Majesties' eyes will fill to overflowing with tears of thanksgiving, and they shall embrace thee from afar, if needs be, as a brother, and, as great Chaldan gives me strength, shall I presently return to thy magnificent city with missives top-filled with their regard and affection which shall, methinks, presage a soon-to-be accomplished reunion — may I dare even hope, a reunification — of the dissevered branches of the holy blood of sacred Arendia."
    "He managed to say all that in one sentence?" Zakath murmured to Garion with some awe.
    "Two, I think," Garion murmured back.
  • The Fog of Ages: Played with, especially in the banter between Beldin and Belgarath.
    Beldin: "You'll have to excuse my friend here; he's been having some shocking lapses of memory lately. But that's only to be expected in someone who's fourteen thousand years old."
    Belgarath: (looking offended) "Seven thousand."
  • Fog of War / Weather of War: The Grolim use a fog to cover their army's movments in The Belgariad.
  • Forced Addiction: When the Nyissan Decadent Court kidnap Garion, they dope him up on Fantastic Drugs with deadly withdrawal symptoms as a carrot-and-stick to make him a docile consort. They weren't counting on him curing himself with sorcery.
    Salmissra: Nothing can save him if you attack me... He has drunk athal and kaldiss. Even now their fire is in his veins. He will need more very soon.
  • Forced Transformation
    • Polgara transforms Salmissra into a snake after she threatens to usurp Garion's role in the prophecy. Subverted in that, once she gets used to it, Salmissra actually likes it a good deal better that way and so do her advisers. That, and she's a venomous snake, which means she's plenty deadly.
    • This is pretty much a standard threat issued by sorcerers throughout the novels. A fun game is to count the times Belgarath, Polgara, Beldin, and Garion threaten to turn people into toads or radishes. The funny part is that the idea didn't originate with the sorcerers themselves. They got it from (terrified, superstitious) people talking about their powers. As such, only once does any of them actually do it (Polgara briefly turns a Cherek king into a toad... without altering his size).
    • Beldin also discusses this once with a casual mention that he wouldn't turn someone into a frog, because they breed like crazy. He'd rather have "one annoying person than a million aggravating frogs."
  • Foreign Money Is Proof of Guilt: Anyone who owns Murgo red gold has probably been bribed by them. Justified in that red gold has addictive qualities to it.
  • Foreshadowing: Blink and you'll miss it in Pawn of Prophecy. Garion, while talking to Barak, mentions an augury for Durnik that said he would die twice.
    • Silk's horrified reaction when Relg uses his ability to move through rock in a fight, by pushing an enemy into a cliff and leaving him there to suffocate, foreshadows Zedar's Fate Worse than Death when Belgarath buries him in the bedrock.
    • In Polgara's prequel: when Polgara is about ten she learns the language of the birds. When she becomes a sorceress, not only is her go-to animal form an owl, she turns out to be a better flyer in any bird form than anyone except Beldin (who has several thousand years of practise on her).
    • In the introduction to the first book, Torak mentions that he did something important "in the high places of Korim, which are no more." Most of the entire second series involves everybody trying to find a place "which is no more", although by then linguistic drift has also made the reference more obscure.
    • In the first series, Garion, hoping to impress his newly-found cousin Adara, magically creates a new species of flower with a lovely scent. Polgara takes a good look at it, and concludes that it might have some medicinal properties but she's not sure what. In the first book of the second series, there's a scene between Adara and Errand, where she mentions that she sprinkles the petals in her clothes chest and the scent makes her husband very affectionate note . Later in the second series, Cyradis tells them that Adara's rose — specifically its scent — is actually the undiscovered antidote to an inhaled poison that would otherwise kill 'Zakath. In fact, going by Cyradis' claims that it's the legendary 'sovereign specific', the universal remedy, it might even be a remedy to everything.
  • Forgot About His Powers: The Orb's basically infinite power is sometimes forgotten when Garion and/or other members of the party need to do something strenuous with sorcery, causing them to tire themselves out when it's not really necessary. On the other hand, it's possible they've conditioned themselves to think that way, given the Orb's tendency to greatly overpower things in an effort to be helpful. It's one thing to cause a rockslide, quite another to slice off a quarter of the mountain - and it takes an idle thought like, say, how to undo the breaking of the world or how to write 'Belgarion' in stars and immediately starts showing the bearer how to do it. Most of the time, though, the main reason seems to be that it's incredibly noisy.
  • Foul First Drink: Garion is served his first beer when the main characters visit a noble estate. Feeling out of his depth as a Farm Boy in famous company, he drinks it to act grown-up in front of his aunt, but regrets both the flavour and the buzz.
  • Foul Medicine: Polgara invokes this with her herbal medicines, claiming that the terrible flavour motivates people to recover faster.
  • Friend to All Living Things: Belsambar. Belgarath recollects: "I think he knew half the rabbits and deer in the vale by their first names, and birds used to perch on him the way they would have if he had been a tree." Polgara is a friend to all birds. Ce'Nedra talks to trees — and they listen to her! (she's a dryad, after all.)
  • Friendlessness Insult: Garion accuses Torak of having no one at all who loves him, meaning that the best he can possibly achieve is a Pyrrhic Victory where he will be alone. Torak loses all self-control, howling in rage, and makes such a clumsy attack that he's easily defeated. Belgarath later explains that if Torak had succeeded in forcing Polgara to love him, then he would have been invincible.
  • Functional Magic: The Will and the Word — Focus your will, and then say the word. If you believe (and happen to be a sorcerer), it'll happen. There are a variety of other types of magic users, including witches (who deal with spirits in nature), magicians (who summon and "control" demons), "wizards" with unspecified minor powers, necromancers, and seers, but in the end they are all stated to be variations of the same concept. Also, alchemy turns lead into gold... and glass into glass-like steel (or possibly high-durability plastic/transparent aluminium).
  • The Fundamentalist: The Bear-Cult. Relg starts out this way (albeit as a more positive variant), but after several books worth of Character Development he manages to lose the worst aspects of it, while remaining a deeply religious man.
  • Funetik Aksent: Generally restricted to minor characters; the two most prominent examples are the juggler Feldegast, who has a thick brogue, and Th' Ol' Farmer I' Th' Tavern Wit' Th' Peg. (that's "pig", by the way.) Garion imitates the Old Farmer's accent at times when he's trying to amuse Ce'Nedra or irritate Belgarath.

    Tropes G 
  • Gender Scoff: Considering that this is a fantasy World of Snark, it's not surprising that Polgara often rolls her eyes and howls "MEN!"
  • Genocide Survivor: Taiba is the last surviving Marag. Her ancestors were almost completely wiped out when the greedy Tolnedrans invaded their realm hundreds of years earlier in an ill-conceived search for gold.
  • Gentleman Thief: Silk is a prime example.
  • Genuine Human Hide: At one point in the Malloreon, Belgarath finds a Grolim prophecy written down on human hide. This prompts him to express annoyance with the Grolims and their ways, less for moral (it'd be redundant when the Grolims are well-known for their regular human sacrifices) than for practical reasons — human skin is terrible at holding ink, so only a few fragments of the prophecy are still readable.
  • Girl on Girl Is Hot: It's never mentioned in the story itself, but according Word of God, since most Nyissan men (the ones that aren't eunuchs) spend about 90% of their time completely stoned out of their minds, lesbianism is commonplace in Nyissa.
    • It's also mentioned by Silk that the clientele of the high-class brothels of Tol Honeth are not entirely male.
  • Giving the Sword to a Noob: This was actually a joke in The Malloreon: Garion's son had been kidnapped as an infant, and Garion and co. had spent about two years searching for him and his abductors. When they were approaching the final showdown, one of the heroes' scouts came back to tell them what was going on, and the scout told them that the toddler was unharmed, but clearly didn't like the abductors he was with or their minions, and speculated that they could simply give Garion's enchanted sword to his son, then sit back and watch the toddler wreck the villains. They weren't seriously considering this as an option; it was a fairly typical joke, given the setting.
  • A God Am I
    • Urvon. Nahaz helps him come to this conclusion.
    • The title "Kal" means both King and God, so any of the Angarak monarchs who appended it to their names fall under this as well (though Zakath claims he did it for propagandistic purposes, not because he actually believed he was a god. He was mad, but not that kind of mad).
  • God-Emperor: In The Malloreon cycle, it is revealed that the emperors of Mallorea are divine per definition, due to the original emperor being a LITERAL God, Kal Torak.
  • God Is Flawed: All the gods except UL and Aldur. While they're on the side of good (excluding Torak, of course), they are also capable of being childish, petty, spiteful, or not thinking things through, and then regretting it later.
  • Go-Go Enslavement: A male example — in the second book, Garion is kidnapped and drugged by the Queen of Nyissa and forced to sit on her throne wearing makeup and a short loincloth. He was fifteen at the time. To say that Polgara was not pleased would be a colossal understatement.
  • The Good Chancellor: Brand is the latest in a line of Rivan Warders who govern Riva until the king returns.
  • Gracefully Demoted: Played for Drama when the Rightful King Returns to Riva after a millennium. Brand, The Good Chancellor and previous de facto ruler, is happy to yield the throne to Belgarion, but Brand's son sees Belgarion as The Usurper and tries to assassinate him. The attempt fails and, as the son dies, Brand rejects him.
  • "Groundhog Day" Loop: A lightweight version. Ever since the Accident split the Purpose of the Universe into two competing Destinies, the same general series of events has been repeating over and over. Discussed by the characters throughout The Malloreon.
  • Guile Hero
    • Prince Kheldar, a.k.a. Silk (nickname bestowed by his classmates at the school for spies, in honor of how smooth he was). Silk almost always has a way to make a chance meeting or bad situation either work for Team Good or hurt Team Evil (usually both at once). Examples are too numerous to mention.
    • Also Queen Porenn, who helps the inexperienced Queen Islena deal with an a usurping priest and get away with it by letting everyone think it was an Achievement in Ignorance. Not to mention the fact she uses the times she feeds her baby (the only time when the spies who watch her don't) to meet with her chief spy. It stands to reason, really, since she's the woman Silk's in love with early in the first series.
    • And surprisingly, Queen Layla, while she's ruling because the King is off with the army. Never underestimate the wiles of a mother.
    • Note also that Silk's father clearly donated his share of Magnificent Bastard genes to Silk. One of his exploits was infiltrating the Murgo King's harem and seducing one of the Murgo Queens. For extra style points his bastard child ascends the Murgo throne.

    Tropes H 
  • Handicapped Badass: King Cho-Hag. A cripple on the ground, frighteningly deadly on a horse.
  • Hard Head: Just about everyone. Garion in particular develops a deserved reputation for banging his head into things, which becomes something of a Running Gag.
    Belgarath: (noticing the bleeding gash on Garion's forehead) What happened to you?
    Garion: I hit my head.
    Belgarath: I thought we'd agreed that you weren't going to do that anymore.
  • The Heart: Garion is this within the Brotherhood of sorcerers. Not yet jaded by aeons of duty, he constantly wants to go out of his way to help people even when it hurts his cause, is extremely reluctant to kill people, and feels ashamed about using sorcery for malicious purposes. The other sorcerers are often irritated by his idealism, but sometimes grudgingly admit that doing something just because it's right is necessary from time to time.
  • Heavenly Blue: Associated with the god Aldur.
  • Heel–Face Turn: Drosta, the Nadraks and many Thulls in the first series, 'Zakath and Sadi in the second ... though how "evil" the latter was even in the first series may be questionable; he has certainly killed people horribly, but at the very least Silk, Barak, Hettar, Belgarath, Polgara, and even Garion have also done so, and they're the good guys.
  • Heinousness Retcon: A frequent criticism of the books was that the series treats Zedar, one of Big Bad Torak's Disciples as unredeemable, even though it seemed apparent that he was under Torak's control and even though the series takes place in a universe where You Can't Fight Fate, and therefore his worst actions had to happen in order for the good guys to triumph in the end. David and Leigh Eddings thus felt compelled to address this in the prequel, Belgarath the Sorceror, which reveals that Zedar was always arrogant and obsessed with power, even back when he was a Disciple of Aldur, and then he was the one responsible for driving Belmakor, a briefly mentioned Disciple of Aldur, to suicide.
  • Heir Club for Men: An important consideration in a cast full of royalty and nobility. The lack of an heir was a significant strain (among many) on Barak's marriage, and after millennia without a Rivan King, the entire West was holding its breath waiting for Ce'Nedra to get pregnant.
  • Helicopter Parents: Polgara to Garion. Somewhat justified considering Garion's importance, but Polgara tends to take it to the extremes, inserting herself into every aspect of his life even after he has married and has long had any need of her advice or assistance.
  • Hell Hounds: The Hounds of Torak. Actually Grolims who've transformed themselves into giant dogs. Some have since changed back to form the Chandim; they aren't noticeably more pleasant.
  • Hellish Horse: The Hrulgin: carnivorous, horse-like beasts that the party has a brief encounter with. Hettar, true to his Horse-Lord nature, takes a stab at riding one. He regretfully kills it after he makes mind contact with it and realizes how utterly insane it is. At one point he muses that if he could raise one from a colt, he might be able to train and ride it, but relents after being reminded by Durnik that it would look at the Algars' prized cattle as food.
  • Henotheistic Society: Each race has its own patron god. The Alorns have Belar the bear, the Arends have Chaldan the bull, the Nyissans have Issa the snake, the Murgos have Torak the dragon, the Marags had Mara the bat, the Tolnedrans have Nedra the lion, and the Ulgos have UL the albatross. There's also Aldur the owl, but he adopts one disciple from each race, rather than being a patron god to a single race. The later books also introduce Eriond the Horse, the new god of the Angaraks, who may end up becoming the god of all other races.
  • Hereditary Twinhood: Polgara (who had a twin sister) has twins at the end of the series.
  • Heroic Comedic Sociopath: Silk really shows this... He finds out that someone he's worked alongside (and against) numerous times has been casually, and viciously, murdered by a group of nobles. His response to this is a series of murders which epitomizes the Roaring Rampage of Revenge trope quite nicely... Especially since he manages to fit about a dozen murders into the day or two he has in the city while the rest of the party is hung up waiting for the quest to continue. And he made most of the deaths look like accidents — until he got rushed. Really, most of the characters count as this, due to extreme Protagonist-Centered Morality, which is occasionally lampshaded.
  • The Hero's Journey: Used straight, very intentionally, and with great attention to detail.
  • He's Just Hiding: Invoked in-universe in The Malloreon. Not even the death of their god can dissuade the Grolims from their orgy of Human Sacrifice. They believe he will one day return to take revenge on his killer and take his rightful place as ruler of the world. Only replacing Torak with a more benevolent god stops them.
  • Hidden Backup Prince: Geran
  • Hoist by His Own Petard: In the prequel novels, Polgara removes the Bear-Cult from Riva by having some witnesses observe the secret ceremonies (that involve low-grade stage magic that wouldn't fool anyone if it weren't for an earlier part of the ceremony involving large quantities of beer) and arrest them under their own anti-witchcraft laws.
  • Holy Ground: From The Malloreon, there is a place called Korim, where Torak argued with UL. It is described as one of the holiest places on earth (just not the nicest). On the other side of the world is the mountain of Prolgu, where the original Gorim shamed the god UL into taking in and caring for the outcast people and monsters of the world, and it's also reckoned to be one of the most sacred sites on the planet.
  • Honor Before Reason: Arends
    • To give just one example, Arendia has been involved in a simmering sort of conflict for approximately five hundred years between the two Duchies comprising it due to what amounts to semantics: the nobles of Asturia do not have their titles recognized by the court because they've never sworn fealty to the Arendish crown, and they cannot swear fealty to the Arendish crown because their families' pre-existing oath to the Duchess of Asturia prevents it. When someone finally points out that the Duchess of Asturia and the Queen of Arendia are one and the same person, she releases them from their earlier oath so they can swear fealty to her in her capacity as Queen and her husband in his capacity as King of Arendia (which they do quite willingly, though they state that they will never swear fealty to him in his other legal persona as Duke of Mimbre). It's clearly pointed out that the hereditary Duchess of Asturia has always also been the Queen of Arendia by tradition throughout the entire centuries-long civil war, and nobody ever noticed before.
  • Hope Spot:
    • Interestingly, engineered by the good guys in the last book. Garion pretends to be about to choose the wrong successor, so that when he gets it right Zandramas will be pissed off and put off-balance.
    • Done, also by the good guys, shortly earlier. Zandramas is alone with her minions just outside The Place Which Is No More, and exults that she will be there and Team Light won't... Oh wait, the fog just cleared. Cue Garion with his BFS, et al. Cue Oh, Crap!.
  • Horny Sailors: In one chapter in the third book, a sailor who had been at sea for months and stealing from his captain after landing, gets relief at the tavern and spends his loot by drinking his ass off and sleeping with a local barmaid. When he wakes up, he finds the girl dead with a Slasher Smile on her face. Tinking he killed her, he flees to Mal Zeth, carrying nothing but the clothes on his back and the deadly plague he caught.
  • Housepet Pig: Played for Laughs with a very folksy Nadrak woodsman who not only lives with his pet pig but brings it to the tavern with him. The protagonist makes a Running Gag of the encounter, but has to admit that it's a good pig.
  • Human Sacrifice: Practiced by the Grolims in honor of Torak. Belgarath admits that it may or may not have been Torak's idea to begin with, but Torak never did anything to stop it.
  • Hypocritical Humor
    • There are many occasions where characters complain about traits in others that they themselves possess. Usually some variation of dramatizing (i.e. Belgarath, who spent years as a professional storyteller, complains that Beldin is being too ostentatious). They are frequently called on this.
    • In Belgarath the Sorcerer, Belgarath and Beldin at one point meet for the first time in a while, and ask what the other has been up to; Belgarath had just finished a rigorous mathematical proof that three and three made six, while Beldin had been trying to determine the exact difference between the concepts of "right" and "good." Both men wonder why the other was doing something so pointless.
  • Hysterical Woman: Played straight with Ce'Nedra in The Belgariad and taken even further in The Malloreon. In the first series she's prone to hysterics, often throws tantrums, and at one point almost gets her friend and Garion's cousin Adara killed because she was bored. In The Malloreon she becomes even more unstable with the theft of Geran, and her major contributions to the party are unreasonable demands that someone get her baby back that very second followed by crying fits when it's pointed out that she's asking for the impossible.

    Tropes I 
  • Idiot Ball: In Guardians of the West, neither Garion, Porenn, or Silk pick up on the the extremely obvious hints General Haldar drops about his involvement with the bear cult. Even Silk, the Guile Hero of the group, doesn't put two and two together.
  • I Have You Now, My Pretty:
    • A recurring threat against Polgara is that Torak will Mind Rape and force her into marriage. Indeed, the turning point of the final battle comes when Polgara is able to tell Torak exactly where he can go stick what, despite his attempts to force her. She's able to resist because of Durnik's death of all things; Garion, having previously realized that Torak doesn't understand love, tells her to "think of Durnik!" and she holds. Belgarath specifically points out that if Torak had had the emotional support of Polgara's "love", however false, Belgarion would never have been able to defeat him.
    • It actually happens to Garion once, at the hands of Salmissra, who has him drugged to the eyeballs and dressed up Go-Go Enslavement style. Thanks to his mental relationship with the Prophecy, it doesn't hold for long.
  • I Just Want to Be Normal: Garion. Everyone's response: You're not. Get over it.
  • I Know You Know I Know
    • Silk's remarks regarding knowing a man is a spy for Brador. In fact, nearly all of Silk's political and mercantile gamesmanship can be seen as an escalating series of these, with him on top. It's also In the Blood, as the one and only time he meets his match across the negotiating table, it turns out to be his hitherto unknown half-brother.
    • Comes up literally in Queen of Sorcery during a conversation with (naturally) a Drasnian stationed in Nyissa:
    "The Tolnedran ambassador knows I've bought his man. He tries to trip me up with false leads now and again."
    "Does the ambassador know that you know?" Hettar asked.
    "Of course he does." The fat man laughed. "But he doesn't think that I'm aware of the fact that he knows that I know."
  • Illegal Religion: The Bear Cult, based on a misguided interpretation of something the Alorn's god Belar said, has to be periodically suppressed — less for its practices, since mostly it's harmless cavorting around in bear skins, than for when it tries to get involved in politics and export its fanaticism by force.
  • I'm a Humanitarian: The Marags' cultural practice of cannibalism (according to Belgarath, it was fairly harmless, based on an unfortunate misinterpretation of a religious text, and was generally blown well out proportion) was used by the Tolnedrans as justification to exterminate them. They were really after the Marags' gold.
  • Immortal Breaker: The Orb of Aldur's power surpasses the gods, and dealt Torak a Wound That Will Not Heal. Later, it is set into the Sword of Riva's pommel, which is used to kill Torak once and for all.
  • Improbable Antidote:
    • In Magician's Gambit, Relg discovers that using his ability of passing through solid rock got rid of his cold.
    • When Zakath is poisoned with Thalot, a Nyissan poison with no known antidote, Cyradis reveals that the scent of Adara's Rose — a flower Garion created for his cousing only a few years previously — is the only cure.
  • Inconspicuous Immortal: Whereas most immortal sorcerers are Living Legends and divine agents who shape the course of history, Senji the alchemist became one by accident and settled right back down to his academic research for millennia. His colleagues quickly became Fantastically Indifferent — not least because he defenestrated a man who tried to stress-test his immortality.
  • Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Errand/Eriond. Justified in that Zedar raised him like that so that he would have a pure enough heart to take the Stone. This is also the reason why Garion ultimately chooses him to become a god.
  • Inelegant Blubbering: Ce'Nedra. Polgara tells her she shouldn't cry in public; she hasn't the right coloring for it.
  • Infanticide Backfire: Asharak tried to kill Garion (and did succeed in killing his parents). That didn't work out so well for him.
  • Intangible Man: Relg can pass through rock like water and take people with him, or leave them in there. Sorcerers can also project their "shadows" as to appear somewhere else.
  • Interspecies Romance
    • Belgarath and Poledra — she's a wolf shapeshifted into human form. No, you shouldn't think about it. When called out on this by a rather disturbed Garion, Belgarath points out that the change of form is absolute. It helps, somewhat, that wolves are depicted as sentient beings, and according to Belgarath, don't tend to die of old age unless they want to — something he realized after he noticed that Poledra had been hanging around him for a millennium. Also, Poledra had her own part to play in the prophecy besides simply being Garion's ultimate grandmother.
    • Even Garion and Ce'Nedra, as she isn't technically human; it's stated that the Dryad strain breeds true in the female Borunes. This isn't widely known, with Belgarath explaining in The Malloreon that it was difficult enough to get the Alorns to accept a Tolnedran Queen (which they mostly did, Bear Cult excepted), without bringing up the fact that she technically wasn't human.
  • In the Back: An interesting prevention tactic employed by Arendish tax collectors is mentioned in The Rivan Codex: a thick, well-fitting wooden plank under the chainmail to protect the back from arrows. Apparently it's not unusual for a tax collector to just ignore the arrows stuck in his back.
  • Involuntary Shapeshifting: Barak's hereditary "curse" is to turn into a bear when Garion is threatened. He passes the trait to his son, with respect to Garion's son.

    Trope K 
  • KidAnova: Garion shows traces of this in the first book: being one of the rivals over Zubrette, flirting with a young maid at an inn and getting kissed by a Cherek girl. Funnily enough, when Ce'Nedra shows up, they don't get along very well.
  • Kill It with Fire: How Asharak/Chamdar killed Garion's parents, and thus, how Garion kills Chamdar. And in Belgarath the Sorcerer, Belsambar suggests throwing burning pitch into the Angarak cities.
  • King Incognito:
    • For the first half of Pawn of Prophecy, almost every member of the party is this to Garion. Of course, Garion stays incognito from himself for three-and-a-half books.
    • All the main characters do their best to maintain anonymity whenever they're traveling, which is pretty much always.
  • Knight In Shining Armour: Mandorallen, oh so very much.
  • Know-Nothing Know-It-All: This is Polgara's frank assessment of Duke Oldoran of Asturia's character in her prequel novel, describing him as, "A petty, self-pitying drunkard with very little intelligence and with that sublime belief so common among the truly stupid that he was the most clever man in all the world."

    Tropes L 
  • Lady Drunk: A noblewoman that the party encounters in Mallorea, due to extreme boredom and isolation.
  • The Lancer: Durnik to Garion, and Beldin to Belgarath. In The Malloreon 'Zakath also plays Lancer to Garion, post Heel–Face Turn.
  • Last of His Kind
    • There is only one dragon in the series, who is both the first and the last of her kind. The gods made three, but the two males killed each other in the first mating season. The entire depiction of dragons is an intentional subversion of the basic fantasy archetype of the creatures — just dumb lizards. Garion is also the last surviving descendant of the Rivan royal family (which Belgarath observes was never particularly fertile), and Taiba is the last Marag.
    • As for Taiba, not anymore, Mara and Relg saw to that. Hettar even complains that his wife Adara can't keep up with Taiba when it comes to making babies and accuses Mara of cheating.
  • Legacy of Service: In a way, the entire Rivan people, as exemplified by the Brands. The Rivans exist solely to guard the Orb of Aldur—their city was designed by Belgarath himself, with every building and every home part of the fortifications. Duty and service are integral parts of their culture, and they also select the men who hold the office of Brand. They're servants to the Kings of Riva, serving as a sort of chancellor — handling the day-to-day administration while the king makes the big decisions. The office isn't hereditary, the Rivans choose based on character and ability—so every Brand is an intelligent man of reliable character, sound judgment, and an unbreakable sense of duty. So dedicated are they to their duty that upon assuming office, they abandon whatever name they had before, becoming known simply as 'Brand' (which was the name of the first one to hold the office). They've spent a long time taking care of Riva and its throne while waiting for the return of the true king, but once he DOES show up, they never falter, and continue to serve faithfully. (With one notable, but quickly-corrected exception.) Belgarath notes that the Rivans choosing a Brand don't go quite as far as the Nyissans do with selecting a Salmissra, but they come fairly close.
    • Also, Barak's family, whose ability to shapeshift into bears is due to them being the hereditary protectors of Garion and his family.
  • The Legions of Hell: Alluded to in The Belgariad and introduced in more detail in The Malloreon as one of several competing evil factions. Even the Grolims prefer to avoid dealing with them if at all possible, but they can be manipulated, if you are very careful. (Nobody is that careful.)
  • Lethal Chef
    • Ce'Nedra's cooking is only edible by a very loose definition of the term.
    • Silk, too. Instantly burning bacon! We can only assume Garion (who in the mentioned incident warned Silk repeatedly that he was about to burn the bacon) had to take over without Polgara around.
  • Lethal Harmless Powers: Relg can use his ability to move through solid rock for combat purposes, by pushing enemies into the rock and leaving them to suffocate.
  • Locked into Strangeness: Polgara has one. As noted in Belgarath the Sorcerer, the snow-white lock appeared when Belgarath laid his hand on her head in an ancient ritual of benediction from his homeland. Polgara's hair was raven black through and through when she was born. Since the stripe resists any attempt to remove it or dye it for more than a moment, the sorcerers sometimes takes steps to encourage skunk stripes being a fashionable trend so Polgara can't be quite as easily identified when she's moving around.
  • Locked Out of the Loop: Belgarath in the fourth book, when it seems like he may have lost his powers. Garion and Ce'Nedra's marriage, as well — both principals were not told about it to guarantee that they actually showed up for the wedding. Given their Slap-Slap-Kiss relationship, this was probably for the better. Garion, himself, is the ultimate example; he was intentionally raised in complete ignorance of his origin and potential powers "for his own safety". Justified, in that it's stated in-universe that there are sorcerers that can read minds. So if Garion knew exactly what he was, and thought about it too much, he could easily be pin-pointed. As well, it could have changed the way he did things, and then things might have turned out quite differently, for good or ill.
    • The prequel novels elaborate on this. Up to a point, Riva's descendants were actually told of their lineage; in one generation in particular, however, the Bear-Cult (duped and led by Asharak) caught hold of the heir, plied him with tales of glory, and subverted his mind, nearly ruining the Prophecy. Ever since, the heirs were Locked Out of the Loop.
  • Lodged Blade Removal: Defied when Adara takes an arrow to the chest. Her would-be love interest Hettar panics and intends to pull it out, but someone with more sense orders him to leave it alone so they can take Adara to someone with Healing Hands.
  • Loveable Rogue: Belgarath; Silk (undisputable king of this trope); Yarblek; Beldin...
  • Love Hungry: Torak, which guides much of his motivation.
  • Love Potion: Discussed in Polgara the Sorceress. The members of Duke Kathandrion's court exasperate Polgara with requests for such a potion, which she notes is a literary device prevalent in Arendish epics. She repeatedly states, 'no, they don't exist'. On the other hand, there are substances that can induce serious lust.
  • Luxurious Liquor: In The Malloreon, the protagonists meet a tipsy noblewoman in a remote manor, and soon realize that her isolation and boredom have led her to become a Lady Drunk.

    Tropes M 
  • Mad God: Torak certainly qualifies. Mara as well, having been driven mad by the death of his people he gets better when he finds out there's one pure-blooded Marag female left, and that UL is willing to lend him an Ulgo male to start rebuilding ... please note in this case "better" does not necessarily mean "not crazy", it just means "coherent and not entirely incapacitated by grief". Issa may also qualify; in his case, he kinda forgot to make his wife Salmissra immortal, so generations of Nyissan priests have been picking someone who looks sorta like the original Salmissra, renaming her, and installing her as Queen ... apparently without Issa ever noticing. Really, pretty much all the gods except UL and Aldur are, if not actually insane, at the very least pretty stupid.
    • It's implied that it's because (much like the Great White Shark in real life) the Gods are so powerful they've never had to evolve — meaning they've never had to grow up. It's also implied that Aldur is the exception because he was forced to do so when he picked up the Orb, and became the first Child of Light.
  • Mage Tower: Each of the disciples of Aldur have their own tower. It's a deliberate and conscious emulation of their patron god Aldur, though the specific styles vary reflecting aspects of the individual sorcerer's personality. Belkira and Beltira have a bridge linking theirs while the hunchbacked Beldin has a delicate and airy looking tower. Belgarath lampshades it while infiltrating a villain's tower by saying that every sorcerer he's met seems to build one — this particular one is upside down and hangs from the edge of a mountain, apparently just because it can.
  • Magic A Is Magic A
    • Magic is rather flexible... but you may not unmake anything. Breaking things is fine, as that just changes its state, but using magic to make something "Be not!" causes it to backlash and take you out. Which means that you technically can unmake something, so long as the something is you. A couple of sorcerers in the Back Story actually committed suicide this way.
    • Magic comes in several types in Eddings' world. Sorcery uses "the Will and the Word". Witchcraft utilizes nature spirits. Magic involves summoning a demon to do your bidding for as long as you can hold him in the shape you create for him (generally, not long enough.) Necromancy exists, which is the magic of speaking with the dead spirits and commanding them. There are Wizards, whose power is never specifically defined in either set of books. It is also hinted at that there are more types of magic than that, such as that Salmissra has a type of magic which appears to be specific to the Brides of Issa. Also, it's worth mentioning that Alchemy isn't a form of magic. It is considered a science. Senji just happens to be a sorcerer who also is an alchemist. Belgarath, Beldin, and several Grolims both know how to do sorcery and magic, and a Mallorean hedge-sorcerer is more famous for alchemy than sorcery. However, it's strongly implied in The Malloreon that all types of magic are variations of the same basic principles.
    • Also: Magic requires you to pay homage to physics, meaning the sorcerers study nature and physics and the like quite a bit to understand how the world works before they try to mess with it. Try to lift a boulder taking into account the forces which have to go somewhere, you get pushed into the earth. Conjure a lightning storm in the wrong place, and you might mess up the global weather patterns. If you turn yourself into an animal, you'd better remember to include the heart.
    • Aside from unmaking there are two main limitations on sorcery. The first is that it's exhausting — Beldin teleports a bunch of loose rocks from one location to another for use as tower building material and it's all he can do to walk the next day. The second is anyone else proficient in sorcery can sense the use of sorcery near them, and the bigger and more spectacular the use, the further it can be "heard". These limitations stop sorcerers just blasting their way through any obstacles with brute force every time.
  • Magical Star Symbols: When summoning a demon, the summoner stands within a pentacle as an extra level of protection. If they leave it or it's disrupted — or if they draw it on water to show off and don't notice it washing away — the demon is free to take revenge before returning to Hell.
  • Magic Knight: Garion, who becomes frighteningly proficient with both weaponry and sorcery. It helps that he's tutored by some of the most skilled swordsmen in the world, as well as the most powerful sorcerer and sorceress (with occasional tips from the Prophecy) in history.
  • Magic Misfire: If you try to unmake something with sorcery such as by saying "Be not!" it will rebound on the caster fatally instead, as Belgarath explains.
  • Magic Pants: When a sorcerer changes shape, their clothes will come back later when they change back. No one knows exactly where they go during that time.
  • Magical Sensory Effect: Sorcery produces a distinctive "noise" to people with Supernatural Sensitivity. Sorcerer characters often have to work around this, such as by avoiding "louder" spells like Teleportation to avoid alerting their enemies from miles away or by concentrating to release a spell slowly to muffle its sound.
    • Used in a stroke of brilliance in the Malloreon: The heroes are being chased by all manner of people, and they're pursued into mountains where someone summoned a powerful demon. The Orb can drive demons away, but makes a spectacular amount of noise and would give away their location when they used it. Eriond has the idea of telling the Orb to be louder and make the noise and light general through the region—the demon goes away, everyone 'listening' gets their teeth rattled by the noise, and they don't learn anything they didn't know already—that Belgarion was somewhere within a few thousand square miles of mountain range.
  • Magical Nanny: Polgara plays this role as caretaker of the Rivan line for two thousand years. And her cooking... divine!
  • Make Games, Not War: The kingdom of Dal Perivor in The Malloreon settles arguments between nobles by holding tournaments. It's not unheard of for two nobles to decide that they want to have a tournament and collude to come up with a "disagreement" to justify it.
  • Malfunction Malady: After Belgarath collapses from overexertion, Polgara worries that he could find his powers greatly reduced or even completely gone. While this ultimately turns out not to be the case, Belgarath acknowledges it was a definite possibility.
  • Mama Bear
    • Polgara — dear gods, Polgara. Her Roaring Rampage of Rescue after Garion is subjected to Go-Go Enslavement by Salmissra has to be seen to be believed. "Wilt thou face a God, Polgara?" "If I must."
    • Ce'Nedra also shows tendencies of this after Geran is kidnapped, although she's not nearly as capable of inflicting mayhem, it's not for lack of willingness.
    • Barak is an odd example, since while he'd normally fit under Papa Wolf, he forcibly becomes a bear when Garion is threatened... no matter where Garion actually is. This is, at first, exceptionally distressing, since he doesn't know the cause and assumes that he's cursed. Once he finds out, he promptly starts trying to figure out how to tastefully reference it in his family crest. His son Unrak inherits this, with regard to Geran, Garion's son.
  • Man Behind the Man: From a cosmic standpoint, Torak isn't really the Big Bad; the spirit that embodies the Dark Prophecy is, and it uses both Torak and later Zandramas to accomplish its purposes. The reader only really "meets" it twice, both times at the Final Battle for each iteration of the Light vs. Dark struggle.
  • Manipulative Bastard: Liselle, Sadi once he loses the worst of his Smug Snake tendencies, and even Anheg are all very good at getting what they want and making you think it was your own idea. Asharak, Nachak, Harakan and Naradas are villainous examples.
  • Marital Rape License: Used on the part of one of the hero's allies in Pawn of Prophecy. According to Polgara, the victim, Merel, was very shallow. And she wasn't part of the hero's crew. Though it has to be said that she said that before it happened. Barak does express regret for the circumstances, and Merel puts him through marital hell until she finally bears him a son, Unrak, (and he compliments her for it), which fixes the relationship instantly. While perhaps not entirely surprising for a medieval fantasy world — particularly a culture based on the Vikings — it is also not surprising that the precise circumstances of Unrak's conception are never discussed again.
  • Mars and Venus Gender Contrast: You will lose track of how often this is invoked.
  • Master Actor: As a spy, Silk has developed multiple personas for the purpose of getting around anonymously. Really only two of them are seen as Silk likes them the best: Radek of Boktor and Ambar of Kotu, both of them merchants.
  • Master Poisoner: Sadi of Nyissa in The Malloreon. In fact, most Nyissans.
    Garion: Sadi could poison one person at a banquet with a thousand guests.
  • May–December Romance: Silk and Liselle (approximately a twenty-year difference in their ages. He played dolls with her when he was a student at the Spy Academy and she was the Top Spy's young niece); 'Zakath and Cyradis (Somewhere around thirty years difference).
    • Rhodar and Porenn were this, as was the Baron of Vo Ebor and Nerina. Both husbands long predeceased their wives.
  • Mayfly–December Romance: Any time a sorcerer woos a normal, unless that normal then gains powers of their own.
  • Measuring the Marigolds: Subverted in an almost literal way as part of Belgarath's backstory: he spent centuries studying and learning everything he could about a single flower, plucked from the ground, as part of his magical education. When his master finally suggested burning the flower and studying the ashes, Belgarath realized that he had come to love the flower after so long, and couldn't bear to see it destroyed.
  • Meet the New Boss: Invoked in Nyissa — the new Salmissra is chosen for her ability to imitate the original in every way. Belgarath comments that at least this system has the advantage that the people doesn't have to adapt to the new ruler's quirks.
  • Mega Maelstrom: The Cherek Bore is a town-sized maelstrom in the strait that connects the Gulf of Cherek to the Sea of the Winds. Cherek sailors are good enough to get around it, but anyone else would be crazy to try, giving the Chereks free rein of the Gulf.
  • Men Use Violence, Women Use Communication: Since it's a medieval fantasy world with very traditional gender roles, this trope is evoked often. It's not just society's expectations, however; some of the special powers of the main characters conform to this trope. The male characters do the fighting and even have their weapons of choice, while Polgara can converse with birds and Ce'Nedra can understand trees. The latter even gathers an army using the power of speech. However, it should be noted that Polgara does use violence on a fairly frequent basis (and even smashes her way into Salmissra's palace and stares down a god to get Belgarion back), it just tends to be non-lethal... which tends to be somehow worse (except for what she did to Salmissra - turning her into a giant snake actually left everyone a great deal happier). Or she just cuts straight to a very effective form of Mind Rape.
  • Merchant Prince: Silk in The Malloreon.
  • Merlin and Nimue: Belgarath and Polgara form an extremely unusual-in-fiction father-daughter sorcerer/sorceress team. Lacks both the betrayal and the romance, though — for obvious reasons.
  • Might Makes Right: Ctuchik says there's no such thing as justice, only the strong doing what they want while the weak submit in reply to Pol saying that they're bringing justice for his victims.
  • Mind Rape:
    • What Torak did to Zedar in the prequel when he tried to get the Orb back single-handedly. The threat of him doing this to Polgara is a major element of dramatic tension in Enchanter's Endgame.
    • Polgara employs a variant of this technique as an alternative to Cold-Blooded Torture; she conjures up an illusion of something so horrible that people spill their guts rather than face it. It fails rather hilariously in King of the Murgos when she tries it on a prepared Sadi—he's so stoned out of his mind he thinks the projection is pretty and asks if it can do tricks.
    • Silk should have recognised Asharak when they meet in Pawn of Prophecy; when told about the meeting, Belgarath implies that Asharak may have tampered with his mind.
  • Mind Your Step: Belgarath has a loose step on the stair to his tower. It turns out that he put a diamond under it, in order to see how long it took for it to be ground to dust. Then he forgot he'd done so and simply developed the habit of skipping that step, since it wobbled...
  • Mineral MacGuffin: The Orb of Aldur and the Sardion — both halves of the original stone at the center of the universe and the embodiment of the power of the Prophecies of Light and Dark, respectively.
  • Missed the Call: In a very ironic and somewhat sad way, Torak could be said to embody this trope for the Prophecy of Dark. It's discovered in The Malloreon that he was never intended to be the seventh God, but the accident that split the universe caused him to come into being as a twisted, malevolent caricature. Despite being the Child of Dark for millennia beyond count, the Sardion never revealed itself to him, and his only purpose for existing was for Garion to kill him so Eriond could take his place.
  • Mordor
    • Cthol Mishrak is the name of a city where the evil god Torak stayed for about two thousand years, but it's also applied to the region surrounding the city. The name means "City of Endless Night", because Torak created a huge mass of totally black clouds and parked them the city and its surrounding region. It really is as dark as night there, at all hours of the day. Due to the lack of sun, most plants don't grow and water doesn't evaporate quickly, leaving the place reeking of decay, fungus, and stagnant water. Torak's iron tower, which he knocked down in a fit of rage, has rusted down to a kind of metallic-reeking goop, and definite adds to the smell. The city's also far in the north, far enough for it to experience an arctic winter of extended periods of night. Put it next to an arctic swamp, and it's really miserable. Beldin described it as a suburb of Hell.
    • In The Malloreon, Zandramas' home province of Darshiva gets the same treatment, presumably due to the fact that she, too, is the Child of Dark.
    • This is expanded on by the protagonists, who come to the realisation that Torak actually never did park that cloud over his city — he was just so disgusting that the sun literally refused to look at him or anything near him. Also everything in the area around his manor house is blighted, even though he hasn't been there for centuries.
  • More than Mind Control: Used a bit disturbingly on Ce'Nedra in the fourth book by Errand, to convince her to go to Riva.
  • Moses in the Bulrushes: Garion is raised in obscurity by his aunt Polgara after his parents' murder.
  • Multiple-Choice Chosen: Thanks to an ancient catastrophe that divided the universe, there are two Prophecies, each a Sentient Cosmic Force with a long chain of Chosen Ones to champion it, and the final victory of one Prophecy over the other is decided by a mortal third party.
  • Multistage Teleport: Discussed — teleportation is draining and is incredibly unsafe if you try it anywhere but line of sight, making it impractical for long trips thanks to this trope. Belgarath tries it once, then gives up and turns into a falcon for the journey instead.
  • Mundane Utility: Garion uses the Orb to keep the two-year-old Geran entertained. Hilariously enough, when he's told to stop, the Orb grumbles. See also Beldin's stick with only one end, which he uses to distract children so they won't bother him.
  • My God, What Have I Done?:
    • Garion's horror and self-loathing over Asharak's death (no matter how badly it was deserved) is a major plot element of Queen of Sorcery.
    • Also a major plot point for Zakath and his back story which affects his behaviour and decisions in much of The Belgariad and Malloreon.
  • Myth Prologue: The prologue summarizes the Divine Conflict that shaped the history of the world, the Cosmic Keystone that's central to it, and the founding of The Chosen One's bloodline. The book then shifts to said Chosen One's childhood as an oblivious Farm Boy.

    Tropes N 
  • Narrative Profanity Filter: Eddings uses this a great deal, most notably with Beldin. Only missed in a couple instances, but in referring to female dogs. Usually played for entertainment purposes. The descriptions of (and reactions to) people swearing can be as or more entertaining than the swearing itself.
    • Garion: (in response to Ce'Nedra) Why dear, I didn't even think you knew what half of those words meant!
    • After the party having fled town due to there being a reward on Silk's head: "Silk was swearing as they entered the forest on the far side of the river, spitting out oaths like melon seeds. His profanity was colorful and wide-ranging, reflecting on the birth, parentage, and uncleanly habits of not only those pursuing them, but of those responsible for circulating the reward notice as well."
  • Nature Is Not a Toy: Garion once magically summons up a lightning storm against an army. Two years later, he gets a furious dressing-down from Belgarath the Sorcerer, who's spent all the intervening time smoothing out the meteorological Disaster Dominoes Garion's weather manipulation caused.
  • Nay-Theist: At the age of nine, Belsambar, after being forced to witness a religious ritual involving his parents, rejected not just Torak but all the gods.
  • Nemesis Weapon: The Orb of Aldur is a Cosmic Keystone and Cthrag Sardius is its antithesis; however, they function differently in the plot. The Orb is temperamental and allows only certain chosen people to touch it, and even fewer to wield it, whereas the Sardion is even more antisocial and will destroy anyone who hasn't already mastered the Orb and used it to keep the Sardion's will at bay. Then there's the Sword of the Rivan King, forged from Thunderbolt Iron and imbued with the power of the Orb; it's countered by Cthrek Goru, the sword of darkness that is first wielded by the evil god Torak and later by the demon lord Mordja in the final showdown.
  • Nephewism: Garion was raised by his "aunt" Polgara, who in actuality is his great-great-great-etc-aunt about 3000 years removed.
  • Neutral in Name Only: In The Malloreon, Cyradis the Seer is supposed to be the neutral party who makes the final Choice between the Light and Dark Prophecies. However, she travels with the heroes, gives them valuable advice, and her fellow Seers of Kell provide direct aid. It's Justified to balance out how the agents of the Dark Prophecy cheat and try to sabotage the Choice at every opportunity.
  • New Skill as Reward: Belgarath invokes this trope in Belgarath the Sorcerer: he finds a very old practitioner of a type of magic that he wants to learn, and curries favor with him by bringing him food that he'd otherwise be unable to obtain for himself, e.g. wild game. In return, the old magician teaches Belgarath the school of magic before he passes on of old age. This appears to be more or less standard practice among the tribal folk of that area.
  • No Mercy for Murderers: Zedar was doomed by fate to Durnik as part of the complicated prophetic interplay between the forces of good and evil, and explicitly said that he didn't want to do it, and because of this, he suffers a truly horrifying fate, even though Durnik is later resurrected.
  • No Loves Intersect: Yep, no love triangles here. Except for one (Mandorallen and two minor characters), and Garion cleans that up quite handily. Technically, Silk's Unrequited Love for Queen Porenn would also count, except he basically gets over it in The Malloreon. Literally everyone gets married to their ideal counterpart in the end with no serious griping from anybody else. Justified in that the Purpose that guides the Child of Light likes to reward the people working in its favor (even the small roles, such as the Darine prophet's daughter) by giving them extremely happy marriages. Possibly as an apology for the stuff it puts them through in the process.
  • Noodle Incident: Silk gets several, including but not limited to: interfering with a ploy of Bethra's involving the Nadrak ambassador, causing her to attempt to have him killed; being smuggled out of Cthol Murgos by a Thullish lady of high station, possibly for reasons related to the also-never-clearly-explained incident which led to the death of the Murgo crown prince; and fleeing Tol Honeth "posing as an acrobat in a travelling circus, and about one jump ahead of the police".
  • No Sex Allowed: Relg had...issues with sex in general, and stated that one of his goals was to build a society like this. The fact that this would have them die out was pointed out to him in-universe, and he said he was looking for a workaround. Fortunately, he has enough Character Development over the course of the novels to grow out of the desire to build this kind of society.
  • Not Distracted by the Sexy: The Pig-Pen Beldin isn't impressed by the seductive Queen of the Snake People, Salmissra.
    Salmissra: You interest me, ugly one, I've never coupled with an ape before.
    Beldin: Forget it, I like my women fat and hot-blooded. You're too cold for me, Salmissra.

    Tropes O 
  • Obfuscating Stupidity
    • Belgarath has elevated this to an art form, to the point where his own daughter sometimes underestimates him.
    • Garion isn't bad either, demonstrating an analytical mind that impresses Beldin (The Smart Guy) and political smoothness that impresses Brador, the Good Chancellor to 'Zakath. The latter works all the better since, as Garion drily points out, he looks like "an unlettered country oaf."
    • Anheg uses it with great skill for political purposes.
    • Also Beldin, who points out his disfigurement is an advantage in this — people see his twisted body and just assume he's stupid to boot.
  • Observation on Originality: This is held up as a perfect example of the observation in action. It's completely unoriginal and very, very good.
  • Offered the Crown: In the backstory, after the Battle of Vo Mibre, Brand was offered the crown of Arendia. He strenuously refused.
  • An Odd Place to Sleep: Belgarath has developed the skill of dozing in the saddle, allowing him to dedicate less time for rest and remain alert for longer when it's required.
  • Ominous Clouds: The strongholds of the evil god Torak are perpetually overcast with unnatural clouds. One wizard claims it's because the sun refuses to shine on him.
  • Omniscient Morality License
    • The Prophecies, more or less by definition, since their objective is nothing less than the patching up of the universe itself; what matter individual lives or happiness as long as that goal is achieved? It's worth noting that the Prophecy of Light does its best to reward its pawns for their service.
    • The Prophecy (and in the Retcon prequel, Poledra and Ul) really screwed around with Belgarath. Letting him suffer for four thousand years because he was lied to about his wife dying while he had — as he saw it — abandoned her? Harsh, man.
    • Also, Aldur's decision not to choose a race of people for his own, leaving them to wander godless forevermore, except for those very few who found UL. No one even remotely calls him on this. It is possible, however, that Aldur was instructed in his decision to stand apart from his brothers by the Prophecy Of Light (the Prophecies having existed since before the younger Gods came into being).
      • The Melcenes, Dals, and Karands did pretty well for themselves, as did the Ulgos who followed Gorim (the ones who didn't were cursed specifically by Gorim and UL). No one calls Aldur on being partly responsible for the state of the Morindim, however.
  • 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".
  • Only the Pure of Heart
    • After its misuse by Torak, the Orb refused to bear the touch of any except one with a pure heart. This turned out to be Riva, and his descendants bear the mark of their bond with the Orb.
      • Subverted in Belgarath the Sorcerer, when Belgarath reveals that the "pure of heart" part of the legend is just embellishment. Anyone could have touched the orb at the start, but they needed to decide who would guard it, and the main criteria were that they wouldn't feel tempted to use the orb, and they could devote their life to being a guardian. Riva's older brother Dras even admits that he could probably resist the temptation to use the orb, but that he wasn't the smartest guy in the world, and that his brothers were more qualified. Ironically, it's Riva's use of the orb in the escape that bonds it to him (before that, even the sly and somewhat-corrupt Belgarath could have picked up and used the orb... which the Prophecy explicitly warns him not to do).
    • Later Eriond, in The Malloreon. His demonstration of this during Zandramas' first attack on the heroes nearly gives Polgara a heart attack.
  • Only Useful as Toilet Paper: As part of her Obfuscating Stupidity act, Queen Layla subtly invokes this trope when she uses a draft treaty to wipe jam off the face of her youngest child. (The ambassador gets the message, but can't call her out on it.)
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business: At the end of the third book, the Prophecy — which is normally calm, matter-of-factly and snarky — practically screams at Garion to save Errand from Ctuchik's collapsing tower. Errand's importance doesn't become clear until The Mallorean, but the Prophecy had every reason to be upset — it came very close to losing the game right then and there. "Save that child or everything that has ever happened is meaningless!"
  • Orcus on His Throne: Although Torak is technically the Big Bad of the first series, he spends almost all of it asleep.
  • Our Gods Are Different: The seven younger Gods ( eight, including Eriond) are immensely powerful beings, said to have infinite mental capacity and Will (the two factors of sorcery) to draw upon. But they are not omniscient — they have to be informed of events occurring in the world before they can act. Their father, elder God UL, may be omniscient — but he appears to be constrained in how much he can interfere with events, possibly as a necessity of prophecy.
  • Our Nudity Is Different: Relg rants about how Ulgo women tries to entice him by showing their calves and forearms. Relg's idea of nudity isn't different so much as it is extreme. The cave-dwelling Ulgos naturally wear a lot of clothing to keep out the cold, but even their high (if conventional) standard of modesty isn't enough for him. Any glimpse of female flesh is a temptation.
  • Our Nymphs Are Different: Dryads live in southern Tolnedra, within the Wood of the Dryads. They're all female and reproduce with human males, and are bonded for life to a tree and live as long as it does.. Ce'Nedra is the daughter of a man and a dryad, and is often described as very pretty due to her exotic looks.
  • Our Vampires Are Different: The Raveners that inhabit the Great Southern Forest in Cthol Murgos, they're described as vaguely human shaped, corpselike creatures with fangs and claws that feed on the flesh and blood of the living and shun the daylight.
  • Our Witches Are Different: Witchcraft and Sorcery are separate Functional Magic systems with no relationship to gender. Witches summon and negotiate with invisible nature spirits to do their bidding, while Sorcerers have purely Thought-Controlled Power with broader applications.
  • Outliving One's Offspring: Taiba had twin daughters who were both killed by the Grolims as a sacrifice.
    • And painfully true for Belgarath and Poledra, who outlive their daughter Beldaran by thousands of years.

    Tropes P 
  • Pals with Jesus: Belgarath is the "Jesus" in this sub-story, where he teams up with a Nadrak prospector and goes off to mine gold. The prospector is a bit rattled by the fact that his mining buddy is his religion's Satan-analogue, but eventually decides that the whole "Satan" thing is less important than the fact that Belgarath pulls his weight and doesn't snore.
  • Panacea: The "sovereign specific", i.e. Adara's Rose, created by Garion to make her happy (he has absolutely no idea that it does anything other than look pretty). It's used to purge Zakath's poisoning.
  • Papa Wolf:
    • Garion is quite the protective dad, prone to going berserk when Geran is threatened. Fully inherited from Belgarath, who is a Papa Wolf to, more or less, the entire world.
    • Taur Urgas — of all people — in Magician's Gambit: Silk narrowly avoids being executed for murdering his eldest son.
  • Perfectly Arranged Marriage: Garion and Ce'Nedra.
  • Pet the Dog
    • Zakath literally pets the cat in The Belgariad — he has a kitten which he apparently found in an alley somewhere. He spends most of his time watching it. He doesn't really say why, but as a literary device, it's effective.
    • In The Malloreon, the female cat has remained his companion and is now an adult. Though he frequently is trying to find homes for her kittens because, as Zakath himself says "She has been unfaithful to me... again." Amusingly, a female cat is called a "queen". What better companion pet for an Emperor than a Queen?
  • Phlebotinum du Jour/Science Marches On: A section of The Rivan Codex discusses an interesting point on how the popular understanding of the Law of Conservation of Energy did this for magic systems. Before it, magic could do pretty much what the plot required, whereas after it a magic system needed to have an answer for "where does the energy come from?"
  • Phosphor-Essence: After Eriond becomes a God at the end of The Malloreon, he has to concentrate on not glowing.
  • Physical God: Eight of them, at least in the Back Story. After Torak used the Orb of Aldur to break the world, the other seven agreed not to directly intervene lest such a catastrophe happen again.
  • The Pig-Pen: Beldin, deliberately. He's so physically ugly that he sees no point in trying to appear neat.
  • Planet of Hats
    • Each of the nations of the world, overlaid on their Fantasy Counterpart Culture. Drasnians are devious, Tolnedrans are greedy, Arends take Honor Before Reason to truly ridiculous levels, Nyissans are decadent hedonists, Alorns are sailors and party animals.
    • Again, justified. The gods chose people who had traits that appealed to them to follow them, and have spent umpteen-thousand years cultivating those traits. Extra justified in the case of the Angaraks, who were split into nations based on physical characteristics after Torak returned from a few thousand years of doing god-stuff. Too bad those characteristics were caste-related and not tribal, like he thought.
    • With the Murgos, as stated by Belgarath in Belgarath the Sorcerer, they were split based not on their physical characteristics, but on their cultural roles. Nadrak is Old Angarak for "merchant", Thull means "worker", and Murgo means "soldier". Their physical characteristics were already present because of natural trends for these roles to attract people with certain body and mind types. They simply became more and more pronounced over the hundreds of years due to their comparative isolation from one another.
  • Plot Tailored to the Party: Each of the many companions has a specific skill (some more broadly applicable than others) which is necessary at some point. Justified in that the Purpose of the Universe has acted to tailor the party to the plot, through the use of various prophecies.
  • Poverty Food: When the companions posing as poor travelers aren't eating food from seedy inns, or leftovers from their last stop, or burning bacon to a crisp, they resort to eating gruel.
    Silk: I hate gruel.
  • The Power of Love: Torak isn't able to take over the world because Polgara loves Durnik (and knows he loved her), and holds on to that while he's trying to bend her will to his.
  • Pragmatic Hero:
    • Garion at one point changes an outdated law that taxed commoners more than nobles; at the time the law was written, the nobles were expected to provide troops, but since they no longer had that responsibility, it was fairer to tax commoners and nobles equally. When another character compliments Garion on his fairness, he doesn't hide the fact that his reasons are wholly pragmatic: he points out he'll have fewer people angry at him this way, because there are fewer nobles than there are commoners.
    • Garion's (very)-great-aunt Polgara shares this trait: when refugees from a destroyed city stream into her territory, she orders food and shelter set up to receive the women and children while the men join her army. When someone says this is very kind of her, she says her reasons have nothing to do with kindness, and that she doesn't want her new soldiers to be worried about their families' wellbeing: they'd probably get desperate and raid her kingdom if they were!
  • Pregnant Reptile: At one point, Sadi's pet snake gives birth. This puzzles some of the others, until Sadi explains that while most snakes lay eggs, his pet's species is a live-birth one.
  • Pretty Boy: Torak was one, before the whole burning thing. He was often described as "over-pretty".
  • Prevent the War: Early in The Malloreon Garion gets to bully two armies into going home and not (potentially) starting a civil war.
  • Professional Killer: Brill and the rest of the Daghashi, and Issus, a Nyissan poisoner and assassin. Silk, Liselle, and the other members of Drasnian intelligence have this as one of their skill sets.
  • Prophecies Are Always Right: Deconstructed. The reason for the prophecies in the first place is that a pure accident caused the original Purpose of the Universe to be threatened, so it split apart to protect itself. The competing Purposes then each set about to cause a course of events to occur such that their preferred outcome would come to pass. They create prophecies specifically to set out instructions for their pawns to make those things happen — or more specifically, to give meaning to the events. Moreover, the competing prophecies sometimes describe mutually exclusive outcomes that do not come to pass until they are resolved in a moment of Choice, which can only be made by a mortal.
  • Prophecy Pileup: There are two competing prophecies, the Light and the Dark. The conflict of the series determines which will be the true prophecy.
  • Prophet Eyes: The blind seer that Polgara cures has them. Naradas, Zandramas' Dragon in The Malloreon has something similar, but his pupils are visible and his eyes function — just the rest of his eyes are blank white. Seeing as how he's neither blind or a prophet, the integrity of the trope is maintained.
    • Also, the Grolim who becomes the first Disciple of Eriond can't see what's in front of him after being struck by the Curse of Kell. (A magical protection the Seers of Kell created to keep Grolims from trying to get spoilers on the Prophecy by sneaking into Kell.) He's not blind, it's just that instead of the world around him, he sees something else. He sees Eriond's face — literally the face of his benevolent God. He's actually much happier that way and it doesn't seem to stop him getting around just fine.
  • Protagonist-Centered Morality: Played With. By modern standards, a lot of behaviour by the heroes qualifies as such, but a lot of it is Deliberate Values Dissonance, with the behaviour being perfectly moral by the standards of a broadly late medieval world.
    • However, even by In-Universe standards, it sometimes veers into this, with it even being discussed by the heroes at a few points, and acknowledged that, while it may not necessarily be a good thing, it's absolutely necessary to fulfil the Prophecy. Belgarath performed assassinations as well as coerced marriages to create the families of the True Companions, and is quite unapologetic about it. Yes, it was wrong, but he doesn't really care. At one point, he Lampshades this:
    Belgarath: I don't like complications. I like nice, simple situations and nice, easy solutions.
    Durnik: Good and Evil?
    Belgarath: That's a difficult one, Durnik. I prefer "them and us". That clears away all the excess baggage and allows you to get right down to cases.
    • Silk goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge to avenge the murder of a Drasnian agent in the second series (The Malloreon). He slaughters many members of a rival Tolnedran family, the Honeths, simply because they are part of the family, whether they had anything to do with the murder or not. Again, none of the protagonists have any issue with Silk killing many innocent people, other than Silk "wasting time".
    • In the prequel, Belgarath the Sorcerer, a group of Nyissan assassins kill the Rivan king Gorek and his family (save one child, who escaped) at the behest of their queen Salmissra (and ultimately Zedar). Understandably, Belgarath and the Alorns are pissed—but the Alorns's response is to invade Nyissa and basically slaughter 90% of the population (some 1.8 million people) and turn the country into a smoking wasteland as some kind of "object lesson" designed to terrify the Nyissans into not interfering in other countries ever again. Nearly 2 million mostly innocent (barring slave traders et al) people gruesomely slaughtered for something they knew nothing about and could not have prevented.
      • This event can arguably be laid at Zedar's door, because being a former Disciple of Aldur he knew exactly how the Alorns would react. It can also be considered a parallel of the Real Life atrocity at Béziers — both occur during a time period considered the "middle ages" in their respective worlds, both were considered acts of morality at the time and both are retrospectively considered a horrific aberration.
    • Subverted with the methodical slaughter of the Angarak army after Torak falls at Vo Mimbre, as revenge for what happened to Drasnia, with the Tolnedran commander being sickened by the slaughter, calling it monstrous. The only reply is "so was what happened to Drasnia."
  • Proud Warrior Race: The Chereks, Algars, Arends, and Murgos all represent different flavors of this trope.

    Tropes R 
  • Rape as Backstory: Part of Taiba's traumatic life as a slave in the mines until she escapes.
  • Really Gets Around
    • A non-humorous example: the primary source for Angarak sacrifices to Torak are the Thulls. Pregnant women are not sacrificed. If a Thull woman wants to keep her heart inside her body, she does everything (or should that be everyone) she can to get pregnant if she isn't currently showing.note 
    • Similarly, Salmissra has this reputation. It is equally unfortunate, since her overdriven libido is a known side-effect of the drugs she takes to maintain her youthfulness and apparent similarity to the original Salmissra. The current Salmissra sees being polymorphed into a ten-foot snake as a vast improvement in her situation not simply because she's immortal and Nyissans like snakes, but because, for the first time in decades, she isn't desperately horny and can actually even think straight.
    • Bethra, though this is subverted to a certain extent given that she has apparently been using sex to manipulate various major players in Tolnedra's political turmoil on the orders of Drasnian Intelligence.
    • Belar — according to Belgarath, a common fantasy of Alorn women was to be visited in the night by their God and Belar liked to make as many dreams come true as possible. Initially, Belgarath admits that it might have been rumour, but his prequel all but states that it really did happen. A lot.
  • Really Seven Thousand Years Old
    • Most of the sorcerers are several thousand years old. Except for Polgara, who looks to be in her mid-late twenties, they all look like old men. Polgara falls for Durnik, who's in his thirties — bit of an age gap. Belgarath is so old that he shows up as an aged mentor in the three-thousand-year-old "Bible" of the series, and is basically considered to be Satan by the Big Bad's followers. It doesn't help that when the sorcerers get caught up in research in their towers, they flat out seem to forget that time is flowing. Belgarath managed to not notice that the wolf which had been staring at him while he puttered around his tower had been doing so for a thousand years until one day he stopped and actually did the math to realize it. Belgarath himself doesn't even seem to notice how old he is until he's over three hundred years old, when he finally asks his god why he doesn't seem to be ageing. The god replies that he's always found it inconvenient.
    • Theories as to how this works are more or less confirmed in the prequel books, when Belgarath speculates that it's tied to the will to live. He also theorizes regarding ageing something to the effect of, "Old and distinguished on a man is perfectly natural and accepted. Old and distinguished on a woman equals crone," and there's no way Polgara would have put up with something like that.
    • Inverted in the case of Salmissra, Queen of Nyissa and consort of the slumbering snake god Issa. She takes a potion to maintain her outer youth but she's really a mortal woman like all of her predecessors, chosen for their resemblance to the original Salmissra, who died ages ago. Polgara "remedies" the situation by turning her into an immortal giant serpent. More deconstructed than averted, because part of Polgara's rationalization for what she does to Salmissra is that Issa forgot to make the original Salmissra immortal in the first place.
  • Reclaimed by Nature: Polgara revisits the site of the former city of Vo Wacune and laments that the trees have overrun the site "so soon"- the trees in question being full-grown redwoods.
  • Red Right Hand: Torak's not called the Maimed God for nothing. Also Urvon (piebald) and Naradas (white-eyes) in The Malloreon.
  • Refuge in Audacity:
    • Morindim magicians usually mutter the incantations that summon demons to keep others from learning them. However, Belgarath speaks one very clearly—because no magician in his right mind would try summoning a Demon Lord (basically one step short of summoning the King of Hell himself). Belgarath does this because he needs to deal with a lot of demons very quickly, and thus summons one that can pull rank.
    • At one point in Demon Lord of Karanda, it's necessary for the heroes to use the Orb of Aldur to deal with a demon. Now, the Orb tends to be rather conspicuous when used (generating "noise" that sorcerers can hear and emitting a brilliant blue glow), which would reveal their location to people looking for them. So, instead of trying to convince the Orb to tone it down, they go the other direction, lighting up the sky for hundreds of miles around and generating so much sorcerous noise that the entire province of Karanda shakes from it.
  • Refuge in the West: The Orb is stored in a Citadel City on the Isle of Riva, the world's westernmost land. Justified: it's being protected from the Angarak Hordes from the East and the locale puts the world's best armies and navy in the way — apparently there's no danger of them sailing east around the globe.
  • Relative Error: In Castle of Wizardry, Garion meets his cousin Adara — who, it has to be said, is stunningly beautiful and who he instantly hits it off with. When Ce'Nedra sees them together, she immediately assumes they're an item, breaks down, and has to be disabused of the notion by Polgara. This is also the moment when she is forced to admit that she loves Garion.
  • Religion of Evil: The Grolims lead one worshiping Torak, which it seems is centered entirely around human sacrifices to him, along with conquering everyone else in his name.
  • Remember The New Bad Guy: Urvon, the third Disciple of Torak, is introduced suspiciously early and spoken of often in The Malloreon, despite never meriting so much as a mention in The Belgariad.
  • The Remnant: The Asturian Arends' long standing rebellion against the Mimbrate Arends.
  • Replacement Goldfish: Queen Salmissra is supposed to be immortal, but her god and lover Issa forgot to make her so. Instead, the priesthood simply replace her periodically; they take twenty girls, train and groom them to look and behave like the original one, then pick the one who fits the role the best. (The rest are killed.) The rest of the world tends to regard them as interchangeable. Now that the current Salmissra really is immortal thanks to Polgara, the practice has probably stopped.
  • Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Played straight in the first series, but not in the second. Sadi's pet snake, Zith, is downright cute, and strikes up an improbable friendship with 'Zakath's kittens.
  • Request for Privacy: Belgarath the Sorcerer has an example where the people asked to leave are offended. When Salmissra tells the palace eunuchs to go away so she can have a private conversation with Belgarath, one of them complains. Salmissra tells him he's welcome to stay—but then he'll have to be Killed to Uphold the Masquerade.
  • Required Secondary Powers: When you use magic to move an object, the resulting force is the same as if you had physically touched the object — so you have to brace yourself with equal force, similar to tightening up your muscles, or some such. The main character learns this the hard way the first time he tries to move a giant stone, as he ends up buried up to his armpits in the ground (he tried to push it up instead of merely sideways). The protagonist's mentor scolds him and comments that if he HAD tried to push it sideways, he'd likely have been thrown across the continent by now.
    • This is also used as an explanation for why certain magical effects are not used very often. For instance, changing the weather is not a normal effect, because it requires moving vast amounts of atmosphere around.
  • Retcon: The prequels.
    • The most egregious example is that taking into account Silk's cameo towards the end of Belgarath the Sorcerer, when he and Garion encounter Asharak in Pawn of Prophecy, Silk should have known that "Asharak" was Chamdar and should hence have realized that the fact that Asharak was poking around was highly significant and should be reported to Belgarath immediately. It's handwaved with the implication that Asharak was tampering with his mind, but that still doesn't explain why Belgarath didn't react to the name.
    • The author eventually Lampshaded this by categorizing the original books as the stories told about the events depicted where things were changed by the storyteller for dramatic reasons and the prequels as personal memoirs subject to the personal biases and the distortions and omissions that human memory is by definition subject to, hence the same events being reported differently in different books.
  • Rich Language, Poor Language: Poorer Arends have the "Wacite brogue"—basically a Scottish or Irish accent. Ironically, Wacune was the wealthiest duchy in Arendia back before its capital, Vo Wacune, was razed by the Asturians.
  • Ridiculously Long-lived Family Name: In Polgara the Sorceress, The Ageless title character strikes up an Odd Friendship with a workman named Killane and hires him as her estate manager. His descendants, the Killanesons, work for her for the next 600 years.
  • Robe and Wizard Hat: Sorcerers maintain that this image of them is a fiction invented by Muggles who know nothing about them. The few times Belgarath, who usually favours the Rummage Sale Reject style of dress, is forced into such an outfit (usually by the more image conscious Polgara), it puts him in a notably foul mood.
  • Royal Bastard: Defied by Polgara in her prequel novel when she spends a millennium guarding the secret bloodline of the Rivan kings. The Royal Blood passes to the firstborn son, "with or without benefit of clergy", so she takes care to get the heirs happily married before the family tree can grow in unexpected directions.
  • Ruling Couple:
    • Garion Invokes this when he proposes to Ce'Nedra, asking her to share the Rivan throne as his equal in all matters. Some traditionalists are outraged, but the respectful gesture lays the foundation for their happy marriage.
    • The co-rulers King Korodullin and Queen Mayaserana of Arendia are also, by tradition, the Duke of Mimbre and Duchess of Asturia, the nation's two constituent duchies.
    • King Rhodar and Queen Porenn of Drasnia divide the royal duties between them: one manages foreign policy while the other handles internal affairs.
  • Rummage Sale Reject: Belgarath, intentionally — he dresses for comfort and practicality (his outfit is nowhere near as rubbish as it looks), and wants to look as unobtrusive as possible. Ditto Beldin.
  • Running Gag:
    • Garion asking 'Zakath if he's sure he's not part Arendish, whenever the latter is behaving too enthusiastically regarding the prospect of extreme danger in The Malloreon.
    • And, of course, "Why me?" It eventually gets a Lampshade Hanging (several, in fact).

    Tropes S 
  • Sacred Scripture: The prophecies may count. Also, religious scriptures belonging to the various races are mentioned.
  • Same Plot Sequel: The Malloreon is a champion example. It even becomes a plot point, with the characters themselves recognizing and lampshading it! Both series are in the form of a travelogue: Garion and company visit every land on the map as they follow the villain and a MacGuffin to a final confrontation at a prearranged place, with their quest guided by prophecy and marked at intervals by encounters with individuals who meet very specific descriptions. Belgarath speculates and Cyradis eventually confirms that this isn't just their imagination: when the EVENT that split the Universe and created the Light and Dark Prophecies occurred, it put the future "on hold" in a mystical sort of way. Until the conflict between the Spirit of Light and the Spirit of Dark is resolved, they'll just keep going round the same (or a similar) sequence of events over and over again.
  • Sand Bridge at Low Tide: An island chain was used twice. Played straight once in the main series, with the path between islands revealed at low tide. Subverted in the prequels, when it's first discovered, but the protagonists skirt it in favor of inconspicuously crossing the frozen northern sea.
  • Sarcastic Devotee: At one point Garion notes that he understands now why Belgarath was so consistently irritated at Silk throughout the entire series — leadership is hard enough without someone standing behind you providing a sarcastic running commentary.
  • Scaled Up: Zandramas turns into a dragon. She seems to go out of her way towards being as ostentatious as possible.
  • Schmuck Bait: The Algar Stronghold. It's a huge self-sufficient walled city in the middle of the plains of Algaria, huge enough to hold every single Algar alive and still have lots of leftover space. But the Algars are nomads, so why did they waste the effort building it? For one very simple reason: The Murgos like to attack cities, and can't seem to resist attacking it. Which makes them sitting ducks for the Algars.
  • Science Wizard: When Aldur's disciples aren't off on adventures saving the world or studying prophecies to help them save the world, they're studying how the world works—science, essentially. They tend to understand it better than most mortals do.
  • Scry vs. Scry: The two competing Prophecies. There's also a version of this when Belgarath confronts Ctuchik — see Disposable Woman, above.
  • Secret Legacy: Garion's "Aunt Pol" is revealed to actually be many times removed — she's the sister of his penultimate grandmother. Belgarath is his ultimate grandfather.
  • Secret Test of Character:
    • In the Final Battle of The Belgariad. Garion realizes that defeating Torak isn't about killing him, but rejecting him utterly.
    • Another happens after the final confrontation in The Malloreon. It turns out that the main reason for Poledra being fated/geased to die after fulfilling her purpose at the final confrontation is to make Eriond stop it and so encourage him to be more assertive — so when UL arrives he congratulates Eriond on having done it.
  • Self-Serving Memory: The Book of Torak retells the story of the Book of Alorn from Torak's perspective, it gets the basic events mostly correct, but twists them to portray Torak as a victim or Tragic Hero.
    • On a lighter note, Polgara accuses her father of this when 'writing' her prequel (set just after his), while also being implied to have one of her own.
  • Serpent of Immortality: Queen Salmissra also invokes this trope. The patron god of Nyissa is a snake god who favored a mortal priestess a long time ago, but neglected to prolong her life. After her death, each reigning queen is chosen based on how closely they resemble Salmissra and kept artificially young through drugs, and replaced when they grow too old for this to work. In effect, this means that it appears to uninformed outsiders Nyissa, favored by the serpent god Issa, has its monarch blessed with immortality and eternal youth. Unfortunately, the realization that she is not immortal drives one Salmissranote  into rather immoral actions under the promise of immortality, until Polgara transforms the latest one into an immortal snake. Since she's immortal, like she wanted, and Nyissans are very fond of snakes, everyone's very happy with this state of affairs - especially considering that she's no longer drugged to the eyeballs.
  • Serrated Blade of Pain: Ulgos use knives with all sorts of nasty hooks to do more damage.
  • Shapeshifting Squick: Garion's first reaction to Belgarath marrying Poledra.
    Garion: "You married a wolf?"
    Belgarath: "No, I married a woman, the change of shape was absolute."
  • She Cleans Up Nicely: Polgara in the prequels. Actually quite intentional on her part; once her sister Beldaran was married to Riva, she decided she had to play the role of the pretty one instead of the Wild Child she'd been up until then. Vella, as well, who comes under the firm but kindly tutelage of Queen Porenn and discovers that silks and satins can be just as effective at making men drool as skin-tight leathers are.
  • She Is All Grown Up: Velvet, in The Malloreon, as Silk is quick to notice.
  • Shining City:
    • The City of Kell in The Malloreon.
    • Vo Wacune in Polgara the Sorceress.
  • Ship Tease: The first quintet spends nearly five books ship-teasing Polgara/Durnik (with things like his constant concern for and solicitousness of her and the way he makes her absolutely light up in a way no one else can do, among other things) to kingdom come before it becomes explicit in the final chapters of book five. Literally Everyone Can See It, even the rather oblivious young Garion, who suggests as young as 9 that Durnik would be a good match for her.
  • Shout-Out:
  • Shower of Angst: After witnessing his first lethal fight, Garion takes a very thorough bath.
  • Sickeningly Sweet: The denouement of The Malloreon, where everyone pairs off with their Love Interest and has Babies Ever After. Lampshaded by Silk, and, as on previous occasions, implied to be the Prophecy's way of saying thank you.
  • Significant Name Shift: For the first two and a half books, Garion insists on thinking of Polgara as "Aunt Pol" and Belgarath as "Mister Wolf," since those are the names he first learned for them when he was a litle boy, and he still hopes that someday he (and they) can go back to those days. When he starts to accept his position as Belgarion the Chosen One, he starts to think of them by their proper names of Polgara and Belgarath.
  • Silk Hiding Steel
    • Velvet claims to be this in The Malloreon, but any woman who has graduated from the Drasnian spy academy probably doesn't qualify for Proper Lady status even if she is a Margravine.
    • Porenn is probably a better example. She does a good job of appearing demure and harmless, but as of Guardians of the West she's the ruler of Drasnia, and has the most effective intelligence network in the world at her disposal. Even before that she engineers the Nadrak defection at the Battle of Thull Mardu — with a little help from Silk and Yarblek — which prevents the armies of the West from being wiped out.
  • Silly Reason for War: The Arends come up with these (and act on them) on a disturbingly regular basis. This is a large part of their collective reputation for being a bit thick - though Garion, being a little kinder, considers it to be less 'thick', more 'absurdly impulsive' (with the exception of Lelldorin, who really isn't all that bright).
  • Silver Fox: Belgarath, the oldest person in the world short of the gods and who looks appropriately venerable for an aged sorcerer, when he strips to the briefs to dive into a lake and shows off his impressive physique in the process. Liselle is very impressed with what she sees and begins blushing when teased about her reaction.
  • Single Line of Descent: Garion's family is this, and it's intentional on the part of the Prophecy of Light. The prequels mention that there are other male children in the line (and quite a few girls, especially in the years Polgara hides the heir in Cherek, where huge families are the norm and Cherek girls are said to be especially fertile) but only the firstborn male can be the heir which fits the hints given in the main books: at the start of The Mallorean, the first prophecy information they get about what's going to happen mentions that the "seed" of the Rivan King has to be protected at all costs from falling to the hands of the Child of Dark because there will never be another. The "seed" is Garion's first-born child, a son. It's revealed at the very end of The Mallorean that Garion will only ever have a single son, but thanks to Ce'Nedra's Dryad heritage he'll end up with many daughters, none of which matter to the Prophecy because only Garion's son is the Orb's inheritor.
  • Single-Minded Twins: Beltira and Belkira in the main series, at least. This was eased off of in the prequels in order to make them actual, y'know, characters.
  • Single-Precept Religion: Surprisingly common, given that the main characters are in regular contact with the deity Aldur and are opposing another deity with the covert support of another five. The worship of Nedra, for example, seems to boil down to a few rules involving money. The Bear-Cult's core beliefs are, in most cases, tied to overt racism and the grand plan of whichever villain is manipulating them that week. Torak's religion is heavy on ritualised gestures of devotion but no real philosophical substance beyond reflecting Torak's own arrogance. There are some references to a field of theology,note  but we are not given any details. Part of this is due to the fact that most of the protagonists are pretty irreligious, and the impression given is that the gods themselves don't care very much about the finer points of how they are worshipped.
  • Single Tear: In Belgarath The Sorcerer, one of the spin-off books, Belgarath meets a troll-like monster (an Eldrakyn) named Grul. Belgarath manages to disembowel Grul in self-defense, but feels pity for Grul when he sees Grul shed two tears, and conjures a needle and stitching material so Grul and sew himself back up.
  • Single Woman Seeks Good Man: In the second series, Polgara gets turned on just by Durnik insisting that they shouldn't kill guards unless absolutely necessary. In general, this is heavily implied to be one of the reasons she loves him.
    • Similarly, Ce'Nedra for Garion.
  • Sixth Ranger: Many characters join up with the group along the way, but the best example is probably 'Zakath in The Malloreon. He joins the group towards the end of the fourth book, after having been a major stumbling block to their progress during the first part of the series, and an antagonist in The Belgariad. He soon becomes something of a second Lancer to Garion (Durnik is his first one).
  • Sleeps with Both Eyes Open: In Belgarath the Sorcerer, Belgarath recounts how his daughter Polgara once cast a spell on some pompous border guards that caused them all to fall asleep with their eyes still open and without falling to the ground, just so that she could get away from them without them following her.
  • Smug Snake: Sadi, before a boatload of Character Development in The Malloreon. By the end he's just a straight up Manipulative Bastard. Most Nyissans (and all Nyissan eunuchs) seem to have this as their hat. Harakan is another good example, and even Ctuchik has his moments.
  • The Sneaky Guy: Silk.
  • Sneaking Out at Night: In Polgara the Sorceress, many of the adolescent heirs to the Rivan throne down through the centuries suddenly developed a habit of trying to sneak out at night once they met their future wives. In a few extreme cases either Polgara or the girl's parents had to resort to putting bars on the youngsters' windows until the wedding day, just so the adults could get some sleep.
  • Snooty Sports: During a visit to the Melcene Islands in The Malloreon, the party sees a group of nobles out on a fox hunt. Durnik can't understand why they bother since no one raises chickens on the island, to which Silk tells him that there are no native foxes on the island either; they have to be imported. They both agree that it's a ridiculous sport, with Silk observing that rich people's sports are, "Usually exotic and often cruel." Meanwhile, Beldin amuses himself with the thought of raising a pack of trolls for the nobles to try chasing instead.
  • Solitary Sorceress: Vordai, the Witch of the Fens, fits the bill. Shunned by her homeland because of her powers, she lives in the swamplands of southern Drasnia and has become fond of the fenlings, otter-like critters that are native there. When Belgarath and Garion are passing through, she compels them to give the fenlings the power of speech in exchange for passage back out of the fens. Polgara herself has qualified a few times throughout her long life.
  • So Proud of You: The Prophecy of Light says this to Garion before leaving at the end of The Malloreon. Sniff...
  • Sorcerer King: Belgarion of Riva is Rivan King, Overlord of the West, and a powerful sorcerer. And a good guy.
  • Spanner in the Works: Nahaz, Mordja and the other demons manage to become one for both prophecies in The Malloreon. Well, they try, anyway; the prophecies seem to have taken them into account. Torak's letter to Garion seems to indicate that had he defeated the latter at Cthol Mishrak, he was planning on becoming this for Zandramas.
  • Spy Catsuit: Subverted in The Malloreon. Velvet frequently dresses in tight-fitting leather, but it is described as looking masculine, workman-like, bleak and completely uninteresting.
  • Stalker without a Crush
    • Anyone who wants to be a disciple of Aldur has to stalk him until he gets irritated enough to grant their wish, just so they'll quit stalking him. The situation may be reversed when he wants you to be his disciple.
    • On behalf of his people, who'd been left godless by Aldur's decision to fly solo, Gorim stalks UL with amazing persistence. He is perhaps the most passive-aggressive religious founder ever. This is brought up in the sequel:
      Zakath: How do you bully a God?
      Beldin: Carefully. Very, very carefully.
  • Standing Between the Enemies
    • Near the beginning of The Malloreon, Belgarion pulls this, mostly to demonstrate how much he's grown up since the previous series. He stops a civil war in Mimbre by basically riding out between the two armies, unhorsing everyone who gets in his way, and then calling down a cataclysmic thunderstorm between them, while suggesting that anyone who wants to start fighting, can start by fighting him. Considering how eager Mimbrates are to go to war, nothing less would have done the trick, probably.
    • In a bit of unfortunate irony, this was somewhat subverted when the Armies of the West were being ground between the Murgos and the Malloreans. As 'Zakath explains in the sequel, if they had been able to get their ships past Thull Mardu, the Malloreans and Murgos would have gleefully ground each other into paste and the Armies of the West could have just sat back with the popcorn.
  • The Stateless: The Ulgos (and the beasts who populate the region where they live) were the product of the gods screwing around with their creation powers. The god UL refused to let His children destroy those poor folks when they'd finished playing around with them, but the other gods refused to claim them, having already chosen their own followers, so those godless people were forced to wander around for centuries until finally the prophet Gorim convinced UL to take them in. Alas, when Gorim went to tell his fellow godless that they now had a new god, only a minority agreed accept UL and follow Gorim to their new home. The rest remained godless, and Gorim made them barren so that they'd all eventually die off; he considered this far more merciful than letting their race persist.
  • Staying Alive: Poledra, who was said to have died in childbirth but in reality went undercover for three thousand years to secretly watch over the Prophecy's interests.
  • Stealth Pun: Garion literally revives a dead horse.
  • Stellification: After the final confrontation between the two Prophecies, the loser's Chosen One and Cosmic Keystone both Disappear Into Light. The winner explains that they'll become a new galaxy to repair the damage from the universal cataclysm that first divided the Prophecies.
    The Prophecy: They'll get bigger along the way, of course.
  • Sterility Plague: When Gorim of the godless finally got a god to accept him, he asked for his people to follow and cursed those who refused with sterility. In Belgarath the Sorcerer he expresses regret at this and surprise that the curse wasn't lifted.
  • Stock Medieval Meal: Sendaria grows a variety of crops, but according to Belgarath, good luck being served anything but turnip stew in a Sendarian inn.
  • The Stoic:
    • Polgara's mother, Poledra, hasn't shown visibly strong emotions in seven thousand years. She's never needed to. The only exception is her general irritation at all the wenching Belgarath did after her death. She also broke down at the death of her daughter, and when the Prophecy called on her to leave.
    • Another notable Stoic is the Voice of the Prophecy, which usually speaks with a certain dry amusement. Every now than then — usually when the rules it and its opposite have laid down are being ignored or things are about to go completely out the window — it can get very angry or very excited.
  • Stop Worshipping Me
    • Aldur has no worshippers, and doesn't want any. When Belgarath, upon first learning that he's a god, tries to prostrate himself before him, Aldur is horrified and calls such behaviour "unseemly."
    • The same was true of UL, until the Gorim came along.
  • Stranger in a Familiar Land: When Garion returns to Faldor's farm in book four, he realizes he's changed so much that he can't live there ever again.
  • The Stormbringer:
    • The Mad God Torak brings oppressive cloud cover wherever he goes because the sun itself refuses to shine on him.
    • Vordai the witch cursed the mob that attacked her to be surrounded by endless rain wherever they went.
  • Stumbling in the New Form: In Guardians of the West, Garion needs to get back to Riva as soon as possible. Belgarath gives him flying lessons, which start with multiple attempts to get the falcon transformation good enough to actually fly. Once he's got the form (mostly) right, Garion beak-plants into several things trying to get into the air.
  • Suddenly Fluent in Gibberish: Sorcerers who learn the art of Animorphism can also speak to animals. Polgara gets information from birds, and Garion learned to speak Wolf (though as several non-shifting characters demonstrate, it is quite possible to learn how to speak and understand Wolf anyway - it just takes more effort). Hettar, being a Sha-Dar, can already talk to, and understand, horses.
  • Suddenly Significant Rule: The Accords of Vo Mimbre say that the Tolnedran Princess must go to Riva on her 16th birthday and await the return of the Rivan King—but the Royal Family was wiped out years ago. except for one member. Guess who Garion's descended from?
    • In the backstory, the Accords of Val Alorn say "...but Aloria shall maintain Riva and keep it whole." When the accords were signed, Aloria hadn't existed as a nation for centuries; it was now Riva, Cherekh, Drasnia, and Algaria. When an Emperor's attempt to force Riva to trade ends in disaster, he calls for an invasion — and discovers that while Aloria isn't officially a single nation anymore, but it is an unofficial confederation. When the Rivan King is assassinated, it's made clear that, yes, Aloria does exist.
  • Suddenly Suitable Suitor: Garion and Ce'Nedra, deliberately invoked in that neither knows they're going to be in an Arranged Marriage... and they've been thrown together all along with the intent that they fall in love. Even funnier is that Ce'Nedra had been starting to have feelings for Garion (despite knowing it would be completely impossible politically for her to marry so far beneath her station), until she discovers that he's the hereditary Overlord of the West and as such is not only an eminently suitable suitor but actually outranks her. At this point, she becomes furious because now an ancient treaty means she ''has'' to marry him. To be fair, Garion isn't entirely happy about it either, though he's mostly just bewildered.
  • Summon Binding: Demons are summoned through complicated incantations that force them into a corporeal form and put them under the summoner's mental control. If the summoner's concentration ever lapses, the demon is free to take revenge before returning to Hell.
  • Summon Magic: Two of the three main branches of supernatural powers (sorcery, witchcraft and magic) revolve around this. Witches use mischievous spirits. Magicians (practitioners of magic) utilise demons. That last one isn't recommended.
  • Superior Twin Teamwork: Single-Minded Twins Belkira and Beltira are the only sorcerers capable of decoding the Mrin and Darine Codexes due to their Twin Telepathy, as the codexes only make sense when read in conjunction. The regular Telepathy that all other sorcerers possess doesn't appear to be up to the task.
  • Supernatural Sensitivity: Sorcery makes what is described as a "sound", which can be mistaken for mundane noise under some circumstances. The sound can be lessened by doing things slowly, and shapeshifting, because it's directed internally, is very quiet. The protagonists are often forced to avoid sorcery in enemy territory because of this noise effect. Interestingly, other forms of supernatural power, such as magic, wizardry, necromancy, and prophecy, do not make this signature noise.
    • In an interesting variation, the reason that the Grolims were kept away from Kell with a curse was to keep them from noticing that the Dals were not using magic in general, but specifically employing telepathy to form a sort of "group mind" (and thereby listening in and receiving advance notice of the prophecies they could not be allowed to have). So while magic was being used, it was employed in a more literal sense than usual since it was creating an actual sound (mental, but still something that could be "heard") others could be sensitive to.
  • Sword Fight: Several, with Garion vs Torak, and Cho-Hag vs Taur Urgas being two of the best. The last one in particular is a great duel between a Fragile Speedster Handicapped Badass and an insane loon who relies on madness and physical power.
    Cho-Hag to Taur Urgas afterwards: "I'm afraid I have pressing business elsewhere. Good fight though."
  • Sweeping the Table: In a prequel of the series, Polgara the Sorceress, Polgara decides she is going to do the cooking for her father, Belgarath, and sister, Beldaran, and immediately sweeps all of the scrolls/pens/etcetera off the kitchen benches, much to Belgarath's annoyance.

    Tropes T 
  • Take a Third Option: Discussed and defied, as there is a possibility that a third prophecy may arise, and Belgarath doesn't want that at all, and neither does the Big Bad. The demons, however, do: they want both prophecies to cease existing and the universe under the command of The King Of Hell.
  • Talking through Technique: The Drasnian sign language.
  • Tantrum Throwing
    • Polgara does this at least twice.
    • Ce'Nedra's capable of some impressive tantrums, too, but as hers don't threaten entire cities, they get less attention.
  • Tap on the Head: Generally averted
    • In The Malloreon when a group of assassins fight Brand's sons, and only one lives because he received such a 'tap on the head'. When the heroes come to question the surviving assassin, Polgara declares that while he is alive, his head and mind suffered too much damage for him to answer their questions, and likely too much for him to ever even wake up.
    • By Garion, after Belgarath suggests that next time he use an axe or a club, as the punch he used to knock a Grolim out nearly killed him.
    • King Korodullin takes a blow to the head in battle, and suffers lasting ill-effects, losing much of his hearing.
    • Otherwise it does seem to be an effective way to deal with sorcerers.
  • A Taste of the Lash: The former punishment for sloppy work by students of the Drasnian intelligence service's academy. Silk refers to it as "a very effective teaching tool", though he doesn't comment on whether or not he knows this from personal experience.
  • Teleportation with Drawbacks: Teleportation is tremendously draining for a sorcerer, limited to line of sight, and very noisy to anyone with Supernatural Sensitivity. Sorcerers usually use Travel Transformation as a hawk or wolf instead.
  • Tell Me About My Father: In Pawn of Phrophecy, a young Garion asks his Aunt Pol about his mother. A few years later he asks Mister Wolf to tell him about his parents.
  • Terminal Transformation: Referenced when Garion learns Voluntary Shapeshifting. He's warned to form a perfectly clear mental image of the new shape, because if he forgets to include a heart, he probably won't have time to correct the mistake.
  • Terrain Sculpting:
    • In the backstory, Torak, after stealing the Orb, is faced with a war against all the other gods and their followers. To protect himself and his people, he uses the Orb to crack the entire continent in two, turning a pangaea into two distinct landmasses and causing lots of geological fallout and mayhem.
    • At one point, Garion thinks about that event, the Orb starts giving him suggestions about how they can put it back together.
    • At one point 'Zakath says that if Garion tries to leave the city where 'Zakath is detaining the party without his permission, he'll just have his troops follow Garion around to keep track of him (he knows Garion won't slaughter his soldiers for doing their jobs.) Garion reminds him of The Breaking of the World, which was done with the very same magic rock Garion carries around with him, and theorizes that 'Zakath's troops will have a great deal of difficulty staying on his trail when they encounter a trench fifty miles wide stretching across the entire continent. It's about this time 'Zakath starts to understand that Garion et al are a) being very patient with him and b) he really, really does not want to test their patience.
  • That Came Out Wrong: When Belgarath asks Garion if he's studied the prophecies, Garion says he'll "make time" to do so. Considering that Belgarath just finished cleaning up the mess Garion made by summoning a storm, he's dismayed at the thought of what damage Garion might cause by manipulating time itself.
  • That Wasn't a Request: The heroes are quite fond of doing this.
  • Theme Naming
    • When Aldur accepts someone as a pupil, beginning the extremely laidback process of becoming one of his disciples, Aldur prefixes the person's name with "Bel" for men and "Pol" for women; both syllables mean "Beloved". Garath = Belgarath, Garion = Belgarion, Polgara, Poledra.... As Belgarath notes, Aldur sometimes has a way with words. Polgara's sister, Beldaran, doesn't follow the theme because she was never a disciple of Aldur's; her destiny was to marry Riva and be the ultimate mother of the line that resulted in Garion.
    • Most races' cities and towns follows thematic naming schemes — every city in Tolnedra starts with "Tol"; every city in Mallorea starts with "Mal"; every city in Maragor starts with "Mar"; etc.
    • Silk and Velvet, the two Drasnian spies. Though other spies have different fake names that aren't fabric-themed.
    • The names of Dryads always begins with an X. The women of the Borune family have names that always begin with 'Ce'. When Garion eventually gets around to asking Ce'Nedra why her name doesn't begin with an X like other Dryads, she explains that it does. It's just that humans pronounce the name "X'Nedra" incorrectly as "Ce'Nedra" which is where the 'Ce' prefix comes from. When their first daughter is born, Garion names her "Beldaran" in honour of Polgara's long-dead sister and his ultimate grandmother. Ce'Nedra is noted to be initially a little annoyed with the name - not because she doesn't like the idea of the tribute, but because she needs her daughter to have the Dryad 'X'. She moves on pretty quickly, though Garion speculates that she's still figuring out where to put the 'X', and decides that he doesn't want to know.
  • There Are No Therapists: Tends to occur a lot - which is somewhat justified for a high Medieval fantasy world.
  • There Was a Door
    • Emphasis on the was part. Sorcerers seldom need to bother with knocking, and Garion takes this to ridiculous extremes in The Malloreon, at one point making a city gate burst with such force that pieces of it are later found five miles away (the Orb helped him). The force blew in the entire city wall on that side of the city as a side effect. Even without the Orb, though, Garion's capable of blowing out the entire wall of one room if he's feeling irritated enough.
    • Garion makes a point of threatening the pre Heel–Face Turn Zakath with a broken city when he finally decides he's been delayed long enough... and blows out a wall while going to make this threat. When Zakath is still being uncooperative, he proposes to blast through the whole house to get to the library.
    Velvet: We wouldn't want the Rivan king to get REALLY upset, would we? There are so many breakable things about... windows, walls, houses, the city of Rak Hagga... that sort of thing.
  • Theseus' Ship Paradox: Alluded to in the Malloreon series. Poledra tells Beldin that she's surprised he hasn't changed his tunic during the thousands of years since she last saw him. Beldin says that he patches it, and replaces the patches as they wear out, to the point that the original tunic "is only a memory".
  • Thieves' Cant: The Secret Drasnian Language is a variation, both in that it was developed for spies (though still largely used by thieves, simply because many of them are the same people), and because it's a sign language. As Drasnians are a Fantasy Counterpart Culture of Italians, they are known to gesticulate greatly while talking, so the language is designed to allow its users to have a secret conversation with their hands while simultaneously holding a more mundane one with their voices.
  • Thought They Knew Already: A minor example appears in The Malloreon: Garion has recently been made king and he's periodically given money for personal expenses which he keeps in a drawer in his bedroom. His wife finds out about this, considers it very important, and asks why she didn't tell him. His answer was that he'd thought she already knew. She begins happily counting the coins, to Garion's bemusement. (She is from the kingdom that worships the god of wealth, after all.)
  • Threatening Mediator: Garion bullies two armies into putting down their weapons. And then he bullies the two leaders into accepting his compromise to end their conflict.
  • Throwing Down the Gauntlet: Mandorallen, except he "missed" the floor, much to the detriment of his opponent's face.
  • Thunderbolt Iron: The BFS is made of this.
  • Tom Swifty: In Belgarath the Sorcerer, Belgarath recounts a time when he transformed himself into an owl to spy on someone. He just couldn't resist saying that he watched the person "owlishly".
  • Tomboyish Name: Beldaran. Despite being the Girly Girl to the adolescent Polgara's Tomboy her name has the masculine "Bel" prefix and Daran is used as a name with no comment by several of her male descendents.
  • Tongue-Tied: Asharak places a magical compulsion on Garion to prevent him from ratting Asharak out.
  • Too Dumb to Live: While learning how to summon demons, one of the magicians Belgarath approached tried to grand-stand by summoning a demon lord in a sigil of fire on a running river. He succeeded in the summoning, but the sigil was washed downstream with the river, leaving the magician to be summarily eaten.
  • Took a Level in Badass
    • Durnik, twice, both at the hands of the Gods.
    • Garion as well, although his power growth is presented organically rather than abruptly. His progress does tend to come in fits and spurts.
    • In The Malloreon, 'Zakath doesn't so much take a level in badass, as he does regain one, regaining the fencing and riding skills that he'd let go rusty during his time as The Emperor.
    • Sadi is a straight example, developing from an Evil Chancellor and Sissy Villain into a capable combatant with his own unique style, becoming one of the few badass Eunuchs in fiction.
  • Top Wife: This trope is in effect in the Murgo royal court. Urgit's mother doesn't mind at all that Silk killed Taur Urgas' eldest son, because he was the son of the "first wife" (who used to boast that she would have her son order the execution of all the lesser wives as soon as he took the throne). Later in the Malloreon, when the marriage arrangements between Urgit and Prala are being arranged, one line in the contract states that Prala will have the permanent rank of most favored wife. However, she insists that he subverts this in favour of only marrying her despite tradition.
  • The Tourney: Arends are fond of them.
  • Training from Hell: It's implied that harsh military-style training is a common rite of passage for Murgo boys. Urgit describes the training regimen he and his brothers all endured, which began when they were seven years old, as a life of constant fear and senseless brutality meant to turn them into perfect Murgos — strong, brave, loyal, and dedicated to Torak. That it also tended to thin out the possible heirs seems to be just a handy side-effect as far as the Murgo royal house is concerned.
  • Traumatic Superpower Awakening: This is standard for sorcerers. Garion, particularly, first uses his power consciously when Chamdar slaps Aunt Pol. In The Malloreon, the sorcerers muse that this tendency might be the reason there are fewer of them around: most people's instinct in such a situation might be to destroy something, but unmaking is forbidden, resulting in them being destroyed instead.
  • Trial by Combat: Being, as it is, a reference to Arthurian epics, the Arendish culture uses this from time to time. It comes into play in the second book when Garion accuses a Murgo ambassador of plotting against the king without evidence, and Mandorallan champions his assertion, resulting in a minor bloodbath that clears up the problem.

    Tropes U-Z 
  • Unconventional Wedding Dress: In the first book of The Malloreon, Garion quickly resolves the crisis in Arendia between Mandorallen, and a rival knight who is the heir to the land of Mandorallen's recently deceased noble mentor, and was about to offer the nobleman's widow to one of his friends (Noted as being technically legal, but very bad form, socially speaking), which pissed Mandorallen off. Mandorallen had been pining for the said widow, Nerina, for roughly twenty years, but they mutually kept their romance platonic even after her husband fell into a years-long decline from battlefield wounds, and died. Garion then orders his friend Mandorallen to quit pining and just marry Nerina already. And, because he was thoroughly annoyed with the sheer stupidity of it all, after a quick negotiation about the dowry and other wedding formalities, he ensured that Mandorallen married Nerina while he was still in his armor and she was wearing widow's black and a doily from the nearby table for a veil note . With Garion standing over the two of them, sword in hand (the Orb coating it in blue arcane fire!), to prevent any last minute screw-ups.
  • Understatement: Belgarath at one point notes that Alorns "take a childish delight in gross understatement", and this does indeed underline a lot of the humor in the regular banter that goes on between characters.
  • Underestimating Badassery: Belgarath severely underestimates Ctutchik's ability to handle a magical duel. He all but calls Ctutchik a two-penny warlock with delusions of adequacy, when in fact the two are about as close to evenly matched as is possible.
  • Undressing the Unconscious: In the second book, Garion is kidnapped and drugged by Queen Salmissra and awakens wearing a short Loincloth while her servants are putting make-up on him.
  • Unequal Rites: Calling a sorcerer a magician turns out to be a deadly insult among them (later shown as being because magicians get their ability from controlling demons).
  • The Unfair Sex: The characters' banter about this is practically a Running Gag, especially in The Malloreon.
  • Universe Bible: The Rivan Codex, Eddings's notes that he put together on all of the nations and their influences before he wrote the books.
  • Unrequited Love Lasts Forever:
    • This is what makes Mandorallan's Courtly Love with Nerina so tragic. Belgarath says himself that if they had followed their urges, they could have got it out of their systems and moved on with their lives. Instead, the two spend years mooning after each other hopelessly. Ultimately, this is subverted when Nerina's husband dies thanks to the long-term effects of his injuries, and the two, thanks to Garion's timely intervention against their instinct of noble suffering, are married.
    • Also averted when Silk eventually gets over his unrequited love for Porenn.
  • Unstoppable Rage:
    • When Polgara gets angry, even Belgarath keeps his head down. Polgara's explosion of rage in Castle of Wizardry (upon finding out that her father and Belgarion had sneaked out to face Torak without her) shook the entire royal palace of Riva and altered weather patterns for miles around. They go to some effort in The Malloreon to avoid a similar catastrophe. Of course, Belgarath takes a perverse amusement in inspiring said rage, when it suits him.
    • Barak, when Garion is in trouble - he literally turns into a giant bear.
    • Garion himself is goaded into this by Zandramas in The Malloreon.
  • Unwanted Assistance: The Orb tries so hard to be helpful. To the point that it has to be told that its help is not required. It thought that rearranging the stars to spell "Belgarion" was a request rather than an example.
  • Upbringing Makes the Hero: Invoked by Polgara; she deliberately raises Garion as a farmboy to give him a solid moral foundation for when he ends up having to save the world.
  • Vain Sorceress
    • Zandramas definitely has some traits of this.
    • Polgara too. Belgarath notes that once she stops ignoring her appearance Polgara becomes quite vain, especially concerning her hair.
    • Salmissra. Vanity was virtually a qualification requirement for the successors of the original (with one exception who was intelligent enough to hide her own intelligence) until the most recent. And the current Salmissra, even as a snake, spends most of her waking time simply looking at herself in a mirror permanently stationed next to her throne.
  • Vapor Wear: Nyissan women wear sheer, see-through gowns (deeply embarrassing Durnik).
  • Vengeance Denied: Inside Rak Cthol, the Companions end up finding a runaway slave named Taiba, who by prophecy, is the sole survivor of the Marag race. She carried nothing but a rusted knife with her in hopes of finding and killing Cthuchik for raping her and sacrificing her children, but got lost in the process until that point. When the Companions come back, Taiba insists on going back to Ctuchik, but they tell her that Cthuchik was obliterated out of existence, and the fact that Rak Cthol is collapsing. She breaks down initially, but out of gratitude, she joins the Companions.
  • Verbal Tic Name: Errand
  • Villain Ball
    • In the Final Battle of The Belgariad, Torak craves domination above all else and seeks to make Garion yield even when he has the boy dead to rights.
    • Also, Torak's followers have several opportunities to kill Garion but instead focus on trying to capture The Only One who can kill Torak and present him to Torak in chains.
  • Villainesses Want Heroes: Salmissra shows signs of this when she kidnaps Garion in Queen Of Sorcery.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds
    • Polgara and Beldin. Their typical greeting ritual is to insult each other in such graphic terms that hardened warriors either turn pale, or rush to stop what they think is an impending murder attempt. It's actually how they show affection. Lampshaded when Garion points out that Polgara uses affectionate insults to greet Beldin because saying "you're looking well" or suchlike would be massively insincere — he is, after all, indescribably ugly. Beldin and Belgarath do this quite a bit as well.
    • Vella and Beldin in The Malloreon, which virtually becomes part of their courtship before they end up mated as a pair of hawks at the end of the series. The level to which they go to in their language towards one another makes even some who are already used to Beldin blanch.
  • Voluntary Shapeshifting: A power of sorcerers; most develop a fondness for a particular animal form. Wolf for Garion and Belgarath, owl for Polgara, human for Poledra (who started out a wolf), and dragon for Zandramas. We also see Beldin take the form of a hawk and Ctuchik (or maybe Urvon) use the form of a Hound of Torak in Belgarath.
  • Wandering Culture: The Algars are Born in the Saddle to the extent that they follow their horse herds and refuse to domesticate them. They have one city, but no one lives there and it was built as a distraction, to give their enemies something to attack other than the wandering tribes.
  • Wandering Walk of Madness: In Polgara the Sorceress, Garion's grandmother Alara's mind starts to slip after she is widowed, causing her to forget her husband's death and go wandering in search of him. One such episode draws Polgara away from the house while Chamdar tries to murder Garion, leading her to suspect Chamdar Invoked the trope with sorcery.
  • "Wanted!" Poster
    • Silk gets this treatment a lot, much to his disgust.
    • Beldin too, in Mallorea, thanks to his vendetta against Urvon, much to his delight. Specifically, he creates a series of masterful characters with the help of shapeshifting that render the posters useless — but every century or so, drops into Urvon's home base and butchers a lot of priests and guards to let Urvon know he's still kicking around and wanting to continue a discussion they once had about white-hot hooks and Urvon's guts.
  • War Is Hell: Zigzagged, often depending on whose point of view we are seeing it from. A lot of the characters are professional warriors or assassins and love nothing so much as a good fight, while scenes focusing on "civilians" tend to highlight the suffering and loss involved. Of special note is Garion himself, who goes from being noticeably traumatised by the first few battles he's part of to complaining about other people stealing his kills somewhere around the fourth book.
  • Weak-Willed: Ce'Nedra spends a lot of time getting mind-controlled. At one point, Belgarath deliberately leaves her behind so this can't happen.
  • Weather Saves the Day: A major element that resulted in the victory of the western kingdoms at Vo Mimbre in the prequels was an unprecedented snowstorm in Cthol Murgos that stranded Torak's second army, but we only get the reports, we don't see it.
  • We Can Rule Together:
    • Ctuchik resorts to this when his Plan A fails. Unfortunately for him, Belgarath is not even remotely tempted by that kind of offer.
    • Zandramas attempts this as well, to override the choice of Cyradis. She even offers herself to Belgarion, saying he would find her fair...
  • We Need a Distraction: The entire purpose of the march of the Armies of the West against the Angaraks in Enchanter's Endgame is to distract them from Garion's journey to confront Torak. They know their war is ultimately hopeless: they're vastly outnumbered, and even if Garion wins, they don't expect to survive. What they didn't count on was the hatred of the Malloreans and Murgos for each other.
  • Weddings for Everyone: Much to Silk's eventual dismay. This is Lampshaded and then justified, as the Prophecy of Light points out to Garion that service to its goals is supposed to be rewarded.
  • Well, Excuse Me, Princess!: Garion and Ce'Nedra's relationship in a nutshell.
  • When Trees Attack: An unnamed species of a deadly, flesh-eating tree makes a short appearance in The King of the Murgos. It's described as having golden leaves, colorful blossoms, and rich-looking purple fruit. It extrudes a sweet smell that makes one regard the tree with affection. All this to lure prey to the range of its tendrils. The fruit? Lethally poisonous. The bark? Loaded with neurotoxins that leave you completely paralyzed but fully conscious. According to Ce'Nedra, the tree feeds on the agony of its victims as much as on their flesh.
  • Wizard Duel: Belgarath vs. Ctuchik in Book 3 is an awesome scene, as is Belgarath versus the unnamed Morindim shaman. Belgarath vs. Zedar in the fifth book is an aversion; Belgarath is too angry and Zedar too frightened to be able to summon up any magic, so they settle their score through a combination of shouting and fisticuffs.
  • Wizards Live Longer: Since all the sorcerers we meet in the books are essential to the plot, it's never conclusively established if it's the power of sorcery itself that grants a long lifespan or whether it was given to these sorcerers by one of the Prophecies as a form of Plot Armor so they can accomplish the tasks set out for them. At the end of Pawn of Prophecy, Belgarath explains to Garion that everyone lives as long as they need to, and that his task just happens to be something that has taken a very long time.
    In any case, sorcerers get effective immortality as a package deal with their powers, and witches like Vordai have a few more centuries than the average person in them. Magicians' lifespans are never specified, though it's likely few reach their natural span anyway, considering how dangerous what they do is.
    • At one point it's mentioned the reason for the endless stream of Eternal Salmissras is that it simply didn't occur to Issa to make his original beloved handmaiden immortal the way other gods did for their disciples, and hasn't noticed the changes. This suggests Aldur and Torak may have actively done something to give their disciples live longer. (Aldur at least finds the notion of aging and dying inconveient.)
  • Who Wants to Live Forever?:
    • Mostly averted — the local rules of magic mean that learning sorcery instantly conveys immortality. Sorcerers never bitch about it, and instead find ways to stay busy for all of those years. This is explored further in The Malloreon and the supplemental novels. Sorcerers do spontaneously pop up from time to time, but there's some attrition due to accidentally (or deliberately) unmaking themselves. The ones that survive this process are the ones who learn how to handle immortality. Belgarath even admits that part of the sorcerer aloofness and tendency to hole up in their towers in study and ignore the passing of a few centuries, every now and then, is a vital coping technique, lest grief drive them insane. It also makes Polgara that much more incredible, as she was forced to forgo this tactic for a thousand years... living with a family line whose every member (every member, from birth to death) she was intimately involved with.
    • It would be interesting to see how Garion copes in ten to twenty years time when the True Companions start dying off... note  although his wife is capable of living much longer than regular mortals, and several of his family members are ageless, so he won't be all alone.
    • Played very straight with Belgarath. Two of his sorcerer brothers — whom he has lived with in the Vale for hundreds of years — take their own lives due to depression. After losing his wife of 500 years (who had been a companion for over a thousand before that), he goes insane and has to be chained to his bed and constantly supervised to make sure he doesn't take his own life. After a year he starts Walking the Earth and becomes a drunken beggar for two years (Beldin explicitly states that he was "a legend" in Camaar, because they've never seen anybody get that drunk before) and eventually ends up entertaining women in Maragor until Beldin finally intervenes.
  • Why Did it Have to be Caves?: Silk's dislike of enclosed spaces is tipped over into a full-blown phobia after a traumatic event in the first series. He also doesn't like snakes. This becomes a major plot point when his love interest in the second series starts to carry a highly venomous snake in her bodice. Some have speculated that she did this strictly to mess with Silk; however this is neither stated nor even strongly implied in the books. She has, however, commented on more than one occasion that Zith was cold and it was a place for her to be warm. Liselle is a pragmatist as well, and it is suggested that (possibly at the unknown prompting of the Prophecy of Light) she began doing so because it might be useful in the future. And it was. This theory is supported by her telling Silk that the first time she did it it made her skin crawl and it was all she could do to keep from screaming.
  • With Us or Against Us: Invoked by Belgarath in The Malloreon, but it's justified by the fact that there really are only two sides in the great conflict: Change or an Eternal Status Quo.
  • A Wizard Did It: Attempted as an in-universe explanation in The Malloreon: a sailor has a leg that is painfully sensitive to changes in the weather to the point where he's employed as a storm-predictor. When he fails to predict a squall and his employers complains, he literally suggests that a wizard might've conjured the storm. His boss thinks it's a lame excuse. It's implied that actually something much more powerful than a wizard that's conjured the storm.
  • Womb Horror: One of The Malloreon's darker moments has the protagonists find a demonic cult waiting for a grotesquely, impossibly pregnant woman to deliver. Whatever Team Mom Polgara the Sorceress does with them isn't described, but is strongly implied to involve Mercy Killing the mother and offing the unborn Demon Lord.
  • World of Snark: Both heroes and villains make liberal use of sarcasm. It's hard to go a page without somebody making some snarky comment.
  • Ye Olde Butcherede Englishe: The Gods and Arends love to speak in this manner. Especially when waxing eloquent. However, the "butcherede" part is averted because Eddings actually does it correctly, except in a few cases where he deliberately gets it wrong to show that a character is trying (and failing) to be "fancy".
  • You Are Not Ready: Garion and weather. Lord, does he make a mess of things, and Belgarath is NOT happy with him triggering blizzards, tornados, droughts, another Ice Age, that sort of thing. Garion is ordered to study weather for 2000 years before touching it again. Then Belgarath has a major Oh, Crap! moment when Garion promises to "make time" to do it (all Garion meant was that he'd rearrange his schedule).
  • You Called Me "X"; It Must Be Serious: Durnik, who has been quietly in love with Polgara for years, always calls her by the respectful "Mistress Pol", because that's how he's known her since they first met on Faldor's farm. It's not until Enchanters' End Game, when she utterly magically exhausts herself and collapses, that we hear him cry out a terrified "Polgara!"
  • You Can't Fight Fate
    • Lampshaded. The majority of the conflict in the books comes from the truly ridiculous amount of effort spent by the Child of Dark in attempting to suborn the Prophecies. This always turns out to be its ultimate downfall.
    • In The Malloreon, the Big Guy Band from the first series spends some time trying to subvert the Prophecy's instructions that they stay out of things, only to have it gleefully send them in circles until they "coincidentally" meet up with the heroes post-climax.
    • Really, you can fight Fate... Fate just has many more resources at its disposal, all the time in the universe to prepare, the reaction time to deal with things personally, a roving squad of sorcerers enforcing its plans, and a twisted sense of humor to boot. When something happens to screw with the plan, expect Fate to panic.
  • You Killed My Father: When Garion finds out that the Grolim Asharak murdered his parents by burning them alive, he swears vengeance, and delivers it in the most karmic way possible.
  • You Mean X Mas: Erastide, the world's birthday. Winter festival, religious celebrations, gift-giving, big feasts, parties, the whole works. Banned in the Big Bad's countries, probably because it involves honoring all the gods, not just Torak. Torak doesn't like to share. Honoring all the gods might just be a particular variant of the feast celebrated in Sendaria, which is the only kingdom without a state religion. Interestingly enough, they really honor all the gods, including the Big Bad. Polgara chokes a bit when a Sendarian priest asks Torak to bless the union of Garion's parents, who will after all give birth to the man destined to kill him.
  • You Never Did That for Me:
    • Played with early in The Belgariad, before Garion gets his big reveal. Garion and Ce'Nedra are talking about the girl Garion probably would have married had things gone another way, and Garion says it's for the best because she's not someone you can ask to sleep on the ground. Ce'Nedra points out that the group had never hesitated to ask her to sleep on the ground. Garion manages to give what may be the only good answer possible at that point: "I guess you're stronger."
    • Played again later with the same characters, after they've been married a while. Talking about how some acquaintances recently got betrothed and married, Ce'Nedra complains about how Garion never asked for her hand in marriage, leading to him getting on his knee to make a proper belated proposal. (Ce'Nedra replies that she will think about it.)

Alternative Title(s): Malloreon, The Malloreon, Belgarath The Sorcerer, Belgariad

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