People of Hair Color: Difference between revisions
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== [[Literature]] ==
* In [[
** In ''[[Lord of the Rings]]'', the Riders of Rohan from the North tend to be blond, while the people of Gondor were chiefly dark-haired. Given the hierarchy he describes, this peculiarly puts blondness at the top and the bottom, among the good peoples at least (the blond Vanyarin Elves are almost sickeningly angelic, while the Rohirrim are supposedly lesser) and dark-haired peoples in the middle (the Noldor are troubled and rebellious, but still Elves and therefore more awesome than any human, while the Numenorians of Gondor and Arnor are "superior"--whatever that means--to the Rohirrim).
*** In this case, "superior" means "being friends with the [[Our Elves Are Different|Elves]]". Benefits included long lifespan and some ability to do things we'd call magic.
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* In [[Andre Norton]]'s ''[[Witch World]]'', the Old Race of Estcarp (and formerly also of Karsten) are uniformly black-haired and pale skinned; their allies, the sea-going Sulcar, are blond. The people of High Hallack across the sea, whose ancestors came through a [[Cool Gate]], are pale-skinned but usually have brown or blond hair, occasionally with a reddish tint.
* In Joy Chant's ''Red Moon Black Mountain'', the races are divided by appearance, including an [[Planet of Hats|entire race]] of [[Dumb Blonde|Dumb Blondes]].
* [[Ursula K. Le Guin|Ursula K. LeGuin's]] ''[[Earthsea Trilogy]]'' has the race contrast by skin color as well as by hair, but the white race is [[Fantasy Counterpart Culture|also chiefly blond]].
* Jennifer Robertson's ''Sword Dancer'' books have the sun-baked, semi-nomadic Southron race who live in the desert and the blond, fair-skinned Northerners who live in the mountains. Later, she expanded it to include a sort of dark-Caucasian islander race.
* In [[Robert E. Howard]]'s ''[[Conan the Barbarian]]'' universe, the barbarians of the north are divided into the Aesir, who are blond, the Vanir, who have red hair, and the Cimmerians, who have dark hair. Howard had a whole essay on the various human races of Hyboria and how they got to be where they are in the story in question, "[http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Hyborian_Age The Hyborian Age]". The racial descriptions given there are characterized by the very best racial science of his day.
* Robert Jordan's ''[[Wheel of Time]]'' is full of these - notably, the tall strawberry blond Aiel and the short dark haired Cairhirenin. Jordan was effective in differentiating people based on geographical region, through appearance as well as speech patterns, dress, and customs.
* [[Harry Turtledove]]'s ''War Between The Provinces'' is a fantasy retelling of the American Civil War in which the original inhabitants of the kingdom, who are blond, play the part of slaves to their dark-haired rulers.
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* In the [[Ravenloft]] novel ''Carnival of Fear'', the circus freak protagonists eventually flee the city of l'Morai, leaving it to stew in its own [[Fantastic Racism]]. Denied genuine human oddities to play [[All of the Other Reindeer]] Games with, the inhabitants are implied to have turned on one another: in the epilogue, a boy with ''black hair'' is shown being chased and taunted by a gang of blond youths, as if his hair color were a grotesque deformity.
* In Swedish fantasy writer Anders Blixt's novel ''Spiran och staven (The Quarterstaff and the Sceptre)'', the Termali of the sophisticated Vidonia region have a Mediterranean look, i.e. tanned skin and brown eyes, whereas the Wealdings (forest barbarians) are pale-skinned and grey-eyed. The Wealdings even use the word "brown-eye-ing" when referring to a Termali person. The protagonist Fox, who is of mixed origins, has brown eyes, pale skin, and reddish hair, hence the nickname.
* In [[Gene Stratton Porter]]'s ''[[
* In [[John C. Wright]]'s ''[[Hermetic Millenium
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
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== [[Mythology]] ==
* Long-after-the-fact depictions of the Saxons and the Normans after the conquest make the Saxons blond and the Normans dark-haired. [[Robin Hood]] is typically blond, when Maid Marian is a Norman, as in ''[[The Adventures of Robin Hood (
== [[Live Action TV]] ==
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* [[Dungeons and Dragons|Dungeons & Dragons]] seems to take yet another cue from Tolkien here. The various elf "subraces" (including the distinct Drow) have hair color and skin tone determined by their elven ethnicity (with a wider range of pigments than humans). Conversely, humans in the D&D universe seem much more integrated and ethnically homogenized.
** The ''Kingdoms of Kalamar'' setting had several distinct ethnicities, ''not'' all of which looked European.
* The [[
** Thyatis, and its former territory of Karameikos, subvert this trope by being host to many ethnically-mixed families.
** In the Hollow World, the Spell of Preservation tends to maintain populations' distinct physical traits across the generations. Even though intermarriage goes on, it's implied that descendents of such mixed pairings eventually breed their way back into one or the other parent ethnicity, eventually causing all "foreign" traits to vanish over time.
== [[Video Games]] ==
* In the NES version of ''[[
* In ''Final Fantasy: Crystal Bearers'', about half of the members of the Selkie tribe, including all four major characters from that tribe, have red hair. Most of the other Selkies have blond hair. No non-Selkie with red hair exists in the game, so red hair is pretty much a "red flag" alerting you that a character is a Selkie. Blond hair, however, leaves an individual's tribe ambiguous; the protagonist has blond hair and is not a Selkie.
* Similar to ''[[
* [[Fire Emblem|Fire Emblem: The Blazing Sword]] has redheaded Phereans, blonde Etrurians, and green-haired nomadic Sacaens. The former is notable since the the Heroine, [[Hot Amazon|Lyndis]] has bluish-green hair due to her Caelin mother and Sacaen father. May also count as [[Phenotype Stereotype]]
* In [[Fire Emblem|Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones]], there is a more realistic version of this: you can tell where ''most'' people are from due to their hair color; most people from Jehanna are redheads, and a number of former Grado residents are blonde. However, just as many people are black/blue/green-haired, with varying countries of origin.
* In ''[[Valkyria Chronicles]]'', "Darkhair" is an ''ethnic slur''.
** Not a straight example of the trope. "Darkhair" was only added in the English translation, there is no equivalent in the original script. In addition, numerous non-Darcsen characters have dark or black hair. For example, Rosina, who has the Darcsen hater personality trait, has black hair.
* Depending on your interpretation of canon within the ''[[
== [[Web Comics]] ==
* In ''[[
* In ''[[
* In ''[[No Songs for The Dead]]'', [http://nosongs.thecomicseries.com/comics/pl/110906 all Lilim have blonde hair], like their mother Lilith.
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