[Severn]

Hm, I'm reading a book about Ancient Rome vs Germania right now, and the Germanic princess the book focuses around has dark hair with gray eyes. She is a 'ganna' - a holy/witch sword maiden. I recall several books where characters with gray eyes are often mysterious, or spiritual, creatures. Bah, can't for the life of me remember specific examples right now, but I can remember thinking 'ah, another gray-eyed character'. Because of this I've always felt that many author's seem to associate gray eyes with a certain neutrality, and hence they're closer to the world of mysteries, or death.

[Siberian]

Jordan, for instance, has the Aiel be culturally Arabic, but deliberately contrasts it with northern Celt coloring, so they have blue, green and grey eyes, and red and blonde hair. Rand being from the Aiel, he has red hair and grey eyes. It marks him as Aiel and as different from other cultures Jordan has set up. So the grey eyes becomes part of the characterization.


I thought Aiel are culturally more like Native Americans (and maybe Zulu) but then Rand's mother also had red/blonde hair and grey eyes that he inherited.

[Mock]

Blue and gray eyes are way overused, in my opinion. Practically all of David Gemmell's heroes are blue-eyed (Helikaon, Skilgannon ... okay maybe that's it :o). Seriously, it's always bright, bright blue eyes, or brooding gray. I'm really starting to get ticked off, and now a brown-eyed character is an instant winner for me.

In fact, I'd make my own main character brown-eyed, except mine are brown. I used to hate that eye color, but it's really grown on me, thanks in part to its rarity in fiction. I always associate it with a quiet, exceptionally intelligent person ... blah.

Naturally, my main protagonist's eyes are glimmering blue, but maybe I'll switch them to brown. Hehe.

[lin]

Especially silly when you consider that about 90% of the human race have black eyes.

(This is privately ironic for me because I think specifying eye color is generally stupid...yet I'm writing a book in which it's important because it's very involved with genetic and racial science.)

[Banger]

Eyes of green and eyes of blue, sparkling under brow,
Hera (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hera)'s got the worst of all, eyes just like a cow!

[Miriamele]

How can blue eyes be "cliched"???

I get sick of people even mentioning eye color, matter of fact. I think of it as a romance thing.


By cliched I just meant overused. I couldn't possibly count how many books I've read when the author kept mentioning someone's sapphire blue eyes. Or their piercing blue eyes. Or their dark-blue eyes, like the depths of a pool. Or whatever. And the blue eyes are almost always paired with blond hair, especially in older (as in Victorian) books where the author wanted to make a character seem child-like or angelic.

I totally agree that it's annoying, and it does make a book sound like a romance novel even if it isn't.

[KatG]

Really? I thought brown eyes won out over black, because a lot of Asians -- who have black eyes -- also have a lot of brown, and brown is a genetic dominant. But I don't know the figures on it.

The reason a lot of main characters have blue eyes and possibly also blonde hair is that they are meant to be Northern culturally (though not always geographically in imaginary realm stories.) Giving them blue eyes and blonde hair immediately mark them as that because those cultures have that, whereas other cultures do not or only do so because of intermarriage with northern European peoples. It immediately marks them as racially from somewhere specific. Which is why my main character has blue eyes. :)

The same thing happens in often having characters who are brown or black-skinned -- they are physically quickly signalling a Southern culture, though again in an imaginary realm story, the people might not be geographically south. We tend not to think of eye color as the same aspect as skin color, especially at this point in history, but they are racial characteristics.

And yes, there is a preference for fair-haired English boys and girls which you signal with the blonde hair and the blue eyes. There are physical characteristics that get stereotyped. Which really annoyed Ursula LeGuin, when her Earthsea main character who did not have white skin or blonde hair ended up with them in the miniseries adaptation.

And I was annoyed with the recent t.v. series version of Jim Butcher's Dresden Files fantasy series, because they took a police detective who was a small, blonde female and made her brunette. Because we can't take blondes as seriously, so if she's a hard-working, no-nonsense police detective, she must be brunette? (I say this as a brunette.)

But I don't think it's reached epidemic proportions. I can't really think of that many grey-eyed main characters I've encountered. But maybe I'm not reading the right books. :)

[Physics Knight]

Jordan, for instance, has the Aiel be culturally Arabic, but deliberately contrasts it with northern Celt coloring, so they have blue, green and grey eyes, and red and blonde hair. Rand being from the Aiel, he has red hair and grey eyes. It marks him as Aiel and as different from other cultures Jordan has set up. So the grey eyes becomes part of the characterization.

This always greatly amused me. A race of redheads in a desert, which sounds awfully uncomfortable for them. I have only read up to book 4 (and probably stopping there) but Jordan has never mentioned sunburn issues. Why not just make them brown like actual Arabic people?

[Abby]

This always greatly amused me. A race of redheads in a desert, which sounds awfully uncomfortable for them. I have only read up to book 4 (and probably stopping there) but Jordan has never mentioned sunburn issues. Why not just make them brown like actual Arabic people?

Totally.

I like the books, but that's one of a few WoT aspects that strikes me as ridiculous. Redheads get sunburns. I can buy that they exiled themselves to the desert as a punishment, but after a few hundred years, they would have moved back to the Wetlands. Come on.

[Tony Williams]

Well there are some male brooding guys with blonde hair and blue eyes, but I can't think of any female ones right off. We women generally are not allowed the luxury of brooding. :) .
Daniel Craig, the new James Bond, for instance.

Women with blonde hair and blue eyes usually seem to be portrayed as pretty but shallow and rather dim. Celtic types with the red hair/green eyes combination are supposedly strong-willed and fiery. I wonder if anyone's done any research into whether there's any truth in these stereotypes?

For some reason, the thought of brown eyes suggests gentleness to me, it seems to go with the rather cliched phrase "soft brown eyes".

(I've just gone in search of a mirror to check out my own, and find they're a mixture of colours which more or less comes out as grey...)