I am currently re-reading John Jakes’s entire Brak the Barbarian saga, and I was struck by an odd thought. Why do wizards in sword-and-sorcery always dress like Ming the Merciless? In “The Unspeakable Shrine,” Brak meets his nemesis, Septegundus, the Amyr of Evil and high priest of Yob-Haggoth:
And from the black portal silently glided the Amyr of Evil upon Earth…The man was not of overwhelming stature. He was clad in a plain black robe with voluminous sleeves into which his hands were folded. His pate was closely shaven, his nose aquiline, his lips thin. His chin formed a sharp point, and the upper parts of his ears were pointed, too. His eyes were large, dark, staring, nearly all pupil. Very little white showed. He had no eyelids. Evidently they had been removed by a crude surgical procedure. Light pads of scar tissue had encrusted above the sockets which held eyes that never closed.
Read the rest:
https://www.michaelmay.online/2015/11/sword-and-sorcery-cliche-no-1-ming.html
