Darken Rahl

Darken Rahl is a fictional character from Terry Goodkind's "The Sword of Truth" series. He is the primary antagonist in the book Wizard's First Rule. He is the son of Panis Rahl, a ruthless dark wizard who had been killed by a wizard of the first order Zeddicus Zu'l Zorander. Darken Rahl is the current ruler of the land of D'Hara at the time of the story. He is also revealed to the reader to be the father of Richard Cypher, the primary protagonist in the story.

Rahl will be portrayed by Craig Parker in the syndicated TV series "Legend of the Seeker", produced by Sam Raimi and premiering on November 1, 2008.

Description

Darken Rahl is described as 5' 11" slender and good looking. He has straight shoulder length blond hair and blue eyes.On his upper left thigh, and across part of his hip and abdomen, he is covered in bumpy scars. His scars, inflicted by a ball of wizard's fire that had killed his father, Panis Rahl, are kept carefully hidden by his robes. He typically wears a white robe that goes down to within an inch of the floor, its only decoration being the gold embroidery in a narrow band around the neck and down the front. He wears no jewelry, other than a curved knife in a gold scabbard embossed with symbols warning the spirits to give way. The belt that holds it was woven of gold wire.

The curved knife at his belt was used carry out his executions. Darken Rahl was a practitioner of an ancient form of magic called anthropomancy, which he learned from his father. He divined the answers to questions by the inspection of living human entrails. It was of limited use, he could at most get a yes or no to a single question and sometimes, a name.

He hated the taste of meat, and never ate anything but plants (unless required to in order to perform a certain incantation). Darken Rahl hated fire, and outlawed it in all lands under his rule (although he approved or ignored its use in certain cases, like in his father's tomb). The most widely accepted reason for this was because fire had killed his father and thus it was a sign of disrespect to the house of Rahl. Darken Rahl had the ability to travel the underworld and used it to cross magical boundaries placed upon the Midlands. and recover the boxes of Orden and undo the boundaries.

Death

Darken Rahl was killed when he was tricked by his son Richard Rahl, using the wizard's first rule, into opening the wrong box of Orden. Later, Richard unintentionally summoned him back to the living world (as a spectre). Darken Rahl's spectre attempted to tear the veil between the underworld and the living, releasing the Keeper of the underworld, but was stopped by Richard and sent back into the underworld where he continued to plot and scheme against Richard. In Temple of the Winds, it is revealed that Rahl escaped his fate into the Temple, when Richard enters the Temple, he finally banishes his father to his fate.

References

External links

* [http://www.terrygoodkind.com Official Terry Goodkind website]
* [http://www.terrygoodkind.net Unofficial Terry Goodkind website] (endorsed by Terry Goodkind)