Belgarath

[The Ace]

UL punished the godless ones who rejected Gorim by making their women barren and they died out. The Marags were wiped out by the Tolnedrans (apart from a few sold as slaves).

[fiveten]

Beltira and Belkira were alorns.
Belsalmbar was agnarak.
Belmakor was melcene (godless).
Beldin was probably Tolnedran.
Belzedar was Arend.
Belgarath was probably marag. Gara = marag with no m and backwords.
Beldurnik was sendar.

No Nyissans?

[Steffi]

I think there is no Nyissan 'cos if Aldur tried to call a disciple from there, they would have been too befuddled to know what was happening......

[devilsgrin]

Considering that most of garath's childhood is a mish-mash of destiny's tampering it would be very difficult to place him racially. I personally don't think he was a Marag...The father of his female playmate thrashed him...does not sound like something that would happen in a marag society, it may have been only early days, but Mara's fertility tampering would have been evident from the beginning. I often thought of Belgarath as having been Tolnedran. But i do have a suspicion that he really was Alorn... Polgara is described as looking almost exactly like Velvet/Liselle and she is Drasnian. This may be a result of Poledra taking on an Alorn body whilst human, but Belgarath was just as likely. He has too many Alorn traits from childhood... the least being his affinity for ale...

[SmoothasSilk]

I think that Belgarath was neither! Although he has the personality traits of an Alorn, I think that he was just someone from a non existent race in Garions time.

It would be like a Amorite or a Canaanite being in today's world. They'd LOOK familiar but you couldn't put your finger on exactly WHERE they came from.

[devilsgrin]

don't forget though, that Belgarath's alien appearance is as a result of having had Aldur's features stamped over his throughout their eons of aquaintance. So Belgarath could be literally any of the races. He is clearly not one of the godless ones, as Gara had a temple. Which means he MUST be from one of the seven gods' peoples. Angarak is almost completely impossible, but any other is just as likely as another...though i'd hazard not Nyissan, as their culture was even then swamp based and Gara was not in a swamp

[KiwiBird]

Welll he looks like Aldur, so that is his racial treat

[devilsgrin]

aah so whatever he was born as... he is now Aldurian...

[aebo06]

Originally Posted by fiveten

Beldin was probably Tolnedran.

No way. He's way too ugly to be of a civilized race.

[The Ace]

Originally Posted by isoneri

UL cannot have made the women barren as such, since they discover Mara(?) the women in the slave pens who tells Belgarath and Belgarion that her mum told her she was a Marag....

UL made the women of the godless ones barren after they rejected Gorim (prologue to "Magician's Gambit, and alluded to in the early chapters of BS) Mara's grief probably blinded him to the Marags who were sold into slavery and ended up in Cthol Murgos. The Marags were never barren, but they were believed to have been exterminated by the Tolnedrans. Taiba was descended from those slaves, completely unknown in the West.

[The Ace]

Originally Posted by KiwiBird

Welll he looks like Aldur, so that is his racial treat

In MB, this is touched upon, and again in EEG, both Belgarath and Zedar came to resemble Aldur through their long service as his disciples. On first meeting Zedar, Ce'Nedra thought (briefly) that he was Belgarath.

[Talysia]

Does it mention in any of the books when Belgarath was born? I know that his birth was lost in antiquity, but how close was his birth to the time when the gods each took a race of peoples as their own? Especially if the boundaries of each new country hadn't been properly established.

[devilsgrin]

as far as it implies, it was not straight after, and it would have been long enough for the racial traits and cultural peculiarities to become apparent. But not quite long enough for humanity to have become generally civilised... melcenes and dals excluded tho...

[Talysia]

Ah, thanks for that, Devilsgrin. I haven't read the series in a while, so I wasn't too sure. Maybe I should get the books out again.