#cormack o'malley

[aquacure]

oc sketches and a new O'Malley Relative Just Invented!

[solarishashernoseinabook]

Okay, Ranger's Apprentice fans, gather round!

For those who don't know, on the Discord server we often make memes and jokes about Gilan's lack of appearance (though let's be real, we do that here on Tumblr too). Some months ago I decided I would keep track of how many characters were given more complete descriptions than Gilan. As a reminder, here is a comprehensive description of Gilan from everything we get in the books:

He's tall

He's clean-shaven

I only counted characters from the main Ranger's Apprentice series (books 1 - 11) and The Early Years. There is a very scientific reason for this.*

There were some stipulations put into place, those being:

"Characters" were defined as figures who had both a name and at least one thing mentioned about their appearance. There are no characters in this study who don't have an appearance at all, which is why characters like Jurgen from The Early Years were excluded. At the urging of several members of the Discord server, several animals and Serthrek'nish (the mythical creature from Siege of Macindaw) were counted as "characters"

Cover art does not count as canon depictions of characters

Only features that were explicitly mentioned got counted in the description. Thus, things like skin colour weren't counted unless it was specifically alluded to. For all characters in The Emperor of Nihon-Ja, then, even though all Nihon-Jan characters could be assumed to have black hair, hair colour was only noted down as part of the description if it was actually mentioned

Clothes don't count as a description. Similarly, anything that was not purely physical didn't count, either. For instance, Halt is said to have "steady eyes", but as this is more of a character trait than a description it wasn't counted. Similarly, "beautiful" (and variations of it) isn't a description

If a character's appearance changes over time, the change isn't counted as part of their physical description as long as it references something that was already described. For example, Old Bob is mentioned as having brown hair in The Early Years, but white hair in Ranger's Apprentice - as these are both about his hair, this is not counted as two separate items in a description. Horace is mentioned as having a scar in Siege of Macindaw, which is a new physical feature, so because it's not describing something we already know about it counts as a new item in his description.

And with that, here we go! Raw data is provided below the cut.

Enjoy ^-^

* They were the only books I had access to. That's the very scientific reason.

The Stats

Following the criteria given above, there are 134 characters in Ranger's Apprentice and The Early Years. On average, they had 4.1 items in their physical description. Most characters overall had 2 items in their physical description, on par with Gilan.

80 characters have more complete descriptions than Gilan. On average, they had 5.9 items in their physical descriptions. Most of these characters had 3 items in their descriptions. By far the character with the most complete description is Norman, a character from The Battle of Hackam Heath, who has 20 items in his physical description. The runner-up is Kona, a character from The Emperor of Nihon-Ja, who has 15 items in his description. These represent 59.7% of all characters in the study.

28 characters have the same amount of physical description as Gilan (2 items in their description) and represent 20.8% of all characters in the study, whereas 25 characters had only one item mentioned in their physical description and represent 18.6% of all characters in the study (percentages are only counted to one decimal place, so they technically add up to 99.1%, but you get the picture).

Raw data below! Some character names are used more than once, which is why you might see what appear to be duplicates on the list. If you find yourself looking at a name and going "who?", well...exactly

Norman – 20 Kona – 15 Black O'Malley – 12 Morgarath – 12 Malcolm – 11 Alyss – 10 Berrigan – 10 Halt – 10 Keren – 10 Tennyson – 10 Serthrek'nish – 10 Arald – 9 John – 9 Nils – 9 Ragnak – 9 Demon Tooth – 8 Douglas – 8 Edwina – 8 Horace – 8 Old Bob – 8 Salt Peter – 8 Yusul – 8 Luka – 7 Montague – 7 Nimatsu – 7 Rosalind – 7 Shadow – 7 Cielema – 6 Farrel – 6 Ferris – 6 Niel – 6 Rodney – 6 Trobar – 6 Atsu – 5 Cormack – 5 Crowley – 5 Delia – 5 Deparnieux – 5 Duncan – 5 Egon – 5 Erak – 5 Robard – 5 Ryan – 5 Sean – 5 Tomas – 5 Umar – 5 Will – 5 Aman – 4 Cassandra – 4 Cedric – 4 Chubb – 4 Denison – 4 Ergell – 4 George – 4 Nialls – 4 Roberta – 4 Rob – 4 Robina – 4 Shigeru – 4 Xander – 4 Sir David Davidson – 3 Ebony – 3 Eiko – 3 Hassan – 3 Hilde – 3 Kyofu – 3 Jenny – 3 Liam – 3 Mussaun – 3 Orman – 3 Pauline – 3 Petulengo – 3 Phillip – 3 Poldaric – 3 Pritchard – 3 Selethen – 3 Ulf – 3 Abelard – 2 Alda – 2 Anthony – 2 Blaze – 2 Bran – 2 Bryn – 2 Deborah – 2 Farrel – 2 Gerald – 2 Gilan – 2 Griff – 2 Handel – 2 Jerome – 2 Killeen – 2 Kord – 2 Leander – 2 Margrit – 2 Marron – 2 Martin – 2 Mound – 2 Nuttal – 2 Peller – 2 Skinner – 2 Tiller – 2 Tom – 2 Tug – 2 Tug II – 2 Yorik – 2 Abelard I – 1 Ambrose – 1 Ayagi – 1 Barnaby – 1 Bart – 1 Carney – 1 Colly – 1 Cropper II – 1 Daniel – 1 Evanlyn – 1 Jerome – 1 Jerrel – 1 Jervis – 1 Joel – 1 Kelly – 1 Mikeru – 1 Nit'zek – 1 Oswald – 1 Ryan – 1 Sandra – 1 Saoud – 1 Teezal – 1 Wallace – 1 Warlock – 1 Willet – 1