So, why is Saze almost always dark-skinned in the fanart? Was it mentioned in the book and I missed it? Because I always imagined him as a British-esque super pale race, due to Terris being the neighbor of a country based off France, and the main characters being a bit darker. When I started looking at the fanart, I was blindsided by all the dark Terris people compared to the free people all being super white. Is this canon, or is everyone is this fandom just assuming the slave race is dark…?
Terris skin color is never remarked upon in the text (and I cannot recall there being any WoB on the issue either). In fact the only defining feature (that I can recall) that is attributed to the Terris is height.
Regardless skin color is definitely not a defining feature of the Terris people. Case in point, Rashek. In all his years as the Lord Ruler he was never (that we know of) suspected of being full-booded Terris, not even by the Terris themselves. If the Terris universally had a different skin color than the “norm” that should not have been possible. (Here is a painting of him done by Ben McSweeney, who did a lot of the artwork for the Mistborn Adventure Game and does the Shallan sketchbook pages for the Stormlight Archive.)There likely is skin color variation in the Final Empire, it would strange if there wasn’t but from what we can tell it is not tied to “race”. Skaa can easily pass for Noble their only hindrances really are more cultural in nature (dialect, education, clothing, etc.). And as we see with RasheK some Terris could likely pass for Noble as well. What the variation *is* likely tied to is geographic location with the people in the southern Dominances (which is closer to the equator) being darker than the northern ones. Terris has always been in the north (and pretty far north at that, it was situated around the Magnetic North Pole of Scadrial and it was considered out of the way—If I remember correctly), even before Rashek Ascended, so it would not strain credulity at all for them to be fairly pale-skinned. (Though of course “people from higher latitudes are paler than those from from lower latitudes” is not an absolute rule, there are tons of reasons for there to be exceptions.)
Besides that there are tons of meta-issues if the Terris did turn out to be darker skinned than everyone else.
The Lord Ruler is specifically described as having pale skin, but the only other person who gets a skin color is Vin (also pale) so technically everyone else could be varying shades of brown. This is actually what I’ve chosen to do with my fancasting—there are a lot of white people, but here are also many people of color amongst the nobility and skaa so my TLR (who is black) doesn’t look suspicious. princekholin also suggested an interesting theory (we both subscribe to the “i reject your reality and substitute my own” view on what TLR looks like) that Rashek is albino *I have some of my own meta/theorizing to support this but doesn’t fit this convo), which could be another explanation. Also, the Terris people don’t have to be European-white to look… white passing?
so yeah, based on what little canon description we have of skin color (I can go find references, if you like, since I’ve literally highlighted ALL descriptions), they are probably not as dark as we like to draw them. but we’re gonna draw them like that anyways for funsies.
Geez, I love this fandom. Thanks so much for the further clarification! I think my headcanon that the Terris people are like Brits will live on, for now, but it is so cool to hear other people’s theories, headcanons, and fancastings. :)
I think there are primarily two reasons, though there are likely more, that people imagine the Terris with darker skin. Personally, I picture them as a sort of Asian (specifically like unto people from India).
I think the primary reason for this is is the description of their cultural garb, which includes many metal bangles, rings, arm bands, earrings, etc. Obviously this is directly related to Feruchemy, but when you first read the description you don’t realize that, and its part of the culture for the non-feruchemists, too. For me, there’s an association between that type of garb and Asian and Egyptian cultures (I realize there are lots of other cultures, both modern and ancient, that have these things as well, but for some reason I don’t have as strong of an association in their cases) so my mind automatically jumped to a demographic from one of those regions.
The other thing that really shored up my image was the way Sazed talks. I’m sure part of it is the accent he was given in the audiobook (since that was the way I first experienced the book), but his word choice and intonation (and accent) seemed to suggest to me a sort of refined eastern philosopher, which just reinforced my mental image.
Logically, by the arguments already presented by other people on this post, it makes perfect sense to me that they would have the same skin tones as the other people’s of the Final Empire, but that logic can only be understood and explored after completing a certain amount of the series, at which point I find it extremely difficult to banish the mental image that was originally constructed based on the first impression I got from these two things.




















