abstract | - The main protagonist, a poor farmboy who becomes the first Dragon Rider in over a century. Initially wanting merely to survive and get vengeance on the Ra'zac, he gradually becomes more and more involved with the war between the Empire and the Varden.
* Anti-Hero: Largely a Type III, but has moments of Type IV by Brisingr, and becomes moreso in Inheritance.
* Anti-Magic: In Inheritance. One of only three practitioners. After using it extensively to break curses, he's probably the most prolific user by the end of the book.
* BFS: In earlier publications.
* Bow and Sword In Accord
* A Boy And His Dragon
* Butt Monkey
* Character Development: Eragon slowly shifts away from a bland Audience Surrogate to...well, YMMV:
* Eragon's world view regarding religion is touched upon. At first he's drawn in by rather simplistic Hollywood Atheism, but decides not to rule anything out when he meets something that seemed to qualify as a "god". At the end, he falls firmly on the side of agnosticism, of the "If he's out there, he'd better have a good excuse" type.
* He grows more obviously bloodthirsty and vicious in battle as the series goes on, either due to Saphira's influence, or becoming desensitized due to war. Notably, he doesn't actually seem to realize it happening.
* Cool Sword: Zar'roc. Later he forges his own blue sword, Brisingr (see below for details).
* Cloudcuckoolander: It doesn't show up very often, but he has a seven-year-old's fascination with Squick which slowly morphs into a rather dark Nightmare Fetishism
* Did Not Get the Girl: He and Arya decide that they can't be together at the end of Inheritance mostly due to their ages and responsibilites. Prior to that, though, Arya had admitted to being open to the idea (when he's older). Eragon shoots that down by revealing that he'll be leaving Alagaesia "forever", and Arya couldn't reasonably join him.
* Constantly Curious
* Dragon Rider
* Drama-Preserving Handicap: For a while in Eldest, Durza's scar gives him seizures at inopportune times thanks to its magical nature, having been inflicted by a Shade.
* Farm Boy
* Fatal Flaw: Arrogance, according to him. While it shows up in spots throughout the stories, Eragon fears its corrupting influence in the future and lets that inform his decisions later in the series.
* Flaming Sword: Brisingr bursts into flames whenever he says its name. Comes back to bite him in the butt, as he can't use his favorite magic while holding it.
* Full Potential Upgrade: An inversion of sorts. Because Eragon learned to fight with an unbreakable weapon, he has a bad habit of blocking attacks with the edge of the blade rather than the flat, which leads to him quickly ruining any normal weapon.
* Genre Savvy: While not especially savvy in general, in Inheritance, he's very much aware of Pride Before a Fall regarding his own flaws, and takes some impressive steps to avert it.
* Heart Is an Awesome Power: In the final battle, he turns the tide against Galbatorix when he makes the king feel the agony of everyone he's ever caused pain.
* Nonverbal magic is so ridiculously dangerous that even the most powerful magicians only use it for the smallest of spells, since those are low risk. It's a party trick, for those who know it. Galbatorix doesn't know that it exists, so Eragon is able to incapacitate him with it. He then uses it to instantaneously shield himself and his friends from Galbatorix's atomic Rage Quit, where normal spellwork would have been far too slow.
* Humble Hero: He tries to play the part, even making plans to return and rebuild his hometown as per The Hero's Journey. It's subverted when he decides that humility isn't really in his character, and after all he'd seen and done, he'd never be satisfied with something so mundane as settling down again.
* Idiot Hero: He gets better about it, but traits remain all through the series, as he's struggling to learn everything he needs to know to be a Dragon Rider. Their training usually takes DECADES.
* Instant Expert: In less than a year, he masters sword-fighting, learns how to read, and becomes fluent in the Ancient Language. While it's not as difficult as some may claim he is explicitly noted to be an abnormally fast learner.
* Reality Ensues: That said, it's also explicitly shown that it's nowhere near enough to match any experienced Rider or elf, and inferior to actually learning over decades like he normally should have been doing.
* Jumping Off the Slippery Slope: In a moment of Properly Paranoid, Eragon decides that this would be way, way too easy for him to do. So he automatically shuts down any offers of Kingship or long term authority.
* Magic Knight
* Moral Dissonance: He's very brutal in battle, and has moments of untoward viciousness. Other moments, such as his judgment of Sloan, remain Base Breakers among much of the fandom.
* Necessarily Evil: In his mind, all of his lapses and killings are justified because he's fighting an immortal Evil Overlord, and no amount of slaughter or mayhem that he causes could be worse than what Galbatorix would cause. He still angsts quite a bit over this though. This becomes a major plot point early on in Brisingr.
* Nightmare Fetishist: At one point fantasizes without much irony about having an apple tree planted over his grave, so that his family would partake of his corpse every time they ate from it. Yum. Similar examples abound throughout the books.
* Not So Different: Elva points out to Eragon that some of his actions aren't so different from the kind Galbatorix would take. “That way lies the depraved pleasure of controlling others for your own pleasure. Galbatorix would approve.”
* Notably, Eragon specifically avoids (or at least tries to) any positions of power in the new government because he's afraid he would end up like Galbatorix.
* Eragon isn't so different from Murtagh either. Eragon denies this when Murtagh mentions it at the end of Eldest, but in Brisingr, Eragon coldly terminates the life of a young, conscripted soldier who was begging for mercy with the same emotionless justification that Murtagh used after killing the slaver Torkenbrand in the first book. "He was a threat."
* Parental Abandonment: Well, his mom died soon after giving birth to him, and Brom dared not reveal his identity...
* Power Strain Blackout: Prone to fainting after using magic, at least at first.
* Simple Staff: Uses one in Brisingr for awhile, but soon becomes frustrated with it.
* Thou Shalt Not Kill: In the first book, he goes out of his way to avoid killing humans, limiting his violence to urgals. In Eldest, however, he drops the policy and starts killing any human associated with the Empire without mercy.
* Took a Level In Badass: Considering he plans to take out old man Galbatorix himself only a few years after becoming a Rider himself...
* He takes quite a few after he discovers the hidden Eldunari cache under Vroengard, gaining enormous magical power. What's more important is that he's learned how to use it..
* Walking the Earth: He leaves Alagaesia at the end of Inheritance, due to needing a more suitable place to raise the cache of dragon eggs found on Vroengard and to remove the temptation for him (now the most powerful being alive on the continent) to become another Galbatorix. He has no plans to return and doesn't expect to be able to see his loved ones in person.
* What Have I Become?: Has a few of these moments now and then.
* What the Hell, Hero?: He is on the receiving end of it twice in Eldest and three times in Brisingr.
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