History Literature / TheEyesOfTheDragon

* DeathByChildbirth: Sasha, while giving birth to Thomas. [[spoiler:At least, that's what Flagg set it up to ''look'' like. She was actually murdered by the midwife, who was in Flagg's debt because he cured his only son of a deadly illness.]]

* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: [[spoiler: King Roland, of all people]]. He's a balding, bandy-legged, paunchy, bumbling fool in his early sixties whose low self-esteeem makes him easily manipulable by his [[BigBad evil advisor]]. He's also [[spoiler: the world's best hunter, one who calmly one-shots a ''dragon'' that was already about to breathe fire on him]], and even [[spoiler: ''Flagg'']] is actually ''[[BewareTheNiceOnes scared shitless]]'' of what [[spoiler: Roland]] [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge would do]] if ever [[PapaWolf decided]] to hunt ''him.''

** Flagg has also been identified as He Who Walks Behind The Rows from ''ChildrenOfTheCorn''.

--> '''Narrator''': That he had never met the woman of his fancy because he has never really fancied women at all. Women worried him him. And he had never fancied the act that put babies in the bellies of women. That act worried him too.

** The 400 year old letter from Leven Valera, that Peter found when imprisoned in the Needle, is later used by him to write a message for Dennis because it's the only writable material available to Peter.

* CouldntFindAPen: The 400-years old letter by Leven Valera was written by him in his own blood and the sharpened Shaft of a Spune. Later, when Peter has to send a message to Dennis (who is waiting outside The Needle), he too uses his own blood as ink and a straw from his mattress as pen.

* HumanoidAbomination: Flagg is ''not'' human, he's one of several incarnations of the same being that exists throughout King's multiverse (it's not revealed wether or not Flagg is aware of this). When Thomas confronts him at the end, he even calls him a "thing" and points out that Flagg's inability to deviate from his preferred patterns in his manipulations over the course of centuries shows how inhuman he is.
* TheInsomniac: Thomas becomes one due to the stress of being a king and the guilt of him knowing the truth about the murder of his father. It gets so bad he becomes entirely dependant on a sleeping potion made by Flagg.

* KickTheDog: Almost literally; during his childhood Thomas has a brief, rather evil moment when he finds a starving dog and, while briefly tempted to adopt it as a pet and nurse it back to health like Peter did with his lame horse, instead thinks "what if the dog was Peter?" and [[KidsAreCruel stones it to death]]. No-one witnesses it except Flagg through his scrying crystal, but seeing it pleases him greatly.

* {{Sleepwalking}}: Thomas suffers from this after Flagg is away from the castle for a week, depriving him of the sleeping potion. During his sleepwalk, he ends up accidently showing Dennis the secret passage to behind the dragons' head and [[TalkingInYourSleep confesses that he knows]] it was Flagg who killed king Roland.

* ChekhovsGun: Many. The peephole in the dragon skull that Flagg shows Thomas, where [[spoiler: Thomas sees Flagg poison his father and Dennis finds out, years later, that Peter was innocent, bringing about Flagg's downfall.]] Peter's need for a napkin at every meal and his mother's old dollhouse are this as well.

* CouldntFindAPen: The 400-years old letter by Leven Valera was written by him in his own blood and the sharpened Shaft of a Spune.

* {{Sleepwalking}}: Thomas suffers from this after Flagg is away from the castle for a week, depriving him of the sleeping potion. During his sleepwalk, he ends up accidently showing Dennis the secret passage to behind the dragons' head.

* LimitedSpecialCollectorsUltimateEdition: Was published as such in 1984, three years before the book's official release.

* DeathByChildbirth: Sasha, while giving birth to Thomas. [[spoiler:At least, that's what Flagg set it up to ''look'' like]].

* GoodPeopleHaveGoodSex: Complicated example with Roland and Sasha, and it actually affects the disposition of their children. They have a mostly loving and satisfying relationship, but Roland is older and not particularly interested in sex, so he makes frequent use of [[LovePotion Love Potions]] to be able to perform. One of the few times he doesn't need one - his moment of glory after slaying the last dragon - is the time Peter is conceived. Thomas, on the other hand, is conceived after Roland drinks an extra strong potion and engages in a violent, joyless moment of what is possibly marital rape.

* HumanoidAbomination: Flagg is ''not'' human, he's one of several incarnations of the same being that exists throughout King's multiverse (it's not revealed wether or not Flagg is aware of this). When Thomas confronts him at the end, he even calls him a "thing" and points out that Flagg's inability to deviate from his prefered patterns in his manipulations over the course of centuries shows how inhuman he is.

* AllMenArePerverts / AllWomenArePrudes: Entirely inverted with Roland and Sasha. [[{{Asexuality}} Not only does he have little interest in sex]] (and usually needs Flagg's potions to have it in the first place), but when he does sleep with his wife it is for ''her'' pleasure, not his own. It's not specified wether or not Roland might be asexual (the concept barely existed when the novel was written) and the narration shows it as being related to Roland's spotty health. The one time he engaged in sex out of his own desire was when he was hopped up on adrenaline and testosterone after killing a dragon.

* BedsheetLadder: [[spoiler:Peter manages to make one out of threads plucked from the embroidered napkins given to him daily and woven together on the tiny but functional loom in the dollhouse he requested to keep in his cell over the span of several years.]]

* AllMenArePerverts / AllWomenArePrudes: Entirely inverted with Roland and Sasha. [[{{Asexuality}} Not only does he have little interest in sex]] (and usually needs Flagg's potions to have it in the first place), but when he does sleep with his wife it is for ''her'' pleasure, not his own.

* ShoutOut: Flagg's spellbook, which drives you mad if you read it too long, was written by [[HPLovecraft Alhazred, in the land of Leng]].

* SequelHook: The novel ends [[spoiler:with the statement that Dennis and Thomas eventually found and confronted Flagg, but that it is a tale for another day. ''Literature/TheDrawingOfTheThree'' makes reference to this, but almost three decades after the novel's initial publication the plotline is still dangling.]]

* CrouchingMoronHiddenBadass: [[spoiler: King Roland, of all people]]. He's an balding, bandy-legged, paunchy, bumbling fool in his early sixties whose low self-esteeem makes him easily manipulable by his [[BigBad evil advisor]]. He's also [[spoiler: the world's best hunter, one who calmly one-shots a ''dragon'' that was already about to breathe fire on him]], and even [[spoiler: ''Flagg'']] is actually ''[[BewareTheNiceOnes scared shitless]]'' of what [[spoiler: Roland]] [[RoaringRampageOfRevenge would do]] if ever [[PapaWolf decided]] to hunt ''him.''

* CanonWelding: Flagg first appeared in ''TheStand''.

* UnreliableNarrator: ZigZagged. It's unclear if the narrator is an in-universe figure writing a historical document, or an omniscient narrator. At times he acknowledges that he doesn't know something (such as Flagg's origin), but other times he gives information he should have no way of knowing (such as several previous times Flagg visited the kingdom). It could be argued he was simply spice up the story with speculation presented as fact.

* GoodPeopleHaveGoodSex: Complicated example with Roland and Sasha, and it actually affects the disposition of their children. They have a mostly loving and satisfying relationship, but Roland is older and not particularly interested in sex, so he makes frequent use of [[LovePotion Love Potions]] to be able to perform. One of the few times he doesn't need one - his moment of glory after slaying the last dragon - is the time Peter is conceived. Thomas, on the other hand, is conceived after Roland drinks an extra strong potion and engages in a violent, joyless moment of what is possibly martial rape.