White Stallion

aka: White Mare

I'm on a horse. ^note Never mind reality.

So first let past the horses black and then let past the brown.
Quickly run to the white steed and pull the rider down,
For I'll ride on the white steed, the nearest to the town,
For I was an earthly knight, they give me that renown.

— Fairport Convention, "Tam Lin"

Back in the days before any kind of engines existed, horses provided man's primary method of transportation. This is reflected in Hollywood portrayals of period pieces such as Medieval European Fantasies or works that take place in The Wild West.

Given the importance of cavalry in the history of some of the world's greatest empires, horses were often a sign of status; poor people could not afford a horse. Moreover, the color of the steed's hair coat serves to emphasize one character who is in a higher standing than the rest: the White Stallion is a type of Cool Horse which serves as a ride for a character usually in a position of leadership or seniority. Chances are if the work has a large group of characters who routinely ride horseback, only one of them will be riding a white horse, usually The Leader, the Knight in Shining Armor, and royalty. Sometimes it has similar implications as white-haired people.

This is Older Than Feudalism, going back to The Bible. Several Eurasian religions and mythologies have associated white horses with the sun, fertility, divinity, and other such themes, so they are often the symbol of an All-Loving Hero or The Chosen One. Light Is Good and all that. The rider might be exhibiting Horseback Heroism.

This trope is justified in that true white horses are fairly rare, and as such, they're more expensive. (That said, a true "white horse" is one with pink skin; most of the "white" horses one sees in fiction, being "white with dark points," are technically "white-haired grays".) Adding to the rarity, white horses are sometimes born with a fatal birth defect called Lethal White Syndrome that affects the digestive tract. White foals must always be closely watched because of this.

Contrast Hellish Horse. Compare White Wolves Are Special and Great White Feline, which assign importance to the similarly rare white animals. White Bunny also involves a white animal, but is more commonly white and has innocent connotations instead. See also White Is Pure.

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Examples:

Advertising

• The Man Your Man Could Smell Like is seen on a white horse, backwards.

Anime and Manga

• Entaku No Kishi Monogatari Moero Arthur has a lot of Anachronism Stew, which includes the titular king riding a pegasus even though there wasn't one in the original myth.
• Attack on Titan: Erwin Smith rides a white horse when he leads the Survey Corps cadets into a suicidal charge towards the Beast Titan, to give Levi the opening to slay it.
• La Seine No Hoshi rides an unnamed white horse into battle, which was a gift from Robert. In the manga adaptation, she frequently uses it against Zaral.

Art

• Marie de' Medici Cycle: To make Marie look extra heroic in The Regent Militant: The Victory at Jülich, she is riding an all-white horse.

Comic Books

• Lady Death's war horse Vassago is white.
• Wonder Woman, and Wonder Woman alone, was often pictured riding a white horse on the covers of her own book and Sensation Comics in the Golden Age, though the horse only occasionally featured in the actual stories as her more famous rides, her invisible airplane and kanga Jumpa, were more likely to make an appearance.

Comic Strips

• Little Lulu: In one story, Tubby plays with a crystal ball and predicts Alvin will become a Knight and Alvin asks if he'll have a white horse.

Fan Works

• In Zelda and the Manacle of Cahla, one of the many things Zelda acquires in her travels that are typical to Link in the original games is her own steed for Horseback Heroism: A "snowy white" mare named Sabrina.

Films — Animation

• Altivo from The Road to El Dorado, who belongs to Miguel, a thief. Justified in that he originally belonged to explorer Hernan Cortes. Taking into account that Miguel is one of the two protagonists of the film and certainly heroic, while Hernan Cortes serves as an antagonist, the trope is still played straight, although it zigzags a little in the beginning.
• In Shrek 2, this is what the Happily Ever After potion turns Donkey into.
• Disney has a fair share of white/grey-white stallions, most of which get badass names. Among them are:
  • Aladdin: Prince Achmed's horse. When the Genie briefly turns Abu into a horse, he's a white stallion. Subverted, in that the Genie decides the horse isn't impressive enough and ends up turning Abu into an elephant instead.
  • Enchanted: Destiny, Prince Edward's horse.
  • Hercules: Pegasus. An upgraded/exaggerated example in that he of course has wings he can fly with, semi-divine powers, and a cool blue mane.
  • The Hunchback of Notre Dame: Achilles, Captain Phoebus' horse.
  • Mulan: Captain Li Shang's horse.
  • Sleeping Beauty: Samson, horse of Prince Philip.
  • Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: The Prince's horse.
  • Tangled: Maximus, originally the horse of the captain of the guard, now friends with Flynn Rider... and captain of the guard. He's one badass horse.
• Joaquin from The Book of Life, is seen on one a few times.

Films — Live-Action

• In King Arthur (2004), the titular character rides a white horse, as expected. The trope is subverted, however, as Galahad and Tristan also ride white steeds.
• In Robin Hood (2010), Robin acquires a white horse early on and rides it around for the remainder of the movie. Justified in that the horse once belonged to King Richard.
• In The Last Samurai, Katsumoto rides a beautiful pure white horse.
• In the 2005 film version of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, Peter Pevensie, aka High King Peter, rides a white horse — a unicorn at that. It's the only white equine seen at the battle of Beruna.
• King Henry V rides a white horse in the 1989 Branagh film. The horse somehow manages to stay sparkly white while the human cast spends much of their time covered in mud and blood.
• Guinevere, Lady of Leonesse and Queen of Camelot, in First Knight is the only rider whose horse is white. Lancelot rides her horse on the way to rescue her.
• The Duke of Kate & Leopold rides down a purse snatcher through Central Park on the back of a horse that he borrowed from a carriage ride. It just so happens that the horse is white.
• Amusingly subverted in The Scorpion King, in which Mathayus's well-trained, courageous, and formidable steed is a pure white camel.
• In addition to Shadowfax (see the Literature section below), The Lord of the Rings has Asfaloth, who in the adaptation is ridden by Arwen rather than Glorfindel.
• In Westerns, particularly in the black-and-white era, good guys typically ride white horses and wear white hats. Apart from reinforcing the Light Is Good trope, this helps the viewer to identify our hero in long shots and fight scenes.
• In the opening of Reality (2012), the camera follows a pair of white horses pulling a carriage in a quite long take.
• Jessica in Forty Guns rides a white stallion, and makes her first appearance in the movie upon it, leading the eponymous forty guns. She is so renowned for this horse, it is even mentioned in the song about her.
• Cinderella (1965) has Prince Christopher ride a white horse, which also carries Cinderella through town on the day of her wedding to the prince.
• Sgt. Angel in Hot Fuzz steals a white horse from the farmer, in order to arrive back in town in the coolest way possible. He gets off it before the gun battle, because having an animal get caught in the crossfire wouldn't be funny.
• Short film White Mane is about A Boy and His X, namely, a young boy who makes friends with a beautiful white stallion. The stallion loves the boy but otherwise refuses to submit to the command of man. Unfortunately, the local horse ranchers want to capture and tame him.
• El Alamein: The Line of Fire features Italian infantrymen before the Battle of El Alamein... But at some point a truck carrying Mussolini's horse for the expected victory parade in Alexandria shows up. Much to the driver's horror, the soldiers promptly decide to eat it, as the supply situation was horrible and they were starving.

Gamebooks

• Lone Wolf: Wildwind, the horse offered by Gwynian the sage to Lone Wolf in Dawn of the Dragons, is described as a magnificent white stallion, and the finest steed the hero's ever seen. He has also a faint magic aura, making him swifter than the best-breed mounts, and nearly tireless.

Literature

• In Arthas, it's noted that pure white horses are rare, even for a stable supposedly famous for breeding them (they're mostly a pale grey). The pure white Invincible was destined to be Prince Arthas' loyal steed for everything except battle (since he wasn't bred for it). Sadly, Invincible's premature death cut that status short, and being raised into undeath seven years later meant there was no flesh left, let alone a white coat.
• The Bible: The first of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse rides a white horse, and is thought to be either an actual victorious military leader or an Anthropomorphic Personification of Conquest itself.
• Binky, the pale horse of DEATH from the Discworld series. Mention is made that Binky is white, not grey, since normal rules don't apply to him. "Not as white as chalk, which is a dead white, but certainly as white as milk, which is alive."
• The Lord of the Rings:
  • Gandalf the White appropriately rides a very particular white horse named Shadowfax. In the books Shadowfax is described as being gray or even silver and shining; The Film of the Book goes for a more straightforward white.
  • The book does have several horses that are explicitly described as white. Glorfindel's horse Asfaloth is one, to better contrast the steeds of the Black Riders. The banner of Rohan shows a white horse on green, being a depiction of Shadowfax's ancestor Felaróf who carried the first King of Rohan into battle. Finally Théoden's horse is named Snowmane and while the book never says the rest of him is white, too; the film chooses to make him so.
• In Robert E. Howard's The Hour of the Dragon, Conan the Barbarian is given a white horse to make his escape.
• Played with in Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar stories. The Heralds ride what appear to be magnificent pure-white horses, but these are actually Companions — guardian spirits, most of them humans reincarnated in horselike shapes. They are also Mindlink Mates with their Heralds and have human-level intelligence and psychic powers. Their hair stays white even if you attempt to dye it for camouflage or disguise. This little oddity is caused by large amounts of magical power (the guardian spirit itself, in this case) and shared with very powerful mages.
  • All Companions are white and spectacularly beautiful, but special mention goes to the Monarch's Own Companions like Taver and Rolan. Born as an Adult and even more striking than other Companions, they were never human and instead of aging and dying with their Heralds, they live until killed and simply Choose again after their human dies. Being picked by a Monarch's Own Companion confers the position of Monarch's Own Herald, the trustworthy and honest personal adviser and friend to the Monarch. Talia is Chosen by Rolan when she's thirteen and is a fish out of water for years, but Rolan working through her is able to convey wisdom to Queen Selenay.
• Athansor in Mark Helprin's Winter's Tale. He's implied to be some sort of angel in equine form.
• The grey-white Cool Horses in Mary H. Herbert's Winged Magic, which turn out to be magically disguised Hunnuli.
• In Emily's Runaway Imagination, Emily's family has a white(-ish) work horse whose coat Emily tries to bleach bright white with Clorox so her cousin visiting from the city will be impressed.
• In the Chronicles of the Kencyrath series, heroine Jame has two white mounts. Bel-tairi is a Whinno-hir mare she inherited from her great-grandmother; an intelligent, nigh-immortal beast, dainty of stature, sure-footed and dependable. She's Jame's mount for regular travel. Death's-head, however, is what Jame rides into battle; he is a white (albino) rathorn—an armored, carnivorous unicorn. Both are quite symbolic.
• In John C. Wright's Count to the Eschaton, the frozen Knights In Shining Armor have white horses as their steeds.
• In Living Alone by Stella Benson, Richard rides a white horse as he inspects the bean rows.
• A Song of Ice and Fire. Daenerys Targaryen receives a magnificent silver horse (though it's a mare, not a stallion) as a wedding gift from her husband Khal Drogo, ruler of a nomadic Proud Warrior Race called the Dothraki. As Dothraki don't name their horses, she simply calls it her silver. In the Game of Thrones TV adaption, Silver dies at the beginning of Season 2 while crossing the Red Waste, though the book counterpart is still alive.
  • Ser Loras Tyrell also rides a white horse when jousting Gregor Clegane. This trope is subverted on several levels: his horse is a mare, and specifically chosen because it was in heat so as to distract his opponent's stallion and throw him off his game, establishing Loras as a cheater rather than a hero.
• The titular horse in the YA novel The Snowbird is so named for having exceptional silver coloring. She's a mare, but otherwise fits the trope; as one character notes, she's "fine for dreaming on."
• In Romance of the Three Kingdoms Gongsun Zan is known as the White Horse General for leading an elite cavalry unit composed of white horses, which he does so because other tribes consider them sacred and would rather flee from them. Zhao Yun, who once served under him, is often depicted riding a white horse for other symbolic reasons.
• Unicorn Western: All unicorns are white unless corrupted by Blackmagic.

Live-Action TV

• On The Andy Griffith Show, the Darling family were quite superstitious, which Andy used to his advantage when he became unwittingly engaged to Charlene. The marriage was cursed if the bride and groom see a man wearing black riding a white horse from east to west. So Barney tried to ride by on a white horse but had trouble controlling the horse.
  Andy: That's north to south.
• Band of Brothers. Lieutenant Winters is rather bemused when a soldier gallops up on a white horse to give him a message from HQ. As they've been parachuted into France only a few days before, he obviously didn't bring it with him.
• Doctor Who
  • The Doctor realises that something has gone wrong with the timeline when he encounters an invading army of Sontarans in the Crimean War, led by their leader Commander Skaak who is riding a white horse. Skaak later admits that he chose that part of history partly because he wanted to ride one.
  • The exact same horse has appeared on Doctor Who before. In "The Day of the Doctor", the Doctor and Queen Elizabeth I ride a white horse out of the TARDIS (apparently he rode in to prove it was Bigger on the Inside). The horse turns out to be a shapeshifting Zygon.
• In the Frontier Circus episode "Lippizan", Ben sets out to acquire a Cool Horse for the circus's blind equestrian after he accidentally causes the death of her Lippizan stallion. He eventually acquires, breaks, and trains a white stallion named King that is half-Lippizan, half-Arabian wild stallion. At the end of the episode, King single-handedly fights off a wolf pack.
• Game of Thrones
  • Used on several occasions to make the rider look more awesome, presumably in a deliberate evocation of this trope. For instance, as part of his regal image King Renly Baratheon rides one in "Garden of Bones." As befitting a Knight in Shining Armor, Brienne rides a white horse in the same episode. Renly's lover Ser Loras Tyrell will later charge into battle in "Blackwater" on Renly's white horse to better enhance the illusion that he is King Renly's ghost. Other characters such as Lord Tywin and Yara Greyjoy ride white horses when making a Big Entrance (though Tywin's horse dumps a load of manure outside the throne room). Likewise Daenerys Targaryen, after losing the white horse she was given as a wedding gift while crossing the Red Waste, acquires another after sacking her first city, marking her new role as The Conqueror. Arya gets one after executing her friend's murderer. On her new horse, she creates a stark contrast with the Hound on his black courser, Stranger.
  • Used for Rule of Symbolism when Arya Stark comes across a pale white horse in the midst of the dragon-scorched carnage of Kings Landing and rides off on it.
• Subverted in Jessica Jones (2015). When standing on the edge of a building, Jessica has an Imagine Spot where she uses her superpowers to float harmlessly to the ground, then ride off on a white horse, free of Kilgrave's Mind Control. The horse then disappears and we return to her on the ledge, contemplating a more permanent solution.
• The Lone Ranger's horse Silver. Interestingly enough, Silver was played by two horses, both of which were true whites.
• The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power: In Numenor, Galadriel rides on slow motion a white stallion to the Hall of Lore. She possibly even becomes the own of the horse because she brought the creature with her back to Middle-earth.
• In Malcolm in the Middle, when the Hal takes the boys to the Grotto for a weekend, they first see Francis when he dramatically rides up on one of these.
• Merlin:
  • Lancelot is the only knight of the Round Table who rides a white horse.
  • Morgana also rode a white horse before her Face–Heel Turn. When Guinevere becomes Queen, she has a white horse.
• Power Rangers:
  • Power Rangers Lost Galaxy: In "Silent Sleep", the Red Ranger engages in horse-mounted duel with the monster of the week. The monster rides a brown horse while the Red Ranger rides a white horse.
  • Power Rangers Mystic Force: In part 2 of "Heir Apparent", Daggeron escapes the Dimension of Wandering Souls with the help of a white unicorn named Brightstar. Brightstar also has the ability to transform into a Mystic Titan and combines with Nick to form the Phoenix Unizord. Brightstar only appeared in one episode.
• In Queen of Swords, the Queen's Cool Horse is a magnificent white stallion named Chico that she uses for all of her Horseback Heroism.
• Rome:
  • In the first episode, Atia intercepts a fine white horse meant for Pompeii and has her son Octavian take it all the way to Gaul to present to Julius Caesar so as to impress him. Due to unforeseen circumstances, his Big Entrance turns out to be even more impressive than anyone expects.
  • Subverted in Season 2 when a grown-up Octavian is at the Battle of Philippi. Blood Knight Marc Antony is calm and collected on a black horse, while Octavian has his white horse but is clearly ill-at-ease.
• Shadow and Bone. Used for the White Shirt of Death trope when the survivor of an ambush gallops back to the army camp on a bloodstained horse.
• The White Queen: King Edward IV, George of Clarence and Richard of Gloucester always ride on white horses because they're part of the House of York, and their royal badge is the White Rose.
• Zorro: Zorro usually favors a black stallion, Tornado, to better vanish into the night. However, during a time he's away from his usual base of Los Angeles, he acquires from a dying man a white stallion, Phantom, who proves to be just as speedy and intelligent as Tornado.

Music

• In the Telephone song "Cendrillon", a group of one hundred men on white horses comes to Cinderella to take her children away. (The Prince has left her for Sleeping Beauty and now he wants his children back.) A subversion, since the men on white horses represent a bad thing in this case.
• The Taylor Swift song "White Horse".
  I'm not a princess, this ain't a fairytale
  I'm not the one you'll sweep off her feet
  Lead her up the stairwell
  ...Now it's too late for you and your white horse
  To come around.
• The country song "Suds in the Bucket" by Sara Evans.
  When her prince pulled up — a white pickup truck
  Her folks shoulda seen it comin' — it was only just a matter of time
  Plenty old enough — and you can't stop love
  She stuck a note on the screen door — "sorry but I got to go"
• Hinatazaka46's "Seishun no Uma" ("Horse of Youth") music video appropriately features a white horse, although it's actually a mare.
• "Holding Out for a Hero" by Bonnie Tyler: The white hero cowboy rides on one in the music video, signifying good.

Myths & Religion

• In almost every depiction where the color of the horse is discernible, the horse Lady Godiva rode on is white.
• The Fair Folk often ride white steeds.
• Celtic Mythology: Irish death god Donn is said to ride a phantasmal white horse through the sky as he gathers departed souls to guide them to the afterlife.
• In Slavic mythology, Baba Yaga sometimes has three horsemen, one of them being white to represent dawn.
• Sinterklaas traditionally rides a gray horse that has become white with age.
• The first of the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, usually said to be either Conquest or Pestilence, is described as riding a white horse.

Roleplay

• In The Gamer's Alliance, Sultan Khalid's horse Buraq is a white stallion.

Video Games

• In the Fire Emblem series, white horses are common mounts for the Paladin class, the advanced version of the Cavalier class. Some lords like Sigurd and his son Seliph, Eliwood, and Ephraim and Eirika receive a white horse upon class changing to Knight Lord (for the former three) and Great Lord (for the latter two).
• In Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life Special Edition, you can receive a white stallion if you're lucky enough.
• In Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne, the White Rider rides a white horse. Could be seen as a subversion, since he is one of the incarnations of Death and therefore is not precisely good.
• Chris Lightfellow from Suikoden III rides a white horse, which goes nicely with her overall color scheme.
• Dragon Quest VIII: Princess Medea was cursed to a form of a white horse.
• Final Fantasy XIII: Lightning has a white horse summon called Odin. In the third game, it's a white chocobo called the "Angel of Valhalla." They are one and the same.
• In Final Fantasy XVI, Ambrosia is a chocobo with white plumage, which is rare for the species. She is a noble and faithful steed to Prince Clive Rosfield.
• In The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Princess Zelda rides a white stallion in flashbacks to before the Great Calamity. In the present day, Link is able to tame and ride one of its descendants, which is among the best horses in the game.
• Ar tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica: Invoked. Infel says she's waiting for her 'prince on a white horse' and is annoyed that it's Croix who shows up instead. What she meant is her wife from her living days, Nenesha. Nenesha is associated with the sun.
• In Warhammer this trope is frequently used for the mounts of important characters in armies that use regular horses as their mounts. The High Elves in particular, being so haughty, aristocratic, noble, pure, and self-promoting, tend to breed and ride white horses almost to the exclusion of all others, such that they can field entire regiments of cavalry on pure white steeds. Pure white horses are much rarer in the human kingdoms of Bretonnia and the Empire, and so they frequently become the steeds of important knights, reikscaptains, and dignitaries.
• A step of a side quest in Red Dead Redemption has you find, catch, and break a white stallion "like the real cowboys ride" to give to a man in exchange for an indentured servant's freedom. Sounds like a pain, but they're relatively common in the area the quest is in and you may even be riding one yourself.
  • The prequel, Red Dead Redemption II, set during the Van der Linde gang's heyday, has gang leader Dutch ride an all-white Arabian stallion named The Count (the game describes him as albino even though albinism does not exist in real horses). The player can also find, tame, and ride a white Arabian of their own, though this one is actually a light gray (with a gray muzzle and dark eyes unlike The Count's pink skin and blue eyes) and will often spawn as female at first. It's not the only white/light gray horse players can ride, but it's the closest one to exemplifying this trope.
    • In the online multiplayer mode, player characters can ride the above Arabian for a premium price, and a white/light gray Kladruber horse is an online-exclusive reward for taking the Trader role.
• The Total War: Attila trialer which features the Eastern Roman Empire as the White Horse of Conquest.
• In The Elder Scrolls Online, a white horse comes with the purchase of the Imperial Edition (an upgrade that gives you a vanity pet, the ability to play the Imperial race, the horse, and some rings that turn you and another player into a Battle Couple).
• The pre-order bonus for Dragon Age: Inquisition provides the Inquisitor with a magnificent armored horse as one of the options for a mount. From what little can be seen of the creature beneath all the trappings, it appears to be white.

Web Comics

• Roza: The horse prince is white.
• In Homestuck, Eridan — Alternian aristocrat and the Prince of Hope — rides his seahorse lusus into battle. Like all lusii, it's pure white. (Unusually for the trope, he is not a good character.)
• The Order of the Stick: Windstriker, the sacred steed of Miko Miyazaki, is a white warhorse, as fitting for a paladin's mount. That is, until her fall from grace.

Western Animation

• She-Ra: Princess of Power has Spirit, who turns into the winged Swift Wind.
• In Samurai Jack, Jack rode on a white stallion when he went to face Aku for the first time and this is also shown in the opening for the first four seasons.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic has several white ponies in positions of power.
  • Princess Celestia, a white-coated Winged Unicorn God-Princess of the sun, as mentioned in the description.
  • There's also Rarity, bearer of the Element of Generosity, and a white unicorn mare with upper-class ambitions.
  • Prince Blueblood, a white unicorn who currently is the page image for Prince Charmless.
  • Shining Armor, Twilight's brother, Captain of the Royal Guard and prince-by-marriage, is a large white unicorn stallion. So he combines the knight, the prince, the shining armor, and the tall white stallion in one entity.
  • Fancy Pants, who is considered to be the most important pony in the social circles of Canterlot.
• The Fairly OddParents!: In "Escape From Unwish Island", Sanjay is revealed to usually have dreams where Timmy shows up on a white horse to rescue him.
• Becky Apples from Centaurworld is an elegant and dangerous perlino^note A white horse with a blond mane and tail, resulting from two color dilution genes on a bay coat mare.

Real Life

• "What color was Napoleon's white horse?" Napoléon Bonaparte's horse is best remembered as white due to Jacques-Louis David's 1800 portrait of him. In reality, Napoleon owned and rode over 150 different steeds during his life; many of them were light-coated Arabians, usually greys or greyish-whites. He did, however, own a pure white Norman called Intendant (a.k.a. "Coco"), which was the one he used for parades and other such state functions, going with this trope. There are five different versions of Jacques-Louis David's portrait of Napoleon crossing the Alps. Bonaparte is not pictured riding a pure white horse in any of them. Incidentally, Napoleon really crossed the Alps on a more practical mule. The horse depicted in David's painting is believed to be Napoleon's favorite mount, which he rode at Marengo, Austerlitz and Waterloo, a small grey Arab.
• There's also a story about Napoleon invading Hannover (which George III of Great Britain/the United Kingdom also ruled; it was the home of his ancestors, including his grandfather and great-grandfather, and gave its name to his royal house) and swiping a whole stable full of cream-colored horses. Hannover kept these horses because the white horse is the heraldic animal and symbol of Hannover and its royal house. George was so pissed off he switched to black horses. (He didn't change the Hannoverian arms, though; too much work.)
• The most famous painting of Charles XI of Sweden has him riding a white horse at the battle of Lund (its name was Brilliant and was a gift from the French). Interestingly enough a famous poem about the occasion claims it was black.
• Amedeo Guillet, "The man on the white horse", who led his Amhara cavalry against British troops in East Africa, riding his white horse Sandor.
• There is a story that lampshades/defies the trope: An native man scoffs at the "civilized" man for choosing a white horse as it is rather noticeable. Combat and other activities are best done with as little to draw attention to yourself as possible. The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.
• King William of Orange, a Dutchman who was invited to take the British throne when Britain ran out of acceptable Royalty, fought a war in Ireland against James, the Stuart Catholic pretender to the throne (a man unacceptable as king of England because of his Roman Catholicism). Protestant William defeated James' Catholic army in a Curb Stomp battle at Boyne Water. William wore the Orange of Holland and rode a white horse. these have since become iconic to Irish Protestants, especially in the North. The image of the orange-sashed William on his white horse can be seen everywhere in Protestant and loyalist areas of Northern Ireland to this day. He is also responsible for the Orange in the Loyalist Orange Lodges, and the Orange in the Irish Republic's tricolour.
• Most of the horses used by Frederick the Great of Prussia were white. His favorite was called Condé and according to legend would sometimes even follow him into the rooms of his palace.
• White horses are said to have been sacred to the old Saxons and consequently, after medieval heraldry arose, some territories where they had lived adopted a white horse on red ground as their coat of arms, with slight differences in the positioning of the horse (running or rearing). These territories include the former duchy, electorate and kingdom of Hanover, the former duchy of Brunswick, the county of Kent, the former Prussian province of Westphalia (its arms still form part of the coat of arms of the Land of North Rhine-Westphalia), and the Land of Lower Saxony. Their Anglo-Saxon brethren carried the symbol with them over to England, where it became part of the arms of the county of Kent. ^note Kent was the first part of England to be over-run by the Anglo-Saxons, the ancestors of the modern English; arguably the oldest part of England. Their totemic white horse became symbolic, in Welsh legend, as a white dragon, symbolizing the Saxon English, fated to be eternally at war with the Red Dragon of the Celtic Welsh.
• At least since the 17th century it was traditional for cavalry trumpeters to ride on white or grey horses and wore uniforms that set them apart from the rest of their unit. This was originally partly due to the fact that trumpeters were also used to transport messages (e. g. to request a truce, call on a fortress to surrender, etc.) to the enemy, for which it was useful to be conspicuous.
• Inverted by Alexander the Great, who rode a black stallion named Bucephalus.
• The Camarillo White Horse is the only horse breed to be consistently pure white. It's a new breed that only dates back to 1921.
• When the northern part of Schleswig voted to reunite with Denmark following World War I, the changeover day was marked with a number of events, the most important (at least symbolic wise) event was King Christian X of Denmark crossing the old border riding on a white stallion. This was based on a vision had by a locally reknowned seer, Virgin Fanny, who had foretold that the area would be reunited with Denmark when a Danish Prince rode over the border on a white horse. However there has been persitent rumours that the horse had been painted white, owing to some clearly visible stains on the King's clothes.
• The Chinese equivalent of the term "Prince Charming" is 白馬王子, literally "White horse prince".
• As a publicity stunt, reporter Nellie Bly greeted General Pershing as he returned to US soil after the Pancho Villa expedition. She made sure to ride a white horse because it showed up better on the black-and-white news photographs of the era.

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