Really Seven Hundred Years Old / Literature

• A Court of Thorns and Roses:
  • As a rule, the High Fae tend to look like young adults. All of the High Fae who appear in the series, with the exception of Feyre, Tarquin, Nesta, and Elain are all actually centuries old.
  • Tamlin is old enough to have been an adult during the human/Fae war, which occurred four hundred years ago.
  • Rhysand is around the same age as Tamlin, but looks like he's in his mid-20s.
  • Cassian and Azriel are roughly the same age as Rhys.
• A Dowry of Blood: Dracula looks like a handsome, romanesqe young man, but in reality he's over a thousand years old as vampires can only gain the ability to sire others into other vampires after they reach that age.
• Guild Hunter: A non-negligible part of the main and supporting characters falls under this, they being angels and vampires:
  • In the most extreme cases (the Ancients), angels can live several hundred thousands years, their lifespan having no natural limit. It also takes them a century to reach adulthood, so an angel will always looks considerably younger than his age.
  • As for vampires, their Making slows down the aging process to the point where it becomes insignificant, so they never seems any older than the age at which they were Made.
• The Vampire Chronicles: As vampires, most protagonists fall under that trope, but Claudia most of all, being at least one century old with the appearance of a little girl.
  • The oldest is Akasha, the first vampire, who was the Queen of Ancient Egypt (although not Egyptian herself).
  • Then we meet Memnoch, who is actually The Devil, meaning he was around before time itself. And yet, in all this time, he has never bothered to look if any other planet in the universe has intelligent life.
• Roman Soldier Casca Rufio Longinus pierced the side of Jesus with his lance as He hung on the Cross. This atrocity put Casca under a curse... he would live never-dying as a wandering soldier until Christ's Second Coming. The late Barry Sadler's acclaimed book series Casca: The Eternal Mercenary (22 volumes; 18 by other authors) explains the anti-hero to be over 2000 years old, having fought alongside such historical names as Attila, Cortez, Marco Polo, Adolph Hitler and George Washington.
• In The Crew of the Copper-Colored Cupids, the sorcerous Queen of the Black Market looks around 30, but is in actuality around 520 years old. She's a Humanoid Alien, however, and by her people's standards she's "just" Older Than She Looks: 520 is still well within her expected lifespan, though without her magic she'd been showing signs of physical aging by now.
• The book Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow, which includes rejuvenating technology, includes the line: "My girlfriend was 15 percent of my age, and I was old-fashioned enough that it bugged me."
• The Empirium Trilogy: Angels can live for hundreds of thousands of years and not look a day over thirty. This holds true for any human body they possess as a wraith.
• In Passing Through We have the mercenary Magic Knight Lyra. Having a dollop of Elven blood in her ancestry means she remains quite lovely despite being in her fourth century, though a few strands of silver have begun to creep into her hair in recent years. She admits to being vain enough to dread the swiftly approaching loss of her beauty and vigor, which will start to happen in earnest in only another four or five decades.
• David Eddings' Belgariad:
  • All the Disciples of Aldur are at least 3,000 years old. Nobody points out that when Polgara marries Durnik, who is around thirty, that he is approximately one hundredth of her age. Of course, a few pages after the wedding we learn that he, too, is now a sorcerer, so all's well and good. Or something like that.
  • Nobody explicitly points it out, but Polgara gave up on dating early in life, and then it was just for a couple of weeks to irritate her father and bask in male attention. Early in the first book a boy suggests her marrying a normal man (who obviously loves her) and Polgara's reaction makes it clear the discrepancy is definitely in the front of her mind. And when she's finally ready to try marriage, the Gods give her reason to believe that it means giving up magic and an extended lifespan...just to make sure she really means it.
  • Her father, Belgarath, the oldest man in the world, and all his brother sorcerers appear old at first glance, but are all as healthy and hale as young men, because looking venerable is important to them subconsciously. Polgara is young-seeming because looking old for her is unacceptable.
  • Also, the dryads from the same series. There's a fairly hilarious scene towards the end of the series when one character learns Garion (sorcerer) and Ce'Nedra (dryad) are likely to be young and, er, fruitful for a long, long time. But to temper this, fate decreed they would only have one son (Geran), so Garion dryly notes that he'll be expecting large numbers of daughters.
  • Any sorcerer who learns the secret gains extended lifespan. All Disciples of Aldur are sorcerers (Durnik joins this group), as are the Disciples of Torak and the Chandim (Hounds of Torak), Angaraks who are/were changed into a dog-like beast to better serve. A number of lesser servants of Torak are also sorcerers and thus have the gift. At least one independent sorcerer (a Melcene who doesn't practice religion) is also confirmed in The Malloreon to have lived for at least 3,000 years. The Gorim of the Ulgos is also given extended lifespan to a lesser extent; his time winds down when his successor is born.
• Also from David Eddings, in The Elenium and The Tamuli trilogies:
  • Styrics have naturally longer lifespans than more typical humans like Elenes and Tamuls, and it's a natural characteristic of their race, so all Styrics age similarly. It's noted that Sephrenia has lived for several centuries yet appears youngish if a little age-weary in places.
  • Later on, we learn that Delphae share that same trait (Xanetia is noted as looking no older than 16, but she's actually a bit over 100). Based on what is learned about their history, Delphae apparently were tampered by their god to extend their age, and Styrics may have been altered similarly by their pantheon.
  • Styric Child-Goddess Aphrael is a goddess who incarnates herself into five-year old child forms. Her true form is actually more like sixteen - Sparhawk is very insistent that she remembers the clothes when she uses it - but she apparently finds "cute" easier to work with than "sexy" (She's actually about 30,000, but she still hasn't grown up, though).
• Also, in Strata by Terry Pratchett, the heroine is not only several hundred years old, but also wealthy enough to buy herself a practically endless amount of extended life (while still physically appearing as a well-preserved 30-something).
  • Aside from the hair. That's always the first thing to go, apparently.
  • Not so much wealthy, but so well paid that's day's pay is more than day's cost for life extension.
• H. P. Lovecraft had the avatar of Nyarlathotep, who appeared as a young Egyptian man, but actually was an older-than-time Eldritch Abomination
• J. R. R. Tolkien's:
  • Tolkien's Legendarium:
    • Elves and various other beings in the long-lived/immortal category who of course can not be visually categorised chronologically.
    • At one point in The Lord of the Rings, Legolas reflects that he has lived longer than the kingdom of Rohan has existed — at minimum this makes him 509 during the book.
    • Elrond himself was in his 50s during the War of Wrath against Morgoth and counted almost 3,500 years when he fought alongside King Elendil (his distant grand-nephew approximately 30 generations removed) in the War of the Last Alliance. Elrond is 6,517 years old in The Lord of the Rings and still looks "ageless, neither old nor young."
    • Elrond's daughter Arwen, born 241 years after the War of the Last Alliance, eventually marries the Númenórean Aragorn — who is 2,690 years her junior. She still looks as young as ever at the wedding. She is Aragorn's first cousin 63 times removed. Aragorn's forefather Elros was Elrond's twin brother.
    • Galadriel is even older than Elrond. She was more than 8,300 when she and Frodo departed from the Grey Havens, having been born in Valinor before it was darkened. She is therefore actually older than the entire race of humanity. And the sun and moon.
    • The Silmarillion: Maglor, the last surviving son of Fëanor and last ringleader of the Noldor Rebellion, has been forbidden ever to return to Valinor - so he is still somewhere among us. He is older than Galadriel, who was the youngest child of Finarfin, Fëanor's little brother.
    • All beaten by Círdan. He may be one of the elves who awoke at Cuiviénen, which would make him over 11,000 years old at the end of the Third Age. He even has a beard, somehow, which elves never do until they are many millennia old.
    • Tom Bombadil and Goldberry are as old as the world itself (or at least ol' Tom is) and don't look older than the elves, though Tom does choose to grow a beard.
      Tom Bombadil: Eldest, that's what I am. Mark my words, my friends: Tom was here before the river and the trees; Tom remembers the first raindrop and the first acorn. He made paths before the Big People, and saw the little People arriving. ...When the Elves passed westward, Tom was here already, before the seas were bent. He knew the dark under the stars when it was fearless—before the Dark Lord came from Outside.
    • In a weirdly meta sense Bombadil is older than the world: he and Goldberry were originally from a poem Tolkien wrote in school and the setting grew around him.
    • The Fall of Númenor: The Men of Númenor were granted an extended lifespan and healthy old ages. They don't begin showing signs of aging until they have lived at least two hundred years.
    • The Dragons will live forever unless you manage to kill them.
    • The Ents are also very old, and Fangorn (a.k.a Treebeard), "the eldest and chief of the Ents", is described by Gandalf as "the oldest living thing that still walks beneath the Sun upon this Middle-earth." (The question of who is oldest, Bombadil or Treebeard, has been debated by fans for decades. It's entirely possible that even Tolkien did not know the answer; he chose to let Bombadil's origin be a mystery even to himself.)
    • The Dwarves are not immortal, but their lifespan is longer than that of men. Their lifespan varies between 200 and 300 years old.
    • The Ainur (Valar and Maiar) (who include Sauron and the Wizards) are older than the world, and most of them can look however they please.
  • The Father Christmas Letters: Father Christmas is as old as Christmas itself, giving his age as the then-current year (about 1,930). And his father, Grandfather Yule, is still around too.
• In The Chronicles of Narnia the Pevensies are all older than they look, all having lived to at least 40 within Narnia before returning to England at the same age as they left it. Also a case of Expecting Someone Taller.
  • Jadis in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: She is actually around 1,000 years old.
  • The Voyage of the Dawn Treader has two characters who are extremely old. Both Coriakin and Ramadu are former stars, so they can be presumed to be billions of years old.
    • The book implies that Narnia and Earth do not share the same stars. Coriakin and Ramadu may be "only" as old as Narnia itself, so around 2,000 years at the time of the voyage.
  • The lady of the green Kirtle in The Silver Chair is at least hundreds of years old, possibly close to a thousand.
• In The Eyes of Hisenburg by Frank Herbert there is no reference to how far in the future it is. So you read through the book looking at the technology available and history mentioned and sort of assume that all this happens a few thousand years in the future. At the end, however, there is an implication that that is off by magnitudes and that the entire civilization has stratified for hundreds (or more) of thousands of years.
• In Anne McCaffrey's Crystal Singer series, all Crystal Singers have extended lifespans (along with a healing factor and varying degrees of super senses: in other words, Wolverine without the claws and violence) due to the native symbiotic organisms that permeate the atmosphere of Ballybran, the source of the crystals. At the end of the third book, the protagonist, Killashandra, is revealed to be over 230 years old. (Her first appearance in the first book has her in her early 20s.)
• In the Revelation Space series by Alastair Reynolds, Captain John Brannigan is several hundred years old, due to extreme modifications to his body and prolonged time in cryogenic sleep; he is by far the oldest human character in the series. The Captain was employed by NASA and was involved the Mars landings, yet the series takes place around 2600-2700 A.D. where Earth is rarely ever mentioned.
• In Dragon Bones, Oreg was turned into the Genius Loci of castle Hurog shortly after it was build, making him very, very old. He looks like 17, which leads to much amusement when someone calls him out on "being rude to people older and more experienced than him".
• In Inheritance Cycle:
  • Eragon and Arya are supposedly an unsuitable match because Arya is a century older.
  • Angela is apparently quite old, but those who don't know better (e.g. Nasuada and Roran) mistake her for an ordinary middle-aged woman.
  • Rhunön is old enough to have been alive before the first dragon-elf union as Dragon rider and elves became immortal. That's about 9000 years ago.
  • The Menoa Tree is even older. An elderly elf (before the elves became immortal) sang herself into the oldest tree in the (really old) forest. She's still alive.
• From The Dresden Files, there is the Archive (otherwise known as Ivy), a child (seven when we first meet her, twelve at her last appearance) who has the memories of everything that has ever been written down (or at least everything written down since the first Archive was created), plus the memories of all the previous Archives including her mother. This results in behavior more suited to a 100-year-old, though she does break into kid mode in the presence of Harry Dresden's cat, Mister. She also writes her office's official letters in crayon and watches the otters at the aquarium.
  • Dresdenverse wizards also live longer and age more slowly than ordinary humans. Warden Donald Morgan, Harry's parole officer, looks in his mid-to-late thirties, but has been in wizard law enforcement since just after World War I. Ebenezar McCoy, Harry's mentor, looks to be in his sixties and is really over two hundred.
  • Luccio has a particularly strong case of this, being over two-hundred years old but looking in her mid-twenties due to a wizard with a fondness for Grand Theft Me.
• Princess Abricotine in the Fairy Tale "The Imp Prince" is at least 600 years old, probably more, despite having the appearance of a young woman. (She is a fairy, which explains her age.)
• In Isaac Asimov's Robot novels, the "Spacers" (human colonists of extraterrestrial planets) are universally the beneficiaries of extremely extended lifespans: in The Caves of Steel, a man of about 160 is barely starting to show the signs of age, and much later, in The Robots of Dawn, the plot briefly features a man of 331 (who looks old, but obviously, not that old); the maximum is stated to be around 400, although they are usually half prosthetic by then. In Robots and Empire, a flashback reveals a dying Han Fastolfe having reached 365 years of age (it is implied, however, that the stress of actually giving a damn about Auroran politics, and fighting against Spacers who hold deep prejudices about Earthpeople has made things worse for him and he could have lived even longer otherwise).
• In Tuck Everlasting, Jesse tells Winnie he's 104 years old. She doesn't believe him. He then explains that he's really 24 years old. He was telling the truth the first time.
• In C. J. Cherryh's Alliance/Union universe:
  • Cyteen discusses how rejuv has affected society, as people can now live past 130 and still appear forty, and consequently keep control of family businesses and live to see their great-grandchildren grow up. The only Union citizens who really look old (apart from possible hair color changes) are those in rejuv failure.
  • In Serpent's Reach, the two oldest Family members in the Reach are effectively immune from assassination, as their younger relatives want to know what the practical limits are on their rejuv technique.
• Holo from Spice and Wolf is a centuries-old wolf god who assumes the form of a teenage girl.
• In Roger Zelazny works:
  • This Immortal has the main character, Conrad Nomikos, look to be a powerfully-built man in his twenties. But we keep meeting people who know he's older... and older... and older... By the end of the book, the best guess is that he's between two and three hundred, and may never get any older.
  • Zelazny loved to play with the concept of immortality and agelessness: Lord of Light, Isle of the Dead or The Chronicles of Amber series have really 700 (or 7,000, or 70,000...)-years-old characters.
  • And in A Night in the Lonesome October, Jack and his dog Snuff have both been to several of the meetings to determine the fate of the world. These happen when there is a full moon on Halloween, which happens only five or six times a century. At the very least this puts Jack past his early-30s appearance, and Snuff well past the expected lifespan of a moderate-to-large dog. Rumors about the pair are mentioned to have been floating around for several of the meetings, indicating they are older still; one of the theories espoused is that Jack is Cain himself.
• The Wheel of Time: Channelers enjoy a drastically extended lifespan, the extension likely dependent on power and usage. The oldest living Aes Sedai—and a powerful one at that—is approximately 300 years old. The oldest living channeler met in the series (the Aes Sedai Oath Rod drastically reduces their lifespan) is about 800.
  • Not to mention the fact that the Forsaken are all several thousand years old, although it is a technicality of sorts, given that they are Type II immortals and have been stuck with the Sealed Evil in a Can for most of that time.
• The Night Watch (Series) is rife with this, since all Others except certain witches stop aging when they are initiated, and nearly all Others can change their appearance through magic.
  • They don't really stop aging at initiation, since most are initiated when they're children (like Anton). They age normally until about their 20s, at which point they stop.
  • With the witches, they rapidly age to an "old hag" appearance in a matter of years (due to their intimate connection to the primal forces of nature), but keep themselves alive through magic and wear a near-constant disguise.
  • Children turned into vampires or werewolves still grow up to adult age, as evidenced by Kostya and a young female werewolf Anton encounters in several books.
  • It's stated that Others can expect to live for centuries, since, apparently, the aging process isn't completely stopped but has slowed down to a crawl. It also depends on the Other's power level. Most encountered Others of the Beyond Classification category tend to be many centuries (if not millennia) old. If Gesar is indeed the same one described in the Epic of King Gesar, then he's at least 800 years old.
• Subverted in Bloodsucking Fiends. After discovering Jody is a vampire, Tommy immediately assumes that it means she's also hundreds of years old. Jody is then forced to spend the next ten minutes explaining that she was turned into a vampire just days ago and she's just twenty-six — physically and chronologically.
• Almost all the vampires in Twilight fall under this category.
  • The Cullens are of varying degree of oldness, but most of them are already inhumanly old. The only exceptions are the two youngest, Emmett and Rosalie, who are chronologically 90 years old during the events of the first book. The oldest is Carlisle; despite looking in his 30s, he is actually over 300 years old.
  • The Volturi twins Jane and Alec appear to be in their mid-teens (and played by 17-18 year old actors in the film version). Though their actual age is never stated in the books, the date when they were turned to vampires has been ballparked to have been around the year 800, which would make them roughly 1200 years old.
  • Vladimir and Stefan (or "Dracula 1" and "Dracula 2") of the Romanian coven are even older than Jane and Alec, since they recounted having ruled Transylvania for several centuries before the twins, recently turned, destroyed their castle and annihilated everyone but them.
  • Volturi leaders Aro, Caius, their respective wives (Sulpicia and Athenodora), and Marcus are possibly the oldest vampires in the world. It's offhandedly mentioned that they have been policing the vampire world for over 3000 years.
  • The Quilete "werewolves" are not this as most of them are actually stated to be slightly younger than the physically appear (Jacob is only 15 in the books, but appears to be in his early 20s). However, it is stated at one point that they will remain at that same physical age as long as they continue to regularly phase into their wolf forms, meaning that they are capable of becoming as immortal as the vampires are.
• While prolong treatment in Honor Harrington has a working limit of about 250-300 years, it still tends to produce some really squicky effects. Like you could be 25, a seasoned military veteran controlling weapons capable of vaporising frakking planets, but you still would look (and, biologically, be) twelve.
  • The series normally seems to avoid calling attention to it except at odd moments; as when one of Honor Harrington's personal guard is musing that the Steadholder they're guarding is older than any of them... but looks like someone's teen sister. The first time a Grayson admiral (whose planet doesn't have prolong) boards a Manticoran ship, he has to fight back his gut reaction that the ship appears crewed by kids.
    • Namely, in the latest novel she looks about 22-25, but is actually 63, while her father and husband, both centenarians, look like they're in their early forties. At the same time her mother, at the same age, but an offworlder with a more advanced prolong, looks early to mid-thirties.
  • When one considers that it has been mentioned that all naval personnel have contraceptives (usually implanted) as a requirement of serving in the field, almost all navies have mixed-sex crews, and that most are pretty liberal when it comes to what crew do off duty... not mentioning that the people cheerfully having sex look like pubescent kids and young teens (not to mention the rapes inflicted on female prisoners in The Honor of the Queen), not mentioning it much is probably the better part of discretion.
• Brian Jacques' Castaways of the Flying Dutchman: the heroes are a boy and his dog who were given eternal life for being the only good souls aboard the Flying Dutchman when it was cursed. Ben, the boy, has effectively been fourteen since the year 1620.
• The title characters in Diana Wynne Jones's The Homeward Bounders effectively do not age and are invulnerable. Jamie Hamilton, the youngest of them, became a Homeward Bounder at twelve, and appears no more than a year older as he begins to narrate the book, but as he says, "You wouldn't believe how old I am." He eventually realises that he's met his little sister's grandchildren, who are older than he is.
• The 'family' in Diana Wynne Jones's Archer's Goon gives birth order and the fact that by the time the youngest was born the older four were already grown and flown, but not ages. However, they all look various forms of young, and Archer mentions offhandedly that 'my family don't age at the rate you people do.' Awful at her most perceptive also accuses Dillian of being thousands of years old, but this seems unlikely given the aging bizzarrities provoked by Venturus and Hathaway's time-travel experiments. Never made clear exactly what they are, since they're not from Earth or Outer Space and seem to be wildly magic with technology very handy and even necessary in the application thereof. Uhm... don't look behind this spoiler tag if you might want to read the book. Seriously, don't, even if it's a habit. It'll ruin the whole point. Jones does a lot of reveals and twists as policy. The number she put in the original Howl's Moving Castle was impressive.
• In Elizabeth Moon's Familias Regnant series, one of the major plot drivers is "rejuv", which reverses aging and brings you back to a biological 25 or 30 years old. You then age normally, but can do it again when you start feeling old. This causes no end of problems, including having successful parents continue to run companies instead of turning them over to the next generation, having the military be loaded with senior sergeants and admirals instead of having them retire to make way for the next generation, etc. This means that the current generation of people will never take over responsibility, since their 30 year old parents are doing fine. Further, this is scaring the heck out of neighboring groups who fear the resultant population explosion of perpetual 30 year olds, with the attendant pressure to take over the planets of the neighboring groups.
• Larry Niven:
  • In his Known Space stories, every human above the age of 40 takes a longevity drug called Boosterspice as a matter of course. This has affected humanity's attitudes and prejudices to the point that when hero Louis Wu (himself 250 years old in the body of a 20 year old) meets a human being who hasn't taken Boosterspice (and thus is "suffering" from wrinkles, gray hair, a missing tooth or two, and the scars one normally finds on a person of 40+ ), he thinks the other man is a member of a human-like alien species.
  • Jerome Corbell, the hero of A World Out of Time starts the story waking up after spending 220 years in suspended animation. By the end of the novel, because of time-dilation caused by a close encounter with a black hole, he's at least five billion years old.
• In the Night Huntress books, vampires do not age after being turned. So, Bones is around 200 years old and looks like he is in his thirties (he was 24 when turned, but people aged more quickly in his day), and Mencheres is around 4,500 and looks even younger than Bones.
• In Discworld, we have the Abbot of the History Monks, who through the process of advanced reincarnation wound up in the body of a young baby — with most of his knowledge intact. Hard to say precisely how old he is, if he's gone around a few times like that. Of course, the History Monks play with time anyway, so....
  • On the other hand, Lu-Tze the Sweeper never bothered with reincarnation and is still quite spry for someone over 800 years old.
    • Most history monks don't bother with reincarnation. It's the Abbot who can't get the hang of "circular aging"....
  • These exact words are used of High Priest Dios in Pyramids when he claims to be seven thousand years old. He's really infinite years old, having lived the same seven thousand years in a perpetual loop.
  • Downplayed with Sally from Thud! She looks about sixteen but is actually eighty, which is relatively young for a vampire.
  • Albert, Death's manservant, is actually Alberto Malich, who founded Unseen University some two milennia ago. Time doesn't really exist in Death's Domain.
• Dead Boy from the Nightside books looks seventeen but is chronologically in his 40s or 50s.
• In the story Child of All Ages, the protagonist, having lived several hundred years as a permanent child, is quite happy to continue life. Even if she is stuck as a child. She does bemoan the fact that modern society makes it pretty hard to be independent as a child, but she still can't wait to see what life brings next.
• In John Ringo's Council Wars series, Bast the Wood Elf is over a thousand years old but looks 14. A very well developed 14 mind you, if the cover art is anything to go by.
• Durzo Blint of The Night Angel Trilogy by Brent Weeks fits this rather well by actually being seven hundred years old.
• Roland Deschain of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series turns out to be Really 700 Years Old due to the space time continuum of his world being ripped apart. He managed to survive the destruction of his entire civilization.
  • It's actually a bit unclear whether or not this trope truly applies to Roland. Although the books seem to imply that he has really been kicking around for centuries, the companion guidebook The Road to the Dark Tower suggests that due to the breakdown of spacetime, though he was born hundreds of years ago, Roland has actually lived a subjectively normal lifespan.
    • However he did pull a major Rip Van Winkle when he slept long enough for Marten to go from alive and kicking to a skeleton fragile enough to turn into dust at the slightest touch.
    • King later revised this to be a fake skeleton placed there to make him think he'd slept that long.
• Averted by Miles Vorkosigan, whose Admiral Naismith persona is rumored to be an old man who's undergone high-tech rejuvenation therapy. He's actually 17.
  • Note that it's possible to have this played straight in that universe, but the most practical way is brain transplant.
• Let the Right One In, a Swedish horror novel by John Ajvide Lindqvist, features Eli, a vampire that was 12 years old when transformed. Eli can't remember exactly how long it's been, but it's implied to be around 200 years.
• The Piper's Children from Keys to the Kingdom. They were brought to the House by the Piper, and in the House one doesn't age. They've been stuck as kids for several hundred years.
  • Don't forget pretty much every House Denizen before the remake of the multiverse has been around for thousands of years.
• John Carter of Mars has been thirty for as long as he can remember, and is stated to have dandled the unnamed narrator's grandfather on his knee when said grandfather was an infant. The nature of his immortality is never explained.
  • Asides from that, the average lifespan for a Barsoomian is 1,000 years, and they don't start looking old until they start hitting the end of their life.
    • There are also a few instances of people lasting even longer than that due to suspended animation or body-hijacking.
• In The Alchemyst, Nicolas Flamel is known to be 678, and Dee is over 400, but it doesn't stop there. Although the date is not given, Scathach is 2,000+, and Morrigan is old enough to have been an ancient egyptian god, while Hekate is supposedly as old as time itself.
  • Don't forget Cernunnos, who's even older than Hekate.
• Zoe Nightshade from Percy Jackson and the Olympians. In fact, any of the Hunters who have been members for a long time. Artemis herself prefers to appear as a 12-year-old girl when she's traveling with them. And then there are the rest of the gods and mythological characters...
  • Take, for example, satyrs, who age twice as slow as humans. In The Heroes of Olympus, Coach Hedge is the 106-year-old chaperone of the kids as they travel on their quest, despite only appearing 53. This is perhaps his least notable characteristic.
• Har, the wolf-king of Osterland, and Deth, the High One's harpist in The Riddle Master Trilogy by Patricia A. McKillip.
• Many of Robert A. Heinlein's recurring characters are members of the Howard Families, and blessed with natural longevity on the order of a couple hundred years, but none more so than Lazarus Long. By his last appearance Lazarus is several thousand years old, though he appears to be in his thirties due to both being a Howard and future medicine. At one point someone tells him he cannot die when he seems to be mortally wounded. The reader is left to decide whether that is the plea of a distraught spouse or a prescient statement.
  • Long claims he met another Heinlein character, a doctor who had invented a machine that could predict when you'd die, and got no answer. It is implied but not made explicit that Lazarus would live forever; the doctor's machine might also have indicated Lazarus' death during World War I thanks to Time Travel.
• The White and the Voices of Trudi Canavan's The Age of the Five trilogy are frozen at the ages they were chosen by their respective gods. The Wilds are also an example, as the second youngest immortal Mirar appears to be in his 40s, despite being at least 1000 years old. The Gull is an even better example: he's the oldest surviving immortal in the world despite appearing to be no more than seven or eight years old.
• Neal Stephenson has:
  • In Anathem, Fraa Jad offhandedly makes it known that he is at least several hundred - and possibly several thousand - years old.
  • Enoch Root, who appears in both the The Baroque Cycle and Cryptonomicon, three or four centuries apart.
• In Sewer, Gas & Electric, Kite is a former Sweet Polly Oliver veteran of the American Civil War ...and is still alive, and fairly healthy, in the early 21st century. No magic, super-science, or non-human blood involved: she's just a statistical outlier for lifespan. Most people assume she's in her nineties, and nuts.
• In Perry Rhodan, most of the main cast is a bit older than they look. Perry Rhodan was born in 1936 and now it is 5050. He stopped aging when he was 39. Atlan da Gonozal was born 8044 bc, but he did sleep about 10,000 years while waiting for the earthlings to invent space travel.
• Peter Pan:
  • Peter Pan's exact age is unknown. He looks to be a boy, but due to his immortality, it is unknown when he was born. Author J.M. Barrie says that Peter Pan abandoned his parents to go to the Neverland while in Kensington Gardens, the western part of Hyde Park, with Hyde Park being opened to the general public in 1637. Hyde Park was a also popular duelling spot during the 18th century (1700s), with 172 duels taking place, and causing 63 deaths, with it being possible that Peter learned how to duel Captain Hook by spying on these events. Much like Captain Hook, Peter Pan is likely to be hundreds of years old, and likely even older than Hook.
  • Captain James Hook's exact age is also unknown; however, it may be able to be inferred from a fan theory. Hook is implied to have lived during the Golden Age of Piracy, which was from 1650 to 1726, the same time period that Pirates of the Caribbean takes place in. This coincides with the Restoration era in England, and the reign of King Charles II, with Peter Pan author J.M. Barrie comparing Hook to a young King Charles II in his "handsome" looks, as well as his aristocratic manner and dress. Charles II also had dozens of mistresses, and at least 12 confirmed illegitimate children, including a "James Beauclerk", his second son with former prostitute-turned-stage-actress Nell Gwyn, who was born on Christmas Day (December 25) in 1671. However, James Beauclerk disappeared without a trace while going to school in Paris, France in September 1680 or 1681, with his mother being told that he had "died of a sore leg", a vague response that could mean anything, per a later relative's account. Barrie also states in Peter Pan that James served as "Blackbeard's bo'sun" on Blackbeard's ship, The Queen Anne's Revenge. Blackbeard was active as a pirate from 1716 to 1718, which means that James would have been about 45 years old when he joined Blackbeard's crew in 1716. He either left Blackbeard's crew or escaped Blackbeard's execution in 1718, whereupon he then commandeered a brigantine ship (The Jolly Roger), recruited a pirate crew, and sailed his way to the Neverland. "Hook" was also not his real name, as confirmed by Barrie, but likely a nickname he started going by when Peter Pan cut off his right hand and fed it to the Crocodile. The events of Peter Pan (2003) take place in 1904, in the Edwardian era, so Hook is at least 233 years old, but looks about 40 years old - the age of actor Jason Isaacs when he played Hook - because he's effectively immortal, so long as he stays in Neverland with his ship and his crew.
• The Canim, a whole race of werewolves in Codex Alera, can live up to 1000 years and still have the appearance/strength associated with youth.
• The Shadowhunter Chronicles:
  • While Magnus Bane's exact age is never given we know that he looks around nineteen and has to be older than two hundred and younger than seven hundred. Historically speaking (and given that Camille wasn't lying about his anchestory) he can't be much older than three hundred years old. In The Mortal Instruments he is implied to be lying about his age (telling Alec that he's eight hundred years old) while The Bane Chronicles flat out state that he lies about it whenever it suits him. He eventually admits to being around four hundred.
  • Tessa Gray is over 150 years old, but looks like she's in her early twenties at most.
  • It is explained that after a certain point in their life all warlocks stop getting older, and so go through the centuries. In the late 1990s or early 2000s, there are said to be eight warlocks still alive who were born before the pact with Raziel and are therefore over a thousand years old.
  • The vampire Camille Belcourt was one of the oldest vampires until she was killed. She looked like a young, blonde woman.
  • Lily Chen looks like a woman in her early twenties. In fact, she is also a vampire and is nearly a hundred and thirty years old.
  • Raphael Santiago had the appearance of a 15 year old boy because at that age he was turned into a vampire. In fact, he is roughly seventy years old at the time of the plot.
  • The Seelie Queen claims to have met Thomas the Rhymer, which gives her an age of at least eight hundred years. However, it is implied that she is significantly older, because her male counterpart, the Unseelie King, is stated to be thousands of years old.
  • The half-elf Meliorn lived in London in the 1870s, where he had trouble with Will Herondale and a few others, and he had to travel to New York. There he met Clary Fray in the 2000s. In one hundred and thirty years he has grown little older, and at one point it is even claimed to be about a thousand years old.
  • All fairies are very long-lived, and can live for hundreds or even thousands of years. For this reason, a lot of fairies qualify for this trope.
• Harry Potter: While not immortal, witches and wizards can live quite a while past their first century:
  • Dumbledore is in his 110s throughout the series and still badass enough to take on Lord Voldemort at the end of the fifth book when he's 116. His eventual death comes from a Curse and not any sort of natural cause. Characters in his age range include his brother Aberforth, oldest friend Elphias, and ex lover Grindelwald are also all healthy and of sound mind. The former two survived the series and Grindelwald dies by Suicide by Cop and not poor health.
  • There are a few characters who are a good bit older than the four of them but their health isn't as good. During Harry's fifth-year examinations there's a witch named Griselda Marchbanks who lived long enough to give Dumbledore his exams. It's never stated how old she is but it's probably in the 150 range. Bathilda Bagshot, a historian, is alive throughout most of the series but she lived near the Dumbledores when the three children were kids. She's also Grindelwald's great aunt. She's dead by the time Harry "meets" her but it's never stated if she'd died of natural causes or if the Death Eaters killed her. She's also probably somewhere in the 150 ballpark.
  • And of course there's Nicholas Flamel. Though never seen in the books themselves (he's in the prequel Fantastic Beasts film series), he is stated to be over 600 years old. Although this is specifically because he can make the Philosopher's Stone, unlike most people. His wife is presumably somewhere in his age range as well as she also uses the stone.
  • The basilisk who appears in Chamber of Secrets is nearly as old as Hogwarts itself. It is the same basilisk Salazar Slytherin raised as part of his plan to kill the school's Muggle-born students a thousand years ago.
• L. Frank Baum's Queen Zixi of Ix: The titular character. Except that she can see her real age in her reflection.
• In David Weber's Empire from the Ashes, the Imperial military uses cybernetic enhancements which have a side effect of increasing the recipient's lifespan to an average of 600 or so years. Horus and the original crew of the Dahak are chronologically over 50,000 years old, counting time spent in stasis.
• Deverry: The wiard Nevyn swore an oath in his youth that he would not rest until he had set right the mistakes that resulted in the deaths of three of his friends. The gods made him keep his oath, he lived to be about 450. This actually turns out to be good for his official profession: He makes and sells medicine for a living, and a doctor who appears to be roughly seventy (in a society where fifty is old) and is still in perfect health would presumably be very good at maintaining his (and by extension, his customer's) health.
• The Galactic Milieu had technology that allowed people to rejuvenate to a younger age. Thanks to a certain gene complex, most members of the Remillard family rejuvenated automatically, leaving most of them looking like twenty or thirty somethings indefinitely. Rogi (The oldest member of the family not counting Mark as Atoning Unifex) still looked like he was in his early fifties at 150.
• In the Starfire series of novels, a few individuals are lucky enough to be selected for the very expensive "Antigerone" treatment. They'll look and feel like they're still in their prime at age 60, and can live for over two centuries.
• Played with Marianne Engel in The Gargoyle. She claims to be this, but given her extremely irrational behavior, the narrator is convinced that she's just crazy. Not that it stops him from falling in love with her. But after her suicide, he finds among her belongings two perfectly preserved ancient manuscripts that implies that her story maybe has some truth.
• In Octavia Butler's Fledgling, Shori is a 53 year old vampire (or Ina, as they call themselves) in the body of a 10 year old, because Ina age slower than humans. This leads to some squick, due to the Hemo Erotic tendencies of the Ina, which means that Shori's 23-year-old human symbiont is having sex with a 10-year-old.
• In Sundered Lands, the final chapter of Full Circle reveals that Percy is actually thousands of years old, and he maintained looking middle-aged due to the Vile Rune of Neverending Life.
• In The Excalibur Alternative the alien captors infuse the English with technology to make them age slower. Granted, they also used "sleep" to help.
• In Kevin Hearne's Iron Druid Chronicles the druid Atticus O'Sullivan tells people that he is twenty one. People naturally assume that he means years rather than centuries. He uses a magical potion to maintain a youthful appearance but he predates Christianity. The vampire Leif is around a thousand years old and the local warevolves have members a few centuries old. The various gods and demi-gods can be virtually immortal.
• "Tale of Norna-Gest": The wandering storyteller Norna-Gest reveals himself as a three-hundred years old immortal.
• In the Kim Newman Dark Future novels, Elder Nguyen Seth, The Summoner. In Demon Download it's stated that Seth first came into contact with Roger Duroc's family during the Albigension Crusade. That took place in the 13th century, and it's hinted by Seth that he's much older.
  Elder Seth: "I remember a hundred years ago as if it were the last minute. A thousand, two thousand, ten thousand years ago."
• Dirge for Prester John: Everyone in Pentexore by way of the Fountain of Youth.
• In Tales of Kolmar, the king of the dragons is a thousand years old. When he's turned into a human he looks young, and gradually starts to loosen up and act less formally, but from time to time something happens that makes the weight of his years seem to come back, most evident in his eyes. A middle-aged human character once absently refers to him as "son" and he then affectionately refers to her as "daughter", saying that in the span of his lifetime she had been born only yesterday.
• In The Year of Rogue Dragons, this applies to all dragons in human form.
• In Phenomena is Sha-ra whom look like to be in his mid 50s or early 70s is really 413 years old, and let's not bring up Millian...
• Due to the strain that their magic places upon their bodies, the Immortals in The Extraordinaires prefer to inhabit the bodies of children.
• The vampires in Poppy Z. Brite's Lost Souls (1992) play this straight and subvert it a little. While ageless, its hinted at in the book that due to their violent lifestyles, someone or something tends to kill them sooner or later. Christian, the oldest vampire we meet in the book, is "only" a few hundred years old. Zillah is 100 years old, and Molokai and Twigg a bit younger than him.
• In The Truth of Rock And Roll, Johnny first believes The Leader Of The Pack to be the Anthropomorphic Personification of "all the rebels in black leather jackets in all the rock songs ever made", which would actually make him younger than he looks, since the story is set in the early Sixties. However, Johnny quickly realizes that the Leader is actually "every night-riding outlaw who ever rode a black horse through a song", which makes him this trope.
• Wanderer from The Host (2008) claims to be thousands of Earth years old, though she admits that she's lost count of her real age. Plus, she's spent a large chunk of her life in suspended animation. Her species doesn't age, though it makes no difference to their apparent age — they survive by taking host bodies, so they look only as old as their hosts.
• In Way Station, the protagonist fought in the American Civil War, and looks only middle-aged in the 1960s. This is because as long as he's inside the Station, he doesn't age.
• Many characters in Dora Wilk Series look much younger than they are, thanks to either magic, vampirism or immortality. For example, magician Rose looks about eighty despite being over one thousand, vampire lord Gajusz is over three hundred and looks the same as when he was changed, and Lucifer looks like he's in his mid-forties despite being over forty thousand. Downplayed with werewolves, who age slower than people - forty-years-old alpha looks like he's twenty-something.
• Alexander Velitzyn, main character of J. M. Siderova's ''The Age of Ice is frozen in suspended animation during the Russian-British expedition in search of the Northwest Passage in 1785 and after being revived stays looking in his mid forties for over two centuries.
• In the Hyperion Cantos, the poet Martin Silenus is more than 700 years old at the beginning of the books, which makes him one of the few Old Earth survivors and one of the oldest people in the Retz. He managed to live that long partly because he spend nearly 300 years in stasis in a sub-lightspeed spaceship, but mostly because he uses and abuses the anti-aging "Poulsen" treatment, which is readily available in the Retz (although very expensive) but rarely used at such extent.
  • In Endymion, which take places 272 years after the original books' events, Martin Silenus is still alive, and although it is never stated as a fact, he is almost certainly the oldest human being in the universe.
• In Steven Brust's Dragaera novels, the average Dragaeran lifespan is two to three thousand years. Many Dragaerans believe Sethra Lavode to be ten times that old. In truth, she's somewhere around two hundred fifty thousand years old.
• First Light: A dog version. The Chickchu dogs which were raised and bred in Gracehope live as long as their owners, who got them as kids.
• in the Ukiah Oregon series Ukiah/Atticus/ Magic Boy are really ~300 years old, while Rennie Shaw and several other Pack members are well into their second century.
• The novel Inamorata is set in the 1890s. One of the main characters, Odile, was born in the 1500s and has been immortal since she was in her 30s. The older woman that turned her was over 400 years old at the time. Odile's archnemesis is a man who figured out who and what she was after seeing a portrait of her in an art museum, made by an artist who died 200 years before he was born.
• The legend of the Wandering Jew is used by C.S. Forester in his book of short stories about Nazi Germany, The Nightmare. There is a reference to the legend of Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew (see Folklore, below) whose wanderings are interrupted between 1939 and 1945 due to his ethnicity. But as he is cursed to eternal life, he survives the death camps, although his sufferings are magnified. especially when Dr Mengele cottons on as to who he's got, and tried to splice out the immortality so as to transplant it into Waffen SS stormtroopers... and in an inversion, a certain German couple seemingly end up as Wandering Gentiles, cursed to walk the Earth forever as penance for their crimes. an American driver picks up a confused elderly couple called Adolf and Eva and ends up wondering about the encounter...
• Praen, in The Will Be Done, is fourteen or so centuries old (Barely a teenager!). Unlike many variations, his appearance seems to be middle-aged, not particular youthful or old. He still manages to lampshade the whole 'older-than-I-look' deal.
• In Mikhail Akhmanov's Arrivals from the Dark, the higher caste Bino Faata can potentially live for several thousand years (on the flip-side, the lower Faata castes are specifically engineered to live for several years at most). This partly transfers to their Half-Human Hybrid descendants, some of whom are known to have lived for over 100 years (although many die unnatural deaths, so it's hard to say) and one is recorded as having died at the age of 172. The Lo'ona Aeo can also live for centuries, which also affects how they perceive time. One Lo'ona Aeo mentions to be deeply grieving the loss of his father, only for a human to point out that it happened decades ago. The Metamorphs/Proteids live for several millennia, although Immortal Procreation Clause seems to be in effect, and there are very few Metamorphs. A Metamorph named the Exile has been on Earth since the 13th century. Of course, being able to alter his external appearance (most Metamorphs can shapeshift into anything, but he has a rare birth defect limiting his abilities) means he can look like a young man or an old man, or anything in-between.
  • In Captain French, or the Quest for Paradise, which Akhmanov co-authored with Christopher Nicholas Gilmore, all of humanity is The Ageless, so there are probably quite a few individuals who have been alive for centuries. It's doubtful that there are many people who have been around for millennia, since odds are that many would be killed by accidents, disease, or violence. The titular protagonist is subjectively about 2000 years old (objectively, he's about 20,000), having spent much of his time on his relativistic ship, and is, in all probability, the oldest human alive (he was the original NASA pilot who first tested the relativistic drive back in the 21st century), as far as birth dates go. While out there, discovering stars, he managed to survive until the invention of the CR procedure, which freezes the aging process. Being in his 50s with graying hair, he is an odd sight among the denizens of the galaxy, the vast majority of whom look to be in their 20s or 30s. When asked, he reflects that he chooses to keep his slightly aged appearance out of nostalgia and to set himself apart. People who speak with him occasionally get a feeling of the Time Abyss separating them, especially when French mentions to have personally known that person's distant ancestor.
• A possibility in Sergey Lukyanenko's Line of Delirium for those wealthy enough to be able to afford aTan. Several characters in the novels have only recently been resurrected and can be over 100 years old while looking like their younger selves, since that's when their body matrix was saved. Emperor Grey is one of the oldest humans in the 'verse, being close to 200 years old, and is one of the first people to use aTan.
• In The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August, as people who have lived dozens of lives with centuries, if not millennia of knowledge and memories, all kalachakras count as this mentally.
  • Amusingly lampshaded by one dying kalachakra Harry visits as a child.
    "You've trained as a doctor, haven't you? I can't stand bloody doctors, especially when they're five years old."
• The adult members of The Addams Family are implied to be this in several tie-in novels. One by Jack Sharkey has Uncle Fester, after receiving a draft notice, comment at the induction center that he already did military service under General Washington and that he was in the legendary cave with Robert the Bruce; while in W. F. Miksch's The Addams Family Strike Back Morticia alludes to the fact that they knew Mother Shipton personally.
  • Note that this is not the case in the TV series, where Gomez and Morticia are established as both being 22 in the flashback to their wedding and celebrate their 13th wedding anniversary in the present day, or in the films, where Fester's year of birth is listed as 1947 in the caption on his portrait.
• In Watersong, two of the sirens, Penn and Thea, are truly ancient, having lived since the time of the Greek gods.
• In The Dinosaur Lords, it's stated that in theory, all Paradisians are immortal, but in practice, very few survive past their first century. The record holders are:
  • Lady Delgao, the Empress-Mother of Nuevaropa and ancestress to the current Emperor, who's roughly three hundred years old;
  • The possibly-non-human Oracular Urchin Karyl meets, who professes being two and a half centuries old. Being the Genius Loci of Paradise, she's far older.
• In Aeon Legion: Labyrinth, most citizens of Saturn City are several centuries old since they have technology that can roll back time to restore their youth. They observe a cultural tradition of dyeing a lock of their hair silver for each lifetime they live. Most of them now have completely silver hair.
• In The Girl from the Miracles District, it eventually turns out that Robin is at least two centuries old, despite looking younger than thirty-odd-years old Nikita.
• The Last Janissary in The Dire Saga is extremely old. He remembers when it was Constantinople, not Istanbul. He generally looks like a man in his mid-50s.
• In Neogicia, Emperor Keynn Lucans is more than 1000 years old and looks in his mid-thirties, thanks to a Longevity Treatment.
• The titular Mediochre from the Mediochre Q Seth Series is a four hundred year old in a fifteen-year-old body. An interesting case in that, due to an accident involving rejuvenating dragon blood, his body started slowly de-aging when he was late middle-aged until it plateaued around the fifteen-year-old mark. He has been stuck in the middle of puberty for about a century.
• The Crimson Shadow: Siobhan, a half-elf, looks around twenty but is nearly sixty. Brind'Amour is four hundred, but he at least appears as an old man.
• Underneath - A Merfolk Tale: Merfolk live to be around 600 years. Although most live under the water in The City, some have been on the surface for centuries, changing identities and becoming some of the richest families on the planet.
• Karl Edward Wagner's Kane Series titular character looks like a very muscular and strong man in his forties, while in fact he's been around since the dawn of time, as he was one of the first humans created by a Mad God. He also met most famous leaders and artist throughout history, including legendary ruler Halbros-Serrantho (whom he served as an advisor) and mad poet Opyros.
• In The Big One series some of the protagonists are long-lived humans, the oldest of whom were born over 3,000 years ago. They are not immortal, they can be killed by accident, disease, suicide or foul play as easily as anybody else. Roughly one human in six and a half million will stop aging once they reach their mid-thirties. After that point, they are sterile and can only have children by adoption. As a group, their main concern is living quietly and comfortably, not getting noticed and not getting bored with their apparently endless existence. In the last century, they've started to work towards helping the world survive the growing threat to human survival from out-of-control technology. One of the themes of the book is how the older of the long-lived have steadily-increasing difficulty in adapting to the changing society around them - and that the surveillance of society means that their existence will soon be exposed.
• In The Spirit Thief:
  • Benehime and her siblings are five thousand years old, owning to their divine parentage.
  • Alric, Lord of Storm's second-in-command, is pushing thousand, as his wish upon becoming a League of Storms knight was to be ageless.
  • The Immortal Empress is eight hundred years old thanks to being Benehime's favourite human for centuries.
• In The Machineries of Empire, Nirai Kujen is infamous among the higher echelons of the Hexarchate as the only man who's managed to use the Reality Warping properties of the calendar to achieve immortality. He's an important player in Jedao's backstory, a few hundred years back, and is still kicking in the story's "present day".
• The vampires in The Saga of Darren Shan are not immortal, only very long-lived. And several vampires there are much older than they look.
  • Larten Crepsley looks like he's between thirty and forty years old, but he's actually over two hundred years old.
  • The vampire Vancha March is about three hundred years old, and looks as if he was over thirty years old.
  • Kurda Smahlt looks like about twenty years, but actually he is over a hundred and twenty years old.
  • Hibernius Tall is not a vampire, but a kind of magical being, and is at least 1,200 years old, but looks as if he were thirty years old. The same is true of his sister Evanna.
• Villains by Necessity:
  • Kaylana, who was a child during the last war between Good and Evil... over a hundred and fifty years ago.
  • Blackmail tops her by being one of the heroes who FOUGHT in the war 150 years ago. In the present all he has is a bit of grey hair. He says his armor is enchanted, implying its magic kept him alive.
  • Mizzamir, the antagonist, was one of the heroes who won that war. As an elf, he's still going strong, and his only visible sign of aging is that his blond hair has turned silver.
• The Soviet children's book Old Khottabych (and the film based on the book) has a young boy find an ancient vessel and rub it, causing a genie to emerge. Calling himself Hassan Abdul-rahman ibn Khattab, the genie claims to be over 3700 years old, having spent centuries trapped in the vessel. Later on, a friend of the boy finds a vessel containing Khottabych's even older brother. Unlike Khottabych, who swore to serve his savior, his bitter brother swore to kill his.
• Many Waters has its fifteen-year-old protagonists travel back to just before The Great Flood, and fits with the Biblical account of people living for centuries. Yalith, who looks about their age, objects to the idea that she's old enough to marry, given that she's "only" one hundred.
• Valentine of Last Mage is very old. In specifics, we know he was there at the founding of the United States, so he's at least 235 years old.
• April, in The Tales of Paul Twister, apparently has a very extended lifespan, even for a magic user. When Paul hears about her, he takes it as confirmation that she is like him, except that his aging got slowed down at a much earlier point.
• Area 51: The alien characters are revealed to have been around for millennia, as their technology can stop them aging. Duncan and Turcotte are revealed to also be like this.
• I've Been Killing Slimes for 300 Years and Maxed Out My Level: Azusa, who is at least 300 years old but still looks 17, along with most every other non-human character such as the dragons, the demons, and the slime spirits, who've all looked like young adults or little children for several decades or centuries.
• In Goosebumps there is the story The Werewolf of Fever Swamp, in which Grady's friend Will looks like a 12 year old boy, but has actually been terrorizing the swamp for eighty years. Werewolves apparently don't age like normal humans there if they have enough to eat. At one point he even says that he is much older than eighty.
• In This Sceptre'd Isle, Sidhe Denoriel's guise as human nobleman Lord Denno slips a bit when someone notices he's been speaking about certain Ancient Greek philosophers as if he knew them personally.
• A Song of Ice and Fire:
  • Brynden Rivers, one of Aegon IV's Great Bastards, was presumed dead after he disappeared while ranging beyond the Wall in 252 AC. A Dance with Dragons reveals that he is still alive, albeit now as the three-eyed crow. By this point, he is 125 years old.
  • Dragons are not immortal, but they will only get Stronger with Age. Balerion, the dragon rode by Aegon the Conqueror, was born before House Targaryen moved to Westeros. It died of old age during the reign of Jaehaerys I, Aegon's grandson, 208 years later. Vhagar, the dragon rode by Aegon's sister-wife Visenya, lived to the age of 182, dying not to old age but to wounds sustained during the Dance of the Dragons.
• In The Executioner and Her Way of Life, Pandaemonium looks like a ten-year-old child, but is an immortal who has lived for over a thousand years.
• Bazil Broketail: Powerful magic users live for centuries here. This includes the evil Masters of Padmasa, along with the good witches. Lessis and Ribela, the main witch characters, are both centuries old while looking middle aged at most.
• The master of The Zodiac Series has been alive for three millennia, possessing a form of Resurrective Immortality thanks to Ophiuchus's Talisman.
• Ryn, the main character of The One Who Eats Monsters, looks like a slightly underfed sixteen-year-old girl, but her existence spans all of human history and then some. She says her years are "difficult to number," but she's lived at least several millenia of linear time.
• The House of Shattered Wings: All of the Fallen are centuries old, though they look younger. Phillipe is millennia old but appears to be in his twenties.
• Of Fire and Stars: Demigods and people bonded with magical creatures like dragons live much longer than others, two centuries or more, with slowed aging.
• Mrs. Whatsit from A Wrinkle in Time is 2,379,152,497 years, 8 months, and 3 days old. She used to be a star. And she is the youngest of the three Mrs. W's!
• The Elemental Trilogy: The Bane has lived for over two centuries by sacrificing young elemental mages to prolong his life.
• Goblins in the Castle: Igor's lived in the castle for six hundred years.
• The Chronicles of Dorsa: The deathless king is revealed to be nearly eight hundred twenty years old, though at the cost of being essentially a walking corpse physically.
• The transmortals of the Ashtown Burials series fulfil this trope, no longer aging once they achieve immortality. Special mention goes to Arachne (yes, that one), who was born in Ancient Greece, and Nolan/Nikales, also known as the snake who took the Plant of Eternal Life from Gilgamesh, making him somewhere over four thousand years old. He still looks a slightly creepy fifteen.
  • Gilgamesh himself also appears, looking like a footballer in his thirties despite being approximately the same age.
• Third Time Lucky: And Other Stories of the Most Powerful Wizard in the World: Magdelene looks forty, while she's actually been alive for centuries now without aging in the least as a result of her magic.
• Phantastes: Anodos's possibly grandmother, likely a fairy, clearly magical, and doesn't look old, says that she's over 200 years old:
  I was two hundred and thirty-seven years old, last Midsummer eve;
• Daughter of the Sun: Aelia is really fourteen billion. In her human form however she looks about twenty five at most. It's later revealed she's even older than that.
• In the Tempest (2011) trilogy, merpeople and selkies are both very Long-Lived. Kona is 224 but looks 19, and Cecily is somewhere in her 600s.
• The Map to Everywhere has Ardent, who seems in his sixties but is well over two hundred - generally considered normal for wizards. It's later revealed that Coll, who looks about sixteen, is actually immortal and pushing 500.
• Inkmistress: Raisa looks like an old woman most of the time, but she's actually even older, having lived for centuries now.
• The Perfect Run: Due to his Mental Time Travel, Ryan has lived centuries in the four years he's had his power. He mentions off-hand that he stopped counting after the first century. The supervillain Pluto, who has power over death, declares that he's at least in the triple digits—and she's pretty sure he's closer to four than to two.
• Tales of the Pack: Archer is described as looking like maybe twenty years or so older than Lexie, who's nineteen. However, it turns out she's a werewolf and nearly two hundred.

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