Character from The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan
The uncrowned King of Malkier — the last of his nation, the finest swordsman alive, and a man who rides toward death with the calm of someone who accepted it decades ago.
Lan is what happens when a nation dies and leaves one man standing. Malkier fell to the Blight when he was an infant, and he was raised with a single purpose: avenge his people or die trying. He accepted death so completely that it became a kind of freedom — a man with nothing to lose fights without hesitation, which is why he's the deadliest swordsman alive. He serves as Moiraine's Warder — bound to her by the bond that enhances his combat abilities and connects their lives. When she was lost to the Finn, his bond passed to other Aes Sedai, and he endured it with the stoic misery of a man who had already given up everything and was now being asked to give up the last thing he had. Nynaeve broke through his armor by being too stubborn to accept his death wish. She married him and gave him something he hadn't had since infancy: a reason to survive. His ride to Tarwin's Gap — one man against the Shadow, gathering an army behind him without trying — is the moment where the last king of Malkier stops being a legend and starts being a man who might actually live.
Tall and hard-faced, with grey-blue eyes like frozen water and dark hair held back by a hadori — the braided leather cord that marks him as a Malkieri warrior. He wears his color-shifting Warder cloak over practical armor and moves with the economy of a man who has been fighting Shadowspawn since adolescence. His face rarely shows emotion. His sword, with its heron-mark blade, is an extension of his body.
Also known as: Lan, al'Lan Mandragoran, Dai Shan, Lord of the Seven Towers, the King of Malkier