Angela the Herbalist and her werecat
companion Solembum
When reading my Females in Fantasy page I can hear you all asking me "But
what about the mysterious good witch?" The
wise women, the funny and sharp-witted women of power who appear at odd
moments and/or are sought after by the protagonists for aid/advice. This
is a trope we all know about and Angela the Herbalist from Christopher
Paolini's Inheritance Cycle is who come to mind for me when
hearing it. Similar to the wise sage, what distinguishes one from the
other is these white witches (for lack of a better term) are typically
portrayed as having an agenda of their own, sporadically working with or
fighting alongside the protagonists less because they see the necessity
of it and more because they want to for their own personal and/or mysterious
reasons. I cannot say more because this class of character is more a
thing of fairy tales & short stories as opposed to Fantasy
literature and, besides, such white witches are near-always so different
from one another that trying to wrap them up any more tightly into a
category together would be like trying to wrap a cactus in silk, the
needles endlessly piercing and poking through the defined parameters one
is trying to set.
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