Tough Traveling - Disguises

Tough Traveling is a fun meme that aims to tour all the tropes big and small, abhorred and loved that are littered across the fantasy landscape. It was conceived of and is hosted by Nathan at Fantasy Review Barn and here's how it's explained on the blog: 

Each Thursday, our copy of ‘The Tough Guide to Fantasyland’ in hand, we shall tour the mystical countryside looking for adventure and fun (and tropes) from all over fantasy.

This week's trope is Disguises:

Hiding in plain site?  Put on a disguise.  Often used to sneak into the evil lair.  For best results brain a guard and steal his; no one is tracking these things.

Let's see how many Sneaky McSneakersons are running around disguised in fantasyland.


- Ron and Harry in Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling
With the help of the Polyjuice potion, Ron and Harry disguise themselves as Crabb and Goyle in order to ferret out Malfoy's secrets.  Hermione was supposed to go as well but she runs into a...complication and turns into a cat instead of Millicent.

- Alanna from the first two books of Song of the Lioness by Tamora Pierce

Alanna passes herself off as a himself for the duration of her training to be a knight.   Pretty impressive since it lasts for years and she finishes her training as the top knight in her cohort.

- Rossamund from the Monster Blood Tattoo Series by D.M. Cornish

This is an interesting one and I kind of don't want to reveal how Rossamund is in disguise as it is one of the biggest questions of this three book series.  Which is an awesome series by the way.  It's middle-grade and has an elaborately developed Dickensian world where humans and monsters are at war though the situation is nowhere near so black and white. 

- Ani and her Lady's Maid in The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale

If you are familiar with The Goose Girl fairy tale at all you will know that it is about an evil Lady's Maid who usurps her mistress' place by disguising herself as a princess.  It forces the Princess to pass herself off as the goose girl while she figures out how to expose the imposter.

- Locke Lamora in the The Gentleman Bastards series by Scott Lynch

Is it bad to use The Gentleman Bastards series in every list?  I don't have a clear memory of the particulars but I know in the first book Locke disguises himself as a wealthy merchant in order to swindle some rich noble folk.  And he probably disguised himself several more times than that in the pursuit of crime because that's the kind of sneaky fellow he is, but my memory is too poor to detail more specifics.

- Wesley from The Princess Bride by William Goldman

Calling his Dread Pirate Roberts personae a disguise might be stretching it but it does hide his identity from Buttercup for a while and I just really like writing Dread Pirate Roberts.

- Some dragons (like Uncle Alma) in Seraphina by Rachel Hartman

Undoubtedly Hartman has some cool made up word to describe dragons who have folded themselves into human form but don't mark themselves to announce the fact as they are supposed to but I, as aforementioned, have a horrible memory.  A dragon masquerading as a human is virtually indistinguishable except that they generally have a more abrupt and less emotional manner than most humans. 

That's it for me!  Go check out other's lists on Fantasy Review Barn!