 Quotes •  Headscratchers •  Playing With • Useful Notes •  Analysis •  Image Links •  Haiku • Laconic
|
|---|
Secondary color, first-class magic.
Whether it's magic, psychic energy, or wizard clothing, purple is often the color that represents these.
It's not the only mystical color, but in fiction, it's one of the most common, regardless of whether the color shows up on the good guys or the bad guys (although the latter is a bit more common thanks to Good Colors, Evil Colors and Purple Is the New Black).
This is one reason purple is one of the Common Mary Sue Traits (and Graceful Ladies Like Purple).
Can often overlap with Purple Is Powerful, Purple Eyes.
Examples:
Comic Books
- Psylocke of X-Men has purple clothing, purple hair, and her psychic aura is purple.
- Raven from Teen Titans.
- Taken quite literally in the 1990 looseleaf edition of Who's Who in the DC Universe, which color-coded the borders of the entries. Heroes got red trim, villains were in black, supporting cast in blue, technology inyellow, and geography in green. Supernatural items and characters...were purple.
Film
- In The Princess and the Frog, the Mardi Gras colors were used to represent different characters. Green was used for Tiana and Naveen; gold was used for Mama Odie; and purple, as the most "unnatural" color, was used for Dr. Facilier.
Literature
- In Septimus Heap, the form of Magyk used by the ExtraOrdinary Wizards is purple, unlike the green of more generic Magyk.
Live Action TV
- In Merlin, Merlin had a purplish shirt for a while, now it's sometimes different colors. Morgana favored purple dresses in the beginning of the series, but her clothes have gotten darker since her Face Heel Turn.
Magazines
- In an issue of In Quest Magazine, there was a joke article speculating if Magic the Gathering added a sixth color, and it was purple, supposing a place and people even more mystical and mysterious than the places in Canon at the time.
Tabletop Games
- Occurs a few times in Dungeons and Dragons:
- The Eldritch Blast of the Warlock is always colored purple in the various books' art. Several of the Warlock's powers are shown to glow purple.
- In 4th Edition, the Devas (reincarnating angels who have taken a mortal form) have purple skin and eyes.
- Much of the art of the Forgotten Realms depicting Mystra, the goddess of Magic, show her avatar (or mortal self) wearing a significant amount of purple.
- The Eladrins in 4th edition tend to favor purple in their clothing in much of the art.
Video Games
- In World of Warcraft, Epic items (the second-most powerful class of items in the game, below only Legendary items) have their titles in purple.
- Also, Arcane-school spell animations are often light purple (with Shadow spells being darker purple, though that might be more a case of Purple Is the New Black.)
- In Dawn of War series, warp anomalies (and chaos magic in general) look like purple flames.
- In Blaz Blue Calamity Trigger, Rachel's Unlimited form is distinguished by a purple glow.
- In Pokémon, purple represents ghost type Pokemon, and in the card game, psychic is represented by purple, whereas in the game, Psychic is represented with pink.
- In the Skylanders series, purple represents the Magic element. This almost certainly has to do with the fact that the name character of the first game, Spyro the Dragon, is both purple and a magic-type.
- In Sonic and the Black Knight, the sorceress Merlina has a purple cape and purple hair.
Web Comics
- In Homestuck, Rose Lalonde types with purple text, has Purple Eyes, and often wears purple clothing. She has a deep interest in grimdark hororterrors and dual-wields magic wands.
- Eridan Ampora wears a purple cape, has a purple tuft in his hair, and purple blood. He has quite an interest in wizards, even becoming a practitioner of Black Magic (though he claims magic isn't real and insists on referring to it as "white science".)
- Feferi Peixes is also associated with the color purple (due to her blood color), also is fascinated by horrorterrors (she was raised by one), and is the Witch of Life. Her genetic ancestor also has the same color blood and is often referred to as a witch.
Web Original
- In Arthur, King of Time and Space, Nimue always wears purple. That said, Merlin wears orange and Morgan le Fay, like the rest of her family, wears green.
Western Animation
- Twilight Sparkle of My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic is a student of magic. Her Unicorn powers are purple, her eyes are purple, her coat is light purple, and her mane and tail are dark purple.
- Trixie wears a purple Robe and Wizard Hat as part of her airs of being a great sorceress (even though she can do some magic). She also has Purple Eyes.
- Gwen from Ben 10 Alien Force.
- Dark Energon in Transformers Prime is purple. It's also the blood of Unicron, and capable of all kinds of nasty stuff, including the creation and control of Terrorcons.
Other
- A lot of Harry Potter merchandise includes purple on the product and/or packaging. For example, Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans often come in purple packages.
- Purple is frequently used in neopagan, magical, and new age websites.
- The crown chakra, which is supposed to relate to one's psychic ability, is often associated with the color purple.
Real Life
- Purple is the most intense spectrum color perceivable by humans. As such, purple glow is exceedingly rare in nature and indicates extremely high temperature and energies.
- Meanwhile, magenta which often is substituted for purple does not even exist. It's a transitional color invented by our brains in an attempt to bridge two non-overlapping parts of the spectrum.