Dejah Thoris
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Dejah Thoris is a major character in Edgar Rice Burroughs's series of Martian novels. She first appeared in the initial Mars novel, A Princess of Mars (1917), in which she is the princess of the title. She reappeared in subsequent volumes of the series, most prominently in the second, The Gods of Mars (1918), the third, The Warlord of Mars (1919), the eighth, Swords of Mars (1936), and the eleventh, John Carter of Mars (1964). Dejah Thoris is also mentioned or appeared in a minor role in other volumes of the series.
Princess of the Martian city state/empire of Helium, Dejah Thoris is the love interest and later the wife of John Carter, an Earthman mystically transported to Mars, and subsequently the mother of their son Carthoris and daughter Tara. She plays the role of the conventional damsel in distress who must be rescued from various perils, but is also portrayed as a competent and capable adventuress in her own right, fully capable of defending herself and surviving on her own in the wastelands of Mars.
Except for some jewelry, all of the planet's races seem to eschew clothing and look down upon Earth's inhabitants because they do wear clothing. Burroughs describes Dejah Thoris thus:
- And the sight which met my eyes was that of a slender, girlish figure, similar in every detail to the earthly women of my past life... Her face was oval and beautiful in the extreme, her every feature was finely chiseled and exquisite, her eyes large and lustrous and her head surmounted by a mass of coal black, waving hair, caught loosely into a strange yet becoming coiffure. Her skin was of a light reddish copper color, against which the crimson glow of her cheeks and the ruby of her beautifully molded lips shone with a strangely enhancing effect.
- She was as destitute of clothes as the green Martians who accompanied her; indeed, save for her highly wrought ornaments she was entirely naked, nor could any apparel have enhanced the beauty of her perfect and symmetrical figure.
Dejah Thoris has appeared in numerous adaptations of the Martian stories, notably in a comic strip and various comic book series featuring her husband John Carter.
[edit] Other Media
Dejah Thoris was mentioned in the novel Doom: Knee-Deep in the Dead by Dafydd ab Hugh and Brad Linaweaver, after the characters are transported back to an area they have already been, one of them is prompted to say, "Deja", the second, "Vu," and the third, "Dejah Thoris".
Dejah Thoris is the given name of Deetee (D.T.) Burroughs, a protagonist in Robert A. Heinlein's The Number of the Beast.
