Darken Rahl is the ruler of the third land, D'Hara. He is a vicious dictator that rules through torture and murder, as his father did. Rahl's father, Panis Rahl, was killed by a great wizard who shortly after vanished from the Midlands due to a political disagreement (that he was right about). Before he left, however, he set up the boundaries. At the very last moment, the wizard sent a ball of wizard's fire over the boundary, letting it touch the boundary (which is the underworld existing on our plane), towards Panis Rahl. Darken Rahl watched his father be burned alive and was also touched by the flames on one side of his body. He spent the subsequent time being tied to a bed, unable to comfort his wounds, by his healers. He would often lick his fingers and trace them over his eyebrows or lips since he couldn't reach the burns, a habit he retains to the time in which the book is set.He is described at tall and thin with long, straight, blond hair. He has scars along his hip, side, leg and one side of his genitals from where the wizard's fire touched him as a child, and is quick to brutally murder any woman who dares to stare or laugh at the scars while in his bed. He is also a vegetarian who sometimes snaps and kills people he sees eating or selling meat. He commands a legion of women, Mord-Sith, who specialize in capturing and torturing into submission people who have the gift of magic, along with a vast army. Rahl himself is a wizard with control of both additive and subtractive (underworld) magic, albeit coming by the latter in an unnatural way, who commands a red dragon as his personal mount.In this story, he has put the Boxes of Orden into play, giving him the potential to become the master of all. Or conversely destroy the entire world or destroy himself. There are three Boxes and depending on which one Darken opens, one of these three results could occur. This is the evil that Mother Confessor Kahlan Amnell has set forth to destroy, by traveling to Westland in search of the great wizard. She needs the wizard to appoint a Seeker of Truth, a sacred post that, when held by the right person, has the power to worry even kings. If she cannot find the great wizard and have him appoint the Seeker, then on the first day of winter, Darken Rahl will become master of the world with the power to find anyone and do anything... including finding the old wizard and getting his revenge.Rahl openly claims to be seeking peace, but is in truth only interested in his own personal power. On the TV series he even tried to convince Jensen that he was her and Richard's brother, and that Richard had rebuffed his offer of peace. Readers of the books know their true relationship. He saw Jensen's being Pristinely Ungifted as being as big a threat to him as the Seeker.On the TV series, in the alternate future created when Richard disappeared, Kahlan agreed to marry him on promise of a pardon to the members of the Resistance. So long as she agreed to be his wife in all ways, he would agree to her terms. Kahlan gave birth to a son, Nicholas. When Kahlan tried to kill Nicholas before he went insane, as male Confessors always do, Rahl had Kahlan executed. Rahl himself was killed shortly after by General Egremont, who had been Confessed by Nicholas. In the real Present, Rahl is killed when Richard uses the Boxes of Orden.Although Rahl is dead, this is not the end of his plotting. At the beginning of Season 2, when he went to the Underworld, he chose to serve the Keeper, the supreme evil in the world. He appears to the Mord-sith Triana an tells her of Cara's betrayal of him, which inspires the other Mord-sith to rebel against her authority. It is also revealed that he was not lieing when he said that Richard was his brother, a major departure from the books. He put the mark of the Keeper on Richard. Rahal also presents the Keeper's Bargin to all dead souls, he will send them back to the world of the living as Banelings, undead creatures that must kill to keep on living. Show less «