Conan hoje em dia está muito mal interpretado pelas pessoas. As pessoas têm a imagem dos filmes e dos comics na mente quando na verdade Conan em si não era nada do que foi retratado. Deixo aqui umas quotes das estórias de Robert E. Howard sobre Conan para ajudar a dissipar a imagem do bárbaro calado e bruto.
-Beyond the Black River:
“But the Picts are divided into small clans,” persisted Balthus. “They’ll never unite. We can whip any single clan.”
“Or any three or four clans,” admitted the slayer. “But some day a man will rise and unite thirty or forty clans, just as was done among the Cimmerians, when the Gundermen tried to push the border northward, years ago. They tried to colonize the southern marches of Cimmeria: destroyed a few small clans, built a fort-town, Venarium, – you’ve heard the tale.”
“So I have indeed,” replied Balthus, wincing. The memory of that red disaster was a black blot in the chronicles of a proud and warlike people. “My uncle was at Venarium when the Cimmerians swarmed over the walls. He was one of the few who escaped that slaughter. I’ve heard him tell the tale, many a time. The barbarians swept out of the hills in a ravening horde, without warning, and stormed Venarium with such fury none could stand before them. Men, women and children were butchered. Venarium was reduced to a mass of charred ruins, as it is to this day. The Aquilonians were driven back across the marches, and have never since tried to colonize the Cimmerian country. But you speak of Venarium familiarly. Perhaps you were there?”
“I was,” grunted the other. “I was one of the horde that swarmed over the walls. I hadn’t yet seen fifteen snows, but already my name was repeated around the council fires.”
Balthus involuntarily recoiled, staring. It seemed incredible that the man walking tranquilly at his side should have been one of those screeching, blood-mad devils that had poured over the walls of Venarium on that long-gone day to make her streets run crimson.
“Then you, too, are a barbarian!” he exclaimed involuntarily.
The other nodded, without taking offense.
“I am Conan, the Cimmerian.”
-Conan on rulership and poetry, during his era of rulership of Aquilonia, in the story “The Phoenix on the Sword:”
“Prospero,” said the man at the table, “these matters of statecraft weary me as all the fighting I have done never did.”
“All part of the game, Conan,” answered the dark-eyed Poitainian. “You are king – you must play the part.”
“I wish I might ride with you to Nemedia,” said Conan enviously. "It seems ages since I had a horse between my knees – but Publius says that affairs in the city require my presence. Curse him!
“When I overthrew the old dynasty,” he continued, speaking with the easy familiarity which existed only between the Poitainian and himself, "it was easy enough, though it seemed bitter hard at the time. Looking back now over the wild path I followed, all those days of toil, intrigue, slaughter, and tribulation seem like a dream.
"I did not dream far enough, Prospero. When King Numedides lay dead at my feet and I tore the crown from his gory head and set it on my own, I had reached the ultimate border of my dreams. I had prepared myself to take the crown, not to hold it. In the old free days all I wanted was a sharp sword and a straight path to my enemies. Now no paths are straight and my sword is useless.
"When I overthrew Numedides, then I was the Liberator – now they spit at my shadow. They have put a statue of that swine in the temple of Mitra, and people go and wail before it, hailing it as the holy effigy of a saintly monarch who was done to death by a red-handed barbarian. When I lead her armies to victory as a mercenary, Aquilonia overlooked the fact that I was a foreigner, but now she can not forgive me.
“Now in Mitra’s temple there come to burn incense to Numedides’ memory, men whom his hangmen maimed and blinded, men whose sons died in his dungeons, whose wives and daughters were dragged into his seraglio. The fickle fools!”
“Rinaldo is largely responsible,” answered Prospero, drawing up his sword-belt another notch. “He sings songs that make men mad. Hang him in his jester’s garb to the highest tower of the city. Let him make rimes for the vultures.”
Conan shook his lion head. “No, Prospero, he’s beyond my reach. A great poet is greater than any king. His songs are mightier than my scepter; for he has near ripped the heart from my breast when he chose to sing for me. I shall die and be forgotten, but Rinaldo’s songs will live for ever.”
-Conan on nobility and class struggle, during the event of his capture by enemies of Aquilonia, in the story “The Scarlet Citadel:”
“Our desires are quickly spoken, king of Aquilonia,” said Tsotha. “It is our wish to extend our empire.”
“And so you want to swine my kingdom,” rasped Conan.
“What are you but an adventurer, seizing a crown to which you had no more claim than any other wandering barbarian?” parried Amalrus. “We are prepared to offer you suitable compensation --”
“Compensation!” It was a gust of deep laughter from Conan’s mighty chest."The price of infamy and treachery. I am a barbarian, so I shall sell my kingdom and its people for life and your filthy gold? Ha! How did you come to your crown, you and that black-faced pig beside you? Your fathers did the fighting and the suffering, and handed their crowns to you on golden platters. What you inherited without lifting a finger – except to poison a few brothers – I fought for.
"You sit on satin and guzzle wine the people sweat for, and talk of divine rights of sovereignty – bah! I climbed out of the abyss of naked barbarism to the throne and in that climb I spilt my blood as freely as I spilt that of others. If either of us has the right to rule men, by Crom, it is I! How have you proven yourselves my superiors?
"I found Aquilonia in the grip of a pig like you – one who traced his genealogy for a thousand years. The land was torn with the wars of the barons, and the people cried out under oppression and taxation. Today no Aquilonian noble dares maltreat the humblest of my subjects, and the taxes of the people are lighter than anywhere else in the world.
“What of you? Your brother Amalrus, holds the eastern half of your kingdom, and defies you. And you Strabonus, your soldiers are even now besieging castles of a dozen or more rebellious barons. The people of both your kingdoms are crushed into the earth by tyrannous taxes and levies. And you would loot mine – ha! Free my hands and I’ll varnish this floor with your brains!”
-Conan on law and loyalty, during his time as a mercenary captain, in the story “Queen of the Black Coast:”
“Why do the guardsmen pursue you?” asked Tito. “Not that it’s any of my business, but I thought perhaps --”
“I’ve nothing to conceal,” replied the Cimmerian. "By Crom, though I’ve spent considerable time among you civilized peoples, your ways are still beyond my comprehension.
"Well, last night in a tavern, a captain of the king’s guard offered violence to the sweetheart of a young soldier, who naturally ran him through. But it seems there is some cursed law against killing guardsmen, and the boy and his girl fled away. It was bruited about that I was seen with them, so today I was haled into court, and a judge asked me where the lad had gone. I replied that since he was a friend of mine, I could not betray him. Then the court waxed wroth, and the judged talked a great deal about my duty to the state, and society, and other things I did not understand, and bade me tell where my friend had flown. By this time I was becoming wrathful myself, for I had explained my position.
“But I choked my ire and held my peace, and the judge squalled that I had shown contempt for the court, and that I should be hurled into a dungeon to rot until I betrayed my friend. Seeing then that they were all mad, I drew my sword and cleft the judge’s skull; then I cut my way out of the court, and seeing the high constable’s stallion tied near by, I rode for the wharfs, where I thought to find a ship bound for foreign parts.”
-Conan on religion, during his time with Bêlit the pirate queen, in the story “Queen of the Black Coast:”
“Mystery and terror are about us, Conan, and we glide into the realm of horror and death,” she said. “Are you afraid?”
A shrug of his mailed shoulders was his only answer.
“I am not afraid either,” she said meditatively. “I was never afraid. I have looked into the naked fangs of Death too often. Conan, do you fear the gods?”
“I would not tread on their shadow,” answered the barbarian conservatively. “Some gods are strong to harm, others, to aid; at least so say the priests. Mitra of the Hyborians must be a strong god, because his people have builded their cities over the world. But even the Hyborians fear Set. And Bel, god of thieves, is a good god. When I was a thief in Zamora I learned of him.”
“What of your own gods? I have never heard you call on them.”
“Their chief is Crom. He dwells on a great mountain. What use to call on him? Little he cares if men live or die. Better to be silent than to call his attention to you; he will send you dooms, not fortune! He is grim and loveless, but at birth he breaths power to strive and slay into a man’s soul. What else shall man ask of the gods?”
“But what of the worlds beyond the river of death?” she persisted.
“There is no hope here or hereafter in the cult of my people,” answered Conan. “In this world men struggle and suffer vainly, finding pleasure only in the bright madness of battle; dying, their souls enter a gray misty realm of clouds and icy winds, to wander cheerlessly throughout eternity.”
Bêlit shuddered. “Life, bad as it is, is better than such a destiny. What do you believe, Conan?”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom’s realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaunted halls of the Nordheimer’s Valhalla. I known not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and priests and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is an illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.”