 | This article includes alist of references,related reading, orexternal links,but its sources remain unclear because it lacksinline citations. Please helpimprove this article byintroducing more precise citations.(June 2025) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
 Cover of first edition | |
| Author | Robert E. Howard andL. Sprague de Camp |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Frank Frazetta |
| Language | English |
| Series | Conan the Barbarian |
| Genre | Sword and sorcery |
| Publisher | Lancer Books |
Publication date | 1967 |
| Publication place | United States |
| Media type | Print (paperback) |
| Pages | 256 pp |
Conan the Usurper is a 1967 collection of fourfantasy short stories by American writerRobert E. Howard andL. Sprague de Camp, featuring Howard'ssword and sorcery heroConan the Barbarian. Most of the stories originally appeared in the fantasy magazineWeird Tales in the 1930s. The book has been reprinted a number of times since by various publishers, and has also been translated into German, Spanish, Italian,Swedish andDutch.
Conan, about forty in these stories, embarks on the most desperate gamble of his life — leading a revolution against King Numedides ofAquilonia, with the goal of making himself king in his place. From his low point as a treasure-seeking fugitive in thePictish Wilderness, he is retrieved by allies from his days in the Aquilonian army to lead the revolt. The borderlands suffer grievously during the war, but in the end Conan takes the throne, only to suffer the customary uneasiness of the head that wears the crown, from an attempted assassination involvingStygian sorcererThoth-Amon to magical treachery on the battlefield as he strives to defend his hard-won kingship against predatory foreign powers.
The Aquilonian civil war between Conan and Numedides is not actually depicted, but occurs offstage as background to the action of "Wolves Beyond the Border", Howard's only non-Conan tale set in the Hyborian Age. De Camp later made the war itself the subject of his novelConan the Liberator, co-written withLin Carter.
"The Phoenix on the Sword", which Howard rewrote from an earlierKull story, marks his only use of Thoth-Amon as an antagonist, in a somewhat peripheral role — he and Conan never even meet! In later stories, De Camp and Carter would later elevate the Stygian sorcerer into one of Conan's principal enemies.
Howard later reused the plot of "The Scarlet Citadel" as the basis of his only Conan novel,The Hour of the Dragon (afterwards retitledConan the Conqueror).
Chronologically, the four short stories collected asConan the Usurper fall betweenConan the Warrior andConan the Conqueror.
| Preceded by | Lancer/Ace Conan series (chronological order) | Succeeded by |