Michael Moorcock

ELRIC!
A hero bigger than life, yet flawed and doomed. His story is a bit backwards in some ways. A weakling who starts out as a king and with the girl and loses it all. Yet Elric is a hero in the pulp sense in many ways. His prowess seems to compare with Conan and Kane, yet he is also an anti-hero, and instrument of chaos who destroys his own kingdom and civilization and finally his world. I couldn't venture to guess the number of White Box PCs that have been inspired by thoughts of Elric.
The world of Elric termed "The Young Kingdoms" by Mr. Moorcock is a dark setting on the verge of annihilation. In one of the best stories of the genre, Elric leads an armada against his home and cousin resulting in the destruction of Elric's kingdom, his bride-to-be and the armada he leads. In other stories, Elric adventures across The Young Kingdom sowing sorrow with his demon-blade and visits the "multiverse" (a series of connected universes) through which Elric travels at times. At the end of it all is impending destruction, an inescapable fate in which Elric is doomed to usher in a new existence leaning more towards Law (our own world?) by destroying himself and his Chaotic world.
White Box was almost certainly inspired by books like Michael Moorcock's Elric series. The above compilation includes the stories written from 1961 to 1965, stories I am guessing which were read by White Box creators Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. Elric and his countrymen, the Melniboneans, serve a chaos lord named Arioch from whom they derive certain sorcerous power. In the Elric novels Mr. Moorcock describes a world hanging in the balance between the forces of Law and Chaos. Various beasts and men serve Law and others serve Chaos in a manner not unlike the default alignment system described in White Box. Elric's magic sword, Stormbringer, is perhaps the iconic "magic sword" inspiring the intelligent, ego driven magic swords found (by lucky PCs) in White Box play.
Elric, as sorcerer and warrior, would be both a magic user and fighting man in terms of defining him as a White Box player character. This fits the elf race nicely. White Box allows the elf character to be played as a magic user or fighting man, freely switching class back and forth from adventure to adventure. The elf PC gains the benefits of both classes and may use both spells and weaponry. It certainly sounds like Elric, the Melnibonean, is an elf.
The ability to draw inspiration from literature and other sources and apply it to the game is I believe one of the lasting appeals to the role-playing game. The RPG is an extension of those tropes, drawn from popular culture, into a game environment where the players can imagine themselves in the roles of such heroes performing daring deeds in a fantastic setting. The "live out your dreams" appeal has probably motivated many to pursue the RPG hobby. In turn the RPG has inspired a number of game related novels, short stories, comics, etc. Imagination is much like a muscle, the more one uses it, the stronger it becomes.