Character difficulties

I think everyone who writes stories has a favorite character. Mine, hands down, is Quilin Carosin. Man, you don't even know how hard it is to put that in writing... so far it's been years of hoping nobody comes out with a character with a similar name, because this is also my favorite name. And I'm not giving it up. I fell in love with this guy right off the bat. He's what turned an abandoned one-page story into a hundreds-pages-long impossible draft. He's established as a wizard (which he protests against) of the same type that tried to steal Glem's farm (which he denies). I'm going to try against my instincts to stop writing about him. I'm already worried he's going to pull a Spike and be ruined by overuse.
So what's the trouble here? I tend to draw my characters to get a better hand on them. The Empire in my story is vaguely Roman, like all good evil empires, and Quilin's home country needed to exist in contrast to it. The main race of the Empire is pale redheads, because I wanted to see a story where they weren't an oddity by nature. Quilin's people are brunettes, with soft straight hair and tanned skin. You will recognize this archetype as "people the author was jealous of in the past." I liked the conceit of this more-acceptable complexion being what set him apart. The wizards have a closer connection to nature because I went with the pretty common nature/magic continuum; so they have long hair, bare feet, less regimented clothing. Quilin in particular has a peculiar mask of white lines across his face. This is where the problem really lies.

First of all, he's pretty effeminate what with his long hair and his skinniness and the fact that I can't draw guys' faces and his open, flowing tunic. But much more importantly, he's an Indian. Not a specific culture of American Indian, but the archetypal magic Indian who's in touch with nature and ends up getting captured and killed by the big Empire due to his inherent meekness and goodness. HOW DID THIS HAPPEN. I am an accidental racist again. This puts a stick in the spokes whenever I try to get a better picture of Quilin by drawing him, because he's impossible to draw without evoking the same reaction. It's better now than it was (the biggest change is robe/tunic --> pants, although a lot of it is helped just by drawing in color so the lines don't overwhelm his face) but it's still problematic. And every decision that I try to make from here just makes it worse. Oh, his hair is too long, maybe he should put it in a braiDANGIT, NO. I'm not sure what to do about this. I don't want Quilin to be conflated with this identity. I certainly don't want wimpy early Quilin to be associated with it, and then have him come into his own by leaving it behind. It's probably telling that it's so much easier to draw him after he's been stripped of his own culture. I'm not sure-- usually writing these things out really helps but this time I still don't know. Maybe I'll start looking for more of a druid look. Eh? Eh? Eh.