Good Castles, Evil Castles

You can tell how good The Hero or bad the Villain is by how the castles are designed.

Heroic designs usually have very clear and bright colors and are situated in very calm and peaceful environments. Bad guy castles, on the other hand, have dark or drab colors, sinister designs (often incorporating Spikes of Villainy), and are surrounded by hellish landscapes.

Another related pattern is what's inside the castle. Heroic castles tend to have richer designs with bright colors and are more open to the public with fewer defenses. Villainous designs, however, have darker interiors, multiple weapons, various egotistical paintings or statues of the Evil Overlord, numerous Death Traps, and higher defenses to show the villain is more militaristic and menacing. The evil castle will sometimes be an Ominous Floating Castle.

Character Alignment may also depend on who designs the castle or where it's placed in the first place and where the resources came from.

Compare Fisher King, for when the environment is affected by a ruler's characterization, and Villainous Badland, Heroic Arcadia for the contrasting landscapes you're likely to find these castles in.

Contrast Mage Tower, for when it's about mages.

Sub-Trope to Bright Castle for when it's heroic designs only, and Evil Tower of Ominousness for when it's villainous designs only.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Daimos: Leon was The Good King and his palace, where Erika and Richter grew up, was dainty, made of white stones, and welcoming to all Baam-seijin regardless of social status (servant girl Cindy was even able to become Erika's best friend, for example). When he dies and Olban becomes the ruler, his palace looks like an archetypical villain fortress, with only his aides being allowed to enter.
• Lady!! has a variant. The Russells are British nobles, and they live in the generations-old Marble Mansion, a beautiful, spacious home with a gorgeous garden that resembles a medieval castle. The Spencers (while not evil but certainly stuck-up, aggressive, and hoity-toity) live in a more modern-looking brickwall house.
• Raideen: Demon Emperor Barao lives in a creepy dark, black castle that's lit only by flames. On the contrary, Princess Lemuria and her father lived in a bright European-style palace made of white and gold stone.
• Voltes V: The Big Bad Emperor Zambajil lives in an exquisite building aptly named the Golden Palace. It's also where the hidden artifact that allows Heinel to turn One-Winged Angel is located.

Films — Animated

• Beauty and the Beast: While the very Beast is not a villain, before he was transformed his castle was very bright and colorful. After he was transformed his castle was transformed into a darker version with darker gloomy colors, beast-face-shaped doorknockers, gargoyles, etc.
• Fire & Ice has two castles: Firekeep and Icepeak. King Jarol rules in Firekeep, which is inside a mountain. His throne room is a spacious cavern with minimal decoration, suggesting Jarol favors uplifting his people rather than glorifying himself. In contrast, Queen Juliana and her son, the wicked wizard Nekron, rule Icepeak. This palace is shaped like a giant skull, covered in ice. This is likely due to Nekron's magic, as he's shown making his icy kingdom grow, sprouting glaciers out of seeming nothingness. His subjects are knuckle-dragging Neanderthals who conduct raids for sustenance.
• Two evil castles in Shrek: the one where Princess Fiona is held prisoner, surrounded by a moat of lava, whose smoke means the castle is always dark, even in the daytime. Also Lord Farquaad's castle, which is extremely angular to reflect Farquaad's rigid personality, and very tall indeed, because the very short Farquaad might be compensating for something.
• Sleeping Beauty: King Stephan's castle, where the titular princess was born, is a beautiful Gothic palace brightly lit in pastel colors. Maleficent's lair in the Forbidden Mountains, on the other hand, is a dark, rustic fortress that looks like it was abandoned for ages before she moved in.
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie: Peach's castle is a brightly lit traditional princess's palace, while Bowser's castle is a mobile fortress used for his attacks on the other kingdoms. Unsurprisingly, Peach and her Mushroom Kingdom is the Big Good while Bowser is the primary villain.

Literature

• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe: The castle or "house" of the evil White Witch is described as being all towers, with sharp pointed spires on them, like dunce caps or sorcerers' caps; and the inside is full of statues of the White Witch's victims. By contrast, the castle of Cair Paravel on the sea coast is described as having a wonderful hall with an ivory roof, hung with peacock feathers.
• The original Lord of the Rings and the film adaptation of The Two Towers both emphasise this concept when dealing with the fortress strongholds of Gondor, Rohan, and Mordor. Minas Tirith is a fortress of air and light and gleaming whiteness; Minas Morgul emits an eerie, sickly glow that somehow doesn't illuminate the dark landscape around it. After the wizard Saruman falls into Sauron's camp, the tower of Orthanc is seen to degenerate from a place of light and peace to a place of darkness and evil. (The Rohanian citadel of Helm's Deep, however, contradicts the premise of this trope: this is a fortress. It's neither good nor evil; it just is.)
• Inverted in Malevil: Malevil Castle is the "ugly" castle, but it is a Boring, but Practical design that does a fantastic job surviving World War Three and being besieged by the Big Bad's raiders, even withstanding being hit with a rocket launcher. The villain's fancier abbey is just more symbolism of him trying to sell himself as a Sinister Minister.

Mythology & Religion

• Arthurian Legend: Lancelot's backstory involves him liberating the castle of Dolores Gard ('Dolores' being derived from a French word meaning 'painful') from an evil knight. In doing so, he finds a coffin with his family tree, including his own name, inscribed under the lid; its liberation causes it to be renamed to 'Joyous Gard' but after Lancelot betrays Arthur and his affair with Guenevere is exposed, he flees back to the castle and it once again becomes Dolores Gard.

Theatre

• In the opera Parcifal by Richard Wagner, part of the action revolves around the respective castles of Kundry and Klingsor, who represent, respectively, Light and Dark, Good and Evil. Stage sets for the opera have duly made the distinction accordingly, in the way the two castles are presented and lit on stage.

Toys

• Knights' Kingdom takes an interesting spin on this trope with the Castle of Morcia set, which is designed to transform between the two, starting out as castle of King Mathias only to be taken and turned more sinister looking with the takeover of Lord Vladek. It was even more pronounced in the original beta design but was scaled back due to concerns over whether or not seven-year-old kids could handle the complex transformation.

Video Games

• In Black & White, your temple changes its appearance in response to your alignment. It starts out looking like an ordinary stone tower and will remain that way if you play neutral. If you play good, the shape doesn't change much but it'll turn white, looking more like marble, and begin glowing with an ethereal light. If you play evil, it'll turn red and black, start growing Spikes of Villainy, and be surrounded by dark mist.
• Castlevania: The titular Castlevania is Dracula's base of operations, described as a living creature of Chaos that always alters itself (thus explaining why the castle is different in every game). The castle houses the forces of darkness the Belmont clan and their allies fight throughout the centuries, including zombies, ghosts, succubi, bats, assorted demons, and the ranks of the undead. Dracula himself is lord of the castle, from where he menaces Wallachia and, by extension, the world.
• Dead Cells zig-zags this. Before the time of the game, High Peak Castle was a prosperous place where the King of the island would meet with his trusted advisors and guests to discuss important matters. The king himself was a benevolent, if somewhat incompetent ruler. Now, with the island overrun by Malaise, it's Light Is Not Good incarnate, with infected monstrous guards patrolling the halls in search of the next victim, many people dead and death traps aplenty.
• The first location in Epic Mickey, Dark Beauty Castle, is a dark version of Sleeping Beauty Castle and Cinderella Castle mixed with the Beast's Castle to reflect its fallen state by the Shadow Blot. At the end of the game, along with the rest of the Wasteland, the castle is restored to the enchanted form it had before its corruption.
• Fable III: At one point, the player character has to make a decision to which sort of castle you want yours to look like. A Good Castle to show your people that you’re The Good King, or an Evil Castle to have your enemies remember to fear you.
• Final Fantasy:
  • Final Fantasy V: The castles occupied by the heroes and their allies are made of stone and have a familiar layout. Big Bad Exdeath's castle seems to be an aversion at first, using the same castle tileset as everyone else's but is later revealed to be made out of flesh, bones, and other viscera.
  • Final Fantasy IX:
    • Played with. Alexandria Castle is a fairytale castle of white marble with four huge towers, domed rooftops, and a crystal spire at the center of it...as it turns out, Alexandria is the villain faction for the first two discs, with the extravagance and pomposity of the interior matched by Queen Brahne's greed and bottomless ambition... just as the ominous dungeons below match her growing cruelty. And yet when Brahne dies and is replaced by Princess Garnet, the decor remains the same — likely because Garnet is still in mourning and can't bear to change any of it. By contrast, Regent Cid's castle at the heart of Lindblum is just as industrialized as the rest of the city, bristling with airship hangars, construction sites, and steampunk engines... and to clue you in to the fact that Cid and Lindblum are straightforward heroes, the interior is decorated all in fire-engine red.
    • In Disc 3, Garland's castle of Pandemonium is immediately outed as a villainous place by the sheer number of eldritch elements: it looks like it's been sculpted from black coral or random machine parts, features a teleporter studded with giant eyes, and is topped with a spikey tower with a glowing red sphere atop it — all immediate indicators that Garland is not just a villain, but the Greater-Scope Villain of the story as a whole.
• Candy Land PC games:
  • In Candy Land Adventure, King Kandy's castle has been transformed by the evil Lord Licorice, who has decorated it with dark chocolate walls and red and black licorice pillars and roofs. When the castle is returned to its normal state at the end of the game, the walls are made of gingerbread, the pillars are made of pink and white candy canes, and the roofs are made of ice cream.
  • In Candy Land (1998), King Kandy and Lord Licorice are revealed to have separate castles. Lord Licorice's castle has dark chocolate turrets and red licorice roofs, while King Kandy's castle has ice cream cones for turrets and ice cream for roofs.
• Kingdom Hearts:
  • In Kingdom Hearts, Maleficent invades Radiant Garden and takes over its castle, renaming it Hollow Bastion. As its name implies, it is an isolated fortress in the middle of the sea, with crooked chimneys and the Heartless emblem adorning it. Hollow Bastion becomes Maleficent and the Disney Villains' base of operations throughout the game.
  • Kingdom Hearts II:
    • Maleficent returns to the game and uses the Villain's Vale as her new headquarters, a decrepit castle with decayed towers rising out of debris, on an isolated cliff.
    • The Organization XIII's base of operations is the ominous-sounding "Castle That Never Was", located in the even more foreboding The World That Never Was. The castle itself is a flying dark grey fortress floating over a gaping abyss in its homeworld, and decorated with the Nobody sigil. Inside, the castle is almost labyrinthine, with walls of a clinical white in some areas. The Organization are the antagonists of the game who oppose Sora, King Mickey, and other Keybearers.
• There are many different castles Land of Illusion Starring Mickey Mouse, each one inhabited by a different ally or enemy of Mickey, and each one having varying degrees of enemies and obstacles:
  • The Blacksmith's Castle has many Lethal Lava Land elements, such as Evil Living Flames, dragons, sentient matches, and lava pits. The boss of the stage is a dragon, who upon defeat, is revealed to be Horace Horsecollar, who has forcibly been turned into a dragon by The Phantom, the game's Big Bad.
  • The Castle Ruins is a Haunted Castle that starts out dark and Mickey has to hold a lantern to light up the room. Enemies in this stage include bedsheet ghosts and floating pumpkins, and spike pits serve as obstacles. The boss of the stage is a giant ghost, who upon defeat, surrenders a shrinking potion that allows Mickey to get through tight spaces.
  • The Toy Workshop is a colorful and whimsical castle with many Toy Time elements, such as giant squirt guns, a piano bridge, and a claw machine that is used to get a key to unlock a door. The boss of the stage is a card king, who upon defeat, reveals himself to be Goofy, who has been forcibly transformed by The Phantom.
  • The Sand Castle is a Palatial Sandcastle, being surrounded by sand and having crabs serve as enemies. It also features an underwater section that Mickey has to swim through. The boss of the stage is a Giant Enemy Crab, who upon defeat, reveals himself to be Donald Duck, who has been forcibly transformed by The Phantom.
  • The Good Princess' Castle is inhabited by Minnie Mouse, who is hiding in a room. Like the Castle Ruins, it's inhabited by ghosts and flying pumpkins and has spike pits as obstacles. However, the interior is much more brightly colored than the Castle Ruins. When Mickey gets into Minnie's room, she gives him the magic beans and advises him to plant them on the Island below the Phantom's Cloud Castle. She also advises him to find the Cloud Shoes in the pyramid so that he can walk across the clouds without falling through them.
  • The Phantom's Cloud Castle is the game's fourteenth and final stage. It is an Ominous Floating Castle with many obstacles that were featured in previous stages, as well as sections where Mickey has to invert the gravity and turn deadly water into clean water so he can swim through it. When Mickey gets to the end, he fights The Phantom so he can recover the magical crystal The Phantom stole and used to transform his friends to serve his evil purposes.
• Legend of Dragoon: In Disc 1, King Albert's Indels Castle is a relatively small castle more akin to a mansion than a palace, and the interior is brightly lit, comfortable, but not obscenely luxurious. By contrast, Emperor Doel's Black Castle of Sandora is a huge imposing black fortress dotted with glowing green windows and smokestacks — to the point that the sky overhead always looks dark and polluted; meanwhile, the spartan interior is lit in various shades of green and purple, dominated by creepy magical research labs and training barracks. Subverted after Emperor Doel's defeat: returning to the Black Castle reveals that it still looks pretty ominous even now that it answers to King Albert and its researchers are using their discoveries to help the people of the surrounding city.
• The Legend of Kyrandia: Castle Kyrandia appears in both forms. When Malcolm was in control, it was dark and ominous, its gates guarded by acid-spitting dragon statues, and its interiors gloomy and in great disrepair. Upon his defeat, it was magically restored to its former glory, all bright and beautiful.
• Medal of Honor: Underground: Two notable castles occupied by Nazi Forces are depicted: Wewelsburg in the main campaign, and the Black Forest Castle in the Secret Level. Both are surrounded by large walls, have large gates, and are (partly) defended by Knights decorated with Nazi imagery. In terms of design, they both feature a lot of pointy rooves and towers, and each has interiors reminiscent of dungeons, reflecting the Nazis using them for secretive and definitely malicious purposes (the former serving as a base of operations for the Waffen-SS, the latter serving as a science lab and testing site for the same organization).
• In the classic Mega Man games, Dr. Wily's bases, called Wily Castle, are depicted as massive futuristic castles with, at least, a massive skull on the front.
• Neopets: Meridell and Darigan Citadel, rival nations that fought two wars, have a contrasting aesthetic and theme. Meridell's castle is large, shiny, and white, and exists in a forested, sunny, prospering kingdom. Darigan Citadel is primarily purple and black, with tall, spiky towers, surrounded by barren, rocky wasteland. This actually leads to a bit of a subversion during the first war; Darigan is initially presented as being a group of evil, power-hungry monsters. When it turns out that they're all suffering from the theft of their magical orb, it reveals that Darigan's edgier look was magically enforced, and that they were once a peaceful and wealthy kingdom much like Meridell — with the look to match. All they wanted was the orb back from Meridell, who were benefiting from their loss. Things are straighter in the second war, where the new lord of the Citadel is far more evil.
• Overlord: The general appearance of your tower changes depending on your standing on the Karma Meter. Also the good and evil option for your mistress offers different extensions to buy, which rely on this trope. Although the good version is rather downplayed, with you being a Villain Protagonist after all.
• Rocket Knight Adventures: The original game features the castles of King El Zebulos and Emperor Devligus Devotindos. King El Zebulos' castle, which serves as the second half of Stage 1, is designed like a traditional medieval castle, having the standard turrets, a gray brick exterior, and pictures and statues of the Zebulous bloodline in its interior. However, it has been set ablaze by the Devotindos Empire, so there is plenty of fire. Emperor Devligus' castle, which serves as the second half of Stage 5, has a more metallic exterior, and the interior is designed like a factory with many machines in the background and even a room where two giant robot suits reside; one controlled by Axel Gear, and the other controlled by Sparkster. In the cutscene preceding stage 6, the top floor of the castle, which is shaped like Emperor Devligus' head from the outside, serves as an escape pod that takes Devligus to the Pig Star.
• The Secret World:
  • The Templars' headquarters of Temple Hall is a neoclassical homage to their medieval glory days, being essentially a marble castle studded with domes, Romanesque columns, classical statuary... and a very high wall to keep out both their enemies and the more diverse elements of Ealdwic's magical bazaars — a hint that the Templars might be one of the nicer factions in the Secret World, but they're not that nice... if the sumptuous training room full of tortured demons for new recruits to practice their skills on didn't clue you in.
  • In the Carpathian Fangs, the highest mountain peak is topped by a small castle in the Gothic style. Sporting sharply turreted towers instead of domes, it comes across as lonely and slightly ominous rather than grand, and though it sports an interior just as luxurious as Temple Hall, it's oppressively dark, littered with surveillance equipment, and the only inhabitants are the vampires that Queen Mara has sent to occupy the place. For good measure, "Mortal Sins" reveals that Mara herself is hanging out in a sinister blood-soaked underground chapel just past the dungeons...
• Super Mario Bros.: The franchise is famous for this trope.
  • Princess Peach's castle is shown to be a Big Fancy Castle in a white design with a calm blue sky atmosphere, while Bowser's various castles tend to have darker monochromatic colors, militaristic elements, and more violent environments.
  • Super Paper Mario: Castle Bleck, Count Bleck's own castle is a floating, glowing castle in monochrome colors set in the middle of a void.

Western Animation

• Masters of the Universe: Inverted with Castle Greyskull. Greyskull is depicted as a massive green castle with a large green skull on the front, yet it is the home base of Sorceress and where He-Man's power is kept.
• My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Celestia and Luna rule from Canterlot, a castle-city on a mountaintop which is all domes and spires in gold, purple, and ivory. In the Bad Future where Luna's Superpowered Evil Side Nightmare Moon won, she rules from a gloomy castle in a dark forest, with walls of dark stone, ominous towers, and an overall blue, grey, and purple colour scheme.
• W.I.T.C.H.: The series presents an example using the same castle under different rulers. Phobos makes it a point to keep the castle gloomy and dark, representing both his personality and to remove any hope and optimism so as few citizens as possible are inspired to rebel. When Elyon is reunited with him, Phobos uses Glamours to make the castle seem brighter and less scary than it actually is, only revealing the truth about what it looks like in the first season finale where he tries to drain her powers. After Phobos is defeated and imprisoned, Elyon changes the castle's appearance for real to reflect the benevolence of its new owner and how Meridian is in a new age.

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