What's interesting is that while Vlad Tepes was never associated with Vampires before Bram Stoker, I've been told by some experts that Vlad Tepes became a Romanian King in the Mountain, that there developed legend he would one day return, just like the King Arthur legends.
Does this really need to be this long?!
- Charles V (Karolus Quintus) Holy Roman Emperor, forever August, King of Germany, King of Italy, King of all Spains, of Castile, Aragon, León, Navarra, Grenada, Toledo, Valencia, Galicia, Majorca, Sevilla, Cordova, Murcia, Jaén, Algarves, Algeciras, Gibraltar, the Canary Islands, King of Two Sicilies, of Sardinia, Corsica, King of Jerusalem, King of the Western and Eastern Indies, Lord of the Islands and Main Ocean Sea, Archduke of Austria, Duke of Burgundy, Brabant, Lorraine, Styria, Carinthia, Carniola, Limburg, Luxembourg, Gelderland, Neopatria, Württemberg, Landgrave of Alsace, Prince of Swabia, Asturia and Catalonia, Count of Flanders, Habsburg, Tyrol, Gorizia, Barcelona, Artois, Burgundy Palatine, Hainaut, Holland, Seeland, Ferrette, Kyburg, Namur, Roussillon, Cerdagne, Zutphen, Margrave of the Holy Roman Empire, Burgau, Oristano and Gociano, Lord of Frisia, the Wendish March, Pordenone, Biscay, Molin, Salins, Tripoli and Mechelen. *
Both The Silver Chair (1953) and The Last Battle (1956) fall under our Handling Spoilers' Statute of Limitations ("fifty-year-old film") so I have despoilered both of them.
Games: Metal Gear Solid 4, when Big Boss returns from stasis. Even if he doesn't do much, apart from informing Snake and then dying, he clearly is a king.
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The King Arthur's entry showcases an excellent example of hilarious counter examples greatly enhancing the article. A style not to be seen in a dull encyclopedia.
Too bad that's what the "Stop Having Fun" Guys brigade would want to axe it :(
{{Planescape}} Hijack
This is some pretty interesting discussion from under the King Arthur bit, so I'm putting it here, in the discussion page, because it's discussion.
- There is a line of thought that Arthur did return in those times, in the form of Elizabeth I and Winston Churchill. Both redheads, incidentally, just like the mythic Arthur.
- The Duke of Wellington, the man who beat Napoleon, had Arthur as his first name. Of course, he never claimed to be Arthur reborn.
- Considering all those wars were won, clearly Britain hasn't had its darkest hour yet...
- Maybe they were only won because Arthur was there!
- It should also be pointed out that as the myth goes, Arthur will return when the Brythons are in their greatest hour of need, NOT the English OR the British. This means that when he comes, it will be to save the descendants of the ancient Britons, who are the native Welsh, and the Cornish.
- Except that most of the English are also descendants of the Brythons. DNA research has shown that the Anglo-Saxons didn't replace the native populations.
- It's a bit more complicated than that. While Brythonic DNA traces remain in the English (and let's be frank, genocide on that scale would be virtually impossible prior to the Industrial Age), they're in much greater concentrations amongst the Welsh, Cornish, and Lowland Scots. Y-chromosome data also seems to suggest that the male Brythonic population did not reproduce as well as the female Brythonic population did (some have suggested an apartheid-like society to explain this and other abnormalities).
- To go even further, the author behind these papers has been criticized for ignoring a number of things (like the archaeology showing a period where the east of england was down to almost nobody), and using a methodology that is relatively poor, and publishing a pop science book instead of peer reviewed papers. While there are areas of England that have heavy brythonic groups, these areas were also more likely to be welsh speaking prior to the modern era in the first place. At this point he's writing crackpot theories about the English being the pre-roman inhabitants of south-east Britain...
- It should also be pointed out that as the myth goes, Arthur will return when the Brythons are in their greatest hour of need, NOT the English OR the British. This means that when he comes, it will be to save the descendants of the ancient Britons, who are the native Welsh, and the Cornish.
- Speaking of that, surely an invasion by The Shadows would be a greater threat to the Britons then even Hitler was. And didn't a man who thought he was Arthur come back in one episode of Babylon Five ?
One further point which is little-known, but of enormous significance, is that in fact the legend is variously understood to refer to Merlin, Arthur's wise man and magician, and NOT actually to Arthur himself, for the faithful and unwavering counsel which Merlin gave made HIM in effect the "power behind the throne". So it was absolutely no surprise to me at all when I discovered at the tender age of eleven or twelve that in England's REAL greatest hour of need - the summer months of 1940 when the RAF on its knees battled to fight off the outnumbering Luftwaffe in a last-ditch struggle for freedom - Merlin DID return just as promised... for both the Spitfire and the Hurricane, England's only saviours in desperate straits - were both powered by Rolls Royce Merlin engines.
Field Primus
I'm not sure what heading to put this under: It's a tale from a tape (by now, probably a CD) by Peter Alsop and Bill Harley, called Peter Alsop and Bill Harley: In the Hospital. I'm not really sure what the title was, or if the piece had a title, but it was the relating of a weird dream by Peter to Bill.
Anyway, here's the basic story, so if someone could pare it down a bit and put it up in the right category, that'd be nice:
In the dream, Peter is walking down a road and meets a strange old woman (who looks like "a volcano with a hat on top"). She turns his eraser into a sandwich and then gives him a rough stone and tells him to go into the castle and find the King. Peter heads into the castle but it's like a weird maze, and he keeps meeting strange creatures who tell him "The King's not here." He continues on until he meets one creature who actually talks to him, and she says the King has been sleeping for so long that everyone decided it was easier to pretend he wasn't here. She tells Peter which door leads to the King.
Peter goes inside and finds the King sleeping on a chair (throne?). He tries to wake him but can't. Finally, in desperation, he remembers something the old woman made him do: sing a silly song he made up back when he was a kid. He sings it for the King, gets a reaction, and so sings it a couple more times until the King wakes up. The King laughs heartily, and then almost goes back to sleep, but Peter begs him not to, and asks him why he wants to keep sleeping.
The King says he used to rule the kingdom with his sister, the Queen, but then one day, while he was away, people made his sister leave. After that, the King felt so down-hearted that he just felt like going to sleep forever.
When the King goes to sleep again, Peter wakes him with the silly song, and the King asks where he got that song. Peter relates that he made it when he was a kid, but that the old woman asked him to sing it. The "volcano with a hat on top" description, the turning of things into food, and the gift of a stone (which has turned from rough into smooth as glass) identifies the woman enough to make the King joyously get up, have Peter lead him to the castle gates, and then just as the castle gates open and they spy the Queen, Peter wakes up.
Only the curious have, if they live, a tale worth telling at all.
[1]James T. Kirk technically qualifies, in the Generations. And possibly EU that bridged TNG and TOS.