The King in Yellow - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

For the Dead Milkmen album, see The King in Yellow (album)
The King in Yellow (album)
The King in Yellow is the ninth studio album by Dead Milkmen. It is their first studio album in 16 years. It was self-released digitally by the band on their website on March 19, 2011. The band started working on new material after their reunion in 2008. The album was recorded in two weekend...

The King in Yellow is a collection of short stories

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

written by Robert W. Chambers

Robert W. Chambers

Robert William Chambers was an American artist and writer.-Biography:He was born in Brooklyn, New York, to William P. Chambers , a famous lawyer, and Caroline Chambers , a direct descendant of Roger Williams, the founder of Providence, Rhode Island...

and published in 1895

1895 in literature

The year 1895 in literature involved some significant new books.-Events:* Carlyle's House in Chelsea opens to the public.* Robert Frost marries Elinor Miriam White.* Ernest Thayer recites his poem, Casey at the Bat, at a Harvard class reunion....

. The stories could be categorized as early horror fiction

Horror fiction

Horror fiction also Horror fantasy is a philosophy of literature, which is intended to, or has the capacity to frighten its readers, inducing feelings of horror and terror. It creates an eerie atmosphere. Horror can be either supernatural or non-supernatural...

or Victorian Gothic fiction

Gothic fiction

Gothic fiction, sometimes referred to as Gothic horror, is a genre or mode of literature that combines elements of both horror and romance. Gothicism's origin is attributed to English author Horace Walpole, with his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, subtitled "A Gothic Story"...

, but the work also touches on mythology

Mythology

The term mythology can refer either to the study of myths, or to a body or collection of myths. As examples, comparative mythology is the study of connections between myths from different cultures, whereas Greek mythology is the body of myths from ancient Greece...

, fantasy

Fantasy

Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...

, mystery

Mystery fiction

Mystery fiction is a loosely-defined term.1.It is often used as a synonym for detective fiction or crime fiction— in other words a novel or short story in which a detective investigates and solves a crime mystery. Sometimes mystery books are nonfiction...

, science fiction

Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...

and romance

Romance novel

The romance novel is a literary genre developed in Western culture, mainly in English-speaking countries. Novels in this genre place their primary focus on the relationship and romantic love between two people, and must have an "emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending." Through the late...

. The first four stories in the collection involve an imaginary two-act play of the same title.

Stories

The first four stories are loosely connected by three main devices:

A play in book form entitled The King in Yellow
A mysterious and malevolent supernatural entity known as The King in Yellow
An eerie symbol called The Yellow Sign
Yellow Sign
The Yellow Sign is a fictional symbol or glyph, first described in Robert Chambers' book of horror short stories The King in Yellow .-The King in Yellow:The King in Yellow never fully describes the shape and purpose of the Yellow Sign...

These stories are macabre in tone, centering on characters that are often artists or decadents

Decadence

Decadence can refer to a personal trait, or to the state of a society . Used to describe a person's lifestyle. Concise Oxford Dictionary: "a luxurious self-indulgence"...

.
The first story, "The Repairer of Reputations", is set in an imagined future 1920s America.

The other stories in the book do not follow the macabre theme of the first four, and most are written in the romantic fiction style common to Chambers' later work. Some are linked to the preceding stories by their Parisian setting and artistic protagonists.

List of stories

The stories present in the book are:

The Repairer of Reputations
The Repairer of Reputations
The Repairer of Reputations is a short story published by Robert W. Chambers in the collection The King in Yellow in 1895. The story is an example of Chambers' horror fiction, and is one of the stories in the collection which contains the motif of the Yellow Sign and the King in Yellow.-Plot:The...
The Mask
In the Court of the Dragon
In the Court of the Dragon
"In the Court of the Dragon" is a short story published by Robert W. Chambers in the collection The King in Yellow in 1895. The story is an example of Chambers' horror fiction, and is one of the stories in the collection which contains the motif of the King in Yellow.-Plot summary:The story follows...
The Yellow Sign
The Demoiselle d'Ys
The Prophets' Paradise
The Prophets' Paradise
The Prophets' Paradise is a short story published by Robert W. Chambers in the collection The King in Yellow in 1895. The story is a collection of short, prose-poetic pieces that have seemingly no connection to each other.-Stories:...
The Street of the Four Winds
The Street of the First Shell
The Street of Our Lady of the Fields
Rue Barrée

The play called The King in Yellow

The imaginary play The King in Yellow has two acts and at least three characters: Cassilda, Camilla, and the King in Yellow. Chambers' story collection excerpts sections from the play to introduce the book as a whole, or individual stories. For example, "Cassilda's Song" comes from Act I, Scene 2 of the play:

Along the shore the cloud waves break,

The twin suns sink beneath the lake,

The shadows lengthen

In Carcosa

Carcosa

Carcosa is a fictional city in the Ambrose Bierce short story "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" . In Bierce's story, the ancient and mysterious city is barely described, and is viewed only in hindsight by a character who once lived there....

Strange is the night where black stars rise,

And strange moons circle through the skies

But stranger still is

Lost Carcosa.

Songs that the Hyades

Hyades

Hyades may refer to:*Hyades *Hyades , an open star cluster in the constellation Taurus...

shall sing,

Where flap the tatters of the King,

Must die unheard in

Dim Carcosa.

Song of my soul, my voice is dead;

Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed

Shall dry and die in

Lost Carcosa.

The short story "The Mask" is introduced by an excerpt from Act I, Scene 2d:

Camilla: You, sir, should unmask.

Stranger: Indeed?

Cassilda: Indeed, it's time. We have all laid aside disguise but you.

Stranger: I wear no mask.

Camilla: (Terrified, aside to Cassilda.) No mask? No mask!

All of the excerpts come from Act I. The stories describe Act I as quite ordinary, but reading Act II drives the reader mad with the "irresistible" revealed truths. "The very banality and innocence of the first act only allowed the blow to fall afterward with more awful effect." Even seeing of the first page of the second act is enough to draw the reader in: "If I had not caught a glimpse of the opening words in the second act I should never have finished it [...]" ("The Repairer of Reputations").

Chambers usually gives only scattered hints of the contents of the full play, as in this extract from "The Repairer of Reputations

The Repairer of Reputations

The Repairer of Reputations is a short story published by Robert W. Chambers in the collection The King in Yellow in 1895. The story is an example of Chambers' horror fiction, and is one of the stories in the collection which contains the motif of the Yellow Sign and the King in Yellow.-Plot:The...

He mentioned the establishment of the Dynasty in Carcosa, the lakes which connected Hastur, Aldebaran and the mystery of the Hyades. He spoke of Cassilda and Camilla, and sounded the cloudy depths of Demhe, and the Lake of Hali. "The scolloped tatters of the King in Yellow must hide Yhtill forever," he muttered, but I do not believe Vance heard him. Then by degrees he led Vance along the ramifications of the Imperial family, to Uoht and Thale, from Naotalba and Phantom of Truth, to Aldones, and then tossing aside his manuscript and notes, he began the wonderful story of the Last King.

A similar passage occurs in "The Yellow Sign", in which two protagonists have read The King in Yellow:

Night fell and the hours dragged on, but still we murmured to each other of the King and the Pallid Mask, and midnight sounded from the misty spires in the fog-wrapped city. We spoke of Hastur and of Cassilda, while outside the fog rolled against the blank window-panes as the cloud waves roll and break on the shores of Hali.

Influences

Chambers borrowed the names Carcosa, Hali, and Hastur from Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce was an American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist and satirist...

: specifically, his short stories

Short story

"An Inhabitant of Carcosa

An Inhabitant of Carcosa

"An Inhabitant of Carcosa" is a short story by 19th-century journalist, short-story writer and occasional horror-story author, Ambrose Bierce....

" and "Haïta the Shepherd". There is no strong indication that Chambers was influenced beyond liking the names. For example, Hastur is a god of shepherds in "Haïta the Shepherd", but is implicitly a location in "The Repairer of Reputations", listed alongside the Hyades and Aldebaran.

Possible influences may include Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...

's "The Masque of the Red Death

The Masque of the Red Death

"The Masque of the Red Death", originally published as "The Mask of the Red Death" , is a short story by Edgar Allan Poe. The story follows Prince Prospero's attempts to avoid a dangerous plague known as the Red Death by hiding in his abbey. He, along with many other wealthy nobles, has a...

". Its synopsis is similar to Chambers's imaginary play: a masquerade is held by decadent members of the aristocracy. They isolate themselves from the outside world where the Red Death, a plague, reigns supreme. At the end of the masquerade, a stranger appears, wearing a bloodied shroud and a mask figuring a Red Death victim. When the shocked dancers try to unmask him, they find nothing but an empty shroud and a Mask; then they die from the plague, one by one.
In both stories, colors have an ominous importance and the strangers are both portents of death and destruction.

Other texts, especially from the symbolist

Symbolism (arts)

Symbolism was a late nineteenth-century art movement of French, Russian and Belgian origin in poetry and other arts. In literature, the style had its beginnings with the publication Les Fleurs du mal by Charles Baudelaire...

writers, may have influenced Chambers as well: "Le Roi au masque d'or" ("The king in the gold mask"), a short story written by Marcel Schwob

Marcel Schwob

Marcel Schwob was a Jewish French writer.-Biography:He was born in Chaville, Hauts-de-Seine on 23 August 1867...

—a French novelist and a friend of Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

—was published in 1893 while Chambers was still studying in Paris. In this story, a king rules a city where all inhabitants are masked. One day, a strange blind beggar comes into his palace. After meeting with the beggar, the king, believing he's afflicted by leprosy, feels compelled to remove his mask; he then tears his own eyes out and leaves his city. A beggar now, the former king heads toward the faraway "city of the wretched" but dies before the end of his journey.

It is also possible that the play Salomé
Salome (play)
Salome is a tragedy by Oscar Wilde.The original 1891 version of the play was in French. Three years later an English translation was published...

by Oscar Wilde

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish writer and poet. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s...

, published in 1893, was another symbolist source of inspiration for The King in Yellow. Like The King in Yellow, Salomé was originally written in French before being translated; it was then banned in Britain because of its scandalous reputation. Wilde's play in one act involves a queen, a princess, a king, and an ominous prophet clad in camel's hair dress, Iokanaan

John the Baptist

John the Baptist was an itinerant preacher and a major religious figure mentioned in the Canonical gospels. He is described in the Gospel of Luke as a relative of Jesus, who led a movement of baptism at the Jordan River...

, whose appearance may bring untold and terrible events.
The ominous language used, the drama, and the feeling of unease and expectation evokes Chambers's play; on page one of Salomé, the moon is described as a "little princess who wears a yellow veil"; on pages three and nine, the young Syrian says, "How pale the princess is! Never have I seen her so pale." On page 16, the young Syrian is named by Salome: his name is Narraboth and he beseeches Salome to avoid looking at Iokanaan and, finally, commits suicide. Marcel Schwob corrected the original French version of Salomé on behalf of Oscar Wilde.

Cthulhu Mythos

H.P. Lovecraft read The King in Yellow in early 1927
and included passing references to various things and places from the book—such as the Lake of Hali and the Yellow Sign

Yellow Sign

The Yellow Sign is a fictional symbol or glyph, first described in Robert Chambers' book of horror short stories The King in Yellow .-The King in Yellow:The King in Yellow never fully describes the shape and purpose of the Yellow Sign...

—in "The Whisperer in Darkness

The Whisperer in Darkness

"The Whisperer in Darkness" is a short story by H. P. Lovecraft. Written February–September 1930, it was first published in Weird Tales, August 1931. Similar to "The Colour Out of Space" , it is a blend of horror and science fiction...

" (1931

1931 in literature

The year 1931 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Cherokee playwright Lynn Riggs' play Green Grow the Lilacs premiers. It would later be adapted by Rodgers and Hammerstein as Oklahoma!....

),
one of his seminal Cthulhu Mythos

Cthulhu Mythos

The Cthulhu Mythos is a shared fictional universe, based on the work of American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft.The term was first coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent of Lovecraft, who used the name of the creature Cthulhu - a central figure in Lovecraft literature and the focus...

stories. Lovecraft borrowed Chambers' method of only vaguely referring to supernatural events, entities, and places, thereby allowing his readers to imagine the horror for themselves. The imaginary play The King in Yellow effectively became another piece of occult literature in the Cthulhu Mythos

Cthulhu Mythos arcane literature

Many fictional works of arcane literature appear in the Cthulhu Mythos. The main literary purpose of these works is to explain how characters within the tales come by occult or esoteric knowledge that is unknown to the general populace. However, in some cases the works themselves serve as an...

alongside the Necronomicon
Necronomicon
The Necronomicon is a fictional grimoire appearing in the stories by horror writer H. P. Lovecraft and his followers. It was first mentioned in Lovecraft's 1924 short story "The Hound", written in 1922, though its purported author, the "Mad Arab" Abdul Alhazred, had been quoted a year earlier in...

and others.

In the story, Lovecraft linked the Yellow Sign to Hastur

Hastur

Hastur is a fictional entity of the Cthulhu Mythos. Hastur first appeared in Ambrose Bierce's short story "Haïta the Shepherd" as a benign god of shepherds. Robert W...

, but from his brief (and only) mention it is not clear what Lovecraft meant Hastur to be. August Derleth

August Derleth

August William Derleth was an American writer and anthologist. Though best remembered as the first publisher of the writings of H. P...

developed Hastur into a Great Old One in his controversial reworking of Lovecraft's universe, elaborating on this connection in his own mythos stories. In the writings of Derleth and a few other latter-day Cthulhu Mythos authors, the King in Yellow is an Avatar

Avatar

In Hinduism, an avatar is a deliberate descent of a deity to earth, or a descent of the Supreme Being and is mostly translated into English as "incarnation," but more accurately as "appearance" or "manifestation"....

of Hastur, so named because of his appearance as a thin, floating man covered in tattered yellow robes.

In Lovecraft's cycle of horror sonnets, Fungi from Yuggoth, sonnet XXVII "The Elder Pharos" mentions the last Elder One who lives alone talking to chaos via drums: "The Thing, they whisper, wears a silken mask of yellow, whose queer folds appear to hide a face not of this earth...."

In the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game

Call of Cthulhu (role-playing game)

Call of Cthulhu is a horror fiction role-playing game based on H. P. Lovecraft's story of the same name and the associated Cthulhu Mythos.The game, often abbreviated as CoC, is published by Chaosium.-Setting:...

published by Chaosium

Chaosium

Chaosium is one of the longer lived publishers of role-playing games still in existence. Founded by Greg Stafford, its first game was actually a wargame, White Bear and Red Moon, which later mutated into Dragon Pass and its sequel, Nomad Gods...

, the King In Yellow is an avatar of Hastur who uses his eponymous play to spread insanity among humans. He is described as a hunched figure clad in tattered, yellow rags, who wears a smooth and featureless "Pallid Mask." Removing the mask is a sanity-shattering experience; the King's face is described as "inhuman eyes in a suppurating sea of stubby maggot-like mouths; liquescent flesh, tumorous and gelid, floating and reforming."

Although none of the characters in Chambers's book describe the plot of the play, Kevin Ross fabricated a plot for the play within the Call of Cthulhu mythos. According to Ross' version, the play is set within the fantastical alien city, Yhtill, adjacent to Aldebaran

Aldebaran

Aldebaran is a red giant star located about 65 light years away in the zodiac constellation of Taurus. With an average apparent magnitude of 0.87 it is the brightest star in the constellation and is one of the brightest stars in the nighttime sky...

. The plot centers on the members of the city's royal family and their struggle for the throne. Their normal lives are disturbed when they hear of a mysterious stranger who is carried to the city by winged demons (assumed to be byakhee

Byakhee

-Summary:There flapped rhythmically a horde of tame, trained, hybrid winged things ... not altogether crows, nor moles, nor buzzards, nor ants, nor decomposed human beings, but something I cannot and must not recall.—H. P. Lovecraft, "The Festival"...

), who openly wears the Yellow Sign and an eerie "Pallid Mask". At the same time, everyone begins seeing a mirage

Mirage

A mirage is a naturally occurring optical phenomenon in which light rays are bent to produce a displaced image of distant objects or the sky. The word comes to English via the French mirage, from the Latin mirare, meaning "to look at, to wonder at"...

of a city on the other side of the Lake of Hali. The city's upper towers are hidden behind one of the planet's two moons.

The royal family question the stranger, who calls himself the Phantom of Truth, but he only gives cryptic answers and claims to be an emissary of the terrible mythical being known as the King in Yellow, or Last King. At a masked ball honoring the royal family, the Phantom of Truth reveals that his "Pallid Mask" is not a mask, but his true face. Outraged, the queen and high priest torture him to death, but learn nothing in the process. As the Phantom of Truth dies, the King in Yellow arrives from across the Lake of Hali, driving most of the population insane as the mirage-city across the lake vanishes. The King in Yellow informs the royal family that Yhtill has now become the city of Carcosa, under the rule of the King in Yellow. The play ends with the royal family awaiting their imminent doom.

Literature

Karl Edward Wagner
Karl Edward Wagner
Karl Edward Wagner was an American writer, editor and publisher of horror, science fiction, and heroic fantasy, who was born in Knoxville, Tennessee and originally trained as a psychiatrist. His disillusionment with the medical profession can be seen in the stories "The Fourth Seal" and "Into...

used it as a motif in his novella
Novella
A novella is a written, fictional, prose narrative usually longer than a novelette but shorter than a novel. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Nebula Awards for science fiction define the novella as having a word count between 17,500 and 40,000...

The River of Night's Dreaming.

Marion Zimmer Bradley
Marion Zimmer Bradley
Marion Eleanor Zimmer Bradley was an American author of fantasy novels such as The Mists of Avalon and the Darkover series. Many critics have noted a feminist perspective in her writing. Her first child, David R...

's Darkover
Darkover
Darkover is the focus of the Darkover series of science fiction novels and short stories by Marion Zimmer Bradley and others published since 1958. According to the novels, Darkover is the only human-habitable of seven planets orbiting a fictional red giant star called Cottman...

novels contain references to Aldones, Camilla, Cassilda, Carcosa, the cloud Lake of Hali, Naotalba, and Hastur. Though Hali is a city by a lake, the characters and places do not otherwise resemble Chambers' characters.
Some writers have attempted to write a full text for the imaginary The King in Yellow, including James Blish
James Blish
James Benjamin Blish was an American author of fantasy and science fiction. Blish also wrote literary criticism of science fiction using the pen-name William Atheling, Jr.-Biography:...

("More Light", 1970
1970 in literature
The year 1970 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* Deliverance by American poet James Dickey published...

), Lin Carter
Lin Carter
Linwood Vrooman Carter was an American author of science fiction and fantasy, as well as an editor and critic. He usually wrote as Lin Carter; known pseudonyms include H. P. Lowcraft and Grail Undwin.-Life:Carter was born in St. Petersburg, Florida...

("Tatters of the King", 1986
1986 in literature
The year 1986 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Michael Grade. Controller of BBC One, axes plans to televise Ian Curteis's The Falklands Play.-New books:*Kingsley Amis - The Old Devils...

), and Thom Ryng (The King in Yellow, 2000
2000 in literature
The year 2000 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* February 13 - Final original Peanuts comic strip is published...

).

"The King in Yellow" is the name of a 1938
1938 in literature
The year 1938 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* The trilogy, U.S.A. by John Dos Passos, is published containing his three novels The 42nd Parallel , 1919 , and The Big Money ....

short story by Raymond Chandler
Raymond Chandler
Raymond Thornton Chandler was an American novelist and screenwriter.In 1932, at age forty-five, Raymond Chandler decided to become a detective fiction writer after losing his job as an oil company executive during the Depression. His first short story, "Blackmailers Don't Shoot", was published in...

. It is a crime story in which the narrator has apparently read Chambers' book, and uses the phrase to describe one of the other characters.
Vincent Starrett
Vincent Starrett
Charles Vincent Emerson Starrett , known as Vincent Starrett, was an American writer and newspaperman.- Biography :...

wrote a poem called "Cordelia's Song from The King in Yellow", which was published in the April 1938 issue of Weird Tales
Weird Tales
Weird Tales is an American fantasy and horror fiction pulp magazine first published in March 1923. It ceased its original run in September 1954, after 279 issues, but has since been revived. The magazine was set up in Chicago by J. C. Henneberger, an ex-journalist with a taste for the macabre....

.
Robert Silverberg
Robert Silverberg
Robert Silverberg is an American author, best known for writing science fiction. He is a multiple nominee of the Hugo Award and a winner of the Nebula Award.-Early years:...

used the exchange between Camilla, Cassilda and the Stranger as the epigraph to his 1967 novel Thorns.
In Robert A. Heinlein
Robert A. Heinlein
Robert Anson Heinlein was an American science fiction writer. Often called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was one of the most influential and controversial authors of the genre. He set a standard for science and engineering plausibility and helped to raise the genre's standards of...

's The Number of the Beast
The Number of the Beast (novel)
The Number of the Beast is a science fiction novel by Robert A. Heinlein published in 1980. The first edition featured a cover and interior illustrations by Richard M. Powers...

, Zeb Carter mentions the King in Yellow's "world" as one to be avoided.
Stephen King
Stephen King
Stephen Edwin King is an American author of contemporary horror, suspense, science fiction and fantasy fiction. His books have sold more than 350 million copies and have been adapted into a number of feature films, television movies and comic books...

, in his novel Thinner (written under the pen-name Richard Bachman
Richard Bachman
Richard Bachman is a pseudonym used by horror fiction author Stephen King.-Origin:At the beginning of Stephen King's career, the general view among publishers was such that an author was limited to a book every year, since publishing more would not be acceptable to the public...

), includes a reference to the "King in Yellow" as a head shop
Head shop
A head shop is a retail outlet specializing in drug paraphernalia used for consumption of cannabis, other recreational drugs, legal highs, legal party powders and New Age herbs, as well as counterculture art, magazines, music, clothing, and home decor; some head shops also sell oddities, such as...

from which the protagonist's daughter buys an item.
Brian Keene
Brian Keene
Brian Keene is an American author, primarily of horror, crime fiction, and comic books. He has won two Bram Stoker Awards.- Background :Keene was born in 1967. He grew up in both Pennsylvania and West Virginia, and many of his books take place in these locales. After graduating high school, he...

's short story "'The King,' in: Yellow", recounts the story of a modern-day couple who attend a performance of the play performed by "actors" who strongly resemble deceased singers and musicians such as Janis Joplin
Janis Joplin
Janis Lyn Joplin was an American singer, songwriter, painter, dancer and music arranger. She rose to prominence in the late 1960s as the lead singer of Big Brother and the Holding Company and later as a solo artist with her backing groups, The Kozmic Blues Band and The Full Tilt Boogie Band...

, Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...

—and Elvis Presley
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....

as "The King".
The King in Yellow makes an appearance in the final volume of Grant Morrison
Grant Morrison
Grant Morrison is a Scottish comic book writer, playwright and occultist. He is known for his nonlinear narratives and counter-cultural leanings, as well as his successful runs on titles like Animal Man, Doom Patrol, JLA, The Invisibles, New X-Men, Fantastic Four, All-Star Superman, and...

's The Invisibles
The Invisibles
The Invisibles is a comic book series that was published by the Vertigo imprint of DC Comics from 1994 to 2000. It was created and scripted by Scottish writer Grant Morrison, and drawn by various artists throughout its publication....

.
Paul Edwin Zimmer
Paul Edwin Zimmer
Paul Edwin Zimmer , was a noted poet and author. He was also an accomplished swordsman and founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism...

's Dark Border series used a number of the names that feature in The King in Yellow, including Hastur, Hali, and Carcosa.
The Doctor Who
Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a British science fiction television programme produced by the BBC. The programme depicts the adventures of a time-travelling humanoid alien known as the Doctor who explores the universe in a sentient time machine called the TARDIS that flies through time and space, whose exterior...

novel The Death of Art, by Simon Bucher-Jones
Simon Bucher-Jones
Simon Bucher-Jones in Liverpool; he is a British author, poet, artist, and amateur actor, best known for his Doctor Who novels for Virgin and the BBC and as a contributor to the Faction Paradox spin-off series....

, starts with a reference to "Naotalba's Song", and includes the art students from Chambers as incidental characters.
Cleveland Moffett wrote two supernatural stories collected in the book The Mysterious Card (1912) that were influenced by the stories in The King in Yellow, although they do not refer to any of the names in Chambers' work.
Joseph S. Pulver
Joseph S. Pulver
Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. is an author and poet, much of whose work falls within the horror fiction, noir fiction / hardboiled, and dark fantasy genres...

has written nearly 30 tales and poems that are based on and/or include The King in Yellow, Carcosa
Carcosa
Carcosa is a fictional city in the Ambrose Bierce short story "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" . In Bierce's story, the ancient and mysterious city is barely described, and is viewed only in hindsight by a character who once lived there....

, and other elements from Chambers' stories. Pulver also edited an anthology of new fiction related to The King in Yellow, titled A Season in Carcosa, scheduled to be released in 2012 by Miskatonic River Press.
Lawrence Watt-Evans
Lawrence Watt-Evans
Lawrence Watt-Evans is one of the pseudonyms of American science fiction and fantasy author Lawrence Watt Evans...

adopted the name for the immortal high priest of Death in a series of novels--The Lure of the Basilisk, The Seven Altars of Dusarra, The Sword of Bheleu, and The Book of Silence--collectively known as The Lords of Dûs.
The King in Yellow is the antagonist of Miyuki Miyabe
Miyuki Miyabe
Miyuki Miyabe is a popular contemporary Japanese author active in a number of genres that include science fiction, mystery fiction, historical fiction, social commentary, and juvenile fiction...

's YA fantasy novel The Book of Heroes.
Simon Green
Simon Green
Simon Richard Green, born 1955 in Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire, is a British science fiction and fantasy-author. He holds a degree in Modern English and American Literature from the University of Leicester. He began his writing career in 1973, sold his first story Manslayer in 1976, and had his...

mentions The King in Yellow as a deity possibly worshiped by the older members of the Londinium Club in The Unnatural Inquirer, a book in the Nightside
Nightside
Nightside may refer to:*The Canadian late-night radio talk show The Nightside, hosted by Mark Elliot*NBC Nightside, NBC's now-defunct late night news program, comparable to ABC's World News Now and CBS' Up to the Minute....

series.

Music

Blue Oyster Cult
Blue Öyster Cult
Blue Öyster Cult, often abbreviated BÖC, is an American rock band, most of whose members first came together in Long Island, NY in 1967 as the band Soft White Underbelly...

's song "E.T.I. (Extra Terrestrial Intelligence)", from the 1976 album Agents Of Fortune
Agents of Fortune
Agents of Fortune is the fourth studio album released by Blue Öyster Cult, originally released in a gatefold sleeve in 1976.The platinum selling album peaked at #29 on Billboards Pop Albums chart, while the single " The Reaper" peaked at #12 on the Pop Singles chart, making it Blue Öyster Cult's...

, refers to "the King in Yellow and the Queen in Red".
In 2002 Rainfall Records released a CD called The King in Yellow by The Society of The Yellow Sign (a name taken from a story by Joseph S. Pulver
Joseph S. Pulver
Joseph S. Pulver, Sr. is an author and poet, much of whose work falls within the horror fiction, noir fiction / hardboiled, and dark fantasy genres...

), containing songs and spoken-word pieces and songs based on Chambers' creations.
British black metal
Black metal
Black metal is an extreme subgenre of heavy metal music. Common traits include fast tempos, shrieked vocals, highly distorted guitars played with tremolo picking, blast beat drumming, raw recording, and unconventional song structure....

band Anaal Nathrakh
Anaal Nathrakh
Anaal Nathrakh are a British extreme metal band formed in 1999 who fuse black metal, grindcore, death metal and industrial music. They are currently signed to Candlelight Records....

have a song called "The Yellow King" on their 2006 album Eschaton
Eschaton (album)
Eschaton is the third album by British black metal band Anaal Nathrakh. Musically, the album continues in the vein of the previous album, Domine Non Es Dignus. Some reviewers have commented that the overall atmosphere and production are at the same time a step back towards the out-and-out ferocity...

, as well as a quotation from the book in the liner notes.
Belgian
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...

extreme metal
Extreme metal
Extreme metal is a loosely defined umbrella term for a number of related heavy metal music subgenres that have developed since the early 1980s. The term usually refers to a more abrasive, harsher, underground, non-commercialized style or sound nearly always associated with genres like black metal,...

band Ancient Rites
Ancient Rites
Ancient Rites is a Flemish black metal band formed in 1988. Initially, the line- up consisted of guitar players Johan and Phillip, drummer Stefan, and Gunther Theys on bass and vocals. In 1990 the Dark Ritual demo was released in the underground scene, getting worldwide attention just as black...

have a song "Dim Carcosa" on the album of the same name; its lyrics are directly based on "Cassilda's song" from The King in Yellow.
Toyah
Toyah
Toyah may refer to:*Toyah Willcox, a singer, actress, and TV presenter, often referred to by her first name only*Toyah , the pop group fronted by Toyah Willcox between 1977 and 1983*Toyah, Texas, a town in Texas, USA...

's 1982 album The Changeling includes a song, "The Packt", that includes the first two quoted couplets of Act I in its lyrics.
The title track of The Forgotten King by the Scottish Blood Metal band Achren
Achren
Achren is a fictional character and villainess in the fantasy series The Chronicles of Prydain, written by Lloyd Alexander.-Profile:In the novels, Achren was once Queen of Prydain, and ruled many years as a harsh and vengeful tyrant, both as ruler and then as the Death-lord Arawn's consort...

makes several references, with the quote "I wear no mask" spoken repeatedly at the start of the song.

Games

The Call of Cthulhu role-playing game
Call of Cthulhu (role-playing game)
Call of Cthulhu is a horror fiction role-playing game based on H. P. Lovecraft's story of the same name and the associated Cthulhu Mythos.The game, often abbreviated as CoC, is published by Chaosium.-Setting:...

has featured the Hastur mythos and the King in Yellow over the years; one prominent example is the campaign
Campaign (role-playing games)
In role-playing games, a campaign is a continuing storyline or set of adventures, typically involving the same characters. The purpose of the continuing storyline is to introduce a further aspect into the game: that of development, improvement, and growth of the characters. In a campaign, a...

Tatters of the King which also includes extracts from the play, as well as an early scene in which the player character
Player character
A player character or playable character is a character in a video game or role playing game who is controlled or controllable by a player, and is typically a protagonist of the story told in the course of the game. A player character is a persona of the player who controls it. Player characters...

s attend an ill-fated performance.
Dungeon Magazine Issue 134 featured an adventure for ninth level characters by Matthew Hope called "And Madness Followed", featuring a bard who performed The King in Yellow for increasingly larger communities, each time warping the populace into Far Realm horrors.
The King in Yellow is the title of an expansion to the Lovecraft-themed Arkham Horror
Arkham Horror
Arkham Horror is an adventure board game designed by Richard Launius, originally published in 1987 by Chaosium and most recently published in 2005 and revised in 2007 by Fantasy Flight Games. In both editions, players take on the role of investigators in H. P. Lovecraft's Massachusetts town of...

adventure board game
Adventure board game
An adventure board game is a board game in which a player plays as a unique individual character that improves through gameplay. This improvement is commonly reflected in terms of increasing character attributes, but also in receiving new abilities or equipment.Adventure board games often...

, involving a troupe of actors who intend to perform the eponymous play. The King himself does not appear, but if the play is performed to its conclusion, it drives the entire population of Arkham
Arkham
Arkham is a fictional city in Massachusetts, part of the Lovecraft Country setting created by H. P. Lovecraft and is featured in many of his stories, as well as those of other Cthulhu Mythos writers....

insane.
The videogame Persona 2: Eternal Punishment for PlayStation
PlayStation
The is a 32-bit fifth-generation video game console first released by Sony Computer Entertainment in Japan on December 3, .The PlayStation was the first of the PlayStation series of consoles and handheld game devices. The PlayStation 2 was the console's successor in 2000...

features Hastur as a summonable Persona. The tarot card from which he is summoned is known as the "King in Yellow" card, and is of the Tower arcanum.
The King in Yellow is the name of heavy occult magical text usable as a weapon in Namco's Tales of Phantasia
Tales of Phantasia
is a Super Nintendo game in the RPG genre published by Namco and released in Japan in 1995, selling 212,000 copies. It is the first mothership title in the Tales RPG series and was later remade/re-released on the PlayStation, Game Boy Advance and PlayStation Portable...

game.
The final boss in Magicka
Magicka
Magicka is an action-adventure video game based on Norse mythology and developed by independent developer Arrowhead Game Studios. It was released via Steam for Microsoft Windows on January 25, 2011. A free demo was also made available for download...

is a powerful being called Assatur, the King in Yellow, who threatens to destroy the world. The name Assatur could be a combination of Azathoth
Azathoth
Azathoth is a deity in the Cthulhu Mythos and Dream Cycle stories of H. P. Lovecraft and other authors. Its epithets include Nuclear Chaos, the Daemon Sultan and the Blind Idiot God.-Inspiration:...

and Hastur
Hastur
Hastur is a fictional entity of the Cthulhu Mythos. Hastur first appeared in Ambrose Bierce's short story "Haïta the Shepherd" as a benign god of shepherds. Robert W...

, both of them powerful beings in the Cthulhu Mythos
Cthulhu Mythos
The Cthulhu Mythos is a shared fictional universe, based on the work of American horror writer H. P. Lovecraft.The term was first coined by August Derleth, a contemporary correspondent of Lovecraft, who used the name of the creature Cthulhu - a central figure in Lovecraft literature and the focus...

.

Other

In 2001, director Aaron Vanek and writer John Tynes
John tynes
John Tynes is a writer best known for his work on role-playing games such as Unknown Armies, Delta Green, Puppetland, and for his company Tynes Cowan Corporation. Under its imprint Pagan Publishing, Tynes Cowan Corp...

adapted much of the book's content into a film titled The Yellow Sign.
Carcosa Seri Negara
Carcosa Seri Negara
Carcosa Seri Negara is a luxury hotel on two adjacent hills inside the Lake Gardens, Kuala Lumpur. It is owned by the Malaysian Government. The hotel includes two colonial mansions, one named Carcosa, the other Seri Negara.-Carcosa:...

, a hotel in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, was built as the residence of Sir Frank Swettenham, the first British Resident-General of the Federated Malay States
Federated Malay States
The Federated Malay States was a federation of four protected states in the Malay Peninsula—Selangor, Perak, Negeri Sembilan and Pahang—established by the British government in 1895, which lasted until 1946, when they, together with the Straits Settlements and the Unfederated Malay...

, in 1896-1897. He named it after the city in The King in Yellow.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.

Stories

List of stories

The play called The King in Yellow

Influences

Cthulhu Mythos

Literature

Music

Games

Other

Further reading

External links