King Under The Mountain Game

[Penny Bozic]

Examplesinclude the legends of King Arthur, Fionn mac Cumhaill, Charlemagne, Ogier the Dane, King David, Frederick Barbarossa at Kyffhuser, Genghis Khan, Constantine XI Palaiologos, Kraljević Marko, Sebastian of Portugal and King Matjaž.[3][4][5]

The motifs A 571[clarification needed] "Cultural hero asleep in mountain", and E 502, "The Sleeping Army" are similar and can occur in the same tale.[1] A related motif is the "Seven Sleepers" (D 1960.1,[2] also known as the "Rip Van Winkle" motif), whose type tale is the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus (AT tale type 766).

King in the mountain stories involve legendary heroes, often accompanied by armed retainers, sleeping in remote dwellings including caves on high mountaintops, remote islands, or supernatural worlds. The hero is frequently a historical figure of some military consequence in the history of the nation where the mountain is located.

The stories gathered by the Brothers Grimm concerning Frederick Barbarossa and Charlemagne are typical of the stories told, and have been influential on many variants and subsequent adaptations. The presence of the hero is unsuspected; until some herdsman wanders into the cave, typically looking for a lost animal, and sees the hero. The stories almost always mention the detail that the hero has grown a long beard, indicative of the long time he has slept beneath the mountain.[citation needed]

In the Brothers Grimm version, the hero speaks with the herdsman. Their conversation typically involves the hero asking, "Do the eagles (or ravens) still circle the mountaintop?" The herdsman, or a mysterious voice, replies, "Yes, they still circle the mountaintop." "Then begone! My time has not yet come."[citation needed]

The herdsman in this story was then supernaturally harmed by the experience: he ages rapidly, he emerges with his hair turned white, and often he dies after repeating the tale. The story goes on to say that the king sleeps in the mountain, awaiting a summons to arise with his knights and defend the nation in a time of deadly peril. The omen that presages his rising will be the extinction of the birds that trigger his awakening.[6][7]

A number of European kings, rulers, fictional characters and religious figures have become attached to this story. Major examples are King Arthur of Britain, Charlemagne of the Franks, and Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, as well as [8][9] Ogier the Dane and William Tell.[9]

Sometimes this type of story or archetype is also attached to not-so-heroic figures, who are either simple anti-heroes or fully villains, whose return would mean the end of the world, or whose sleep represents something positive. This kind of archetype is known as the "Chained Satan" archetype.[33] Among examples of this are:

There fell also Fli and Kli, his sister-sons. But Din Ironfoot, his cousin, who came from the Iron Hills to his aid and was also his rightful heir, became then King Din II, and the Kingdom under the Mountain was restored, even as Gandalf had desired.

I'm going to vastly oversimplify some common rules of succession to try and explain how this issue might be resolved. Please note that (to my knowledge) Tolkien has never indicated what rule of succession the Dwarves follow.

I'm going to assume, as you do in your question, that Fli and Kli survived the Battle of the Five Armies, because otherwise it's a moot point. I'll also assume that their mother Ds is alive, although we have no canon to confirm or deny it, because it's easier than constantly saying "If Ds is alive then..., otherwise...".

Cognatic primogeniture. Vastly oversimplifying, this means that succession is a depth-first search on the family tree, preferring the oldest children. Typically this rule has preferred male children over female (a variation of which is sometimes called "Male primogeniture"2). Under this rule, succession would be determined like so:

Salic Law, Variation 1. Salic Law is similar to cognatic primogeniture, except that it excludes females kin from the line of succession. In the first variation I'm going to look at, the entire female line is considered "naturally dead"3. In this case, the succession would be determined like this:

Salic Law, Variation 2. Under the second variation of Salic Law, female kin are considered "naturally dead", but their sons are in the line of succession. How this plays out is essentially the same (in this case) as with cognatic succession, except the Crown skips over Ds and lands directly on Fli.

As previously noted, we have no idea. Tolkien was presumably not interested in the topic of succession, so we have no Word of God answer on the subject. Considering that Ds is literally the only Dwarf female identified in Tolkien's writings (and Tolkien identified a lot of Dwarf kings, as you can see from the above image), it's a fair assumption that they follow a variation of Salic law, with no Queens allowed, but exactly which version they follow is unknown, and there are no clues to help us sort it out.

What effect would [Durin's reincarnation] have on the succession? Probably this 'return' would only occur when by some chance or other the reigning king had no son. The Dwarves were very unprolific and this no doubt happened fairly often.

2 For reference, male primogeniture was how succession of the British Crown had worked (with the added caveats that illegitimate children and Catholics were always excluded) from 1701 until something happened that made the Royal Family somewhat anxious to revise that male-preference thing.

3 "Natural death: is an idea found in the British rules of succession (and likely those of other nations, although the British one is where I'm sourcing the phrase). To be "naturally dead" just means that you're not in line for succession. Under British succession law, for example, Catholics and illegitimate children are naturally dead.

A legendary form of Faux Death: the Long-Dead Badass is not really dead, but asleep. Usually, but not necessarily, under a mountain. Islands and a Magical Land are other possibilities. At any rate, somewhere difficult to access.

He will come again in his country's hour of need to play Big Damn Heroes. The original folkloric motif generally referred the hero's awakening to The End of the World as We Know It; the rise of nationalism altered the focus from the entire world to merely the nation.

See also Awakening the Sleeping Giant, which comes into play when it does happen; while not technically neutral, they are effectively so because they are not in the fray. Sister Trope to Sealed Good in a Can and Sealed Badass in a Can; they overlap in those rare stories where the king does wake. Compare Sealed Evil in a Can. Compare Present Absence, Rip Van Winkle, Year Outside, Hour Inside, and Stumbling Upon the Lost Wizard.

Anime & Manga Bleach: The Quincies have ancient folklore speaking of a Sealed King. The legend states that 900 years after he is sealed, he will regain his heartbeat; 90 years after that, he'll regain his intellect; 9 years after that, he'll regain his power. The Final Arc takes place during the year he regains his power and plunges everyone into a war he started a thousand years ago. Yhwach reveals the last stanza of the legend is that 9 days after he regains his power, he'll regain the world. Saya in Blood+, until a couple years before the first episode, and then again in the epilogue. Played with in The Five Star Stories. The legendary warrior king Colus III really is dead, but his Humongous Mecha and Artificial Human partner Clotho are sealed away waiting for a worthy descendant of the king to use them in his nation's time of need. In Phantom Dreams, the Gekka family have a "sleeping king". Probably Sealed Evil in a Can for once. Nakiami becomes this in the ending of Xam'd: Lost Memories.

Audio Plays The Dark King Ixpellia in StrikerS Sound Stage X sleeps in the underwater ruins uncovered during the construction of the Marine Gardens, and intended to never wake up despite all the text that speaks of her return since she was sick of all the fighting. Unfortunately, the current Big Bad learns about her and seeks her out, planning to use her and her undead army to terrorize Mid-Childa.

Comic Books Batman: The Elseworld story Batman: Dark Knight of the Round Table re-imagines Batman as a knight in King Arthur's court. At the end of the story, the dying Batman is enchanted to sleep and awaken at the hour of Britain's greatest need. The final page shows the Batplane battling German fighters during the Blitz. The Batman: Black and White story "Legend" is set in 'the far future', where a woman tells her child a bedtime story about how the great warrior Batman finally banished evil from the world, then went to sleep in the Batcave, having promised to awaken if evil ever returned. Then she starts crying, because the world they live in is beset by evil apparently victorious. The final panels show a malefactor looking around in surprise and then alarm as a familiar pointy-eared shadow falls over him... In The Books of Magic, Tim Hunter and Doctor Occult encounter the King Under the Mountain. When they ask which king, they're told that he's all of them. The bard under the mountain specifically name-checks Barbarossa and Arthur, among others. Camelot 3000 takes the Arthurian Legend and runs with it. King Arthur does indeed return in the hour of England's greatest need: an alien invasion in the year 3000. Captain America, who slept for Xnote Sliding timescale means that X = the amount of time between 1945 and about ten to fifteen years ago years until our greatest need... In both DC One Million and All-Star Superman, our Superman goes into the sun in order to rebuild its heart and leaves the superheroing to his many descendants who he blesses with extra-extraordinary powers. He returns after 83,000 years and brings New Krypton into our solar system. In an Iron Man story featuring Doctor Doom and Time Travel, Iron Man and Doom find themselves in a future England (this was a sequel to an earlier storyline that had seen the same two characters go back to Arthurian times). Merlin is back, as is Arthur... only due to genetic engineering and such, Arthur was literally reborn to two Yuppie Britons and so is a spoiled young brat. Guess who has to take his place? An issue of Rom Spaceknight has Rom stumble upon the suspended form of King Arthur in a subterranean chamber. Not being familiar with Earth's legends, Rom doesn't understand what he's found, but as a noble Knight in Shining Armor himself, he feels a strange kinship with the slumbering figure and an instinctive sense that he shouldn't be disturbed just now.

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