King Pariah Dark.
There’s no way that’s his real name.
It sounds like a Sith lord name. Then again, lots of ghosts have edgy self-chosen names, don’t they?
But there’s also no way he’s anybody’s actual king.
Maybe when he was alive, he was a king. A really bad one. So bad that the people revolted and exiled/executed him. He calls himself “Pariah” out of self-pity.
I’m probably not the first to say this, but I don’t think the “ghost king” actually has any political power over the Ghost Zone. It seems that ghosts are kind of ungovernable by nature. Even those in positions of relative authority like Walker or Aragon only seem to be so as part of the mechanics of their unique purposes as ghosts, and they only “rule” over those in their own domains. They may vie for more power, but it’s more of a scrappy turf war kind of thing. Greater bodies like the Watchers and Clockwork seem to be the closest thing to formal organization, but it hardly seems related to the King. And Danny consistently struggles to wrangle any number of ghosts to do anything under one banner, so clearly nobody sees the Ghost Zone as a kingdom. It’s more like the wild west. Law of beasts. Every specter for itself. Yadda yadda.
So then, why is there a crown? Why is Fright Knight there to serve it?
Here’s my theory.
The Ghost Zone is memetic, right? Its entities and architecture are born from consciousness, impulse, and intent that reflect the living world. Including objects (the Infimap, Fright Knight’s Sword, dragon amulets, etc.). Call them cursed objects.
What if the crown is a cursed object that reflects a desire for power and control based on fear. The crown feeds on that potent emotional energy from its wearer to sustain itself. In exchange, the wearer gets a massive power boost. (I bet Pariah wasn’t always that big.) the Crown is conscious enough to want to exist, so it’s motivated to keep generating that fear. It deludes the wearer. Makes them hallucinate. Whispers to them. Tempts them with powers that could eliminate all their problems with force. But it’s never that simple, is it? It only ever creates more conflict. More enemies. More fear. More power.
The crown is the embodiment of man’s need for dominance. Every entitled insecure thought and action that justified taking an ounce of control or capital from someone else. And the absolute terror and anguish at losing it all. A beacon of power and a vacuum of loss. A prize claimable by taking down the biggest dog in the yard. (The crown can’t be worn by anyone except its paired champion—the wearer must be destroyed to pass it on. The change is instant the second the old King is gone.) I guarantee there’s no shortage of dead rulers and aspiring egomaniacs in the Ghost Zone desperate to have that kind of security and agency… and scared angry people who just want some peace. I bet that’s why they built the coffin.
Fright Knight might have once been a captain who followed his king into tyranny. He refused to question his orders to avoid facing the meaning of his actions. In death, without the enforcement of command, he was lost. So he went looking for something to help reassure him. Rather than taking the Crown from its wearer, he swore his ghostly soul to it. He became the Crown’s executor—physically unable to resist its will. Why would he want to? As far as he’s concerned, fear is how the world works.
Pariah is only the latest King, and others will follow. My money’s on Vlad… But in the wrong moment of a heroic action, it could be Danny. I wonder what the Crown would whisper to either of them.
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