Gormenghast

A series by Mervyn Peake made of the novels Titus Groan, Gormenghast, and Titus Alone and the lesser-known novella "Boy In Darkness", which take place sometime before the second book. They are fantasy and take place in an imaginary world but do not have any elves, dragons, magic, or Patchwork Map. They focus on a group of weird and horrible people who live inside a huge castle with an apparently self-sustaining structure and no contact with the outside world other than a few villages, some lakes, and a mountain.

Titus Groan, the 77th Earl of Groan, is the ruler of Gormenghast, the eponymous castle. He dreads the long life before him, a life of ruling a single building, never leaving the moth-eaten, rusted-shut, claustrophobic, crumbling halls of pointless, decaying ritual. The castle/city's other inhabitants include the Magnificent Bastard Nietzsche Wannabe Anti-Hero (or Anti-Villain) terrorist Steerpike, Titus's sister Fuchsia, the good Dr Prunesquallor, chef Abiatha Swelter, Titus's gloomy father Sepulchrave, and Titus's mother Gertrude, the original Crazy Cat Lady.

The novels are very gloomy, disguising their actually fairly left-handed place on the Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism. They have been described variously as Dickens on acid, an Edward Gorey drawing that goes on for a thousand pages, Kafka mainlining Yorkshire pudding and opium, and a Darker and Edgier Shakespeare. They are also cluttered and sprawling in a way that few major authors have managed to get away with before or since. The physical clutter of Gormenghast's sprawling castle and spiritual clutter of pointless custom and ritual are all lovingly described, sometimes at great length. In addition, there are whole passages where Peake departs from the plot(s) to stage dialogues and visit places and characters that are not even vaguely tied to the story and are never referred to again. Think LotR needed some ruthless editing? Gormenghast will have you reaching for the shears.

The series should have been the first three in a series which should have followed the protagonist's entire life; sadly Peake's rapidly-evolving Parkinson disease prevented this goal from being realized; the fourth novel would have been entitled "Titus Awakes" and a fragment of it is said to have been penned by Peake before he became totally incapacitated, along with a list of events which would have taken place in the following volumes. It has since been found and edited by Peake's daughter, and published June 2011.

Michael Moorcock is a great admirer of Gormenghast, which he judges a masterpiece of fantasy and has praised vocally in several instances.

In 2000, the BBC adapted the work for the small screen as a project explicitly for the new millennium, focussing on the first two books involving Steerpike. Peake purists criticised it for being Lighter and Softer than the books.

Brian Sibley adapted the books for BBC radio twice - the first time also adapting the first two books as separate plays, the second as a series, The History of Titus Groan, adapting the entire trilogy. There have also been several stage adaptations AND an opera adaptation!


 * Affably Evil: Steerpike
 * A Man Is Not a Virgin: averted with Prunesquallor, who is a fifty-something virgin and probably the single most Badass character in the novels (a Badass Bookworm, no less!). Manly Tears are shed in many scenes involving him.
 * Ambiguously Gay: Prunesquallor.
 * His vocal disgust with Steerpike's naked chest is a little too much protest.
 * Also, in The Series, he is played by Invisible to Gaydar actor John Sessions...
 * Anyone Can Die
 * Appropriated Title: Inappropriately appropriated - the focus of the series was Titus Groan, title character of the first book, not Gormenghast, the childhood home that he departed from two books into what should have been a much longer series.
 * Asshole Victim: Most people in Gormenghast are complete and utter tools. Steerpike kills a lot of people. Do the math.
 * Ax Crazy might also count.
 * Author Existence Failure: Peake was planning on a cycle of seven novels, but contracted Parkinson's Disease, which aggravated his emotional and mental instability, before writing the third and died after finishing only one chapter of Titus Awakes, which would have been the fourth.
 * The omnibus edition ends with a list of the tropes Peake intended to use later on (although not referred to by Wiki Word, of course) and the words "what these books could have been." This was, for him, the biggest Tear Jerker of the whole damn series.
 * There was going to be a revisitation of Gormenghast during an interregnum in which Prunesquallor is in charge. It makes this Prune fan want to Rage Against the Heavens that Peake died young.
 * Titus Alone had to be edited severely because Peake had put in plot elements that arguably made absolutely no sense given the plots of the previous two books. You have to be pretty sick to forget the plot of your own epic...
 * Awesome Moment of Crowning: So, so subverted...
 * Awesome Yet Practical: Steerpike kills people with a slingshot and a sword cane.
 * The gag is that whenever a character plans a particularly dramatic method by which to kill somebody, it inevitably fails. (The Twins' execution axe device, Steerpike's initial plan for Barquentine, Swelter's obsessively detailed cleaver ritual) The library burning is the only instance that doesn't, and is particularly poignant in the post-9/11 conspiratorial era.
 * Back for the Dead:
 * Big Damn Heroes:
 * Broken Bird: Fuchsia.
 * Building of Adventure: Castle Gormenghast.
 * City in a Bottle
 * Cobweb Jungle: The attic in which Flay and Swelter fight.
 * Consummate Liar: Steerpike is possibly the only character in literature who never makes a single unambiguously truthful statement.
 * Cool Big Sis: Subverted to hell and back.
 * Crapsack World: Gormenghast. In quite an original way- full of pointless rituals that must never be broken, at the expense of everybody's sanity and lives.
 * Crazy Cat Lady: Gertrude. She also likes birds.
 * Creator Breakdown: The aforementioned Parkinson's Disease killed him at the age of only 57, three novels into a planned seven-novel sequence.
 * Creepy Twins: Cora and Clarice. Although "grotesque" twins would be more accurate.
 * Crystal Spires and Togas:.
 * Deadly Decadent Court
 * Doomed Hometown: Sort of.
 * Driven to Suicide:.
 * Dying Like Animals: Mice, mostly, but there are some bats, ostriches, and sheep to spice things up.
 * Earn Your Happy Ending
 * Evil Albino: Steerpike's physical description (in the book) borders on this.
 * Fisher King: Sepulchrave.
 * All the Earls have this potential, and it seems like Titus is the only one aware of the curse of being captain aboard the sinking ship that is Gormenghast.
 * From Nobody to Nightmare: Steerpike
 * Future Imperfect: Oh so very much.
 * Heroic BSOD:
 * Heterosexual Life Partners: Real Life example: Peake and Anthony Burgess.
 * I'm a Humanitarian: Swelter; implied.
 * Incendiary Exponent: Steerpike seems to do a lot of important things while on fire.
 * Interesting Situation Duel Flay and Swelter have it out on the flooded, cobweb covered attic.
 * Judge, Jury, and Executioner: The Masters of Ritual—Sourdust, Barquentine, and.
 * Loads and Loads of Characters: Fifty-five major characters and many more bit parts.
 * Love Martyr: Fuchsia all the way.
 * Meaningful Name: Just about every character in the series.
 * Morally-Ambiguous Doctorate: subverted. Dr Alfred Prunesquallor is used by Steerpike, but he's still probably the most genuinely good character in the entire series.
 * Mrs. Robinson: Irma Prunesquallor,.
 * Nietzsche Wannabe: Guess.
 * The Philosopher leads a small cult of existentialist professors that only see the errors in his theories after he has been immolated.
 * Noble Savage: Deconstructed with the Bright Carvers.
 * Old Maid: Avoiding becoming an Old Maid is the motivation of Irma Prunesquallor. She marries an eighty-six year old man out of desperation, meeting him after holding a party with no women invited, wherein the only invitees were hopelessly pathetic professors of the castle's school.
 * Only Sane Man: Prunesquallor.
 * Bellgrove is sane, but lazy.
 * The Ophelia: Guess.
 * Pragmatic Adaptation: The 2000 serial adaptation, Gormenghast, which covered the first two novels, altered some plot and character elements (particuarly the circumstances surrounding death).
 * Purple Eyes: Titus
 * Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Steerpike's actions are this trope incarnated as a crazy-awesome Batman Gambit.
 * Swelter's plans.
 * Royally Screwed-Up
 * Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Idealistic, although the gloominess disguises this very well.
 * Space Amish: The world outside Gormenghast has Raygun Gothic technology and a Crystal Spires and Togas feel. It isn't clear if this is the future, another planet/universe, or both, though.
 * Stranger in a Familiar Land:
 * Stuff Blowing Up: The end of Titus Alone.
 * Sympathetic Murderer: Steerpike, before he murders the twins.
 * That Reminds Me of a Song: Peake was never shy about inserting his nonsense poems into the narrative, usually apropos of nothing.
 * The Vamp:
 * Upper Class Twit: Almost every character except Steerpike and Swelter, who aren't upper class. Justified in that Gormenghast was written as a parody of English society.
 * Villain Protagonist: Steerpike in the first two books, though he does not serve as the only protagonist.
 * Villainous Glutton: Swelter