The King in Yellow, also the One of the Pale Mask or the Enthroned of Carcosa, is a major entity named for the place he occupies rather than the person he is. He manifests to those who finish reading a certain play.
| Type | Major entity |
| Seat | Carcosa, by Lake Hali |
| Spanish entry | El Rey Amarillo |
Description
He sits on a stone throne in a ragged yellow robe and a featureless pale mask with black eyes. Carcosa, a Gothic city older than the Christian count, lies on the black lake Hali under two moons that fit no known sky map. The most cautious doctrine places it not on another plane but in a fold of this one that opens when someone misreads a certain work.
That work is a play, fragmentary in its first act, complete in the second. Reading only the first act is harmless; whoever reads the second does not come back.
The mask does not come off. Those who looked beneath found, by different accounts, a mirror, a dark cavity, their own face, or nothing.
Relationships
Some doctrinaires relate him by cosmological posture to other seated entities: the Lady of Pain in Sigil, Cakravartin in Atlantis, Caladan in Valakhan. The enthroned govern by not acting. The Blue Book is not that work. His relation to the Yellow Lady is disputed.
Appearances
- Antiterra, c. 1784: with Les Libertateurs in the Land of Dream, Carcosa replaces the City of Doors extinguished by Sigil; La Plume speaks Necronomicon names tied to the King, and the witch Cristina aspires to be “yellow queen”.
- Late Antiterra: an oblique reference in Uchronic Paris.
- Present cycle: latent; the play is still occasionally performed.
- Earth-212: the yellow frame behind the platonic New York, sealed “Esto es Carcosa” (“This is Carcosa”).