Throughout the progression of the six archetypal character arcs that make up the human life cycle, we see a steady progression of the character’s power. As we explored in the positive King Arc, this final mid-life arc represents the height of temporal power. The King is someone who wields a vast amount of influence not just over his own life or within his personal relationships, but over extended numbers of people.
Symbolically, he rules over a Kingdom, but more practically, his empire could be anything from a large family to a company.
In short, he’s the boss. He knows it. Everybody knows it. And he holds within his hand, whether literally or symbolically, the power of life and death over his subjects. Will he wield that powerful responsibly in a way that brings life to the Kingdom? This depends on whether he is centered within his positive aspect of King, or whether he is gripped by his shadow archetypes of Puppet and Tyrant. The Puppet represents the passive polarity within the King’s shadow; the Tyrant represents the aggressive polarity.
Along with the growing power that accumulates as a character progresses farther into the life arcs, so too the stakes rise proportionately. The more power the character accumulates, the greater his ability to do good to others—or evil. This evil inevitably results from a stagnation of growth. It could happen because a character was thrust into a position of leadership even though he failed to properly complete previous initiations. Or it could be he worked his way up through the aggressive archetypes, building his Kingdom on the backs of those he selfishly oppressed along the way.
King, Warrior, Magician, Lover by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette (affiliate link)
It’s also possible for someone to responsibly and authentically reach an archetype, only to stall out in his growth by over-identifying with his current archetype. In King, Warrior, Magician, Lover, Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette refer to this as being “possessed” by an archetype. They indicate how the King archetype, particularly, may be forced into a shadow version of his own arc—still facing the propitiatory sacrifice demanded of him, but doing so unwillingly:
As Sir James Frazer and others have observed, kings in the ancient world were often ritually killed when their ability to live out the King archetype began to fail…. The danger for men who become possessed by this energy is that they too will fulfill the ancient pattern and die prematurely.
The Hero With a Thousand Faces Joseph Campbell (affiliate link)
It is no coincidence that the negative archetypes of later arcs often act as antagonists to the younger arcs. A King gone bad makes a formidable foe with the opportunity for huge stakes. He shows up most often in Hero stories (in which the Hero’s Quest may be about trying to “heal” the Sick King) and Queen stories (in which the Queen must grow into a leader worthy of responsibly replacing the unfit King). In The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Joseph Campbell frequently refers to this villain as the “tyrant ogre” or “Holdfast”—the representative of a stalled status quo:
The upholding idea of the community is lost. Force is all that binds it. The emperor becomes the tyrant ogre (Herod-Nimrod), the usurper from whom the world is now to be saved
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