The Return of the King Cycle - The Archetypal Journey of the King from Exile back to the Throne - The Ulyssean Cycle/Ulyssean King - The Greatest Archetypal Tale Ever Told

Introducing the Cycle

It has been some time, perhaps too long since the topic of Archetypes has been tackled on this Substack. So here it is; an analysis of the journey that the King Archetype ordinarily undertakes. Why analyse the journey and key components to this sort of story? Because putting it out therein the baldest, simplest terms for everyone to understand should help everyone craft better narratives.

This is one of the oldest myths in human history. Simply put it is perhaps in some ways the oldest myth around.

The Epic of Gilgamesh is a case in point in that the King is someone who has become a tyrant. Now Gilgamesh of course has a spiritual moment of realization thanks to Enkiddu so that he overcomes his spiritual emptiness and so on a metaphorical level the ‘King Returns’ so to speak. And at the end of the story he leaves for a time, before he returns to his kingdom to beautify it so that there’s a ‘second return’ of sorts.

You have of course the most definitive version of this sort of Archetypal journey in the Odyssey.

The Odyssey really takes this theme pretty far, presenting it in the best possible light. Odysseus is a man who awed all those around him with his heroism, his chivalry and his wit of course. Over the course of the war in Troy he was to really go some way towards winning over good men and bad men, winning for himself their respect and even their affection.

In most depictions of the events of the Trojan War, Odysseus is depicted positively so that he shines like a light in the darkness. Regretful for the tragedies, he longs for home but more than that he is needed back home as his kingdom has become truly lost without him.

This is where he must undertake a dangerous journey back home that he might reclaim his homeland, not just for his people, but for his wife, son and himself. Even his dog needs him to return to make things right again, so that this is one of the major reasons that the Odyssey has resonated down through the centuries.

Odysseus journey is the rawest, most Archetypal adaptation of this ‘Cycle’ hitherto Tolkien’s own tale from the Lord of the Rings.

Interestingly it is also one of the only Return of the King style Cycles in the modern age where the monarch is the lead. In most stories such as those of Robin Hood, King Arthur and such the ruler is a secondary character or someone we perceive through the eyes of others.

This is where it is very odd how the Modern Age has seen authors show the Cycle, through the eyes of others and yet there’s something strangely fascinating about it. It cannot be denied that it is indeed interesting. But the thing is that we need more stories where the character who is to be the King is the lead.

Sure, the average ‘pop corn’ Fantasy story has indeed done this, and not always well. It’s been my view that cinema has done it quite well such as with Dragonheart, several of the episodes of Legendary Journeys, various dramas and many other movies. But the thing is novels must lead the way. To be outdone by Video-Games such as with Dragon Age, Final Fantasy VI, and many others is not a sure sign of the novel’s good health.

That said there are ways to change this.

For one thing showing it from the point of view of others is fine, do it at the start. But you must also add a twist like how Robert E. Howard would do with the vast majority of his stories.

The funny thing about him is that he did this sort of Cycle with Hour of the Dragon but in there there wasn’t any twist which was the twist. How do I mean? Any passionate reader of Robert E. Howard knows his various stories and that there’s always something intricate in there, in each of his stories. And yet in HotD he didn’t do this, and instead played up the Returning King Cycle straight.

It was done in an open battlefield in no less grand and great a manner, with the odd twist and turn here and there and yet there was ultimately something about the way Conan triumphed that was rather more straightforward than how Aragorn did.

And yet there is a similarity, the difference is that Howard made Conan the lead while Tolkien made him one of several leads.

What it looks like

The King being away like Odysseus and returning in the hour of greatest need is also discernible in the Arthurian myths with regards to Arthur. He is the legitimate ruler of Camelot and arrives in the ‘nick’ of time to avert total disaster by pulling the sword out of the stone as everyone knows.

And yet there’s also something else to these stories; typically the King is the bearer of the broken crown or sword that only he may well restore, such as with Aragorn Elessar II. According to Red Book over on youtube Narsil can be regarded as a kind of ‘broken crown’ that is a reflection not only of Aragorn but of the line of Elros itself; broken and savaged beyond compare. The re-forging of the sword is the re-forging of the line itself after all.

It is also significant that the only one who is capable of restoring and utilizing Odysseus’ bow is the King himself. As all throughout the Odyssey expectation builds up and tension is wrought among the people of Greece as they all reminisce and discuss him in awed tones. Later his bow is spoken of with great respect, so that by the time he re-strings it he is more kingly than he ever was in all his time in Troy.

The homeward journey wasn’t simply about breaking him, but about reforging him into a greater King than ever before. Same could be said about Conan’s Odyssey throughout Hour of the Dragon, and the journey that Aragorn undertook, and even the likes of characters such as Hazel from Watership Down, the lead Hero in Fable III, Peter Pevensie in Narnia, Alistair in Dragon Age Origins, Bowen from Dragonheart, Bradan from Caladbohlg.

The journey could be broken down into a number of trials.

• The First Failure: Odysseus fails by giving his name to the Cyclops which results in the man being cursed.

• The Second Failure is giving to Circe

• Third Trial is Calypso

Another way of examining it is that Aragorn fails in the Mines of Moria as Gandalf dies, the second one is losing track of the Hobbits and the third trial is rising to the occasion to rally the dead to help in the battle of the Pelennor Fields.

First Failure

The reason the first Trial ends in failure seems to be that this is meant to break the Heroic-King at the start of their journey.

Conan loses the battle near the Fjord and is captured by Xaltotun, Theoden gives into Grima Wormtongue & Saruman’s manipulations and Peter Pevensie ignores and treats his brother Edmund poorly.

These are failures to be sure, with the failure leading to guilt, suffering and a broken state from which the King might well be reforged as repeatedly stated. The reason is quite simply that they must be shown their own innate mortality and weakness so that they discover new strength.

The reason that Bruce Wayne is cast into the hole in the ground from whence Bane came from is to break him, but also teach him to not hide his fear or cloak himself in it but to embrace it and master it once more. Thus the reforging is as much a physical thing as it is a spiritual one, because the King has come to take victory and his kingly status for granted on some level.

But this doesn’t necessarily mean that the failure is their fault. It is something that is usually within their power for the most part though there are times when it isn’t. A case where it is within their power could prove to be that of the likes of Bowen for example who fails by training Einon in the first place.

He could well have refused yet chose to train him, and so became blind to the boy’s wickedness and twisted soul.

But a case where it is outside their power is Conan’s defeat and Gandalf’s death. So that things are reversed from time to time as there isn’t any definitive order to this business.

Either way the King’s screw-up usually results in a character or many characters’ deaths. The reason is that this is their moment of failure with the character’s death weighing upon them as they journey through the remainder of the story.

Second Failure

The Second Failure is that of a mistake that is within the King’s power ordinarily. Certainly Tolkien and Howard reverse it to an extent with Conan being defeated yet his failing is refusing to flee from his defeat, while Aragorn’s is letting Frodo slip away from him.

Usually this leads to another major death such as that of Boromir, or in Odysseus’ case his wasting time with Circe, and the end result is that Odysseus’ crew ends up perishing not long after this trial.

The first error seems to be based on the King’s desires, where the second one is based on a mistake in judgment. He initially screws up because he is insecure such as with Conan’s frustration with being weak and sluggish in Hour, Theoden’s insecurity, Odysseus’ desire to boast and humiliate the Cyclops, and Thingol’s fear of losing his daughter.

That said the second is an error in judgment (but sometimes it is reversed), with this sort of error being like that of Priam’s mistake in not sending Paris and Helen to hide in Hattusas or elsewhere, Batman misjudges Bane’s strength and chooses to stupidly trust his new girlfriend, Aragorn as mentioned slips up with Frodo and so on.

But the important thing is that the King after this moment realizes that he’s made a mistake and must not languish in it. He must rise above it.

The Beginning of the Return

The Third Trial is that of the time on the isle of Calypso, it is akin to Theoden’s defiance of Saruman, King Arthur’s battle against King Lot, or the Bruce’s battle near the Western Isles when he kills a small English force. This is usually a signal like a gunshot going off that the Monarch is at last ready.

It is an incubation period in which he is tested on a somewhat smaller level and will usually overcome the ‘errors’ of the prior trials that he might demonstrate his legitimacy on a spiritual level.

He must rally the dead, or rally the great lords of the realm as those around him have begun to doubt him, and yet he’s now resolved because the battle is now personal. One could look at the life story of the likes of King David, Octavius and Philippe II de France along these lines; they failed initially losing battles or otherwise failing their family (in David’s case) before gathering together their forces and friends for one last clash.

Rouen was Philippe’s test and the battle for Sicily was for Octavius.

This signals something important about the King; He is ready to rise to the occasion. He entered a period of exile, was crushed and rose to the occasion as Bruce did, and is now prepared to fight, kill and dart away from enemy forces and then back out to seize victory no matter the squalls. The hour of his Coronation draws near.

His sword reforged and his crown once more atop his head, the King will challenge the odds and lead the way to Bannockburn, or to Pelennor, or Ithaka that he might be crowned not in a Church but in battle.

Baptism in Fire!

The Coronation is when the King has completed the Ulyssean Cycle as we’ll call it from now on (for simplicity’s sake) and is prepared to defeat his enemy. It is in essence the moment of triumph, of glory as he conquers those before him.

The Bruce wasn’t simply crowned in Scone but at Bannockburn if one looks at things from a spiritual and literary perspective, just as the likes of Aragorn is crowned in the Pelennor fields and Conan is re-crowned when he triumphs over Xaltotun. Odysseus is re-crowned King of Ithaka when he slaughters those who had infringed on his house’s goodness and attempted to force themselves upon his wife.

This is important and the ‘climax’ of the story.

Bouvines was the coronation in a manner of speaking of Philippe Auguste who had had to struggle his entire life to claim dominancy over his nation. The Plantagenet had overstepped the mark for generations and had humiliated the line of Capet so that their tale from the time of Philippe I to Philippe II was a period of humiliation and ‘exile’ from the south only for Bouvines to reverse this decline.

This is the sort of thing one should insert into their stories.

While the Battle remains unfought for, the crown in the mire and the King uncrowned the realm will suffer, screaming and crying out for the return of their hero-king. The Ulyssean King is someone who embodies not only the glory of a true warrior but the cunning of a trickster, the magnificence of a priest and the honour of a Knight/Samurai.

He is supposed to be the embodiment of the nation rising once more from the ashes. The exiled father coming home to restore order to his house, and is usually something that necessitates a great battle in which the King leads from the front. Why? Because he must prove to his subjects that he’s not like the tyrant, he’s not Denethor who hides behind the city walls whilst others fight for him. He is as Odin returning home to begin preparations for Ragnarok, he is full of grace and will not yield.

Let the cowards keep to the city, let them hide and let them break and despair, the true King will not do this. This is not the way of a monarch modelled after Ulysses.

Siomon from Crown of Blood doesn’t hide from the likes of Cinaed at the end, but rather defies him openly in the field of battle. He plans the battle and leads his forces against those of darkness as represented by his evil kinslaying cousin.

The Ulyssean Cycle as Side-Show

Yes there are times when it is a side-show, such as in the story of Lord of the Rings, or many other Fantasy novels such as Dragonlance’s Chronicles where Lord Gunther’s coronation as Grandmaster of Solamnia happens off-screen/page. Many King Arthur stories see the character play a secondary role to the leads, there is the likes of Bardulf’s rise and even that of Clovis from the Gemstone Cycle I am writing right now. Ivanhoe and most Robin Hood stories usually posit Richard I’s return as a secondary event to the struggle of the principal hero (these stories are quite good and Richard I is himself an interesting hero).

The reason for why these stories place the Ulyssean Cycle in the background or to one side in a multi-character epic is that they are playing with other Cycles other. There’s other Archetypal epics/tales going on.

This means that like in the Iliad, Lord of the Rings, Watership Down, Once and Future King, Ivanhoe, Bruce Trilogy, you can have a multitude of plot-lines, of cycles going on. Even stories like those of the Bruce Trilogy which place the Ulyssean Cycle near the centre of the story tend to have other secondary Cycles in the background or to the side.

This is a staple for a reason. Because having multiple plot-lines deepens and enlarges the conflict and story.

So when writing Returning Kings do remember there’s several models, but it seems to follow certain structures that align with that of the Odyssey and Epic of Gilgamesh, and even the story of King David. The reason is that this is a great story and that it repeats several times throughout history, so that on a philosophical level it is a story that humanity loves, most especially the people of Eurasia and of Eurasian descent.

The Chinese have stories like this, the Japanese do, Koreans do, same with Mongolians and also Russians, and naturally as repeatedly stated all people of Europe do. It is a story that seems coded into our very genetics as much as it is into our very souls, and there are important reasons for this.

It is also one that should be embraced by Mythic Fiction Authors, why? Because it is the greatest Cycle there is out there, and the most inspiring.

The Ulyssean King is not only an ‘Aspirational’ figure but one that is deeper than most others as he combines the attributes of all others. Fighting for the woman he loves, the Queen Penelope/Zenobia/Arwen/whomever, for a lost and broken people and conquering all adversity before him, he will continue to feature in stories until the ending of the world.

But remember another thing; no King should ever be ‘safe’ as he’s a very dangerous man. Only weak men, tyrants and weak Kings are safe. The Ulyssean King’s return is dreaded by the wicked and hoped for by the people and his kinsmen precisely because he is dangerous.

Only a dangerous King may ensure the safety of his realm. Only a safe King will shatter the peace of the Kingdom.

So remember; he’s unsafe, cunning, resourceful and well armed and usually resolved to reclaim what is his, which he will attempt to reclaim in a dignified, glorious and confident man. The reason being that the worse is behind him, and as he has the Divine on his side, who could possibly oppose him?

So why not attempt your hand at it? First construct your plot. Build up the characters of your world, and decide will it be first or third person? Will it feature as the King as the lead, or one of them or even as a secondary character like how Ivanhoe/Robin Hood did it?

Answer these questions for only you can do so as only you can write the story you wish to write.

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Also Crown of Blood has a new edition, with maps, character bios and more!