Web Animation / Double King

COMING EVENTUALLY^note Well, it's out now, but you understand what he means.

"A Film about love and regicide"

— How the YouTube description describes this short.

A strange and very, very surreal short created by Felix Colgrave. The short takes place over the course of a few days, where The Double King travels across the land looking for any crowns, even if it means killing innocent people.

For more details as on the story, see this synopsis. You can watch it here.

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Double King contains examples of...

• Accidental Suicide: How the Double King meets his demise. Following a sudden case of Sanity Slippage, the Double King notices the small crown he himself put on his finger earlier and cuts it off with a knife. This leads to him bleeding to death.
• Abdicate the Throne: King Aldo of the Glade does this in his old age, passing his crown to the younger Queen Aldine in a ritual observed by their subjects, the caterpillars.
• Acid-Trip Dimension: The whole world this animation is set in is rather surreal.
• All Are Equal in Death: Played with. No mortal ruler keeps their crown in the Underworld, where Agatha holds dominion over all things. This displeases Double King immensely. However, former rulers are invited to dine at Agatha's table.
• All There in the Script: Aside from the titular Double King, everyone else is only given a name within the credits.
• Ambiguous Species: No telling what species the Double King is, as only his eyes and hands are visible under his robe. The only other members we see that are of the same species of him only have their eyes and hands shown in a cave too.
• Ambition Is Evil: The titular Double King kills every other king for power. Or probably because he just liked their crowns.
• Art Evolution: Felix made the entire short in sequential order, and his style evolved noticeably as production of the short continued, with the King in particular having his general animation model steadily change over the course of the cartoon.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: King Aldo does this after giving his crown to his successor. He lies in a grass boat on his back, crosses his arm, closes his eyes, and is floated into the water. Then he metamorphizes into a butterfly and flies up into the sky.
• Bad Boss: The Double King attacks Olov with an immense mobile fortress. However, the moment the Double King manages to get into Olov's "crown", he pulls a musket on the fortress and forces it to back off.
• Butt-Monkey: Harg the Serpent Queen. The poor girl keeps getting repeatedly stabbed in the head by Double King.
• Chariot Pulled by Cats:
  • The very first image shows two centipede-like beasts carrying the King's throne on pillars on their backs. See here.
  • The King's mobile fortress is built on the back of a giant insect-like creature and it is almost pulled, but more like guided by two lion-like creatures.
• Cool Crown: Every king has one, and the Double King wants them all for himself.
• Crown of Power: Some of the crowns are presumably sources of power — a misplaced crown falling on a cloud somehow turns the cloud itself into a monarch. Most remain simply symbols of power.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Most of the kings and queens in the story are quickly and violently murdered by the Double King.
• Dark Is Not Evil: Agatha, the ruler of the Underworld, doesn't seem to be an unpleasant person, despite being a giant skeleton. In fact, she's the first to happily welcome the Double King to their gigantic afterlife feast.
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu: Agatha is perfectly fine with the King repeatedly stampeding across the table in an attempt to reach her crown. But once he punches her in the eye, she immediately stops taking his shit, nearly crushing him in one hand and throwing him into his seat.
• Dem Bones: Agatha, the ruler of the Underworld, is a skeleton wearing a (really fancy) crown.
• Determinator: Nothing, and we mean NOTHING, will stop The Double King from reaching his goal.
• Divine Right of Kings: Implied to be the case with Queen Daisy VII and King Stratomonarchus, both of whom have halos.
• Did Not See That Coming: When Double King reaches for Ronald the Moist's crown a crab suddenly pops out from under the crown and runs off with it. The hilarity is amplified by a short silly calypso tune.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Double King quickly punches Agatha in the face when she refuses to give him her crown. It's not really effective as Agatha just grabs him and shoves him back at his seat.
• Did You Just Scam Cthulhu?: After numerous failed attempts thanks to Agatha's Mind over Matter powers, and then having his own napkin crown taken away, Double King throws such a loud and irritating tantrum that Agatha is forced to shut him up by plonking her giant crown on him. This is exactly what he wanted and he immediately runs outta there.
• Dramatic Space Drifting: After running out of the Underworld, The Double King steps out to space and drifts away.
• Easily Forgiven: None of the kings and queens show any anger towards the Double King for killing them out of selfish reasons. They even let him join their afterlife feast! It is implied that unlike the Double King himself, the other deceased kings and queens became humbled in the afterlife, learning that there are more pleasures other than obtaining royalty.
• Ethnicity Monarch: This seems to be the case for Ratking Augustus, Lady Gertrud of Squash, Harg the Serpent Queen, King Aldo and Queen Aldine of the Glade, and Durt the Elder, as their subjects are all shown to be the same species as them and their titles reflect that species. At one point, we can also see Double King's subjects, which also only shows their eyes and hands.
• Evil Is Petty: The Double King slew other kings and queens in many ways, and uses all of his resources available, just so he could get their crowns. There's no big plan.
• Eye Scream: The Double King repeatedly tries to grab Agatha's crown despite her using magic to levitate him back to his seat. Eventually while being levitated, Double King manages to punch Agatha in her right eye. Agatha does not take it too well.
• Finders Rulers: In this world, possessing the crown of a kingdom is enough to be recognized as King of it. This is how the Double King becomes King of the Rats, the Squashes, the Flies, and the Snakes. This is also what confers royal status and sapience upon Stratomonarchus (upon whom Queen Daisy's crown fell), Lady Gertrud of Squash (a pumpkin that Stratomonarchus rained upon), and the Lord of the Flies (a fly that formed from a maggot laid in the rotting crown of Lady Gertrud).
• Fingore: After arriving at the mountain and realizing that pretty much everything there has a crown, Double King loses his sanity and cuts off his own finger (forgetting it's a crown he'd already taken). He dies from the blood loss.
• Genius Loci: Olov, the Mountain King, not only rules a mountain, he is the mountain. His subjects? The denizens of the jungle covering his surface.
  • To a larger extent, the entire world.
• Giant Foot of Stomping: Narrowly subverted with the Mushroom Guard protecting Durt the Elder. Double King's foot misses him by a few inches.
• Gratuitous Latin:
  • The Double King's egg shaped airship is named the "Ovum Regia", or Royal Egg.
  • Stratomonarchus, or Cloud Monarch.
• Greed: The Double King's only motivation is to collect crowns of any sort. The easiest way to earn his ire is to take crowns from him or prevent him from getting a new one, and he will murder without hesitation to get a crown from someone. He will also lose interest in anything that doesn't immediately lead to getting a new crown.
• Halfway Plot Switch:
  • The first third involves the Double King attempting to steal more crowns to further his royal stats.
  • The second third focuses on the Double King's dwindling sanity and eventual death.
  • The last part has the Double King in the Underworld where he reunites with all the kings and queens that he killed throughout the short and meets Agatha, the Underworld's ruler.
• Humble Goal: While it initially looks like the Double King is a megalomaniacal regicidal despot, all he really wants is crowns. Lots of them, at any cost, but still. He is even content to hurl himself into the endless void of space as long as he has a nice big crown to wear during the trip.
• Ironic Hell: Played with. Due to the Double King's absurd selfishness, the terrors of the Underworld don't register with him at all, but the idea of being denied any crowns to wear, while Agatha gets her gigantic one, horrifies him. Her taking the tiny napkin origami one he makes for himself is the last straw.
• Jerkass: The Double King. His only goal is to kill rulers to get their crowns. When the envoys of the Rat Kingdom show up to his castle to pledge fealty, he leaves out a mousetrap for them.
• Karmic Death: The Double King dies by cutting off his own finger to get a crown he forgets he already owns.
• The Kingslayer: The Double King kills many kings and queens in search for crowns.
• Know When to Fold 'Em: All the deceased kings and queens in the Underworld beg Agatha to give the Double King her crown when he throws a tantrum so he'll stop.
• Long Song, Short Scene: The video is about 10 minutes long. The total play time of the soundtrack is 30 minutes. The songs are only partially played in the video.
• Nightmare Face: The Double King, during his screaming tantrum, suddenly reveals that most of his body under his robe is actually a gigantic, fanged maw with two little eyes on top.
• No Ending: After getting Agatha's crown, Double King happily runs away, leaves the Underworld and jumps off of the planet into an endless void. What happens to him after this is unknown.
• No Name Given: Due to the short having no dialogue whatsoever, every character's name other than the Double King is left nameless. The credits however reveal all the king and queen names which are in order of appearance:
  • The (Double) King
  • Ratking Augustus the Agreeable
  • Queen Daisy VII
  • Stratomonarchus
  • Lady Gertrud of Squash
  • Lord of the Flies
  • Harg the Serpent Queen
  • King Ronald the Moist
  • (Outgoing) King Aldo of the Glade
  • (Incoming) Queen Aldine of the Glade
  • Olov the Mountain King
  • Durt the Elder
  • A cockatoo (not royal)
  • Agatha, Matriarch of Death
• Off with His Head!: The Lord of the Flies gets his head sawed off for his crown, which the Double King then wears as a ring.
• Ominous Latin Chanting:
  • The music during the Ratking's funeral is a Jewish prayer sung by an orthodox priest.
  • Olov's theme is a Gregorian chant sung by Colgrave himself.
• Pie-Eyed: Double King has pupils like a 1930s cartoon character.
• Psychopathic Manchild: The Double King throws a tantrum when he cannot get a crown in the Underworld.
• Protagonist Title: Named after the titular Double King.
• Pyrrhic Victory: Double King manages to kill all the other kings and rule over most of the races, but then kills himself in a fit of insanity. When he finally manages to get Agatha's crown, he runs out of the Underworld and leaps into the empty void of space — in the end, he becomes the ultimate king, but has nothing and nowhere to rule over and can't do much other than float in space.
• Rage Breaking Point: In the Underworld, only Agatha is the ruler, and all the other deceased monarchs don't wear crowns, as All Are Equal in Death. This doesn't stop Double King from trying to steal Agatha's crown. When this fails, he briefly fashions one out of his napkin, but when Agatha takes it away, he doesn't take it very well.
• Random Events Plot: Only connected by the common thread of the Double King collecting more crowns. According to Felix, this is because the entire thing was mostly plotted as he was animating it, starting with the opening shot and evolving from there.
• Sanity Slippage: Double King slowly loses his sanity while hunting for cockatoos across Olov's crown, eventually cutting his own ring finger off to claim the crown of "Hand King".
• Schmuck Bait: The Double King leaves a rattrap out for the Rat Kingdom envoys. One actually tries to get the bait before he is held back by one of his companions.
• Skewed Priorities: Double King is not at all shocked or scared when he sees the monsters of the Underworld and finds out that he's dead. However, when he finds out that his crowns weren't brought with him, he immediately freaks out.
• Stealth Pun: Some of the characters' names are very punny. Case in point: Olov the Mountain King.
• Too Dumb to Live: Unwilling to deal with the envoys of the rat kingdom, the Double Ling leaves out a mousetrap. Despite blatantly setting the trap down in front of them, the smallest of the envoys tries to go for the cheese anyway, only being held back by his fellows.
• The Usurper: Subverted. The subjects of the various kingdoms assume that the Double King is their new ruler (having murdered their previous kings and taken their crowns) and send envoys to his castle, but the Double King has no interest in actually ruling anything; all he wants are the crowns.
• Villainous Breakdown: When Agatha takes the Double King's napkin-crown, he immediately throws a tantrum, screaming like a child while banging on the table. Ironically, this makes Agatha finally give him her crown so he'll shut up — which is exactly what he wanted.
• Villain Protagonist: The Double King is out on a quest to collect crowns, which he does by killing their owners.
• We Hardly Knew Ye: Most kings and queens get very little screen-time. This is mainly due to all of them being quickly killed by the Double King.
• You Kill It, You Bought It: Whenever Double King kills a monarch, envoys from their realm show up at his castle to pledge fealty to their new king. Double King has no interest in actually ruling anything though, so they just remain at his door.

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