Jareth

[JARETH]

jareth

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[/b], so please call me that from now on. i've got 8 birds flying round my head and they don't half get annoying but when you've been around for 20 years you get used to it. have you heard about Legolas, 'cause he is badass so don't mess with me, 'cause i've read the rules and i say florence. kthxbi.[/ul][/blockquote][/size][/center]

BASICS?!

NAME?! - Jareth. Like the royal family in England, he only has a given name.
NICK NAMES?! - Only 'King'; he's not the kind of person to tolerate nicknames.
AGE?! – 83. Relating this to a human scale of years, this is more or less like being 20. The royal family is strictly pure-blooded, so they still live for about four hundred years. Though completely mature at age 50, Jareth is still considered very young by other fae.
GROUP?! - Fantasy
SEXUALITY?! - Pansexual, but essentially heterosexual due to his obsession with Sarah Williams
GENDER?! - Male

ABILITIES?! - Jareth is one of the fae, meaning he has quite a few abilities, one of them being an extended life. For a king of the Underground, he is fairly young -- only 83 -- as the royal family tends to live for about four hundred years. His special powers are limited by the change of environment, as there is a magic field around the Underground that lends him power, but the effect is only slight because he can draw on his own stamina for magic. Using his own physical and mental strength, Jareth creates crystal balls, through which he exerts his will. He can transform them or himself into anything he chooses, making him a master of disguises (though his most common form is a barn owl); he can cause hallucinations and grant wishes; he can teleport himself from any one place to another at the small price of having a shower of glitter (an aftereffect of the crystal balls being used) fall over him. These crystals can also be used like telescopes or magnifying lenses, allowing him to view things from far away or look at something in great detail. On top of this, he is a minor telepath, able to speak to people, but not to receive their replies unless they are a telepath as well.

FANDOM?! - 1986 movie 'Labyrinth'
NATIVE?! - No
PLAYED BY!?! - David Bowie


APPEARANCE?!

EYES?! - the left one is a hazel-brown color, but the right is a distinctive blue-grey shade.
HAIR?! - long, dirty blond hair that falls past his shoulders.
FACE?! - oval
BODY?! - tall and thin, though hardly athletic.

OVERALL?! - Jareth takes quite a bit of pride in his appearance, there being not much else to do in the Underground. Physically, he is very skinny -- enough so to wear spandex pants without feeling self-conscious in the least. The fact that he's so thin accentuates certain things, such as his high cheekbones and prominent bone structure. His hair is cut in a fashion that is very common to the Upper Lands, where his father ruled: short at the top, long at the bottom; blond at the ends, brown at the roots. However, Jareth often highlights his hair according to his outfit, magically removing the color that he had previously and replacing it with a new one. Blue is the most common, especially because he knows Sarah likes it. Despite how elfin his slanted eyebrows make him look, his ears are rounded like all other humans’. Jareth had a straight-bridged nose and pale lips and skin. His left eye is hazel, but the right is a very dark blue-grey color.

As far as outfits go, the Goblin King likes to dress very flamboyantly. Glitter and gems are his signature, in a way, as are long, flaring coats with high collars. He dresses neatly, though, in a mix of 80s and Victorian fashion: waistcoats, cravats, ruffles, leather, sparkles, and spandex. His shoes are one of many variations on the same knee-high style and his accessories consist of either gloves or rings. Unlike many men, Jareth wears eye shadow and has his ears pierced, although it is rare that he actually wears jewelry.


PERSONALITY?!

LIKES?! - The one thing that Jareth is the most fond of in the world is Miss Sarah Williams. She's a plain girl from our world that he was supposed to hate, but instead came to love. She is, however, a bit of a sore subject, too, because after he did everything he could for her while still obeying the rules of his realm, she turned him down and left him alone. Next to that, he loves to be in control. The end justifies the means, in his opinion, so he'll use anything (bribery, deceit, threats) to keep this. In his free time, Jareth indulges himself by sketching out images of the world he would like to live in, the one that isn't the Underground, and by writing songs, since he has an excellent singing voice. He likes dusk, fashion, being dramatic, and always coming out on top.

DISLIKES?! - While Sarah rates highest on his list of 'likes', she does the same on his list of 'dislikes'. Jareth is likely to scalp anyone that so much as mentions anything about her, as he was furious and defeated when she abandoned him. He won't suffer fools or people who go against the grain, and hates it when his plans go awry. Without influence, he can't be happy. However, Jareth also loathes the Underground and everything about the idea of ruling over a kingdom of stupid goblins. His family, too, is not the best subject for conversation.

GOALS?! - His main goal is, again, to find Sarah and to make her his. Other than that, he would simply like to establish himself and gain some sway on the island, whether he has to do it by compromise or force. Jareth would also like to redeem himself, if possible.

FEARS?! - Jareth fears being the villain. He knows he is one, though, and that drives him mad sometimes. He also is afraid of losing, because once a kingdom falls, it cannot be rebuilt again. Taken as he was from his timeline just after Sarah left the Labyrinth, leaving him in ruins, he fears that he will never be able to prove that he is more than just the villain in the story.

STRENGTHS?! – One of his strengths is how resilient he is. Outcast by his family, exiled to rule over an unwanted kingdom, left alone for years, then heartbroken by Sarah, Jareth still manages to keep it all together, albeit under a guise of villainy. His magical powers are also obviously a strength, as is his cruelty. He can do what needs to be done without any sense of morals getting in his way. Also, Jareth has a huge heart once you get to it, and he will do anything to protect his loved ones.

WEAKNESS?! – Jareth’s power is limited outside of the Underground. While typically he can draw on the kingdom’s natural power to summon up his magic crystals, here on the island he can only rely on his own magical strength. Granted, he is very good at it, but if he tried to do something like sustain a glamour for hours on end, he’d end up tiring and would have to let it go. On top of that, he’s a complete sucker for anything Sarah wants. She wants the Kohinoor? All right, then. The Eiffel Tower? No problem. Jareth will do positively anything for her or to protect her, and that is often not a good thing. He is also very bitter at the moment, and is too afraid of being hurt again to let himself be nice.

OVERALL?! – The Goblin King’s personality is difficult to describe. Although taught by his parents and siblings to be vain, self-centered, and ruthless, he always rebelled a little against what they said. What he does may seem severe, such as imprisoning someone for life, but he only does it because the alternative is killing them. He doesn’t like death or ruining other people’s lives because his own has been ruined several times before. However, if something must be done, Jareth does it without a second thought. In that way, he is very unlike his family: he tries to choose the kindest course of action that doesn’t make him look like a pansy, but also recognizes that some things are necessary and some aren’t.

In many ways Jareth is like a child because he is lonely, he has a compassionate heart, and is always dreaming of a better place. He’ll make sacrifices just to please other people because he hopes that someone will one day do the same for him. When he falls in love, he falls hard, and doesn’t recover easily at all. His imagination runs wild, having never had anyone stamp it down, so he draws and sings and generally entertains himself easily. Jareth loves fashion and making himself look good, but is a bit of a rebel and won’t conform to rules or family expectations.

When he met Sarah, he became someone else entirely. He broke the rules of the kingdom for her by letting her in to search for Toby, saved her life, granted her wishes, taught her lessons about life. Jareth loved someone for the first time in his life, and he was willing to do whatever she commanded of her just for her affections in return. However, she abandoned him, and his heart broke. All of his reforms reversed, leaving him bitter, lonely, and confused. Now, he feels like he has to be the villain since he failed so badly at being a hero. He is unnecessarily sarcastic, cold, and aloof, pushing everyone away from him emotionally while still trying to gain their loyalty. Jareth has fewer morals, fewer reservations, and much more motivation to be evil since he thinks he can’t be good. The lighter, kinder part of him is hidden underneath a shell of hurt and villainy, locked there for someone to discover.


HISTORY?!


MOTHER?! - Maizana (no mention of her anywhere, so I made this up) is his biological mother; Shilan is his stepmother.
FATHER?! - Errolking (see above)
SIBLINGS?! - Ethrel, his younger sister by twenty years, and Jonal, his older brother by fifty-three.
IMPORTANT?! - Sarah Williams
FINALE?! – Much like our home is called Earth, Jareth’s world is called Nighten, a place that is divided up into three kingdoms called the Upper Lands, the Middle Lands, and the Lower Lands, arranged counter intuitively from south to north, with the Upper Lands being at the very bottom. These were then all divided up into smaller kingdoms, though the ruler of each of these paid taxes and homage to the ruler of the area. Jareth was born the second son to the king of the Upper Lands, a fae called Errolking.

Jareth was the black sheep of the family, but in a way different than most. He was the kindest, unwilling to parade around the Upper Lands with his father, forcing the subjects to kneel and scrape as he passes. He preferred music to magic, and drawing to attending his father’s court. Jonal made fun of him constantly and they often came to blows; Maizana and Errolking fought constantly and abused each other. It got to a point where the parents and the children could not even be in the same room together. The brothers were miserable and they took that out on each other – until Maizana died. The circumstances were shady, everyone in the kingdom suspecting Errolking of having his wife murdered, and he blamed his father, having been very close to his mother.

When Errolking decided to remarry when Jareth was 34, he and Jonal had a lot to say on the subject, not a lot of which their father wanted to hear. Shilan was already pregnant with Ethrel so there was no choice – who wanted to obey a scandalous king? – but to get married as soon as possible. Fearing any dissent from his sons would bring his government down, Errolking hurried and seceded two small parts of the Upper Lands, naming them the Underground and the Forest Lands. Jonal was shipped off way up north to the latter; Jareth was sent to the former. Both were made kings in order to preserve appearances, but the reality was that both areas were miserable hells with no one worth ruling. The Forest Lands were inhabited by gnomes and plant spirits that had serious problems with authority; the Underground was populated by stupid goblins that weren’t good for anything but menial tasks.

Thus, the Goblin King earned his title at 34 years old – which was to Jareth’s family more or less like giving control of a country to a ten-year-old. He wasn’t even fully an adult yet. However, Errolking stood by his decision, forcing his son to take over the depressing task of snatching away unwanted children and turning them into goblins which would then be shipped out over the area to be servants to other people. For forty-nine lonely years, he ruled over the Underground, drawing, singing, dressing up, playing with magic, and only really finding pleasure in spying on the Earth via his crystal balls. One day, however, Jareth spied Sarah Williams, and nothing else was the same.

It was easy enough to plant the book – ‘The Labyrinth’, which told the classic Upper Land fairytale about the Underground – somewhere she’d find it. For months, Jareth waited, until finally Sarah wished Toby away and he had a reason to go to see her. However, she wanted her brother back. Already in love with her, the Goblin King broke all the rules he had ever known and took her to his kingdom, telling her that she could win Toby back by traveling to the center of the labyrinth. While she worked on this, Jareth planned ways to try and keep her in his kingdom for longer amounts of time: locking her in an oubliette, restarting her at the beginning of the maze, anything to keep her where he could see her.

Word spread quickly in Nighten, however, and before Sarah’s allotted thirteen hours were up, Jonal – who had always blamed Jareth for his exile to the Forest Lands – knew about how his brother had broken all the rules for her. He teleported to the Underground and approached Jareth, saying that he would tell Errolking and all the rest of the royal families about Sarah and make sure that his life was a living hell. However, Jonal had a heart, too, and said he wouldn’t tell them on one condition: that Sarah admitted that she loved him. He was willing to keep his mouth shut if Jareth really loved her and she reciprocated.

Immediately, Jareth sprung into action, giving her companion Hoggle a hypnotic peach that would set her into a trance. Once she fell into that state, he tried to woo her and get her to admit she loved him. However, Sarah rebelled, and when she shattered the glass walls of the dream she shattered Jareth’s heart.

The rest of the story is obvious: the heroine reached the castle, rescued her brother, and faced off against the villain. He made one final plea, one last, desperate appeal for her love, both for her sake and his, but was turned down and defeated. Sarah returned home. Miserable, Jareth hardly even noticed when Jonal returned or when Errolking, enraged that his son had fallen for a human girl, erected barriers around the walls of the Underground, thereby preventing Jareth from ever leaving. A month or so after his fall, the Goblin King decided that he was born to be a villain and that is was no use being nice. He imposed all sorts of rules on the goblins, cursing his father for the barriers around the kingdom – and then was pulled here, to the island.

[ROCK N ROLL, BBY !]