| “ | I think my entire plan may have been a bad idea, after all. So, to make amends, I have just sent a live crocodile into every household. That way, parents can make fashionable backpacks for their children. | „ |
| ~ King Ethelbert's last line in the book, and his most infamous quote. |
| “ | Hey! Didn't we agree a giant octopus was going to jump out and gobble everyone up?! | „ |
| ~ King Ethelbert to a royal vassal concerning a ship holding tens of thousands of children hostage. |
| “ | I'm not surprised she's sick so often. Kids are just awful. And girls are the worst. Enough to make you sick every day of the year. | „ |
| ~ King Ethelbert reflecting in the most bitter way imaginable. |
King Ethelbert is the eponymous villain protagonist in Tiny Tyrant. As a six-year-old, he inherited the royal throne from his hegemonic ancestors, and ruled Portochristo with an iron fist in spite of the inevitable naivety that came with his age. Following a string of petty incidents where his world briefly stopped going his way, his monstrous ego took over and he commissioned thousands of AI replicas to replace all the children of his kingdom, whom he had every intention of massacring. His plans came to nought and the robots went out of commission for good, prompting him to unleash crocodiles all around Portochristo, with ultimately ambiguous results.
His Evil Ranking[]
What Makes Him Heinous?[]
In General[]
- Despite being a little boy, Ethelbert has a very convoluted conscience and will do anything to get his way, no matter how bizarre or harebrained it is or who he puts in severe danger just to see his petty desires fulfilled. There is also literally no indication he has moral agency issues or that he doesn't know right from wrong. There are even two occasions where he abstains from murderous activity out of pragmatism rather than having any standards, as nothing indicates he has any in the first place.
- He is constantly rude and disrespectful to Miss Prime Minister (although they do get along sometimes).
- He seems to have a concerning pathological fearlessness that makes him oblivious to putting himself in mortal danger sometimes, which has led him to drag other people into danger with him before.
- It is pretty apparent that the Tiny Tyrant doesn't take kinghood seriously or care too much about doing his job since he zones out and twiddles his thumbs during board meetings and doesn't care if his ideas for Christmas feast are universally disfavored by everyone else in the palace and makes petty and sadistic attempts to mass-murder his own loyal subjects when he is supposed to be governing them instead of wantonly destroying their innocent young lives.
Tiny Tyrant[]
- When two scientists try to question his orders, he threatens to have them buried in concrete and sadistically implies sentients would have been delighted to find their remains in 20 million CE.
- Not wanting a personal bodyguard, the Tiny Tyrant gets him put in mortal danger from multiple mafias multiple times just to test his mettle and more so to get him the boot.
- During the Great Love Race, he callously feeds his goldfish to Princess Hildegardina's cat just because he thought the bowl was taking up too much space.
- He kicks "Santa Claus" in the backside (albeit after he tricked him), not knowing the royal chef was playing him so no one would have to tell the little boy that Santa wasn't real.
- And even though he declined his guard's suggestion to make an example by declaring war on the North Pole, Ethelbert declines out of blatant pragmatism, childishly thinking Santa would've done magic tricks and retaliate by spanking his buttocks. Not to mention he has no idea no one actually lives there.
- Trying to get his book signed by Floyd, he jerkishly pushes his way through the line until a much larger child stops him. Refusing to be reduced to "waiting around like an ordinary kid", he asks Miss Prime Minister if they could drop a bomb on all of the kids and mass-murder them to clear a path to Floyd. He only backs off when she makes him realize that Floyd might get hurt by the explosion, hence why he subverts this attempted mass pedicide out of pure pragmatism.
- Even though he refuses to carpool with his cousin Sigismond to the airport, it's because he thinks he would have ungratefully disparaged him, and this does sound like something Sigismond would do, so Ethelbert was justified.
- He bans the Bigobango comic book franchise from Portocristo out of sheer spite, which also strongly indicates he subverted his strong admiration for Floyd.
- He plots to have every child in his kingdom, Portocristo, massacred just because he hypocritically thinks children are extremely annoying.
- First, he tries to have them stuffed into toilets and flushed into oblivion, but this backfires because toilets don't work like that, of which he initially had no clue.
- Second, he loads them in a ship and tries to arrange for a giant octopus gobble them up, but this backfires because the ministers just told him that. For this, he is very surprised and angry when no octopus ever shows up and wrathfully berates a royal vassal for things not going the way he was expecting.
- Third, he sends a live crocodile to every household in the kingdom (allegedly so parents can make backpacks for the kids), marking his fourth attempt to massacre children and his third one at the expense of his own people he is obligated to protect.
What Makes Him Inconsistent?[]
- He is far too comedic to be morally scaled anywhere other than here, hailing from a comical comic book series. His MEHs themselves are laughable; barring the giant octopus stunt, the other three of his attempted mass pedicides aren't even played to be very serious moments in the book. Thus, he also can't be a Silly NPE since he's not taken seriously in the slightest.
- Despite their strained relationship, Ethelbert does sincerely care for Miss Prime Minister and is genuinely nice to her sometimes. He also sincerely loves his crush Princess Hildegardina and even got her to like him back and teach him some high-tier vocabulary so they could bond over that after she admitted she misjudged him.
- Ethelbert is shown to be sincerely affable every so often, although admittedly, this side of him is seen rarely.
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TBA