Sources of Lord of the Ring

The Worm Ouroboros: XX. King Corinius

Summary only - full text stays on its own separately-gated source. Read the full text at the source »

This is an excerpt from E.R. Eddison's 1922 epic fantasy novel *The Worm Ouroboros*, a foundational work of the genre written in an archaic, Jacobean prose style that self-consciously imitates Renaissance English. The passage depicts a political power transfer: the Witchland lord Corinius arrives victorious at Owlswick Castle in conquered Demonland, bearing the king's warrant naming him viceroy, and forces the previously commanding Duke Corsus to crown him and then sail home in humiliation — effectively expelling a rival before he can plot treachery. The scene turns on layered political calculation: Corinius engineers the entire dinner to maximize Corsus's public degradation, while Corsus and his sons whisper schemes of future revenge, and the tension nearly breaks into open violence before Corsus judges the odds and submits. Eddison's prose is notably dense and ceremonial, full of period vocabulary ("howbeit," "prithee," "withal") and elaborate descriptive set-pieces — the food, the crown, the carved jade throne — that aim at the texture of medieval chronicle rather than modern fiction. The excerpt is representative of the novel's overall character: high-stakes aristocratic politics rendered as formal, slightly theatrical pageant, with morally ambiguous actors on all sides and no clear heroes.

The Worm Ouroboros: XX. King Corinius

Related pages View as graph →