Nome King
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The Nome King is an enduring enemy of the characters of L. Frank Baum's Oz books. Although the Wicked Witch of the West is the most famous of Oz's villains (thanks to the popular 1939 film The Wizard of Oz), the Nome King is the closest the book series has to a main antagonist. He appears again and again to cause trouble for the Land of Oz.
The character called the Nome King is originally named Roquat the Red. Later he takes the name Ruggedo, which Baum first used in a stage adaptation. Even after Ruggedo loses his throne, he continues to think of himself as king, and the Oz book authors politely refer to him that way. Authors Ruth Plumly Thompson and John R. Neill used the traditional spelling "gnome," so Ruggedo is the title character in Thompson's The Gnome King of Oz.
In Baum's universe, the Nomes are immortal rock fairies who dwell underground. They hide jewels and precious metals in the earth, and resent the "upstairs people" who dig down for those valuables. Apparently as revenge, the Nome King enjoys keeping surface-dwellers as slaves—not for their labor but simply to have them.
In their first encounter with Roquat, in Ozma of Oz, Princess Ozma, Dorothy Gale, and a party from the Emerald City free the royal family of Ev from his enslavement and, for good measure, take away his magic belt. Roquat becomes so angry that he plots revenge in The Emerald City of Oz. He has his subjects dig a tunnel under the Deadly Desert while his general recruits a host of evil spirits to conquer Oz. Fortunately, at the moment of invasion Ruggedo tastes the Water of Oblivion and forgets everything, including his enmity and his name.
Tik-Tok of Oz reintroduces the Nome King with his new name and old resentments. Using some personal magic, he has enslaved the Shaggy Man's brother, a miner from Colorado. Shaggy, with the help of Betsy Bobbin, the Oogaboo army, some of Dorothy's old friends, and Quox the dragon, conquer the Nome King again and force him into exile. (In Rinkitink in Oz the king of the Nomes is Kaliko, the original king's chamberlain; he behaves much like his former master, at least in this book, which is a revision of a lost 1905 novel titled King Rinkitink, which, had it been published, would have been the original character's debut.)
In The Magic of Oz, Ruggedo meets the young enchanter Kiki Aru and plans to destroy Oz again. He gets into the country without Ozma's knowledge, creating havoc. However, he again drinks of the Water of Oblivion, and to stop him ever going bad again Ozma settles him in the Emerald City.
Soon after taking over the Oz series, Ruth Plumly Thompson brought back Ruggedo, his memory and rancor restored. Finding a box of mixed magic, in Kabumpo in Oz he grows into a giant and runs away with Ozma's royal palace on his head. Later he returns to threaten the Emerald City in The Gnome King of Oz, Pirates in Oz, and Handy Mandy in Oz. The end of the last book finds him transformed into a cactus by Himself the Elf so that he can never make trouble again. However, since he has recovered from amnesia, exile, being struck dumb, and even being transformed into a jug, it is quite easy to imagine the Nome King coming back again.
[edit] In Other Media
The Nome King was portrayed on film by Nicol Williamson in 1985's Return to Oz which was based loosely on the books Ozma of Oz and The Marvelous Land of Oz.
In L. Sprague de Camp's Harold Shea stories, the Nome King was teamed with Harold Shea in "Sir Harold and the Gnome King."
In Fables, the Gnome King has sided with the Adversary and is now the ruler of Oz.
In The Oz/Wonderland Chronicles#1 comic, set around January 2006, Ruggedo was coerced by a new Witch to bring the Jabberwocky creature to life.
