The Raven King

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Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The Raven King is a fictional character often referred to in the novel Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. According to the novel, the Raven King was stolen as a child and raised by fairies, emerging from Faerie as a young man of 14 or 15 as king of a fairy kingdom and a very powerful magician. He defeated the English King and took Northern England for his kingdom. His capital was set in the city of Newcastle. Along with his kingdom in Northern England the Raven King was also said to have kingdoms in Faerie, and in a strange land on the Far Side of Hell, the kingdom of Agrace, which some said he leased from Lucifer.

In the novel the Raven King is shown as the foremost symbol of English magic because he was reckoned not only as the person who introduced magic from Faerie to England, but also as the greatest magician who ever lived. He put English magic into system and law as well as training new magicians. Among practical achievements, he prevented the bubonic plague from affecting his kingdom, ruled the country for three hundred years as a young man, and had the subservience of the trees, sky, rivers and earth of his kingdom.

He is mainly described as a good and just king but, being raised by fairies, he exhibited some quite unnerving traits. Among other things he had a habit of abducting people he admired in order to keep them close to him. He also had his own form of writing known as "the kings letters"

The Raven King had no name, probably to protect himself from magic, in which a name is always powerful over its owner. He is often called John Uskglass, but that was probably his father's name. He was called the Raven King, or the Black King by the English, but he only ever identified himself as the nameless slave.

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