Death Knight

Origin

The iconographic origin is the medieval European Arthurian motif of the fallen knight. In the late-fifteenth-century England, the Le Morte d'Arthur (Death of Arthur), composed by Sir Thomas Malory (1415-1471) in Oxford prison in 1469-1470 and printed by William Caxton in 1485, contains in Book XXI 'The Book of the Death of Arthur' the tragedy of Mordred, the bastard son of King Arthur, betraying his father and dealing him a mortal wound at the Battle of Camlann before being slain himself — the canonical fallen-knight figure of English literature. The anonymous late-fourteenth-century Sir Gawain and the Green Knight established the supernatural-knight canon with the Green Knight who continued to live and move even after his head was severed. The decisive canonisation of the modern death knight iconography was Gary Gygax's addition of the Death Knight to AD&D Monster Manual II in July 1983: the setting that twelve dark knights were transformed into death knights by the curse of the mage Demilich Thorha and scattered across the Greyhawk world settled the canon. Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman's Dragons of Autumn Twilight of November 1984 in which Lord Soth, the greatest knight of the Knights of Solamnia, was cursed by the gods and became a death knight for his illicit love and broken vow, becoming the eternal tragedy of Solamnia, settled the popular canonical figure.

Features

• Jet-black armour and the cold will of a wraith
• Combat prowess combining excellent swordsmanship with black magic and necromancy
• Leadership commanding undead armies
• Tragic self-awareness with vestiges of pre-fall honour
• Bound by the chain of the curse that raised it
• If the lich is the apex of mage-undead, the death knight is the apex of warrior-undead

Stories

After the Death Knight was added to AD&D Monster Manual II by Gary Gygax in July 1983 — with the setting that twelve dark knights were transformed into death knights by the curse of the mage Demilich Thorha and scattered across the Greyhawk world — the figure became the canon of modern fantasy role-playing games. In Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman's first volume of the Dragonlance Chronicles, Dragons of Autumn Twilight (November 1984), Lord Soth, the greatest of the Knights of Solamnia, was cursed by the gods for his illicit love with the elven maiden Kit beyond his wife and his broken vow at the temple of Takhisis, becoming the death knight of Dargaard Keep: this narrative was expanded into the 1996 stand-alone novel Lord Soth by Ed Greenwood and became the decisive canonical character of the death-knight tragedy. The Dark Knight Cecil Harvey of Square's July 1991 video game Final Fantasy IV — a dark-magic-and-swordsmanship-wielding dark knight who awakens to become a paladin of light — is the canonical figure of the Japanese RPG dark knight. Blizzard Entertainment's video game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos of 3 July 2002, in which the human prince Arthas Menethil takes up the magical sword Frostmourne and falls to become the Death Knight of the Lich King Ner'zhul, is the twenty-first-century gaming canon, and the World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King expansion of 13 November 2008, in which the Death Knight became the first hero class in WoW — selling 2.8 million copies in the first twenty-four hours, a video-game launch record — completed the gaming canon.

Weakness

The death knight's weaknesses are: (1) the dissolution of the curse that raised it — in the 1983 D&D canon, the lifting of Thorha's curse, or in the 1984 Dragonlance canon, divine pardon, settles the death knight at rest; (2) the dissolution of the binding oath — the narrative in which Lord Soth, who broke his vow of the Knights of Solamnia, attains repose through true repentance at the Age of Despair, is canonical; (3) pre-fall honour and lingering attachments — the greatest weakness and also the thread of salvation — the motif that the self-awareness of having once been an honourable knight makes the death knight hesitate every time he draws his sword; (4) holy weapons and light magic — the narrative in which Cecil of the 1991 Final Fantasy IV awakens as a paladin of light and overcomes his dark self, and the 2008 Wrath of the Lich King final boss the Lich King Arthas is purified by the dawnlight sword (the light-crystal of Light's Hope Chapel) of the bearer of light Tirion Fordring, are canonical; (5) destruction of magical weapons — the canonical climactic resolution in which the breaking of Arthas's rune-blade Frostmourne severs the bondage of his soul and brings him true death.

Cultural Significance

The death knight is not merely an undead but the canonical figure of modern fantasy where Western chivalric literature, Japanese role-playing games, and American video games converge. The betrayal of Mordred and the tragedy of the Battle of Camlann in the 1485 Le Morte d'Arthur of Sir Thomas Malory established the decisive canon of the 'fallen knight' in Western chivalric literature, and the supernatural Green Knight of the thirteenth-century alliterative poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight settled the iconography of the knight beyond death. Gary Gygax's 1983 D&D and Weis and Hickman's 1984 Dragonlance condensed this medieval chivalric tragedy into the fantasy RPG death knight, and Cecil Harvey of Square's 1991 Final Fantasy IV and Arthas Menethil of Blizzard's 2002 Warcraft III reinterpreted the death knight iconography at the twin apices of Japanese RPGs and American video games. The Skull Knight of Kentaro Miura's 1989 manga Berserk is the canonical death knight of Japanese manga. The success of the 2008 World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King — about 4.6 million copies sold in its first year for 100 million US dollars in revenue — established the death knight iconography in the canonical position of twenty-first-century global gaming culture. In 2017, the American gaming magazine Game Informer ranked Wrath of the Lich King first in the greatest fifty game expansions in history.

In Popular Culture

Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d'Arthur, Mordred (1485) — Western canon of fallen-knight literatureSir Gawain and the Green Knight (late fourteenth century) — English-literature canon of the supernatural knightGary Gygax, AD&D Monster Manual II (1983) — canonisation of the death knight in modern fantasy RPGMargaret Weis and Tracy Hickman, Dragons of Autumn Twilight, Lord Soth (1984) — canonical character of death-knight tragedyKentaro Miura, manga Berserk, Skull Knight (1989) — death knight canon of Japanese mangaSquare, Final Fantasy IV, Cecil Harvey (1991) — canon of the Japanese RPG dark knightBlizzard, Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, Arthas Menethil (2002) — twenty-first-century gaming death-knight canonBlizzard, World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (2008) — canon of the death knight as playable hero classNet-Ease, Diablo IV, Necromancer (2023) — successor of the necromancy undead class