Pretty chill right?
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What's the Work?
Double King is a 2017 animated short film about a monarch of the same name, who abandons his kingdom to obsessively murder other kings and queens to steal their crowns. The short film was made by Felix Colgrave.
Who is He? What Has He Done?
Double King is the main protagonist and the main antagonist of the film of the same name. He is, well, a monarch. The first thing he does is go to Augustus the Rat King's castle and despite the former kindly greeting him, he kills this man by grabbing his head and ripping out his skull, tossing it aside so he can get the crown and put it on top of his, hence the name "Double King".
After he did this, he would be back at his castle, going down and seeing 3 rats kneeling at the front door. He would go down and open the door before placing down a mouse trap, seeing if they'll either leave or just die. When the Goat King tries to eat a leaf, he would drop his crown, which would land on a cloud and rain heavily on a pumpkin, said pumpkin would turn into Lady Gertrud, a king before Double King runs in and smashes her head, literally killing her and takes the crown. Due to her crown just rotting, a fly pops out, the Lord of the Flies. When Double King is trying to eat, he notices the rotting clown flying away and pulls it, showing the fly. He does the very reasonable reaction to his by stabbing the Fly with a fork before cutting his head off with a knife, using his crown as a ring.
The next day, Harg the Snake Queen wakes up and Double King wastes no time before kicking her crown off and stabbing her in the head with two knives, he'd get into the crown not before she uses her tongue to push him off a cliff and into the water, after that happened, more and more disciplines of the kings and queens went to Double King's castle. He threw Ronald the Fish King up on the surface, making the fish suffocate and Double King smacks him in the stomach with the hammer, he tries to take the crown before a crab goes away with it. After Aldo makes a caterpillar the successor to his throne and became a butterfly, Double King tries to kill him via missiles, he shoots one that attaches to his leg, making it easier to track, he catches up only to find keys.
After he reaches the mountains, he makes it to Durt and takes his crown, only to be confused on where to put this. He would get distracted by a bird with a feather-like crown and he chases it for, well, the crown, which would lead for the King to get lost. All of this, plus couples with his sheer greed for crowns, he'd hold his own hand down and cut his finger off because he had a mini-crown, he would have a whole illusion before eventually dying to blood loss. When he makes it to the afterlife, his first instinct was to check if he still had his crown, and panics when he doesn't, he just calms down when he notices an entrance to more crowns. When he makes it to the dining room, all the kings and queens he killed are there and he meets Agatha, the Skeleton. When she offered him to sit down, he just goes for her crown almost immediately, not caring that he stepped on Harg's head causing her to stab herself with the fork. When Agatha places him in his seat, Double King still tries to take her crown, which he tries MULTIPLE times and Agatha gets annoyed before King just punches her in eye, which made her slam him down onto the chair. After he made a paper crown, Agatha would take it away from him, which would make him breakdown, screaming at her. It wasn't until Augustus gestures for her to give her the crown, she just sighed and does so. He jumps in joy before running out of the room (not before stepping on Harg again) and jumps out into the void.
Heinous Standard
He's the Heinous Standard here, like he's the only villain the entire short. While he just has a kill count of 5, this doesn't make him any less heinous as basically every other King and Queen were shown to be genuinely nice or didn't even do anything, Double King brutally kills all of them with the sheer goal of getting more crowns, and he's aware that they are sapient (shown with Fly) yet still does it anyways.
Mitigating Factors?
Well, none. Despite having recruits that are shown to be alive, there isn't any indication if he genuinely cares about them. While his moral agency is questionable due to his sheer insanity, there are times where he's shown to actually calm down and do his own thing, so I do think he ultimately has moral agency yet does what he does because of his greed.
Is He Silly Enough?
I mean, hell yeah? Everything he does is played for comedy and entirely for laughs, like the running gag of the disciples waiting for the Double King to meet them after he brutally killed their kings or queens and the dead realm, where the monarchs he killed are simply annoyed at him because they couldn't withstand his antics.
While he is undeniably played for laughs, he's still occasionally taken seriously by the other characters, he's literally killing monarchs for greed, and while the monarchs themselves don't take him seriously, that's because they're literally dead and know what he is, he can't do anything as well to them due to Agatha.
Final Verdict?
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