best fictional castle

you can always count on a castle for a great name imo

tired: actually frankenstein is the name of the doctor

wired: actually dracula is the name of the castle

Voted Kafka for depresso reasons, though was tempted by both Howl's and Dracula's.

'ghast all the way

Blandings ftw

obligatory ironic link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Castle

the fastness serehfa.

Cair Paravel

voted other, richard

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/aa/Richardcastle.jpg

Open the castle door, Richard.

longmont potion castle

Where the eff is Otranto, come on now

Been almost exclusively reading late 18th Century lit for the past six months or so, castles out the ass.

TS: castles vs. abbeys

otranto actually has a castle!

Otranto is the setting of Horace Walpole's book, The Castle of Otranto, which is generally held to be the first Gothic novel. Walpole had chosen the town from a map of the Kingdom of Naples because the name was "well sounding"; he was not aware that Otranto had a castle until 1786, some twenty-two years after the novel was first published under a pseudonym.

last night otranto was on an earlier version of this list but for some reason i replaced it with udolpho

cair paravel was also considered and even more obscurely rejected

the fastness serehfa

this one i didn't know, good looking out

I'm reading a Dianne Wynn Jones cat fantasy novel atm, so Howl's

Castlevania versions of Dracula's castle.

Alexander from Final Fantasy(?) and Richard Corben's Ragemoor for living castles.

oh whoa doma castle / alexander a serious oversight, that castle rules

Jan Strnad wrote Ragemoor but cant remember if he was just fleshing out a Corben plot.

the one that Count Duckula lived in.

IRL Otranto may have a castle but it is not the same castle where a giant helmet fell out of the ether and crushed a dude.

barad dur

much as i love howl's moving castle, i was always disappointed that you never really saw much of the inside of the castle beyond the kitchen/entrance and howl's bedroom

Maybe Hodgson's House On The Borderland, less for the castle than the pit right under it.

the one that Count Duckula lived in.

― mark e, Sunday, March 31, 2019 5:27 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i believe it was called "castle duckula"

kafka's castle is the one that is possible to experience in real life

I was semi-homeless and living in Prague near Kafka's grave when I read The Castle, and yeah.

A propos:

https://hornet.com/stories/rocky-horror-castle-oakley-court/

The castle from Rocky Horror is now a hotel and you can stay there.

My advice? Don't order the meatloaf.

the best fictional castle is the one you build for yourself

on graph paper, in 6th grade, with colored pencils

the one of the mind in hannibal

I just want to say that is an A+ list of castles

castles rule

tombot otm

map is also otm

Minas Morgul.

Tombot OTM, though, with an honorable mention to the castle a friend of mine drew that was in the shape of the anarchy symbol.

tombototm

https://i.imgur.com/pdbdknj.jpg

When I was a kid I told my mom to bring back several boxes of sugar cubes from the grocery store. And she did! I glued them together and made my castle. She didn't really question any part of it, the asking or the gluing.

Went with Dracula's castle.

thank u v much the late great

ciderpress otm-- it can now be revealed that all votes for the "other" option are in fact votes for that castle

Write in for the vampire castle

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/b/b0/Castle_Roogna-Piers_Anthony.jpg/220px-Castle_Roogna-Piers_Anthony.jpg

j/k

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/3/30/CastleofLlyr1stEdition.JPG/220px-CastleofLlyr1stEdition.JPG

not j/k

spiral castle is the prydain representative because i remembered it more vividly (despite llyr being my fave and most frequently reread book in the series, do love a sea castle)-- not least for its expertly timed exit.

this thread definitely needs a mention of this book

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51-jBcDYjOL._SX372_BO1,204,203,200_.jpg

What no Hyrule Castle ffs

https://static.247tickets.com/o_1c0qdepqh1s69dfrelomcf1o2k11.jpg

when it comes to video game castles castle figaro is kind of cool

I feel like the inn and the village are the geographical nightmares of "The Castle" but it's been a while and i might be misremembering

https://www.roadunraveled.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/led-zeppelin.jpg

Dunluce castle, country Antrim^

https://www.roadunraveled.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/led-zeppelin.jpg

The castle in Ico, easily

piranesi must imply a fictional castle or two in carceri d'invenzione; they can't all be endless subterranean diabloscapes

Castle Rackrent, unless that’s a real castle (I haven’t read the book, just bringing it up as a good castle name)

houses of the holy art all-time of course BUT photographing a castle does not turn it fictional and you can tell don delillo i said so

no but the "sacrifice" and all the stories I projected onto it at age 12 do

wait a second: are all castles fictional

the king is mad: he thinks his house is a castle

xp but there's a pictorial narrative in that art, it is staged

i will grant at least that questions of artifice and ontology are smack within the purview of the fictional castles thread, tho obviously secondary to the determination of the best fictional castle.

this morning i'm wondering who'd bother inventing a fiction without a castle tbh

The Library of Babel and even more so the Name of the Rose's palimpsest of that library are pretty much castles in all bar name and Eco's might be my fave non-video game castle

There must be a ton of Oulipo castles...Calvino's Castle of Crossed Detinies and I know Queneau did a choose-your-own-adventure story about a castle. There have to be others? Castles are def ripe for recursive/discursive games.

*Destinies

are video games the ideal media for castles? xps!

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/d/dc/Castles_Coverart.png/220px-Castles_Coverart.png

hyrule was another deliberate and now-inscrutable cut (it does function better as destination than setting imo, even in link to the past, so fans should vote kafka) but i should have included durlag's tower.

I tried to think of video game castles for this thread and decided they're all too small to be satisfactory but as mental soaces i've inhabited i feel them more than most fictions

suikoden probably deserves a shoutout re: video game castles that are setting rather than destination

Cloppa Castle theme tune, written by one of *Nirvana.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lk_J9h9VNbw

*the UK one

The Library of Babel and even more so the Name of the Rose's palimpsest of that library are pretty much castles in all bar name

Hm, not entirely sure about this. What is it that makes a castle a castle?

Was thinking about Calvino castles earlier but couldn't think of a specific one, my mind was more focused on the many castles of Invisible Cities.

Mistrinaut

Thinking gothicism and a kind of fractal endlessness emily bit yeah i'm only wibbling

(if you want to know what Castle Mistrinaut is, here's a good article about the English translation of Letter For The King: https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/tonke-dragts-the-letter-for-the-king-has-finally-been-translated-into-english-50-years-on-9826857.html )

castle voldesad

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Kasell

Castle Anthrax and the Castle of Arghhh

yep

https://assets.catawiki.nl/assets/2016/11/3/3/0/8/308dae04-a1f1-11e6-944d-c2ec2412e9ab.jpg

https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/xnkAAOSwntRcaW-3/s-l1600.jpg

first drawing of scrooge mcduck's ancestral home by carl barks, from "the old castle's secret" (1948)

https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ImxZM-RBi-8/WMC0dhFXaBI/AAAAAAAABIk/gwCSH7MXmOEri0oiftqqh1_rWPRXk-n-ACLcB/s1600/ducktales_trailer_007.jpg

Tracer Hand - thanks for the link, never heard of that.

One of Ogmor's images is by Ian Miller, who has drawn a lot of very good castles, including Gormenghast.

I feel a little ashamed I cant think of more because castles are one of my absolute favorite things but I hope to update this thread in the future with more finds.

Just remembered the castle drawings by Victor Hugo
https://benedante.blogspot.com/2016/06/victor-hugos-drawings.html

Howl's Moving Castle, with Cadtle Greyskull a close second

The Library of Babel and even more so the Name of the Rose's palimpsest of that library are pretty much castles in all bar name and Eco's might be my fave non-video game castle

― The Xylems of the Limes (Noodle Vague), Monday, April 1, 2019 6:15 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Hm, not entirely sure about this. What is it that makes a castle a castle?

Was thinking about Calvino castles earlier but couldn't think of a specific one, my mind was more focused on the many castles of Invisible Cities.

― emil.y, Monday, April 1, 2019 7:30 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Thinking gothicism and a kind of fractal endlessness emily bit yeah i'm only wibbling

― The Xylems of the Limes (Noodle Vague), Monday, April 1, 2019 8:55 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

for me the castle's key architectural feature (distinguishing it from a mere palace) is fortification; and its key etymological feature is its derivation from castrare-- to cut off. a castle can certainly be a mind or universe unto itself (fractal endlessness) but for it to be a castle there must also be an outside it is fortified against. in elsinore to be overthrown from within is also to be captured from without, because death is only change. the forest and the mountains (and the carvers' houses) are as much a part of the conceptual architecture of gormenghast as the castle itself. the library of babel imo is a palace-- it's all there is.

derivation from castrare

woah, deep dive into the essential boyhood-ness of castles

Crenellation or gtfo

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Ranier Wolf just over Frank.

i still haven't voted. leaning gormenghast.

Watched Howl's Moving Castle again yesterday, still good

act iv might steal it for elsinore. it's the way it looks on the page: all those little bitty scenes, characters running screaming in and out of them like rooms, gaps opening in the text like teeth falling from a skull. and structuring it all, this frantic series of settings:

IV.1: A room in the castle.
IV.2: Another room in the castle.
IV.3: Another room in the castle.
IV.4: A plain in Denmark.
IV.5: Another room in the castle.
IV.6: Another room in the castle.
IV.7: Another room in the castle.

frankly shocked there's no modernist novel called another room in the castle

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

good spread

Old Lunch, thank you for remembering Otranto. I had a spaced-out think once about a South Korean film adaptation of the novel after watching The Wailing. Think it would do well tbh.

I think I voted Kafka

Just finished looking at Art Of Ian Miller and the castles are just spectacular.

Moon's Spawn

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-fcmKMSyToyw/WKTocIUT0iI/AAAAAAAAPOY/vGtzs7BrXs8si3PmOIL6QOZhMt2_i8onQCLcB/s1600/Malazan%2BBook%2Bof%2Bthe%2BFallen.jpg

Belated write-in for The Enchanted Castle by E. Nesbit

Castle, We Have Always Lived in the, Shirley Jackson

see also: Castle, I Capture the, Dodie Smith