Emerald City
| Emerald City | |
|---|---|
| The Oz series location | |
| Created by | L. Frank Baum |
| Genre | Children's books |
| Type | Capital city |
| Notable locations | Ozma's palace |
| Notable characters | Wizard of Oz, Princess Ozma, Dorothy Gale (eventually) |
| First appearance | The Wonderful Wizard of Oz |
The Emerald City (sometimes called the City of Emeralds) is the capital city of the fictional Land of Oz in L. Frank Baum's Oz books, first described in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900).
Located in the center of the Land of Oz, the Emerald City is the end of the famous yellow brick road, which starts in Munchkin Country. In the center of the Emerald City is the Royal Palace of Oz.
In the first book, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900), the walls are green, but the city itself is not. However, when they enter, everyone in the Emerald City is made to wear green-tinted eyeglasses; this is explained as an effort to protect their eyes from the "brightness and glory" of the city, but in effect makes everything appear green when it is, in fact, "no more green than any other city". This is yet another "humbug" created by the Wizard. In this book, the Wizard also describes the city as having been built for him within a few years after he arrived. It was he who decreed that everyone in the Emerald City must wear green eyeglasses, since the first thing he noticed about Oz after he landed in his hot air balloon was how green and pleasant the country was.
In the second book, The Marvelous Land of Oz (1904), however, the characters are required to wear the glasses at first, but halfway through the book, no more eyeglasses appear and no more mention is made of the brilliance, but the city is still described as green. This is continued throughout the series. The only allusions to the earlier conception appeared in The Road to Oz (1909), where the Little Guardian of the Gates wears green spectacles, the only character to do so. Furthermore, although at one point the character Tip describes it as being built by the Wizard, at another the Scarecrow explains that the Wizard had usurped the crown of Pastoria, the former king of the city, and from the Wizard the crown had passed to him. The book quickly concerns itself with finding the rightful heir to the crown of the city.Ozma remained the king's heir, though both she and the original king were transformed to the ruler of all Oz. However, the story reverted to the Wizard's having built the city in Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz (1908), with the four wicked witches having usurped the king's power before the Wizard's arrival.
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