The Crimson King

The Crimson King
The Dark Tower character
The Crimson King as illustrated by Michael Whelan.
First appearance	Insomnia
Last appearance	The Dark Tower VII: The Dark Tower (in chronological sequence)
Created by	Stephen King
Information
Nickname(s)	Red Daddy The Red King Big Red
Aliases	Los' Ram Abbalah The Kingfish The Red King Lord of Chaos Lord of Discordia Lord of Spiders Satan
Species	Trans-dimensional demon
Gender	Male
Occupation	Leader of the Random
Relatives	Arthur Eld (father) Crimson Queen (mother) Mordred Deschain (son) Randall Flagg (cousin) Wizard's Rainbow (cousin) Roland Deschain (29th-generation half-nephew)
Associates	Randall Flagg It the Breakers Atropos

The Crimson King, known to some as Los' or Ram Abbalah, is a fictional character created by Stephen King. He is the primary antagonist of King's eight-volume Dark Tower series, as well as the novels Insomnia and Black House. Described as "Gan's crazy side", the Crimson King is the ultimate ruler of the Red (also called the Random and the Outer Dark), and the archetypal embodiment of evil in Stephen King's fictional multiverse. His goal is to topple the Dark Tower which serves as the linchpin of time and space, destroying the multitude of universes which revolve around it so that he can rule in the primordial chaos which follows.

According to the Dark Tower comics, the Crimson King was the bastard offspring of Arthur Eld, a legendary gunslinger, and the Crimson Queen, a demonic creature of the Prim – the chaotic void from which the Dark Tower, and all universes, arose. With the aid of the wizard Maerlyn, the Crimson Queen took on human form and deceived Arthur Eld to achieve this union. The protagonist of the series, Roland Deschain, is himself a distant descendant of Eld; this makes the Crimson King a half-uncle of Roland, albeit through many generations. This is the key through which Roland can defeat the King, as stated in a prophecy laid out during the course of the series. In the one-shot comic The Dark Tower: The Sorcerer, Randall Flagg and the Pink Grapefruit (one of the thirteen Bends o' the Rainbow) refer to the Crimson King as their cousin.

The Crimson King is introduced in the Stephen King novel Insomnia, where he is depicted as a powerful and mysterious entity that forces others to do his bidding. He seeks to kill a child named Patrick Danville who is prophesied to aid in bringing the King down; he is defeated during a confrontation with that novel's protagonist, Ralph Roberts. He makes his next appearance at the end of Black House, where he is revealed to be responsible for the events of that novel and is seen to have been weakened by the actions of protagonist Jack Sawyer and his allies. In the Dark Tower novels, the King is revealed to be behind the destruction of the beams that hold up the Dark Tower which holds reality and all of the universes together. He is shown to have gone insane and his intentions are not quite clear beyond that he wishes to destroy the Tower and possibly rule the darkness that would follow. He rules from the lands of Discordia and, as his insanity worsens, he kills nearly everyone in his employ and even kills himself. He thus becomes undead and possibly immune to Roland's guns. He reaches the tower before Roland, but is trapped on a balcony on one of its lower levels. When Roland finally meets the King at the climax of the final Dark Tower novel, he appears as an old man with a white beard and blood-red eyes who throws grenades from his imprisonment in the Tower. As previously predicted, Roland and Patrick Danville bring about the Crimson King's downfall. Patrick captures the King's image with his supernatural artistic abilities, using a mixture of Roland's blood and a rose's petals to finish the drawing; then he erases the King from existence, forever banishing him to some other world, or to the todash space between the worlds. Only his red eyes remain, trapped eternally on the balcony of the Tower.