King Harlequin
King Harlequin is the Fairy King in The Seven Deadly Sins, the Grizzly's Sin of Sloth, who fights with the transforming Spirit Spear Chastiefol while floating on his pillow. Jun Fukuyama voices him in Japanese and Max Mittelman voices him in the English dub.
About King Harlequin
King Harlequin is the Grizzly's Sin of Sloth and the Fairy King, a small, sleepy looking boy who floats on a giant pillow and wields one of the most powerful weapons in Britannia. He abandoned his kingdom for 700 years to chase a missing friend, came home to ruin, and has been trying to make up for it ever since. His love for Diane, and his guilt over his sister Elaine, make him the show's most anxious and most earnest heart.
Appearance
In his usual form King looks like a sleepy child: small and slim with sandy brown hair, amber eyes and a green and orange patterned hoodie, floating cross legged on an enormous green pillow that is secretly his weapon in disguise. He can also take the form of a stout, middle aged man, which he considers more kingly and everyone else considers worse. When he fights seriously the pillow unfolds into the Spirit Spear Chastiefol, a huge ornate lance, and tiny fairy wings sprout from his back as his power matures. The design makes his authority a running joke until the moment it very much is not.
Personality
King is anxious, earnest and exhausted by responsibility, a king who would rather nap and who feels every failure personally. He is gentle with friends, hopeless around Diane, whom he has loved for centuries, and savage when protecting the fairy realm or her. His defining wound is guilt: he left his kingdom, lost his memory, and returned to find his people slaughtered and his sister dead, and he has been apologising to the world since. Watching him grow from a boy hiding inside nostalgia into a king who can stand beside the other fairies is one of the series' most satisfying long arcs.
Background & Story
Harlequin ruled the Fairy King's Forest as its third Fairy King, with his sister Elaine guarding the Fountain of Youth. Seven hundred years ago he left to find his missing friend Helbram, was wounded and lost his memory, and spent centuries living among humans, including a happy stretch of years with the young giant Diane, whose memories of it he later erased to protect her. He returned home to find the forest destroyed and Elaine dead, and was branded the Sin of Sloth for abandoning his post. Captured and displayed as a supposed corpse by the kingdom, he rejoins when Meliodas calls, and the series slowly gives him back everything he lost: his people, his friend's truth, his sister's fate and Diane's returning love. The anime gives King some of its best visual comedy, nosebleeds, pillow naps and his disastrous old man form, but it balances the gags with the Necropolis and Helbram episodes, where his failures are laid out in full. His relationship with the fairy realm's people is equally layered: they love and resent him in the same breath, as subjects do with a king who vanished.
Powers & Abilities
- Chastiefol, the Spirit Spear: Forged from the Sacred Tree, his spear has ten configurations, from a pillow and a giant bear guardian to a swarm of kunai and a sunflower that fires beams of sunlight. It fights on its own under his control.
- Disaster: King's magic gives him command over life and growth in nature: drawing out a plant's full potential, shrivelling poison or turning a scratch into a mortal wound. It is the Fairy King's authority over his domain.
- Flight and fairy power: He flies naturally, reads hearts as fairies do, and as his wings develop his power grows toward that of the first Fairy King, one of the strongest beings in the war.
Key Relationships
- Diane: The giant he has loved for centuries, since the years they lived together that she forgot. Restoring her memory and earning her love again is his life's quiet mission.
- Elaine: His little sister, whose death he blames himself for. Everything he does as a king is measured against the day he was not there.
- Ban: The man he holds responsible for Elaine's death, and later, painfully, family. Their feud and reconciliation fuel several of the show's best episodes.
- Helbram: His best friend, lost to madness and human cruelty. King's failure to save Helbram is the original wound under all the others.
- Meliodas: His captain, whom King trusts and resents in turns, especially over demon matters. The later seasons force the two into honest alliance.
Quick Answers
Who voices King Harlequin?
Jun Fukuyama voices him in Japanese. Max Mittelman voices him in the English dub. Note that Gilthunder, not King, is voiced by Mamoru Miyano in Japanese.
Why is King called the Sin of Sloth?
He was blamed for abandoning the Fairy King's Forest, which was destroyed in his absence, and for doing nothing while his people died. Sloth, in his case, is a charge of neglect.
What is King's pillow?
It is Chastiefol, his Spirit Spear, in its resting form. The pillow transforms into the spear and nine other shapes in battle.
Does King end up with Diane?
Their love is one of the series' central romances, built across centuries and lost memories. The sequel era shows them together as rulers of the Fairy and Giant realms, with a daughter, Nasiens, in Four Knights of the Apocalypse.