The Return of the King In Yellow

One may trace the lamentable fashion of chromatic sovereignty to the blasphemous ascendancy of the so-called Crimson Emperor. A man, if such he may be called, whose very name seemed a dread incantation echoing through the vaulted gulfs of unreality. It was he who first wove into the fabric of kingship the madness of hue, proclaiming himself in tones as grandiose as they were unwholesome, and thus infecting the very notion of rule with a fever of colors.

In the wake of his proclamation, a pestilence of petty monarchs arose, each more deluded than the last. No matter how meagre their dominion, be it but a desolate moor, a ruined hamlet, or a crumbling privy astride some wind-blasted crag, they took upon themselves grand and ludicrous titles: The Red King, The Verdant Regent, The Monarch of Mauve, The Ebon Overlord. Even the void between stars, I daresay, did not escape the contagion.

Conflicts of a most lunatic nature erupted, wars not for gold or god or land, but for the sole, absurd privilege of calling oneself the White King, or the Dread Black Sovereign. Thrones were overturned, blood spilled in torrents upon cold flagstones, and long-forgotten crypts were opened to seat new, color-besotted tyrants upon worm-eaten thrones.

Far-flung provinces and half-imagined satrapies broke away from ancient unions, ruled now by creatures who had…