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Fisher King
aka: Fisher Queen

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As within, so without. Light begets plenty, darkness begets famine.

Nanny Ogg: One what?

A house says a lot about the people living in it: their social and economic status, their religion and culture, their cleanliness. The same can be said about a king and his kingdom. You're unlikely to find Moloch the Despoiler ruling Hippity Hoppity Happy Hare Hill, and a place like the Firepits of Wrath is most certainly not going to be ruled by the iron-fisted Tooth Fairy (unless, of course, he's that Tooth Fairy)... though the Orcs would have had much better dental hygiene.

The land of the Fisher King not only reflects the kind of rule they impose, but their moral alignment, state of health, and in some cases even their mood. ("The Land and the King are One.") In this kingdom the "divine right of kings" extends to a righteous link with the land. This is either a blessing or a curse, because though their joy brings eternal spring and bounty, their sadness and anger heralds rain and thunderstorms respectively. If the king is dying or goes mad, expect the kingdom to become sickly and its inhabitants unhinged. If he's replaced by a villain, they either "inherit" the link or the kingdom itself resents this affront to the natural order and becomes a truly depressing Mordor-like place to live (or even wintry). It is much more justifiable in-universe when the rulers are supernatural in any way. At other times it is just Rule of Drama and Empathic Environment having their hand in that. A more mundane explanation that could apply for everything but the weather, is that a good and respectful ruler cares about the well-being of his land and his subjects and invests time and effort to make his kingdom as pleasant as possible, while a selfish and uncaring one will only care for his own prosperity at everyone else's misery.


The replacement of the Big Bad on the throne can produce remarkably quick changes. Either Cue the Sun or Happy Rain is possible, depending on what effect the Big Bad had. A full blown World-Healing Wave isn't out of the question if they were really bad.

May require a king of the right family. Of course, in those works, the rightful king tends to be The Good King.

Trope Namer is the guardian of the Holy Grail in some versions of the Arthurian legends. He is wounded in the leg or the genitals and unable to rule; so he takes up fishing, while his lands rot. To cure the king and his realm and win the Grail, The Chosen One (usually Perceval or Galahad) must ask him a specific question, which varies between accounts: usually something about the Grail, asking the king what ails him, or the average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow.


Compare Medical Monarch. Contrast Friend to All Living Things and Enemy to All Living Things, where their mere existence causes the changes (on a small scale).

If it's an explicit power of the ruler rather than the link being merely figurative, then it's also Royalty Superpower. See also No Ontological Inertia, Terminally Dependent Society and Genius Loci. If the place has this effect on its inhabitants, it's a Fisher Kingdom. If you are looking for the film of the same name, hop on over to The Fisher King.

Oh, and this has nothing to do with the Grand Fisher of Bleach, or Carrie Fisher, or with an ex-king of the Chess world, or the character called Fisher King from the novel Lady of the Lake.


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    Anime and Manga 
  • In Magic Knight Rayearth, the land of Cephiro is directly connected to how devoted its ruler, the Pillar, is to it. One of the major conflicts in the series occurs when the heroines ask whether or not this is right, after the Pillar summons them to kill her since she has fallen in love with her right hand man and cannot rule properly anymore..
  • Each country in The Twelve Kingdoms is governed by an immortal ruler chosen by a holy creature called a kirin. If the ruler rules his or her kingdom effectively and with benevolence, the land prospers. If the ruler grows corrupt, the land is beset by plagues and natural disasters. Also, the kirin sickens and dies, which, in turn, causes the ruler to sicken and die. If the ruler reforms before the death of the kirin, both can become well again - although such a thing has yet to happen in the recorded history of that world. There have, however, been instances of rulers committing suicide upon recognizing the illness of their kirin, which let them get better and be able to choose a new king - like Queen Joukaku of Kei, who did that to save her land and her kirin Keiki; and king Shishou of Sai, whose death saved his kirin Sairin and let her choose his adoptive mother Chuukin as Queen..
  • The films of Hayao Miyazaki tend to be full of this, with "good" represented by "natural".
    • In Castle in the Sky, by the end, after its destructive capabilities have been destroyed, Laputa is left as a great tree surrounded by the overgrown gardens.
    • In Princess Mononoke, after the death of the Shishigami and Lady Eboshi turning over a new leaf, Irontown's exterior becomes covered with greenness.
    • Commentary about Howl's Moving Castle reveals that the art division wanted to give the castle a total makeover for the end, but because that wasn't realistic, they settled for letting the garden grow over the sides.
    • In Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea, Ponyo's half-way status causes enormous floods and draws the moon close to earth.
  • Not magical in nature, but Lupin III: Dead or Alive demonstrates this with the difference between the royal regime before the film, and General Headhunter's leadership during the film. The complaints of taxism, the bank of television monitors, and the nation's history of being state-of-the art in nanotechnology, all point to the country suffering severely under General Headhunter's leadership.
  • In Kubera the emotions of the king of a sura clan will affect all lesser sura, as well as the half-sura half-humans of their clan. During the Cataclysm, the emotional resonance was so intense that all the Halfs went crazy and slaughtered everyone close at hand. This causes the Fantastic Racism of the present day where Halfs are hunted and harvested for their body parts, and need magician sponsors to even be allowed within a city.
  • Justified in Pokémon 3. Due to the Reality Warper nature of the Unown, the crystals that cover the Hale's mansion change depending on Molly's emotional state.

    Comic Books 
  • The Dreaming, the kingdom of Morpheus in The Sandman; he literally is his kingdom, and it obeys his commands and bends to his will. This leads to the inhabitants knowing he was angst-ridden when it rained for months on end.
  • In the spinoff series Lucifer, Elaine, guardian spirit of Lucifer's world, inadvertently causes the environment around her to decay when she's angry. When Mazikeen points this out, Elaine controls her temper and the environment is restored.
  • Aquaman is this to the sea. No Pun Intended. Some of his more successful stories are his re-acquisition of the throne from his brother Orm or others.
  • Isis in 52 brought beautiful flora to the country of Kahndaq, until she became saddened, then it poured with rain for weeks - and when she fell ill, the plants withered and died.
  • Though not always the official ruler of anything, Marvel's Storm has this effect; her mutant weather-control powers tend to cause local weather to change to reflect her mood (in X-2, Xavier knows she's upset because the weather is overcast). In her past, this caused villagers to worship her as a goddess; unlike a true Fisher Queen, the power is not dependent on her location, though it could be interpreted as being linked to the Earth itself.
  • The Justice League once fought Rama Khan, ruler of the hidden magic kingdom of Jarhanpur. Not only was the land a paradise so long as the Khan was happy, he could cause the earth of his country itself to rise up and smack people around when they displeased him. Likewise, the loss of his heir threatened to destroy the entire nation.
  • In W.I.T.C.H. the Oracle is this for Kandrakar, as the Fortress changes to reflect the reigning Oracle. Already hinted when Phobos managed to take over the position for a while and Kandrakar became similar to Meridian under his reign and resumed its previous appearance as soon as Himerish returned the Oracle, it was confirmed at the end of the New Power story arc, when Yan Lin becoming the new Oracle changed the look of the Fortress as soon as she decided it.
  • In Marvel Zombies Destroy!, it's shown to be the case with Odin. One bite from a zombie turns the whole of Asgard into zombies.
  • In Mage: The Hero Discovered, the big bad of the first series is hunting "the fisher king" to use him in a ritual to bring an age of darkness to the world. Though it is subverted slightly in that it is not an actual king or ruler but an actual embodiment of goodness. Last time the ritual succeded brought about the world war 2 and before that the dark ages.
  • Mentioned by name in Fables during the "Cubs in Toyland" arc, though this one overlaps with both the magical and mundane Fisher Kingdom. Nine year old Therese Wolf is taken to the ruined wasteland of Discardia, a realm of toys who accidentally killed their children (by choking, catching fire, falling on top of a sleeping baby and smothering it etc.). The toys had brought her there hoping that a good queen would have a restorative effect on their deteriorating bodies, but a combination of starvation (nothing grows there,) and the sort of Heroic BSoD you might expect from a somewhat spoiled, selfish child suddenly taken away from her loving family and landing in this situation ends up turning her into a killer, and the land remains blighted and Therese continues to starve as had all the previous child monarchs with whom the toys had tried this. The toys discuss the overlap with Fisher Kingdom when one points out that instead of the land and their bodies being improved by her presence, she's being diminished by theirs. It's only when her brother kills himself, mixing the effect of his Heroic Sacrifice and the Blood Magic provided by their powerful mixed parentage, that the land heals enough to provide food for Therese, at which point she mentally and physically grows up, and leads the toys in atoning for their crimes. After an unclear amount of time passes with their mission being successful, the land is vibrant and fertile, and the toys are healed/repaired, though Therese remains guilt-ridden and broken-hearted.
  • Superman: The 5th Dimension, home of Superman's long-time nuisance Mr. Mxyzptlk, is one of these, or was, and will be... When the King-Thing's wife dies in childbirth, he falls into a deep depression that turns the entire dimension grey and gloomy, only being lifted when Mxyzptlk appears to perform magic that cheers the king up again.
  • In Zombies Christmas Carol, mankind's dim prospects and the encroaching zombies have made the Ghost of Christmas Present into a lumpy, troll-like figure who's somewhere between full to bursting and emaciated.
  • The Nightshade's Lands reflect the state of their ruler. Once they were a fantastic land filled with oddities but beautiful, then when the deposed Queen was murdered everything started to decay and was slowly twisted to reflect her murderer who had now possessed her son. When her son his possessor were killed by her daughter Nightshade everything sort of disintegrated, though Nightshade still uses the place to teleport through.
  • In X-Men the rulers of the hell dimension Limbo can make the landscape whatever they choose. Demons will always remain though, and time in Limbo inevitably corrupts its ruler into a demon themselves.

    Fan Fic 
  • Bird features Elle as a prominent example- her powers, and the changes she works on her surroundings, change based on her intentions and emotions.
  • Dungeon Keeper Ami features this as a side-effect of the dungeon hearts. Often manifesting in a manner that reflects the Keeper involved (Mercury is An Ice Person and a water elemental so hers usually manifests as a sleetstorm) Some of the more powerful keepers can make use of it like Zarekos' perpetual night. Furthermore, Mercury has been experimenting with ways to make greater use of hers in dungeon defense, among other things.
  • Some Axis Powers Hetalia fan works tend to show the Nations as this: if something's wrong with them, the effects trickle down to everything in their respective countries. Usually (both in canon and in fanworks), it's portrayed the other way around, however.
  • The Last Queen Of Greenwood uses this trope for the forest that became Mirkwood in The Hobbit. There is a connection between the forest and its king. When the forest becomes ill (in chapter 19), so does its king.
  • Harry Potter and the Duke's New Clothes:
    Lucius: Magical titles work slightly differently Harry. As the land is the Lord, the Lord is the land. Your health and happiness informs the health and happiness not only of your lands, but of all your retainers and of magic itself inherent in your estates.

    Films — Animated (Disney) 
  • In Wreck-It Ralph, tweaked a little. King Candy's land appears fine despite his being an evil usurper, but when Vanellope returns, it magically restores the damage done during the film.
  • Agrabah in Aladdin reflected the alignment of the ruler. The good sultan made it a sunny place of wonder, Jafar a dark and dreary land. In the original treatment, Jafar's first wish was not only to be sultan, but to always have been sultan. This would cause a wave of magic to spread out over the kingdom, retroactively changing it to a gloomy and poverty-stricken place (with Aladdin spared because the Carpet protected him by wrapping him up).
  • In Beauty and the Beast, the castle matches the prince's appearance and demeanor. When he's The Beast—sullen, spoiled, vain, and angry—the castle is gothic, dark, and with scary gargoyles. When he returns to being human and is reformed, the castle is turned into white marble, and the gargoyles become statues of angels. This is rather discriminating to some viewers' styles, seeing as the original style wasn't necessarily a bad thing and the transformation was completely unnecessary.
  • The savannah in The Lion King reflects the rule of its king. Pride Rock turns into a desolate wasteland under Scar's evil rule, partly the result of and partly a symbolic indication of how he has forced the pride to overhunt their territory until the natural "circle of life" is unbalanced and disrupted. (It starts raining the second Simba takes the "throne".) What makes this an even better, and more moving, example of the trope is that the kingdom of the Fisher King could not be healed until the king himself was — i.e., the Pride Lands are restored not just because the good and proper king has taken the throne, but because Simba, himself, in honoring his father, defeating his treacherous uncle, and earning his place in the circle, has finally overcome and recovered from his trauma.
  • Frozen: Elsa's ice powers are tied to her emotional state, and early on the troll shaman Grandpabbie warns her "Fear will be your enemy." During the film's climax, as Elsa grows more afraid, the blizzard forming around Arendelle grows fiercer and more dangerous. When Hans breaks her spirit by telling her that Anna was dead because of her, Elsa went numb, prompting the blizzard to stop suddenly. After Anna's Heroic Sacrifice reverses the curse that was freezing her heart, Elsa's love for her sister helps her overcome her fears and restore the kingdom to summer.
  • In the "Mickey and the Beanstalk" segment of Fun and Fancy Free, Happy Valley is kept that way by a magic harp, whose music gladden the hearts of its citizens. When the harp is stolen by the giant, Happy Valley is turned into, as one character put it, "Gruesome Gulch". The river dries up, crops wither, and peasants live in misery under a brownish overcast sky.
  • The Little Mermaid: The condition of the sea reflect how King Triton is feeling; the sea is calm when he is in a "friendly-type mood", like when he was to attending a concert held in his honor, and becomes choppy and stormy when angered, like when he is furious at his daughter Ariel for missing the concert and depressed for having to be so cross with her.
  • In Moana, after Maui stole the Heart of Te Fiti, which contained the power of creation, Te Fiti was replaced by corrupted lava giant known as Te Ka. The things she created began to became unmade, making the seas turbulent and causing life on the islands to begin dying off. The title character's quest to return the Heart is jumpstarted when the blight reaches her home island of Motunui.

    Films — Animated (Other) 
  • When Prince Charming takes over Far Far Away in Shrek the Third, he turns it from a beautiful kingdom to a barren ghost town, and even renames it "Go Go Away."
    • Shrek Forever After. Seen in Far Far Away after Rumplestiltskin takes over, though the sheer luxury of his palace implies it's simply because he's so greedy he doesn't spend any money on maintaining his kingdom.
  • After Count Grisham's death at the end of The Scarecrow, Grisham Heights is renamed Swingtown and becomes a much more lively town.
  • In The Tale of Despereaux, The Good Kingdom turns cloudy and the colors go away when the king is grieving.
  • Chanticleer's farm from Rock-A-Doodle is always sunny and bright, but when the evil owl arranges for him to be distracted by a fight and makes the Sun rise without him, all of Chanticleer's friends make fun of him and as a result Chanticleer gives up and moves to the city, causing the Sun to set and stop rising altogether, and therefore allowing the evil owl to terrorize all of the farm animals in constant darkness. But then some kid gets turned into a cat by said evil owl...

    Films — Live-Action 
  • Excalibur, and the way Britain falls apart as King Arthur does, but after he drinks from the Holy Grail the sun emerges and the trees blossom.
  • Pop Fisher in The Natural, as if the name weren't a dead giveaway.
  • In Super Mario Bros., when Koopa takes over he turns the king into a fungus, using his evolution ray to de-evolve him all the way back to a fungal state. Under Koopa, the dinosaur city was a giant slum infested with fungus. On Koopa's defeat, the fungus recedes when noble king is restored (thanks to how much of it was actually him, turned into the stuff by Koopa).
  • Laura in Men in Black II is the semi-divine daughter of an alien queen and has a similar link to the weather.
    Agent K: Whenever you get sad, it always seems to rain.
    Laura: Lots of people get sad when it rains.
    Agent K: It rains because you're sad, baby.
  • The 2003 movie version of Peter Pan uses this trope abundantly; Neverland is locked in winter when Peter is away, and rapidly transforms into summer when he returns. Later, Hook and the pirates assume that because it's snowing and a raging storm has suddenly appeared, Peter has to be dead (he's not, he's grieving for Tinkerbell's Heroic Sacrifice). When the storm suddenly becomes a shining summer day (when Tinkerbell returns to life), Hook immediately realizes that it means Peter's still alive.
  • Pleasantville: Although Pleasantville slowly changes to color throughout the film, the town only fully changes over to become a fully realized world after both George and The Mayor are changed in quick succession. Either character (or both) might be considered the Fisher King in this case as the former was the last of the in-show "Protagonist Family" to change and sets off an entire crowd when he does change while the latter is the highest authority in the town and is the only character to actually be shown changing on-screen.
  • In Pirates of the Caribbean, the captain of the Flying Dutchman has this effect on the ship. A good captain (or at least a captain who does the job) has a nice ship, but a corrupt one who doesn't (e.g., Davy Jones) makes the ship a little fishy. Thus, when Will Turner becomes the captain in the third film, the ship's appearance improves and the sailors are no longer human-fish hybrids. In fact, you can see the fishy bits falling off of his crew when he takes over. Will's father even takes the starfish off his face on camera. Unfortunately, the latest film seems to retcon this, as Will is shown to be turning into Davy Jones Lite despite Elizabeth waiting for him and Will doing his job.
  • David Lynch's Film of the Book Dune ends with Paul Atreides taking up his rightful place as the Kwisatz Haderach, at which point Arrakis, a planet defined by its absurd dearth of water, is consumed by a torrential downpour of rain. Subtle. In the book, it took years of terraforming. note 
  • In Jim Henson's The Dark Crystal, the area around the crystal castle is barren and gloomy while the Skeksis are in power. Once the UrSkeks return and hand it over to the Gelflings, cue sunshine and green grass everywhere.
  • In The Lord of the Rings the corruption of Sauron is reflected in the harsh barren landscape of Mordor, although this is an inverted example as the land was like that before he settled there. Played traditionally after Sauron's overthrow, where the land literally opens up and swallows his army (it's handled a bit better if, less visually interesting, in the book).
    • In the movie, this trope is reflected in the Tree of the Kings in Minas Tirith, used as the symbol of Gondor. In the prologue, it is shown in full bloom on Gondorian armour, but by the time of the Ring Quest, it is completely whithered as a reflection of steward Denethor, with the line of kings missing. The coming of heir Aragorn causes a single flower to appear on the tree, and by his coronation it is alive and well again. This contrasts the books where Aragorn had to find a new tree to replace the dead old one.
    • Inverted in the movies with Arwen, who sickens as evil contaminates the land, and heals as it is driven back.
  • Scotland, PA is a black comedy adaptation of Macbeth. The Fisher King trope of the original is inverted: When Joe McBeth kills Norm Duncan and takes over Duncan's Cafe (renaming it "McBeth's") business starts booming. After McBeth's death, Lt. McDuff turns it into a vegetarian restaurant and business completely dries up.
  • Thomas and the Magic Railroad. With Lady not having been in steam and running on it for decades, the eponymous Magic Railroad has become overgrown by of vines and apparently sunk below ground, and is in danger of vanishing. When Lady is steamed up again and travels on the tracks once more, the railroad is revitalized. Light shines through, brighter and brighter. The rails gleam, and the foliage shrinks away, shortly after which Lady's face reappears.
  • In Mirror, Mirror, the weather turns bad the instant the evil queen ascends the throne, and the sun comes out the moment Snow White knocks her off of it.
  • In What Dreams May Come, everyone in the afterlife is ruler of their own personal Heaven, and it shifts to fit them uniquely. Interestingly, the protagonist's "paradise" is heavily influenced by his still-living wife, as it's originally based on her paintings.
  • In Snow White and the Huntsman, King Magnus originally had the kingdom as a grand, prosperous country. When Ravenna takes over, the place becomes poor, rainy, and muddy, plus there's the Dark Forest to worry about, though areas outside of her influence (the sanctuary in the forest, the Duke's lands) seem like they're still the way they used to be. When Snow White kills Ravenna and becomes queen she is given a blooming branch, and the kingdom begins to return to the way it used to be.
  • In Matilda, while Miss Trunchbull resides in the former Honey mansion, it has a dark, dingy and foreboding atmosphere; once Trunchbull skips town and Miss Honey reacquires the house, it returns to its former bright, pristine glory.

  • In The Quest of the Unaligned, the royal house's magic is directly tied to the magical balance of Caederan itself. This means that if the rulers become unbalanced, Caederan will be thrown into chaos. With the current king and queen, who are "ruahks in all but name", the country is plagued with droughts, tornadoes, and massive storms.
  • Patricia A. McKillip's The Riddle Master Trilogy lives and breathes this trope. All the land-rulers are Fisher Kings, that's just the nature of the universe.
  • In Being a Green Mother by Piers Anthony, Gaea's fury over being deceived by the man she's in love with triggers massive earth-wide storms. Later, when she's grieving, her tears are echoed by worldwide rain.
  • In John Barnes's One for the Morning Glory, Overhill has been reduced to a wasteland under the reign of the usurper Waldo. Queen Calliope, returning, is told that it has even become better since the usurper left to continue his conquests.
  • In Exorcisms of Dora Wilk, the area where the main villain of the book lives is dying, rotten and plagued by a variety of poisonous creatures, not to mention smelling like death. It's disputable whether it's directly because of villain's aura, or is it the magic circle he set up sucking out all the life from the area.
  • J.M. Barrie's Peter Pan works this way. Neverland awakes when Peter returns. When he becomes angry, the land is covered in storms. When he's happy, it's sunny and summer.
  • In both the film and the book The Last Unicorn, the land of King Haggard (exactly like he sounds) is a barren wasteland. (With, in the book, one particular exception.) When he dies and is succeeded by his adopted son, the countryside begins to bloom again.
    • Though part of that was because all the unicorns in the world went stampeding across it after being freed from the Red Bull. Given the apparent powers of unicorns, that would tend to springify the place.
  • In Terry Brooks' novel Magic Kingdom for Sale — SOLD!, the palace of Sterling Silver and her magical, self-stocking larder are tarnished, decrepit and dying from years of neglect and ruin. The old rulers set up a contract to "sell" the kingdom of Landover to anyone who wanted to be king, filling the throne but leaving the kingdom both morally and spiritually bereft. It was almost worse for the kingdom than having no king at all. Widower Ben Holiday only takes the job because he thinks it's a hoax and he needs some relief from his grief. However, he turns out to be exactly the moral, spiritual guardian for which the kingdom was starving. He and Landover end up healing each other.
  • In Terry Brooks' Shannara world, both ancient fey and evil supernatural rulers have domains that reflect their personalities. The King of the Silver River appears as an ancient, stooped old man. Good at heart, his land is a haven for travellers seeking respite from the monsters of the surrounding land; even the very air is relaxing and peaceful. Uhl Belk, the Stone King, is turning his entire realm to stone. He has lost sight of the fact that this is actually hurting himself in the process, not just everyone else. The Skull Kingdom is all but infected by the evil of the Warlock Lord to become a barren, lifeless country surrounded by poisonous mists and inhabited by horrible, mutated monsters. The Maelmord is a living jungle that has become something that attempts to kill anything that steps foot in it. It is the domain of the Ildatch, and reflects its evil to such an extent that it acts as a first line of protection against anyone seeking the Ildatch to destroy it.
  • In Lois McMaster Bujold's The Curse of Chalion, the royal family's curse causes every decision they make, be it directing a war or political maneuverings, to be twisted, increasing the likelihood of failure by mischance or enemy action.
  • The fairy kingdom of Lost-hope in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke. Under the dominion of the Gentleman with the thistle-down hair, an amorally cruel and capricious and extremely narcissistic fairy, it is a sad and dismal place, a derelict manor on a windswept moor surrounded by a dark leafless wood, with the remains of ancient battles rotting outside. The fairy inhabitants spend their time in endless balls, they have "idled away their days in pointless pleasures and in celebrations of past cruelties". After the Gentleman with the thistle-down hair is defeated and the new king approaches, Lost-hope becomes a gentler place, more ancient and primeval but also "possessed of a spirit of freshness, of innocence", and the barren winter trees start to show the first hints of fresh green. The Gentleman also does this to Venice while Strange is living there, turning into a Goth Punk city as part of a plan to drive Strange insane.
  • Merry Gentry - by Laurell K. Hamilton. The Courts of Faerie are only as alive and fertile as their rulers. Both Taranis (Seelie Court) and Andais (Unseelie Court) learn of their infertility, and handle it differently. Taranis, King of Illusion, pretends everything is fine, and murders, banishes or beats anyone who says otherwise, terrified of losing his throne (and life). Andais, after centuries of a dying sithen and a bloodthirsty tyrannical rule, finally gives in and goes to a human doctor, who confirms her infertility. She grudgingly agrees to give up the throne to whichever of her two descendants can make a baby first.
  • Michael Ende's The Neverending Story: Phantasién (or Fantasia/Fantastica) is linked to the Childlike Empress: She is the source of all life, and without her, the world could no longer live, like a human body that had lost its heart. As an extension of this, Phantasién is subjected to The Nothing whenever the Childlike Empress needs a new name.
  • In Simon R. Green's Blood and Honour, Castle Midnight starts sliding into a hellish state without a King. As soon as a King is on the throne again the darkness subsides.
  • As Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time goes on, the world becomes a worse place to live, the weather system is screwy as hell, and chaos reigns in most of the countries due to years of near constant warfare, from civil strife to human to inhuman invasion. Bubbles of Evil cover the earth killing people, and ghosts are even appearing as the Pattern itself becomes unstable. This is reflected by Rand's mental health, as he slowly goes mad. By the end of Knife of Dreams Rand is schizophrenic, is missing a hand, and his eyes are damaged. He also has the traditional unhealing wound in his side. Moridin even refers to Rand as the Fisher King, after a crucial piece in a complicated, nearly forgotten board game. Even in book 1 (when the weather was only mildly odd and Rand not yet mad or injured) we get the phrase, 'The Dragon is one with the land, and the land is one with the Dragon'.
    • In the conclusion of The Gathering Storm, Rand has gone through his Despair Event Horizon and out the other side, and it's implied he has fixed his schizophrenia—at any rate, Lews Therin won't be talking in his head anymore—and, for the first time in virtually the entire book, the clouds break and pure sunlight shines through. Immediately following this in the next book, Rand makes an entire orchard of rotten apples grow instantly, and wherever he goes, the clouds clear up and the sun shines.
  • In Mercedes Lackey's Five Hundred Kingdoms series, this is seen as a manifestation of "The Tradition", a universal force that basically compels the world to act out fairy tales. As Godmother Bella explains to Elena in the first book, her kingdom's prosperous nature comes from having a good king and queen. And Andie's Acadia in the second book always relatively pleasant thanks to all the songs and poetry about their fair weather. Except when it comes time for a sacrifice - gloomy grey days for the drugged ones or thunderous storms for the fighters. And in the third book, the worst one happens when an Evil Jinn takes up residence in a castle, forcing the entire area to turn into a fierce desert that grows as he gets stronger.
  • Invoked in Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar series: After Ancar usurps the throne of Hardorn, he damages the land by draining its magical energy for his own use. After he gets taken down, the locals insist that his replacement accept a magical link to the land to prevent him from doing the same, since harming the land would mean harming himself. Since the land is still damaged when this happens, this is rather unpleasant for the new king at first.
  • In Tanith Lee's Death's Master, Narasen's kingdom is cursed to be as barren as she was. After her death, she returns and reinvokes the curse in jealous revenge, contaminating the land with the poison that killed her.
  • In Tamora Pierce's Tortall Universe series the King eventually gains possession of a jewel that can make the land itself rise against invaders if necessary. Notable in that there is a huge famine as a result of using that power after the King is forced to use it, and as later described by the characters, the power to make the land attack the invaders came from the living potential of the entire kingdom's stores of edible plants - specifically, the stores that would have been used to produce a crop for the next year. Result: a near bankrupt kingdom for several years because they had to buy all the food that they would normally have grown. Not exactly the best start to the new king's reign, but it gets better.
  • Lancre in Discworld rebels depending on how much the king likes the country itself and cares about ruling in general. How the ruler treats the people of the country is seen as somewhat irrelevant, as Lancre residents share the pragmatic view everyday life really isn't affected by kings most of the time.
    • For that matter, Carrot has a remarkable ability to bring people around to his point of view, even if said people are residents of Ankh-Morpork. Practically everyone in the city knows him; he's also very well-liked, and no one has been known to actually dislike him. Part of his charisma may come from his naturally humble and bright outlook on life. Of course, it could also be attributable to the fact that he is the rightful heir to the vacated throne of Ankh-Morpork, and in the Disc's magical environment, such titles carry a lot more meaning behind them.
    • Granny Weatherwax hints at this kind of relationship between Tiffany Aching and her home of the Chalk Hills.
  • The Warcraft novel Rise of the Horde. When the orcs lived in harmony with their surroundings and respected the elements, the land was lush and verdant, but when they started using Fel magic, life was slowly being drained from the land, who as a result eventually turned most of their home planet into a dry, red wasteland.
  • The kingdoms in the Mirror Duet, each being constructed out of raw magic by a single mage, tend to reflect their creator's personality. More powerful mage, bigger kingdom. Stormpoint, home of protagonist Laenan Kite, responds to his moods by changing the weather.
  • In Robin McKinley's Chalice, the Master of a demesne is a Fisher King. Apparently that is not enough: the demesne needs an entire Fisher Court to run properly. Every demesne is like this, and part of the reason things were so unbalanced is because the emperor (the Master of the Masters) was a corrupt, evil man.
  • Romance of the Three Kingdoms - A number of strange omens including a hen attempting to crow are taken as signs that the current imperial line is falling out of favor with the heavens.
  • Harry Potter: Though he is relatively incompetent as Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge wasn't a Death Eater and was merely a democratically elected official, and as such, the wizarding world was for the most part a joyous place. Diagon Alley was lively and fun. Other wizarding communities were mostly peaceful. When Voldemort started to have a grip over the wizarding world in the sixth book (and downright took complete control in the seventh), Diagon Alley became barren and other wizarding (and non-wizarding) communities became dark, dreary, and chilly. Admittedly, the earlier is justified in that the Death Eaters roamed Diagon Alley, and the latter is justified because Voldemort had Dementors roaming through the villages, and they have that sort of effect on their current environment.
  • In the Enchanted Forest Chronicles, the eponymous forest apparently has a kind of low-level sentience, which is linked to the status of its king. If he dies, the forest reacts in a dramatic fashion. As one character mentions, reflecting on a prior such occasion, "none of us got any sleep for three weeks."
  • In novel Inne Pieśni (Other Songs) by Polish author Jacek Dukaj (pity the fact he's not translated into English, guys and girls!), world is ruled by both "casual" kings (who do not exhibit this trope) and kratistoi, virtually demigods whose Determinator-plus level force of will influences both people and land of their domains.
  • Happens all the time in Tolkien's Middle-earth writings. Justified when the kings in question are semi-divine, and their will and nature has direct influence on physical matter; so the land of the Valar (angels) is paradisiacal, the land ruled by Morgoth (Satan) or Sauron (Satan Jr.) is always hellish. Tolkien referred to these effects as "Secondary World Powers" in his commentaries.
    • Also, the forest kingdom of Doriath is protected by Queen Melian's divine magic, an almost literal fence or maze that keeps unwanted visitors out. When the King dies and she abandons the land, Doriath is very soon overrun by its enemies. Galadriel, though an Elf, learned a lot under Melian and hence later she does something very similar for Lórien.
  • In the Second Chronicles Of Thomas Covenant, Lord Foul is a sort of Fisher King, or rather the Fisher King's illness. His presence corrupts the magical Earthpower, causing the Sunbane which warps the Land's weather so severely that travel is impossible without powerful magic. His defeat allows Linden to restore the natural order.
  • A rather large part of T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. The motif of dry/wet and its symbolism of life, death, and resurrection recur in the poem, and parts III and V explicitly refer to the Arthurian motif. Indeed, Eliot's notes to the poem specifically cite From Ritual to Romance, a book which discusses the origins of the Fisher King motif in Arthurian legend in much detail.
  • Tim Powers has visited this terrain more than once:
    • The villain of Last Call is a gangster who established himself as Fisher King for the American West - based in Las Vegas, naturally - and uses Black Magic to steal bodies to become immortal; the heroes refer to him as 'Saturn'. Notably, the novel contains many references to The Waste Land, and it's established that the last Fisher King before the villain was Bugsy Siegel.
    • The Drawing of the Dark: It is implied that the 1529 siege of Vienna (a real historical event) happened because the western Fisher King was sick, inviting an attack from the Eastern King. When the Western King is treated, the Turkish army gives up and goes away.
  • In Diane Duane's The Tale of the Five, Kings and Lords are bound to their lands. In times of famine, a Lord may be sacrificed to the land by his people, his body being plowed into the soil; this normally helps matters. One of the signs of the evil taking over the land is it interfering with that ancient bond.
  • In The Tale of Desperaux, the queen of the land dies driving the king into an extended depression in which the once happy kingdom becomes dreary, overcast, and generally miserable.
  • In Stephen Hunt's The Rise of the Iron Moon, the new queen goes barefoot because she can feel the land, and communicates with it and a long-dead queen, and declares, justly, that she is the land and the land is she.
  • In a Inversion, Christopher Anvil's short story The Troublemaker features a planet where the King, a volunteer who serves a term, and every noble in the realm currently in office, have devices called neuristers surgically implanted in parts of their bodies. When triggered, the neurister stimulates a nearby nerve with, depending on the circumstances, a sense of uneasiness, pressure, itching, burning, feeling of pain or downright agony. Each subject of the kingdom has implanted within them a transmitter that sets it off, and neuristers correspond to a geographical region. So if a natural disaster hits somewhere, every noble with power in the region feels pain. Oh, and if any noble even thinks of evading duty, every single neurister in their body activates.
  • Played with a couple of times in books by Diana Wynne Jones.
    • In Hexwood, Reigner Two (who is "King Ambitas" of the illusory Arthurian castle created by the Bannus) has clearly heard of the legend and cannily uses his "wound" (actually just a bruise) to delay indefinitely doing anything very much, especially marrying Reigner Three.
    • In The Merlin Conspiracy, the weather and magic in general in the Isles of Blest goes wrong when the people in power are corrupt - though notably this starts happening before they have persuaded the king to abdicate in favour of his more pliable teenage son. It doesn't help that the king's weather wizard has been kidnapped, leaving Blest stuck with oppressively hot weather. However, in an inversion of this trope, it's necessary to "raise the land" to get rid of the corrupt leaders, not the other way about.
    • And in A Sudden Wild Magic, the magical imbalance between Earth and the Pentarchy causes the gods of the Pentarchy to become ill and weak, and the lands to suffer climate change. In order for the imbalance to be removed, the political figures whose actions caused it must either die, or redress the imbalance by leaving the Pentarchy for Earth.
    • Her The Tough Guide to Fantasyland mentions that many kings have this relationship with their country.
  • In An Elegy for the Still-living, the fisher king of Arthurian legend appears, though he is strangely warped and resembles a mirror image of Francis. Because he has gone mad, the land is rotting away.
  • In Diane Duane's Stealing The Elf-King's Roses, the position of the Laurin, the King of All Elves, turns out to be something like this. The world of Alfheim has a will of its own, and the title of the Laurin must be held by an Alfen who possesses a strong enough command of "worldmastery" to understand that they are a servant to that will rather than the master of it. A good bit of the plot is set into motion by the current Laurin's fear of what would happen if the people of other worlds succeeded in invading Alfheim and wiping out the Alfen without any understanding of worldmastery, and the resolution of the storyline hings on the fact that, as the Laurin himself states, "As I go, so go my people."
  • Escalated in The Lords of Dûs series where it is not the ruling king who influences the land, but the ruling god who influences the world. Each of the gods rules the world for a given age, and during that age the world reflects their nature. The novel begins during the Age of the Goddess of Decay, when all the kingdoms are in decline. It transitions into the Age of Destruction and wars break out. The ultimate fear of many characters is when the Fifteenth Age begins, ruled by the God of Death.
  • In Michael Flynn's Up Jim River, the emperor of Morning Dew hates his position because all his subjects believe this trope, and therefore he's to blame for anything that goes wrong.
  • Labyrinths of Echo has not-quite-real worlds, including ones accidentally born out of dreams, working like this and usually dying with their creator — unless or until they acquire full independent reality. The latter, at least according to one ancient being, is the whole purpose of Arbiters' existence, not that they aren't apt to accidentally create such near-realities themselves.
  • In The Book of the Dun Cow, the natural goodness of the animals is what keeps the Big Bad trapped underneath the earth. In turn, his main plan of escape involves terrorizing and killing them, taking advantage of one leader's weakness to corrupt him into fathering an Eldritch Abomination.
  • In Holes, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a juvenile detention facility called Camp Green Lake. There's no lake there, however, since it hasn't rained for over a hundred years, ever since the local townsfolk murdered a black man for falling in love with a white woman. At the end of the story, Stanley unknowingly fulfills a promise made by his ancestor, thus breaking a curse on his own family — and it rains at Camp Green Lake.
  • In Expecting Someone Taller, Malcolm Fisher discovers that owning The Ring of the Nibelung and being the secret ruler of the world means that his moods and attitudes have a global impact. Fortunately, he's a nice guy (the first one ever to bear the ring), and so he takes great effort to avoid anything that might upset him or make him angry.
  • "The Chapel Perilous" is a short story in the Iron Druid Chronicles series that retells the Holy Grail quest through Atticus' eyes, as he was the one who found it, and it was actually Dagda's cauldron, which contained a never-ending supply of food. The Fisher King ruled what would eventually become Wales, but was an undead puppet for the Pict necromancer who had stolen the cauldron. The Fisher King was bound to the land, thus causing it to die. The people outside the keep were able to fish, but fish was all they had to eat. Atticus, having been tasked by Ogma to retrieve the cauldron, dispatched the necromancer and the king, which allowed the land to recover.
  • Invoked in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, where the White Witch, who has usurped the throne of Narnia, has cast a spell over the land so that it is "always winter and never Christmas" to match her cold, cruel personality. When Aslan arrives to end her reign, the spell breaks, and the land begins to become warmer.
  • The concept of the king having a connection to the land is discussed in The Dresden Files in regards to the Knights of the Cross. Three Knights, one for each Sword embedded with one of the Nails from Jesus' Crucifixion, travel the world doing His will and helping the people as they need it. The three named Knights have connection to ancient Kings, including Charlemagne, Saladin, King of Egypt during the Crusades, the line of Kings who ruled Okinawa. Add to that the Swords they bear have had different names in the past. Fidelacchius, Esperacchius, and Amoracchius have been called, respectively, the Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi, Durandal, and Excalibur. The protagonist Harry Dresden wonders if in this modern era of kingdom-less times, is this trope being used as part of the calling for these modern day bearers of Royal Blood?
  • In the Marla Mason novel Lady of Misrule, a chaos witch uses a spell to make herself into a Fisher King of the city of Felport, becoming the titular Lady of Misrule.
  • In The Girl from the Miracles District, the health of the District is directly tied to the Pillars, a group of people the spell which created the place declared the keys to preserving itself. Should something happen to a Pillar, something will happen to the District as well.
  • In the Eighth Doctor Adventures novel The Crooked World, the Doctor and his companions inadvertently become this when they arrive on a world populated entirely by cartoon animals, soon realising that their presence is introducing new concepts as the original natives break out of their old routines and even become capable of killing each other. It is established at the end of the novel that the world was originally created when a young girl crash-landed on the initially blank planet in an escape pod, her childish perceptions of old cartoons shaping the world around her before she finally died.

    Live-Action TV 
  • In The X-Files the agents visit a town where the weather is the reflection of the emotional state of one man. Inverted in that the man in question is only the town's TV Weatherman.
  • An episode of Red Dwarf features a "psi-moon", which models itself after Rimmer's twisted psyche, features including the Swamp of Despair, the Wood of Humiliation and the Chasm of Hopelesseness. The crew escapes by making Rimmer feel better about himself just long enough to fight off his Self-Loathing, the dominant emotion of Rimmer's psyche.
  • The trope namer is featured in a season 3 ep of Merlin , where his kingdom and he are under a curse, and Arthur travels to him to retrieve an artifact. Merlin secretly gets an artifact of his own from the king before allowing him to die and end his suffering.
  • Metaphorically done in the first two seasons of The Crown (2016) with the depiction of Britain's government and the decline of the British empire. Though played with, in that it's not the monarch who represents the decay — the series focuses on the early reign of the young and beautiful Queen Elizabeth II — but her Prime Ministers, pretty much all of whom are elderly men who are increasingly frail and sickly. Practically spelled out in one episode, wherein Winston Churchill and Anthony Eden plan to hold a summit following the first Soviet atomic weapon tests to demonstrate British resolve and leadership during the crisis, only for both men to suffer major health problems and forcing the summit to be cancelled.

    Myth,Legend and Religion 
  • The Trope Namer is from Arthurian Legend.
  • A variant is Demeter, the goddess of verdant stuff in the Greek Mythology, especially in the story of the kidnapping of her daughter Persephone by Hades. When she is with her daughter, the world is lush and green. When her daughter is away with her hubby Hades, the world is cold and barren (or sun-scorched and barren, depending on where it is told). Give yourself a pomegranate seed! Persephone goes away for half the year. This is, of course, the origin story of the change of seasons.
  • In some ancient cultures the king and his personal piety and virility were equated with such things as the success of the crops and life of the land in general. So, in the early ages, the Pharaoh of Egypt masturbated into the Nile annually at the festival of Shemu to ascertain the flood. note  It's not entirely surprising that this was Truth in Television, in a sense - succession was rarely a smooth business, and as such, any king who perpetually managed to hold on to life generally ensured an era of stability and well-being for his people. While no sovereign actually has sympathetic magical control over their lands, good governing generally means stability and well-being for the people, while bad governing means a rough time.
  • The ancient Indian epic Ramayana features a semi-demonic king whose emotions seem to effect the whole world's climate. When he becomes lovestruck, the seasons change rapidly, and time itself stops temporarily.
  • Chinese emperors believed themselves to be responsible for the well-being of the land in varying degrees ("The Mandate of Heaven," which even modern communists try not to upset too much- ever see a government official slack off when a Chinese natural disaster strikes?), and thus instituted a number of rituals in which they'd attempt to appease the heavens; some of them apparently have been heard to directly appeal to the gods to punish them instead during natural disasters. People who worked for the emperor were often savvy about this, sending memorials to the Imperial palace about bad omens like solar eclipses in various places (which have been calculated by modern scientists to be impossible at that time and place) simply to politely tell the Emperor that his policies were unpopular in (X) Province.
  • Oedipus, who kills his father, marries his mother and becomes the king of Thebes. This moral stain — even though he has no idea that they are his parents — brings year-long famine to the land.
  • Older Than Dirt: A variation appears in Inanna's Descent to the Netherworld. The Mesopotamian fertility goddess Inanna mourned her husband Dumuzi each year when he died. Her grief (and guilt for killing him) transformed the earth into a parched wasteland where nothing could grow. Only the annual return of Dumuzi could cheer her up.
  • The Hellenic philosophy "Hermeticism" had a catchphrase for this: "As Above, So Below", meaning any change in microcosm is reflected in the macrocosm.
  • The pagan Swedes tended to sacrifice their kings in case of famine.
  • In Hawaiian Mythology, there is a "Just So" Story about why there is a leeward and windward side to (specifically) the Big Island. Pele fell in love with a trickster demigod named Kamapua'a. Sometimes their relationship was happy; other times not so much. In one incident, they got into a terrible domestic dispute. Pele sent her lava out, and Kamapua'a covered Hale'u'mau'mau Crater (her official home) with large fern leaves to suffocate her with her own smoke. When the two lovers realized that their Belligerent Sexual Tension would likely destroy both of them, they called a truce. They called off the relationship for good, and divided the island of Hawai'i in half, with Kamapua'a getting the rainy (but fertile) windward side, and Pele getting the drier and sunnier leeward side.
  • Fraser's Golden Bough described several kings like this. They were often so constrained by traditions and taboos that they could never conduct statecraft and were more akin to a High Priest then what occidentals would think of as a king.
  • In The Bible, God makes this an explicit promise and threat against the people of Israel: if they obey His commandments, God will make their land prosper, but if they disobey, God will send famine and drought to punish them.
    • As he was nearing his death, King David was described as having become impotent. As the fertility of the king was considered to have an direct effect on the fertility of the nation, his counselors sent Abishag of Shuenem, a beautiful concubine, to lie in his bed and hopefully reawaken his vigor. It did not work and David died a few months later.
  • A prominent part of Celtic Mythology, to the point were a deformed, crippled or in any way "incomplete" man would not be permitted to become a king in Celtic society for fear of invoking this trope.
  • In "The Rightful King" when Prince Fergus' stepbrother Art assumes the throne, there's a severe storm on the day of his coronation and the land is beset by war, famine and blighted crops, which the druids say are signs of a usurper. When Fergus returns and takes the throne from Art, bright sunshine appears despite it being midwinter.

    Professional Wrestling 
  • In the Smart Marks' eyes, Vince McMahon is a meta example over WWE. When he's feeling passionate and pragmatic enough, you get a highly esteemed environment such as those of the Attitude and Ruthless Aggression Eras. But when he's feeling complacent and paranoid beyond all reason, you get a widely panned environment such as that of the PG Era.

  • In Nobilis, a powerful PC (or least one with a lot of Realm) will affect their Chancel this way - in one of the book's Flash Fictions, a Noble being drowned causes the entire kingdom to flood.
    • In third edition, Realm is no longer an attribute and as a result, anyone who wants to do the whole Fisher King thing would be advised to take a secondary Estate of "things of my Chancel". Chancels can also have an Erus, a kind of pseudo-Noble who has a degree of control over it automatically, and who doesn't cost anything because they tend to spend a lot of time treading on Powers' toes and otherwise being inconvenient.
  • In Dungeons & Dragons cosmology (Planescape), domains of gods and other "powers" are closely tied to their owners and have their will as one of "laws of nature". Which includes becoming stale and decrepit if the owner dies or otherwise is cut off thoroughly enough.
    • In Ravenloft, the various Domains were actually karmic prisons for their Darklords, which reflected their crimes. The Domains and their lords varied wildly, ranging from lands that reflected every whim of their public ruler, to realms where the Darklord was a hounded, outcast monster. Even then, all the realms were intrinsically tied to their Darklords, who could close the borders of their realm at any time.
    • Birthright is all about this trope. The players play a regent and his court (or multiple regents) who literally has the blood of gods in their veins and the state of their kingdom is tied heavily to the nature of its ruler. When the king is well, the kingdom is well; if the king turns evil, the citizens will start to turn distrustful of one another and crime and corruption will grow rampant; if the king grows ill or dies, disease and famine will wrack the land.
  • Daemon worlds of Warhammer 40,000 change to reflect the whims of their masters.
    • On the opposite side, the High Elven Everqueen in Warhammer has this with Ulthuan.
    • The Wood Elves combine this trope with its opposite: Athel Loren seems to reflect its inhabitants, as they reflect it.
    • The God-Emperor's continued existence (however limited) is vital to the interstellar travel and communications of the Imperium. As his presence wanes, the outer regions are lost, and few would want to be there when he dies completely.
  • In Changeling: The Lost, every single True Fae is a god unto their own realm in Faerie, having control over every single aspect of their home, from whether the sky is blue to the conditions as to when a fire will or will not cook a person's food. The Changelings, human slaves abducted to act as servants, have to enter pacts with every element in order to even survive. The world changes according to what a Faerie thinks is entertaining. The True Fae are powerful outside their realms, but have nowhere near this level of control over other domains.
    • To a lesser degree, there is a Fatebound Merit named after the Trope Namer. As long as the holder is not suffering from serious damage, all their Social Merits function at double efficiency, but they suffer serious damage whenever a member of their Court dies and unrest in their kingdom is physically painful.
  • Unknown Armies has the True King, an archetype that characters can become Avatars of. True King avatars have a supernatural connection to whatever their "kingdom" is: the realm reflects their physical and emotional state, they can heal themselves by draining the fertility and well-being of their realm (or vice versa), and lose their powers if they have no realm to rule over.
    • Another example is the M.V.P., a sports hero who improves the social conditions of his home town by winning.
  • Vampire: The Requiem has a Bloodline known as the Bron, whose members believe themselves to be descendants of the Fisher King. Their curse is that any land they claim as their domain instantly becomes harder to control — feeding checks are made at greater difficulty, and so on. Ironically, the line's split down the middle on their true origin — members in the Lancea Sanctum (Christian vampires) believe themselves to descend from the Fisher King, whereas members in the Circle of the Crone (pagan vampires) believe they come from Bran the Blessed.
  • GURPS Fantasy provides highly abstract rules for this as an Advantage. Due to it's limited nature and serious drawbacks it is not particularly expensive to have.
  • In Infernum, this is the effect of one of the Noble Mutation chains (sets of powers that a demon can acquire by taking control of sufficient territory). With the Chain of The Screaming Sky, the demon can make its land hotter, colder or darker. At first level, it merely determines the weather. By third level, its kingdom is either under a permanent night sky, or swallowed up amidst either glaciers or volcanoes. A similar Noble Chain is the Chain of The Burning Land, which ties a demon more strongly to its kingdom — this makes it more powerful in its home turf, as well as giving it early warnings of things like gatherings, invading armies, riots, Et cetera.

  • William Shakespeare: Macbeth, of course. Upon the king's murder and replacement by said murderer, the sky is covered in thunderclouds and the horses start eating each other. When the king's perfectly normal son takes over, everything's good.
    • King Lear, too. When Lear is stripped of the last vestige of his power and goes mad, it's accompanied by a terrible storm. Some productions balance this by associating his recovery / Cordelia's return with sunshine and birdsong.
    • Downplayed in a lot of Shakespeare's history plays; there's an entire scene in Richard II in which a pair of gardeners discuss the title character's misrule in terms of bad gardening, and in the Henry IV plays, King Henry's physical decline is paralleled with the political chaos in his realm, but in both cases it's the state, rather than the land itself, that's depicted as in danger.
  • Exit the King takes this trope absolutely literally; the king's mental and physical decline shrinks and collapses his kingdom on a scale reminiscent of The Nothing in The Never-Ending Story. It even extends into time.
    "All the wars you'd won, you lost. And all the ones you lost, well, you lost them over again."
  • In A Midsummer Night's Dream, disharmony between fairy king and queen Oberon and Titania produces disharmony in the land and seasons.
  • In Antony and Cleopatra, Octavian references the myth by mocking Antony for spending all his time fishing while he is the nominal ruler of Egypt. This is an inversion, as the point was to demonstrate that Antony's job was so cushy and undemanding that Egypt continues to run perfectly well regardless of how he spends his time.

    Video Games 
  • American McGee's Alice: Alice becomes Wonderland's fisher king.
  • The lands (and skies) under your control in the Black & White god games change to reflect your alignment. More pronounced in the sequel, where Good cities are teeming with wildflowers, butterflies, and pristine marble architecture; whereas Evil cities are surrounded by shadowy volcanic plains and haunted by the lamentations of the miserable peasants.
  • Conquests Of Camelot is a variant on the Arthurian legend, in which the Fisher King is Arthur himself. Gwenhyver's love for Lancelot causes Arthur to become depressed, causing his kingdom to sink with him, as explained by Merlin during the intro sequence.
  • Cythera: An old game by Ambrosia Software, had Alaric the Landking.
  • DragonQuest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King: A subplot revolves around the depressing castle town of Ascantha, in mourning two years for their deceased queen, before the heroes help the king to get over her death and he and the town return to their former jovial state. The king did this to his town by edict, however, not by mystical power, making this a Subverted Trope.
  • The Elder Scrolls
    • The realms of the Daedric Princes in Oblivion are part Genius Loci and part Eldritch Location. The Princes rule their own realms as Dimension Lords, inside of which they possess almost absolute power to create, change, and alter at will. Anything that causes one of the Princes to change, however, be it a Hijacking Cthulhu situation or through their own actions, also affects their realm. For example, in the 4th Era when Clavicus Vile was separated from his external conscience, Barbas, his realm of is said to have literally shrunk.
    • In Oblivion's Shivering Isles expansion, you visit the titular realm of Sheogorath, Daedric Prince of Madness. It is appropriately insane. However, as part of an Eternal Recurrence known as the Greymarch, Sheogorath reverts to his true form, that of the Daedric Prince of Order Jyggalag. Life in the Isles begins to die off and crystal spires grow out of the ground, signalling the beginning of the Greymarch. Naturally, it is up to the Player Character to put an end to this recurrence and save the Isles.
  • The Final Fantasy games make heavy use of this from time to time.
    • In Final Fantasy I, this applies to the rotting earth, especially the much more noticeably decayed earth on the subcontinent surrounding the Earth Cave, home of Lich the Earth Fiend.
    • In Final Fantasy V, the world after having all its elemental crystals shattered and under the siege of the Void. With the elements decaying, their constituent natural forces are stagnating, and large areas of land appear as black pits where the Void sucked up entire countries.
    • In Final Fantasy VI, the world is all but destroyed when the Warring Triad's balance is broken, and their power is usurped by Kefka as the new source of magic. This leaves the land barren and desolate, and Kefka's rule over it keeps it the land from recovering (his razing it with the almighty Light of Judgment doesn't help things, either.) However, when Kefka is destroyed and magic dissipates, life across the world blooms triumphantly.
    • In Final Fantasy VIII, the future world of Ultimecia under her domination, and most especially her castle.
  • God of War III: killing gods changes the world for the worse: Kill Poseidon, and the seas flood the coasts. Kill Hades, and the souls of the dead escape from Tartarus. Kill Helios, and the sun is shrouded by the clouds. Kill Hermes, and swarms of insects are released. Kill Hera, and all plantlife dies. Kill Zeus, and the constant lightning storms begin.
  • Infamous: Cole's moral choices determine the weather in the postgame: Empire City is a sunny paradise if Good Cole defeats Kessler, and a hellish disaster area with red skies if Evil Cole does.
  • Legacy of Kain: The series does this with the Pillars of Nosgoth - the twist being that not only are the pillars literal pillars, but they're also represented by a person. When the Pillar of Balance is murdered and her lover, the Pillar of Mind (with all the psychic power that implies), goes mad... Nosgoth itself suffers, and suffers more later as a result of Kain's climactic choice.
  • The Legend of Zelda:
    • The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past features the Dark World, originally known as the Sacred Realm before it fell under Ganon's rule and was warped into a dark and twisted version of Hyrule. The Dark World has the ability to turn anyone who ventures into it without the Moon Pearl into an animal or monster supposedly reflecting their "true nature" - e.g., a bully becomes a fanged and horned demon, and an indecisive kid becomes a bouncy pink immobile ball; hence it is also a Fisher Kingdom. Link becomes a helpless pink bunny, and Ganon, himself, is a massive boar.
    • In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Zelda's castle and city become corrupted once Ganon takes control of them. Though not seen, Zelda also mentions that the Sacred Realm has once again become a place of evil due to Ganondorf's pouring of his malice into the Triforce when he attempted to gain possession of it. It becomes his prison after his defeat when the Sages seal him inside the Dark Realm.
    • The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess: Justified Trope; when the evil Zant takes over Hyrule, the land becomes cloaked in perpetual twilight, because he's actually using dark magic to bring the Twilight Realm to this plane. Things look pretty bad there, too, what with the sky darker than ever and the inhabitants all gone or turned into the Shadow Beasts you repeatedly fight. Normally, it's actually pretty nice under its rightful ruler, Midna, the titular Twilight Princess.
  • New Super Mario Bros. U: Bowser manages to take over Princess Peach's Castle, and the surrounding area becomes a Lethal Lava Land just like what usually surrounds Bowser's own castle in games that feature it.
    • Fawful takes over both Bowser's and Peach's castles in Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story and shapes them into his image, even making Peach's Castle into a very gloomy area with washed-out colors and bleak music.
  • Overlord: Both your tower and the entire domain are like this in the first game, where it's especially prominent in the endings.
  • In Might & Magic VII, you become the Lords of Harmondale, which is already in pretty bad shape, as is the whole continent, which is in a state of war. Whether it becomes better or worse depends on your actions and whether you choose the Path of Light or Dark. The continent, that is — Harmondale gets better either way.
  • Pathfinder: Kingmaker has the player's realm reflect the character of its ruler in background dialogue and inhabitants.
  • Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: In the second set, the mental state of the god of time, Dialga, is reflected by the physical state of Temporal Tower, his hidden abode.
  • Psychonauts: The mental realms. Obviously. This trope is taken to the point where everything in a mental world corresponds to the personality and mental state of the mind-holder, from the general layout (a Germanic Depressive character whose psychic specialty is turning repressed emotions into firepower has a mind consisting of a large black, white, and grey cube floating in dark purple space) to the Figments (several plot points are hinted at upon close examination of the Figments in each mind) to the characters (in a paranoid schizophrenic's mind, the mailboxes have eyes and stalk you).
  • RuneScape: The quest "Holy Grail" takes the entire storyline of the quest from the Arthurian legend, and the Holy Grail is indeed held by the Fisher King, who rules a Fisher Kingdom. It gets better when you get Sir Percival to take over.
  • In Shin Megami Tensei IV, the Expanse changes according to what entities currently rule over it. Without anyone, it's a barren, desolate landscape, with a sea perpetually frozen in time at the background. With the White in charge, the place becomes the Monochrome Forest, a White Void Room spanning the whole plane. With the revival of the Goddess of Tokyo, the landscape heals and the sea is unfrozen, making it far more pleasant to be in.
  • Wild Arms 2: The Encroaching Parallel Universe, Kuiper Belt, is gradually eating the entire universe, and strikes Filgaia with a phenomenon called the Stain Paradigm, which rots away the sky, the land, the water, the forces of nature, everything, as Kuiper Belt grows more powerful. Named after but very different from the real Kuiper Belt, a ring of countless Plutoid planetoids surrounding the main Solar System, some of which occasionally stray into the main Solar System like Pluto does every few centuries.
  • Zyll: Zyll eventually turned the once prosperous country into a dark and barren wasteland.
  • The whole plot of the game King's Bounty is that King Maximus is linked to the life of his kingdom by the Scepter of Order. When Arech Dragonbreath steals the Scepter, the country descends into chaos and anarchy, and both Maximus and the land itself start to sicken and die. The object of the game is to recover the Scepter, restoring both Maximus and the land to health.
  • In Ys V: Lost Sand City of Kefin, the return of the eponymous lost kingdom causes desertification of the surrounding lands.
  • In the Pride Lands level of Kingdom Hearts II the land has remained barren because Simba still had doubts about his abilities as a leader and is plagued by the Heartless ghost of Scar. That, and the Pride Lands obviously weren't restored to their former glory instantly, there's at least four months between when Simba takes the throne and Kiara's "christening" seen at the end of the film and the epilogue of the game. This is nature we're talking about, not magic, even if it is a Disney version of nature.
  • The city of Dunwall in Dishonored seems to be this. It becomes noticeably worse off after the Hiram Burrows takes over following Empress Jessamine's assassination. Also, a high chaos run (read, if the player goes on a killing spree) will result in far more rats and Weepers than low chaos ("pacifistic") run. Doubles as a case of Fridge Brilliance in that though Corvo is not a ruler himself his actions directly influence Emily, Jessamine's daughter, ultimately shaping what kind of person she becomes.
  • Dishonored 2 continues using Dunwall as the fisher kingdom. At the beginning of the game, the city looks normal, with the sun shining overhead. When Emily or Corvo finally return following Delilah Copperspoon's coup, the sky is permanently cloudy and the city looks just as rundown as it actually is, with debris and bodies scattered everywhere as Delilah's coven of witches are given the run of the place.
  • In Armello the kingdom gets worse as the game progresses and the King gets more corrupted, not merely because his proclamations become more insane but also more Banes appear and they get stronger.
  • Seen in the bonus chapter of the seventh Dark Parables game. The goddess Flora is a divine Fisher Queen, and an evil enchantment has caused her to lose both her memory and her proper form. She becomes trapped in the body of Thumbelina, and since she's the goddess of nature's balance, the entire world is beginning to unravel without her to keep order.
  • In Ori and the Blind Forest, the Spirit Tree controls the Elements of Light that maintain the forest of Nibel. After Sein, the spirit who is "the eyes and light of the Tree", is separated from it by Kuro during her Roaring Rampage of Revenge over the accidental death of her children, the forest is "blinded" and falls into decay, being overrun by thorny weeds, toxic water, and hostile wildlife.
  • While nothing happens to the actual kingdom in Star Stealing Prince, the introduction does state that the title royal's emotions directly influence those of his subjects - therefore, if he's happy/sad/etc. then they are too.
  • The wellbeing and sanity of the soldiers and citizens of each Land in Drakengard 3 are tied to whether the ruling Intoner is around or not. When events cause each Intoner to no longer be present to rule, well...
  • Used in Total War: Warhammer. The landscape in territories changes to represent the influence of the power who controls it. Provinces controlled by the Empire are farmed Arcadias, provinces controlled by the Vampire Counts turn into haunted Uberwalds, Greenskins turn lands into barren wastes dotted with ramshackle fortifications, tribal totems and giant mushrooms, and lands controlled by Chaos become Mordors dotted with lava flows, obsidian spires and arcane portals.
  • Similarly in For Honor, the maps change with the controlling faction. Land occupied by the Knights is temperate, land occupied by the Samurai becomes foggy marshland, and land occupied by the Vikings becomes rather frigid.
  • In Shadow Warrior (2013), the demon maiden Ameonna brings life-giving rain to the demon world, but only when she's crying. When she meets and falls in love with Hoji, it starts a slow decline into their world's destruction, causing Enma to forbid them from seeing each other. Hoji, in a fit of grief and envy, poisons her, sending her into eternal sleep as she can't die, damning the world of demons to destruction unless the Nobitsura Kage is reforged and an immortal is sacrificed to revive her.
    • According to the sequel, there's a different stream of fluids she can cry out - of her other mouth. As such, the demon world has chaotically merged with Earth to form a constantly shifting procedurally generated killing floor. Everything sucks unless you're having as much fun murdering everything in sight, as Ameonna has during her sex tapes.
  • In Fe, territories occupied by the Silent Ones are overcast with an ominous red-orange haze. Once they are driven out and the animals liberated, the skies clear and the colors return to the standard blue-violet palette.
  • In The Spectrum Retreat, the Penrose Hotel becomes "infected" with Alex's memories as they return, from pictures in frames filling up with his family photographs to various posters and leaflets being replaced with ones reading "Vote Crow", growing more menacing and unsettling as the game goes on.
  • Gwynevere, the Princess of Sunlight, from Dark Souls is solely responsible for Anor Londo being in a state of perpetual sunset. Killing her casts the city into eternal night instead. This is because the Gwenevere you see isn't real, but an illusion created by her brother Gwyndolin (the real Gwenevere left a long time ago,) and so is the sun over Anor Londo. The eternal night is the true state of the city.

    Visual Novels 
  • Fate/stay night: A Dangerous Forbidden Technique known as a "Reality Marble" shows the inner workings of a Mage's soul by making a world that represents that Mage overlap the real world. These worlds, being shaped by the Magi's inner nature, are of the Fisher King nature. One inner world shown during the course of the game and the anime is Unlimited Blade Works, which belongs to Archer ( and by extension, Emiya Shirou).
    • Other Reality Marbles mentioned include that of Tsukihime's Nrvnqsr Chaos (pronounced Nero Chaos), which is always active and allows him to join his being to other creatures, giving him a body that is incapable of dying so long as at least one part of it remains alive and he can maintain magic energy to feed it. Unless you're Shiki. Satsuki's Reality Marble represents her loss without gain (Isn't it sad? No, really, not just a meme in this case) and passively destroys any mana in a radius around her that is not contained in a living being. Reality Marbles are bizarrely specific and produce equally strange results.
    • There is also the group of beings called the Ultimate Ones, the final singular lifeform that embody the hereditary of the now-dead planet of which it originates. Their very presence is enough to cast a permanent denial of reality sphere called Alien Order, overwriting Earth's laws of physics with those of their original planet as it was when it still bore life. In the main series, this is the effect Type-Mercury is having on a region in South America. In the far-flung future of Notes, the body of Ultimate One Type-Venus is blown out of the sky and, crashing onto the dead Earth of the future, its "corpse" is the only place that can still sustain life, albeit Venusian life.
    • The prequel of Fate/stay night, Fate/Zero, also has Servant Rider's shared Reality Marble, "Ionioi Hetaroi", which summons the Badass Army which conquered half of the world in his lifetime. (For context, Rider is Alexander the Great.)

  • In Last Res0rt, Whimsy is apparently caused by a Reality Warping Fisher King of sorts — and treated accordingly.
  • In Sinfest, Slick characterizes weather changes as God's mood changes.
  • Blindsprings has a case of this. It has not yet been revealed how exactly this works, but the royal family (who was overthrown in a bloody revolution/ academic coup d'état, with only one person surviving) had a pact with some nature spirits, who in turn seem to be connected to the magic in this world. While the country is not all brown and withered yet, this or something similar is implied to be a danger looming in the near future. It is also something of a dystopia, with the new rulers oppressing a certain kind of magic user with nazi-like methods.
  • In Stand Still, Stay Silent, the mage safe spaces are influenced by their mage's mood or will:
    • Lalli makes a moving tree grow out of nowhere when he kicks Reynir out of his space.
    • A storm starts in Onni's when he spots Reynir in his own space. It calms down when Reynir recognizes him from Tuuri's family photo.
    • The sheep in Reynir's space are seen fleeing in panic when he is protecting himself from the ghosts.
    • While her nature is unclear, "Pastor A" has her church briefly change from its Old World beauty to the impromptu Rash hospital it had become near the end as she tries to remember its physical location.
  • The Master of Paris in Girl Genius due to Simon spending at least 200 years making Sparky updates to himself and the city they are very well integrated. When Beausoleil murders him he does so using a sword that purges him from the systems of Paris it causes the entire city to go dark briefly before his death causes his partially integrated daughter Colette to have a Traumatic Superpower Awakening and take over as the new Master:
    Tarvek: How-How do you know?
    Colette: Because it is happening here in Paris and here in Paris I know all.
  • The reason why Beforus was a happier place is because Feferi ruled it benevolently. It had highbloods caring for lowbloods and the planet was a happier place overall. Now it's Alternia, not so much.

    Western Animation 
  • Reversed in one of the episodes of Captain N: The Game Master based on The Legend of Zelda. Mother Brain's minions steal parts of the Triforce, and Captain N and his friends have to help Link and Zelda try to get it back. But with the Triforce missing, Hyrule is dying - and therefore, so is Zelda.
  • Parodied in the "King Wrong" episode of Inspector Gadget, when Gadget is assigned to the fictional kingdom of Pianostan and meets his lookalike, a king whose sadness and misery pleases his subjects, but if the king is ever happy, the subjects won't be happy; in short, when the king is feeling happy or sad, his subjects' feelings will be the direct opposite of the king's mood.
  • Justified in W.I.T.C.H.: Meridian was Mordor under Phobos's rule, but that was because he was draining the energy from it. Once Elyon became queen, she restored everything.
    • There's also the fact that Elyon is pretty much a Reality Warper and Phobos, while not as strong, is still quite a powerful Evil Sorcerer. They really do have the power to mold their kingdom to suit their aesthetic preferences.
  • Evil Prince Aragon from Danny Phantom is a Jerk Ass whose isolated stuck-in-the-Dark-Ages (literally) kingdom reflects his aggressive rules. It's only when his timid sister, Princess Dora finally gets the gumption to dethrone him did the dying kingdom regale in happiness. It's expected it'll only get better from here; Dora's first act is restoring time so they can catch up to the rest.
  • When Crocker and later Vicky Take Over the World in The Fairly Oddparents, Dimmsdale becomes bleak and barren, with debris abound. Once they're off the throne, Dimmsdale becomes beautiful again (though, you could argue, no less miserable).
    • During Crocker's turn, there was a sign reading "Welcome to Slavesdale - Population: (Depends on Crocker's mood)
    • Also extended to Timmy's dad when he got to be Mayor for a day after winning the Miss Dimmsdale pageant. Though that may have just been set up to mess with Dinkleburg.
  • Done in a Da Vinci Code spoof episode of The Simpsons, Maggie, who was revealed to be a special child who would usher in true peace, is put on a chair that would fulfill her fate, people stop fighting, flowers bloom, all and all good stuff happens...unfortunately, Marge would rather have her daughter than world peace, and Homer leaves the nuns with Bart, who causes the rapture tribulation when he sits on the throne.
  • Played twice on The Emperor's New School with both the protagonist and the antagonist. When Kuzco wishes he'd never been an emperor to begin with... guess who becomes the ruler in an alternate world? Cue a dark (and very purple), cruel kingdom run by Yzma. However, in another episode Kuzco, despite not being an Emperor yet (again) takes over the entire school and turns it into a bleak and empty "kingdom"... literally. He locks the background colouring artists in the dungeon together with the other characters.
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • Whenever Discord rules Equestria, he transforms the land into a nonsensical chaotic hellhole. By contrast, when Celestia is on the throne, Equestria is a nice and peaceful place to live. It's not a perfect utopia, but it's arguably fairly close.
    • Nightmare Moon qualifies as well. Under her power, Equestria would never again see the light of day.
    • In "Hearts and Hooves Day", Apple Bloom has an Imagine Spot where, due to Cheerilee and Big Mac neglecting their jobs, Ponyville is blanketed by stormclouds and overrun with starving uneducated ponies.
    • A local example. When, in "Putting Your Hoof Down," Fluttershy decides to seal herself away so that she can't hurt her friends with her newfound assertiveness, which she took way too far. When she does so, her house and the area immediately around it becomes much more drab and dreary, complete with darkened sky, and the small stream turning to a mud puddle.
    • King Sombra's powers turned the Crystal Empire into a Mordor-like land of jagged black rocks, and it was said that the rest of Equestria would've eventually followed suit if he hadn't been stopped (which was ultimately demonstrated by one of the Bad Futures during the Season 5 finale).
    • When the main cast has their destinies altered in "Magical Mystery Cure", the citizens of Ponyville turned surly and angry, showing just how much an effect Pinkie's cheerfulness has on the town, Carousel Boutique turned decrepit and covered in cobwebs, and Sweet Apple Acres turned fallow and barren, despite the switch appearing to have only been in place for less than a day. Fans have suggested that the spell was retroactive. They instantly switch back once Rarity, AJ and Pinkie's destinies are restored.
    • During the climactic battle with Tirek after he has reached Physical God status, the environs around Ponyville also take on a Mordor-esque appearance.
    • In the season 5 finale, each alternate universe's equestria physically reflects the villian that conquered it, biome and all. Tirek Lethal Lava Land, Chrysalis Darkest Africa etc.
    • In the Season 6 finale, the land around the Changeling hive is a barren wasteland due to an Anti-Magic field generated by Queen Chrysalis's throne, which means no maintenance of the land or weather by pony magic. Presumably, with Thorax having ousted Chrysalis and become The Good King of the Changelings, the land will regain its vitality in time.
  • In The Legend of Korra, the Avatar is this in the Spirit World. If the Avatar's negative thoughts and emotions dominate, the world around him or her - including the resident spirits - will turn dark, frightening and hostile. Positive emotions, on the other hand, reverse this effect, bringing light and peace.
  • In an episode of Aladdin: The Series, the kingdom of Quirkistan is enchanted to reflect the mood of the king, a spoiled child. When he is in a foul mood the land starts dying, sadness causes downpours, and happiness causes the land to become fertile and rich. Just don't make him angry; lightning and volcanoes happen when he's not even fully mad.
  • In the Kaeloo episode "Let's Play Me-Me-Nopoly", Mr. Cat becomes the king of Smileyland, and the sky turns red.

Alternative Title(s): Fisher Queen


Example of: