Titus Groan disturbed and uneasy about all that has happened, and disturbed about Steerpike's sudden rise. Yet neither is able to connect Steerpike as the cause of the tragic events, as he was their apparent saviour from the fire in the library. Soon afterwards, the “Earling” takes place, and young Titus is officially made Earl of Gormenghast. In a ridiculously elaborate ceremony on a nearby lake, little Titus holds aloft the sacred symbols of his status – the stone and ivy branch, and to the horror of observers, promptly drops them both into the lake. The scene is silent except for the
Gormenghast (castle) inner buildings of Gormenghast owe much to the Gothic and Regency period mansions and to the various styles of English country house. The quadrangles and professors' quarters also owe something to the architecture of Oxford and Cambridge and to Eltham College where Peake was educated as a boy when he returned to England. Finally, the isolated Channel island of Sark, which retained a feudal system of government until 2008, may have influenced Peake, who lived there in the early 1930s and again in the late 1940s. The references to Gormenghast castle as a rocky island of many promontories and sheer