Gormenghast (series) a year later with his "Earling" or formal investiture as the seventy-seventh Earl of Groan, after the untimely death of his father Sepulchrave. As Titus is only an infant in this novel, he plays a minor role. The main plot therefore follows the somewhat bizarre inhabitants of Gormenghast Castle, and in particular chronicles the rise to power of Steerpike, a scheming kitchen boy. Steerpike successfully destroys the existing order of the castle by inciting the twin sisters of Sepulchrave, Cora and Clarice, to burn Sepulchrave's beloved library. This event drives Sepulchrave into madness and eventually into taking his own life.
Sepulchrave Sepulchrave Sepulchrave, Earl of Groan is a character in Mervyn Peake's novels "Titus Groan". Sepulchrave is the 76th Earl of Groan and Lord of Gormenghast, the gigantic, isolate citadel-state which forms the setting/otherworld for the Titus Groan novels of Mervyn Peake. He is father to Titus Groan and Fuchsia Groan, brother to Cora and Clarice Groan, and estranged husband to the Countess Gertrude. He is afflicted by an intense melancholia that leaves him psychologically paralyzed for most of the novel. The movements of his every waking hour are dictated by the “immemorial rites set down in the books of the