Steerpike Titus, who blamed Steerpike for his sister's death, eventually finds and kills him. Stefan Vinzberg portrayed the character in the opera adaptation, and he was played by Irish actor Jonathan Rhys Meyers in the BBC miniseries. "The Daily Telegraph" has described Steerpike as one of the greatest villains in English literature. They also proposed that post-war readers were not prepared to fully appreciate the character upon his initial appearance. Steerpike Steerpike is a fictional character in Mervyn Peake's novels "Titus Groan" and "Gormenghast". Steerpike might be called the antagonist of the Gormenghast trilogy, but in truth he is more of
Boy in Darkness "Gormenghast".’ The story is one of Mervyn Peake's short works. After this he wrote only "Titus Alone" (1959); by the time it was published, Parkinson's disease had made writing almost impossible for him, although he continued to draw, intermittently, for several more years. "Boy in Darkness" is an episode in the Gormenghast series when Titus Groan, referred to as "the Boy" in the story, is a young teenager – placing it during the period covered by the second novel in the series, "Gormenghast". Yearning for freedom from his ceaseless duties as 77th Earl of Gormenghast, he escapes the ancient castle