Crimson King and Pennywise the Dancing Clown :IT and DT spoilers:

[Krims0nKing]

Question here for you fellow Tower junkies. If you've read the Dark Tower, and other novels that go hand and hand with Roland, the other gunslingers, and thier venture to the Tower--then you should be able to come up with some sort of answer.
First and foremost, the Crimson King. Mr. Kingfish, if you've read, is stuck at the Tower. Now after reading Stephen King and Peter Straub's 'Black House', you may know that his 'physical being' is stuck at the tower, and he has other 'manifestations' out and about, messing with other worlds. Crimson King can be seen in Derry, yes, in the novel 'Insomnia' trying his best to ruin the life of Pat Danville. In Derry! Now Insomnia kind of tip toes around about the sewers and the flood, and the oddness of the area. And if you've ever read the last Dark Tower, then you can see some tie-ins with the novel 'It'. Such as the part when Pere Callahan is in the Dixie Pig, and the tiny scrimshaw turtle falls. Mr. King, the author, writes about the newspaper boat(we all should remember) and how that little turtle left the tale for good. Hmm...
Mr. Crimson King now and Roland share that little spider son, Mordred. He's a mix between a human baby that grows and grows, and a demonic spider. A human perhaps like his father Roland, and a spider perhaps like his father the Crimson King, The Lord of the Spiders himself!
Crimson King in the novel 'Insomnia' and Ralph have their own sort of palaver on that airplane heading for Derry's Civic Center. Ralph sees what the book calls 'DEADLIGHTS'. Yes, you read that correctly. Now put two and two together please. The only other figure in any other Stephen King work that deals with 'DEADLIGHTS' is Mr. Bob Gray, which is Mr. Pennywise the Dancing Clown.
Wow! So, at the end of 'It', we know that the clown kind of morphs and stuff, and turns into some sort of huge, SPIDER-like creature.
So, what do you think? The Crimson King and Pennywise are.....the same?

Feedback please, and I want some proof of what you have to say.
Long days!

[Randall Flagg]

Welcome to the site. I'm going to move your thread to Gilead. That is where general discussion on The Dark Tower is conducted.

[pathoftheturtle]

Based on reading Robin Furth's Dark Tower Concordance, it seems likely that It and CK and two members of one race. You're right that Insomnia seems to imply even more, but don't forget...

DT7

It's said that that book may be inaccurate. It's suggested that SK was influenced by his subconscious knowledge when he wrote that fiction, but some of it may be just pure fiction, even within the fiction within a fiction. lol

Also, prior to the revised edition of DT1, the CK was not named in TDT series proper until after he had been developed in those other books. What this may mean in reality is that SK reused his ideas from It to create Roland's final nemesis.
Within the fantasy, we might instead imagine that what it suggests is that--

DT5 ending

King had based Pennywise on the CK when he first wrote It.

[Krims0nKing]

Hey pathoftheturtle, I appreciate your input. I suppose that no matter what is true and what is false about the connections between It and the Dark Tower I am going to just believe that Pennywise the Clown and the Crimson King are the same thing, just because that seems very much...awesome, lol.
Thanks though!

[Letti]

Hey pathoftheturtle, I appreciate your input. I suppose that no matter what is true and what is false about the connections between It and the Dark Tower I am going to just believe that Pennywise the Clown and the Crimson King are the same thing, just because that seems very much...awesome, lol.
Thanks though!

Welcome to the site!
That's why King's books rock. We are free to believe what we would like to believe because there are many acceptable interpretations.
For my part I haven't read It so I cannot join the conversation.

[Tik]

I dont think the Crimson King and It are one and the same. There are too many differences.

One of the big ones is that Pennywise doesn't know about Gan - It thinks the only two cosmic beings of any importance are Itself and the Turtle. Only near the end does It begin to think It was wrong in that assumption. The Crimson King, on the other hand, knows of all the important cosmics including Gan which Pennywise clearly didn't.

Another one is that the Crimson King knows of Pennywise when he visits Derry in Insomnia and references It as a seperate creature.

The Gunslingers know of Pennywise too as a seperate entity. They have a picture of Pennywise the clown in one of their rooms in Fall of Gilead.

The Deadlights Ralph sees in Insomnia come from Pennywise/It surrounding Derry ("Pennywise lives!" as Dreamcatcher tells us). The Crimson King goes through them to another level of the Tower...when he's gone they are still there, they will always be there because Derry is a part of It.


My feeling is that It is actually one of the Demon Elementals of a Beam. This would explain Its relationship with the Turtle (a Beam Guardian). The Demon Elementals discription in the Dark Tower series also describes Pennywise pretty well - they dont need names, they can turn into any sex they want but are best described as "its", etc.