Rumplestiltskin (KQGS)



Rumplestiltskin was a straw to gold spinning gnome who once lived in a section of the kingdom of Daventry (KQGS).

Background
During Graham's quest to recover the Magic Mirror  (KQGS), while searching places throughout Daventry for the location of the Mirror, Graham encountered the gnome.

The gnome gave him an impossible riddle, which though 'impossible' Graham narrowly discovered its answer, and was given a gift which allowed him to climb into the clouds via a giant beanstalk. While he was not able to find the mirror in the sky, he recovered one of Daventry's other stolen treasures.

Rumplestilskin's 'help', and the giant bean stock were one of the feats that proved Graham's worthiness to become the new king of Daventry. However, after becoming king due to annoyances with the gnome, and not wanting any more reminders of impossible riddles, King Graham made a decree that all spindles in the realm should be destroyed. It was thought that all spindles had been destroyed, but one escaped the king's decree.

Later that year, Rumplestiltskin was captured by the rocky Stone Goblins who took him down into their Goblin Caves to force him to spin bales of hay into gold. Unfortunately for Rumplestiltskin, he refused to follow the goblin's orders. He was lost and forgotten, and ultimately starved to death at the top of the pile of bales, with the last spindle.

After Graham found himself captured by the Goblin's himself, he discovered the secret cell through the food pipes in his own cell, and found the skeleton of the poor gnome sitting in a chair near the spindle. He thought to himself in surprise that one of the spindles escaped his decree.

Behind the scenes
Rumplestiltskin can be found in King's Quest Chapter II: Rubble Without a Cause. He is dead (only his skeletal remains and his pointy gnome hat remains), where he had been  locked away in his own cell on top of a bunch of hay bails. Of course in the original timeline Rumplestiltskin should be alive a few decades later at the time of KQ3, and later in KQ5. It is also mentioned that Graham had the kingdom's spindles destroyed, so that he would have no more reminders of 'impossible riddles'

Of course if 'time travel' is involved as stated in the King's Quest Companion, the order when Graham meets him is irrelevent. Still this maybe another indication of the reimagined alternate universe. In this universe perhaps Alexander never encountered Rumplestiltskin, and Graham never encounted him during the events of KQ5.

The reference to destroying all the spindles in the realm is a nod to the spindles being destroyed in the story of Sleeping Beauty.