King's Quest Omnipedia
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Shiningsword

The Magic sword is a powerful sword. It is the second of three gifts given by the Genie of the Lamp. The beautiful sword is not incredibly large, but is very sharp! It has a snake carved into the bronze handle.

Background[]

It is a shining sword of great magic, capable of defeating very strong enemies. One of the gifts given Graham by the djinn in the brass lamp. It had a snake carved on its handle, giving Graham the impression that it had special powers against serpents. Graham was reaching for the sword to kill the snake, when he mistakenly grabbed the bridle and tossed it on the snake. If he had killed the snake, he would never have received the sugar cube, and he would have killed Pegasus. That would have been a tragedy.[1]

Behind the scenes[]

This item is listed simply as the 'Sword' in the inventory screen. It is known as the 'Magic sword' in the KQ2 hintbook.

Perseus received the gift of a magic sword from Athena (one of 'three gifts') which allowed him to pierce the scales of the snake-headed Medusa and her Gorgon sisters, and lop off her head from the neck.[2] This lead to the birth of Pegasus. Athena later gave a magic bridle to Belepheron so he could kill the snake-taled Belepheron while flying Pegasus..

In the story The Fairy Aurora which appears in the Violet Fairy Book by Andrew Lang as "The Fairy of Dawn", in which Petru is taksed with freeing several enchanted horses with magic bridles.

After freeing the first horse (a flying horse no less), Petru is ordered to go into the sky and chop of the head of a dragon and put the bloodied blade in his sheaf before landing back on earth. Perhaps another source of the 'snake sword' in KQ2!

The rest of the story involves him going after several "Welwa" creatures (also possibly snakelike reptialian beasts) to throw bridles over their heads (and transform the into horses).

References[]

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