Though it takes a long time to get there, we do eventually learn that Walter/ Marten/ Randall/ The Man in Black, was born Walter Paddick, and after setting out age 13 for a life on the road, he was raped by another traveler. In the third novel, The Wastelands,' Walter appears as Richard Fannin and in the fourth, Wizard and Glass, he is Marten Broadcloak once more. These are characters from another King novel, The Eyes of the Dragon, where Flagg appears. Roland recalls seeing Flagg with two men, Dennis and Thomas. in The Drawing of the Three, the second novel, Walter appears in flashback as Randall Flagg. Roland slips into delirium, and wakes next to a pile of bones Walter has faked his own death, unbeknownst to Roland.įrom there, The Man in Black appears at various points in the subsequent novels, almost always with the sole intention of trying to kill Roland or prompt others into doing so. Roland bears this tragedy for much of his life, and in the first novel, The Dark Tower, Roland eventually catches up to Marten, now Walter, and the pair talk by a campfire in the desert. Obviously, given how young he was, Marten hoped for Roland to fail the test and be exiled, but he passes well, though he then goes on to accidentally kill his mother. Marten had an affair with Roland's mother, and deliberately let Roland catch them in the moment, prompting Roland to take the gunslinger test early in the hopes that he could earn his guns and therefore kill Marten. ![]() However, The Dark Tower is a series that King has revisited and added to several times over the years, and in later editions, Walter and Marten were retconned into one. This wasn't always the way again, King conceived the two as separate characters, and in early editions of the novels, they were just that. In the flashbacks, Walter takes on the guise of Marten Broadcloak. He makes his first appearance in the first line of the first book "The Man in Black fled across the dessert and the Gunslinger followed." We later learn that Roland and Walter share a long history, and he has been Roland's nemesis since the latter was a boy. In The Dark Tower series, arguably, he is at his most evil. King describes his character as " An accomplished sorcerer and a devoted servant of the Outer Dark." The Man in Black has supernatural abilities, including prophecy and the ability to influence human and animal behavior. ![]() In The Dark Tower novels, Walter goes by the nickname the Man in Black, while elsewhere, again, he is known by various nicknames including The Walkin' Dude, The Dark Man, and The Hardcase. King originally meant for The Man in Black, also known as Walter O'Dim, to be a different character for 'The Dark Tower' series, but he decided instead to bring back his popular embodiment of evil, and so, although he doesn't share the initials R.F., Walter O'Dim is the same person. Names he goes by include Ramsey Forrest, Russell Faraday, Richard Fannin, Richard Freemantle, and Robert Franq. ![]() The logical question to ask, is why does the Man in Black want to destroy the Tower, and why does he hate Roland so much? To answer that, we have to go back to the very creation of the character, whom King introduced in another novel, 'The Stand.' There, he was called Randall Flagg, and he has appeared in various guises in many of King's stories, though it's important to remember that it's always the same character.
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