The Suicide King
Modern playing cards are filled with layers of meaning and symbology that can be traced back centuries. The four kings, for example, are based off of real rulers: the king of diamonds represents the wealthy Julius Caesar, the king of clubs is the brutal Alexander the Great, Spades represents the strong but kind David of Israel and Hearts represents the… emotionally disturbed, shall we say, Charles VII of France. It is this king that we will be dealing with today. It should also be noted that Charles was the only one of the four who was actually there to see the day that his face was printed on a playing card, which may rationalize why he acted apart from the others.
Charles’ visage was put on the king of hearts at the very beginning of his rule, but he never really got a chance to come into contact with playing cards until many years later when he became very ill with a fever and was informed that he would be bedridden for the rest of his life. It was during this period that Charles began learning card games to pass the time, such as an early version of black jack, “vingt-et-un” (twenty one).
Charles lay in his bed for two years, constantly fiddling with the cards and always getting weaker. As time continued to pass, there were reports that Charles had begun obsessing over the idea that the king being the thirteenth card in a suit was causing him bad luck. He talked about how he was starting to see the number pop up everywhere and that he was close to figuring out its secret. Of course, his ramblings were blamed on the fever, and by the end of the second year, he had been declared insane, and his son Louis XII took over the thrown.
One day, several months after the end of his reign, one of Charles’ physicians went to his chamber to find the frail old man standing in the middle of the room wielding a large sword. Before the doctor could react, the king said, “Ils m’ont montré la vérité de treize, et il n’est pas signifié pour les yeux mortels.” which roughly translates to, “They have shown me the truth of thirteen, and it is not meant for mortal eyes.” Without hesitation the king proceeded to ram the blade in through the left side of his head (between the ear and temple) until it came out the other side. He wavered a moment, before collapsing to the floor dead.
After the incident was announced and it was made public that the king had gone mad, the image of Charles on the king of hearts was altered to show himself offing himself. Although the picture is now shown significant-ly less graphically, the image of Charles thrusting the sword into his skull can still be found on modern day playing cards. Perhaps the strangest part of the whole story, however, is the day that Charles chose to kill himself: 7/6/1462. Whether or not it was intentional of the king, the facts that 6+7=13 and 1+4+6+2=13 can only be explained as coincidences.
//
Credited to John ♠.
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that\’s so full of bullshit. the dates are all wrong and inaccurate, and that little number summing game you play at the end is total crap. the results are infinite and you can make up any number if you try a little hard.
When I said weeks, I meant average, FYI. I was, in fact, pleasantly surprised that there was new creepypasta in 6 days, but I have noticed that 6 days is rather fast compared to the average rate of posting.
Sorry about your electronics BTW. That sucks. I can’t donate any money, but I wouldn’t mind donating some of my time to this site, if it would help?
Suicide_King.avi
Good job John! I liked it a lot. And yeah, I had to check if it was actually like that on the card xD It was :D
Oh, please. How on earth are you supposed to stab yourself in the side of the head with a sword?
The king either had very long arms, or, heh, a very short sword.
The only unclear part was how he knew about the oh-so-magical secret of the thirteen. You could have done loads with that.
Hm.
I liked this. 13 is not a really very scary number to me, nor was I creeped out by this pasta, nor do I speak French so I can correct your French grammar- The words and translation did look slightly odd together, though- But I liked this very much. It was something to read, it was worthwhile, and it didn’t have one of those utter shit endings like “They say if you go to his final resting place, you can hear the echoing screams”.
7/10.
Also, for all you guys who are undoubtably going to eventually complain about how “DIS DIDNT RLY HAPEN WTF RU ON ABUT” It’s a story. It doesn’t matter if it’s fiction. >>
cool story, but where is the creepy?
Pasta needs sauce, too plain
Very good pasta, id say
I think this is copyrighted to Warner Brothers. No wait, that’s 23. You’re talking about cards and a different number. Pretty sure this was the exact storyline of another movie too. Can’t think of the title though. That’s annoying.
Louis XII took over the thrown?
Kinda interesting anyway.
Good story…short, but still managed to get a nice enjoyable tale across. This would be a good “campfire” tale for kids.
not bad, but not entirely all “shat-bricks” worthy. this kinda reminded me of the movie 23 though, despite the fact this being history..
hm…i give it a 6/10
Wasn’t bad. The spirit was definitely as fresh as the older ones (my mind goes to Lee Harvey Oswald with the weird Quarter), and had some pretty cool coincidences.
The mood was a bit broken by the french/french translation (no real need for it), but overall, I liked it. good show.
Julius Caesar wasn’t a king, and apparently the author did not know much about Charles VII either. This pasta is full of fail because it’s premise is so Dan Browned that it breaks suspension of disbelief. 2/10
What’s up with the meh creepypasta here? I don’t mind meh creepypasta as long as it’s posted every other day. I wouldn’t mind waiting weeks for new creepypasta if it was really good creepypasta, but waiting weeks for meh creepypasta is ridiculous. Are there really so few uploads that this is the best rate that can be managed? Even if the creepypasta isn’t particularly good, as long as it’s new I don’t mind…
“The number 13 is following meeeeeee”
Now where have i heard that before…
\"The number 13 is following meeeeeee\"
Now where have i heard that before…
Who else thought of Willem Dafoe after reading the first sentence?
Also, I concur with a few others: You got the other kings right, but I’m pretty sure hearts is Charlemagne.
…so… what?
The guy on the card went crazy and killed himself.
How does that affect me? It was more of a history lesson than anything.
The number 23 called. It’s very cross with you.
This was interesting. Well written, Not really creepy, but still good :) At least it’s not another “OMG EVERYBODY IS A ZOMBIE NOWWWW IM GOINg to BE OnE Too i cant tiiipe anymooore” One like “Evaporation”.
@4: Let’s see… Obama has made progress in getting us out of Iraq, helped mitigate the recession (though he didn’t do enough to properly end it — presumably due to fears of accusations about huge deficit spending if he made the stimulus as large as he should have), has verifiably created and saved jobs, accomplished the first major reform of our broken health care system in decades, and all against an unprecedented level of opposition party obstructionism. Plus, most of his “running up the deficit” is due to finally putting Bush’s two wars on the budget, rather than hiding their cost. Clearly, he’s a much worse president than the last one who turned a giant surplus into a deficit in record time, removed an unprecedented number of freedoms, gave tax cuts to the supremely wealthy under false pretenses, got us into two wars — one of which he lied us into and was inarguably unnecessary — and allowed the worst national security failure in history to happen under his watch.
Also, setting up your posting name as “President Obama” and tacking “BTW, I’m a horrible president” on the end isn’t funny, and only questionably qualifies as a joke. Please go back to Redstate, where your brand of non-humor will be appreciated.
More entertaining in a faux-informative way than a creepy one, I think. The style was concise (not tl;dr) but it lacked much tension or deep involvement. With a pasta this short you need a really disturbing or shocking ending, and this ending was good but I’m not sure if it’ll stay with me.
Not to say I didn’t like it. Keep writing! Maybe next time, though, a little more atmosphere? :)
@Arancaytar: Thanks :] And about the \"contrived number games\" I guess I should tell you all the reason I wrote this story in the first place and included some seemingly unnecessary details. You see, I\’m a magician of sorts, and really wanted to create a \"scary story\" magic trick, based on the effect that good creepypasta gives. So, I made up this somewhat accurate tale to go along with a trick: after telling the spectator(s)* about the \"vingt-et-un” game, you invite them to play a hand with you. From a shuffled deck you have each spectator choose two cards, and before letting them look at them the rest of the story is told. I finish with telling about the strange thirteen-related coincidences, which makes it all the creepier when they find out that every hand adds up to 13.
*one-three
Not all that scary, but at the very least pretty interesting.
At least it’s not another tl;dr apocalypse pasta.
RutilusHemal: Symbology is an actual word, dipshit.
@4: Piss off, wingnut.
Being a lover of card games and card history, I thoroughly enjoyed that.