[alansplace]

Originally Posted by Nyssa

There's Titania and the Redcaps too!

When you see these roots in Shakespeare remember that Jim Butcher's college degree is in English Literature.

Spoiler:

Titania

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Midsummer Nights Dream act IV, scene I. Titania, with fairies in attendance. Engraving from a painting

by Henry Fuseli, published 1796.

Titania is a character in William Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream. In the play, she is the queen of the fairies. Due to Shakespeare's influence, later fiction has often used the name "Titania" for fairy queen characters.

In traditional folklore, the fairy queen has no name. Shakespeare took the name "Titania" from Ovid's Metamorphoses, where it is an appellation given to the daughters of Titans.

Shakespeare's Titania is a very proud creature and as much of a force to contend with as her husband Oberon. The marital quarrel she and Oberon are engaged in over which of them should have the keeping of an Indian changeling boy is the engine that drives the mix ups and confusion of the other characters in the play. Due to an enchantment cast by Oberon's servant Puck, Titania magically falls in love with a 'rude mechanical' (a lower class labourer), Nick Bottom the Weaver, who has been given the head of an ass by Puck, who feels it is better suited to his character. It has been argued that this incident is an inversion of the Circe story. In this case the tables are turned on the character and, rather than the sorceress turning her lovers into animals, she is made to love an ass after Bottom has been transformed.
Other references

Titania has appeared in many other paintings, poems, plays and other works.

In Edmund Spencer's Faerie Queene, the title character is the descendent of Titania.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe included the figures from Shakespeare's work in Faust I, where she and her husband are celebrating their golden wedding anniversary.

Alfred Lord Tennyson's play The Foresters, which is a Robin Hood story, has a brief segment with Titania, Queen of the Fairies.

Titania, one of Uranus's Moons, was also named after her.
Modern references

She has occasional cameo roles in Neil Gaiman's Sandman comic series, and is a major supporting character in The Books of Magic. In the mythology of those comic series, she is a mortal woman, who has lived and ruled in fairy land so long that no one remembers she once looked (and still is, under her magical seeming) human. It is hinted, though never outright stated, that she may have once been the lover of Dream, the protagonist of the Sandman series. It is eventually revealed that she is the mother of Timothy Hunter, the protagonist of the Books of Magic series. The character recently returned in her own graphic novel God Save the Queen.

In Disney's Gargoyles, Titania was the queen of the fairies, but a millennium before the main events of the series, she apparently greatly angered her husband Oberon, causing them to divorce and him to banish her and all other members of their race from Avalon to teach her to "grow up." It is possible that she manipulated Oberon into that action though, as she was shown to make several such clever feints and ploys during her appearances in the series. The royal pair eventually reconciled and remarried. She was voiced by Kate Mulgrew.
Titania and Oberon appear as major characters in the novel Magic Street by Orson Scott Card.
Titania is the queen of the Summer Court of the Faeries in Jim Butcher's Dresden Files books.
In King's Quest VII: The Princeless Bride, Titania and Oberon must save the world of Eldritch. This is her only appearance in the series and is the mother of Edgar and the sister of Malacia which are both made up characters.
In Frewin Jones's The Faerie Path, Titania is the mother of the book's main character, Tania.
In E.D. Baker's book Winged Titania plays the Queen of the Fairies whom the goblins dislike because of her rules and judgment of what the goblins do in the human world.
In the Doubled Edge series by Mercedes Lackey and Roberta Gellis, Titania is the High Queen of the Sidhe (elves) and the consort to Oberon. She is the patron and protector of the young magician Elizabeth Tudor. It is hinted that Titania is in fact Hera.
Titania is the aunt of the Raven King The Ladies of Grace Adieu and Other Stories by Susanna Clarke
Introduced in Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3, Titania is a Persona of the Lovers Arcana, while Oberon is a Persona of the Emperor Arcana. Both make a return appearence in Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4
In The Invasion of the Body Snatchers, protagonist Dr. Miles Bennell quotes the opening line of Oberon's poem; "I know a bank where wild thyme blows".
Titania is the name of the axe-wielding knight in the English versions of the Nintendo Video Games, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn. She was second-in-command of a small mercenary group called, "Greil's Mercenaries".
Titania and Oberon both appear as the king and queen of the fairies in the TV film, Voyage of the Unicorn.
In Final Fantasy Legend II, the final evolution of the Fairy-class was called Titania.
Titania is the heart, the mind, the spirit, the soul of the Starship Titanic. novel and video game by Douglas Adams.
In an episode of The Simpsons, Titania is a large-breasted woman who competes in a contest sponsored by Duff brewery.
Titania is mentioned in the Star Trek episode Time's Arrow. While traveling back in time to save Data, the rent on the lodging for Picard and his crew in the 20th century is due. When the landlord comes in to collect it, Picard pretends to have an acting troupe and has the landlord read the part of Titania.
Titania is the name of a fictional planet in the Star Fox video game series.
Titania appears as the King of Pride in the Little Fears RPG.
Titania appears in the Yu-Gi-Oh! Trading Card Game (TCG) as a Plant-type monster known as "Tytannial, Princess of Camellias" , which is currently one of the strongest Plant-type monsters in the game.
Titania is also the nickname given to Erza Scarlet, the strongest woman in the Fairy Tail guild, in the manga Fairy Tail by Hiro Mashima.
In Summer Dream Titania is an elven queen.
Titania is the wife of Oberon of the Summerdream family in the PC life simulator game The Sims 2.
In the children's book series The Sisters Grimm, Titania and Oberon both feature in book four, "Once Upon a Crime", as the parents of Puck, one of the main characters. They argue most of the time they are seen interacting, but when Oberon is murdered during a party, Titania morphs into a fire-breathing monster and threatens to kill everyone to avenge her love if the murderer is not found.
Regina Titania is ruler of the Seelie Court in the 2009 novel "Midwinter" by Matthew Sturges. She is enemy to the Unseelie Queen Mab.
U.A Fanthorpe's poem "Titania to Bottom"
Titania and Oberon appear (although not mentioned by name) in Terry Pratchett's book Lords and Ladies, which is a partial parody of A Midsummer Night's Dream.
Titania is the nickname for the Sword Art Online character, Asuna Yuuki.

Redcap

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Red Cap or Redcap, also known as a powrie or dunter, is a type of malevolent murderous dwarf, goblin, elf or fairy found in Border Folklore. They are said to inhabit ruined castles found along the border between England and Scotland. Redcaps are said to murder travellers who stray into their homes and dye their hats with their victims' blood (from which they get their name). Redcaps must kill regularly, for if the blood staining their hats dries out, they die. Redcaps are very fast in spite of the heavy iron pikes they wield and the iron-shod boots they wear. Outrunning a redcap is supposedly impossible.

They are depicted as sturdy old men with red eyes, taloned hands and large teeth, wearing a red cap and bearing a pikestaff in the left hand.

The tale of one in Perthshire has him as more benign; living in a room in Grantully Castle, he bestows good fortune on those who see or hear him.

The Kabouter, or redcaps of Dutch folklore, are very different, and more akin to brownies
Robin Redcap and William de Soulis
Hermitage Castle.
Hermitage Castle in 1814.

As the familiar of Lord William de Soulis, a certain Robin Redcap wrought much harm and ruin in the lands of his master's dwelling, Hermitage Castle. Ultimately, he was taken to the Nine Stane Rigg, a circle of stones hard by the castle, wrapped in lead, and boiled to death.[3] In reality William De Soulis was imprisoned in Dumbarton castle and died there, following his confessed complicity in the conspiracy against Robert the Bruce in 1320.
See also

Bluecap (Northumbrian English)
Brownie (English and Lowland Scottish)
Cofgod (Archaic English)
Far darrig (Irish)
Kabouter (Dutch)
Kobold (German)
Leprechaun (Irish)
Nain Rouge (French)
Tomte (Scandinavian)