Rat King

WARNING: contains discussion and images of dead animals.

I was surprised to find out that most people don't know what a rat king is, or that it's a real phenomenon. I think most people have a sense of it as a trope, a king who is a rat, which likley stems from a mixup with the Nutcracker's Mouse King. A rat king, a real one, is not very kingly or royal, it's mostly just sad. When a group of rats nest in a small confined space, sometimes their tails with become knotted together. The rats starve or kill each other in the struggle. We haven't been able to secure any solid evidence on how this happens, and many people still consider them a complete hoax. Somewhat amusingly, there have also been experiments done to attempt to tie rat tails together and see if it would even be possible to manufacture a live rat king. No rats were seriously harmed. Of course, for a long time, we only had eyewitness accounts and preserved specimens to go off of, which wasn't enough to convince everybody. Nowadays, we have footage. Live rat kings have been caught on camera in Estonia, confirming once and for all that however rare, there is some truth to the myth.

I'm a little morbidly obsessed with rat kings. I think there is something so captivating about something we feel shouldn't exist. We feel like our world should be kinder than this, good-er than this. Things like this shouldn't just happen by chance, we need a moral evil to blame. But rat kings happen. They also interest me as the far extreme opposite of such a common fear. I think anyone would cite the fear of being alone as high up on their list, whether they find it valid or not or have any overwhelming abandonment issues. No one wants to be alone. What if you were never alone again?

Rat Kings in Pop Culture

Like I said, the idea of a kingly rodent has maintained as a trope in fiction, in reference to the Mouse King. He is not a rat nor a rat king, though there have been depictions of the character with multiple heads in reference to the concept. Side note I'm also a huge fan of this skull-like Mouse King from the English National Ballet.

The most accurate depiction I have come across is the Rat King in Hilda. Not surprising, since Hilda is clearly created out of great interest and respect for European folklore. I like this guy. They're a bit of a mafia boss and I think that lends itself well to other rat tropes, and they're both terrifying and kinda charming. I like that in addition to being a mass of rats, you can actually see the knots of tails.

In most depictions of rat kings, they are seen as a single character, a joined collective mind. Though, compared to other versions of this trope such as swarms of bees or birds, the real life rat king is anything but. Other social animals can act as a collective, and the single mind just a fictional extension of that, but a rat king is a writing mass of disorder and suffering. It isn't a collective made for the good of all, it's a trap. I can't fault artists too much for not wanting to depict such a horrific moment so literaly, though.