page_title: Randall Flagg
section_title: Concept and creation
hierarchical_section_title: Randall Flagg / Concept and creation
caption_attribution_description: English: Stephen King, American author best known for his enormously popular horror novels. King was the 2003 recipient of The National Book Foundation's Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. Taken at the 2007 New York Comicon.
context_page_description: Randall Flagg is a fictional character created by American author Stephen King, who has appeared in at least nine of his novels. Described as "an accomplished sorcerer and a devoted servant of the Outer Dark," he has supernatural abilities involving necromancy, prophecy, and influence over animal and human behavior. His goals typically center on bringing down civilizations through destruction and conflict. He has a variety of names, usually with the initial letters "R. F." but with occasional exceptions, such as Walter o'Dim in The Dark Tower series and Marten Broadcloak.
  Flagg first appeared in King's 1978 novel The Stand as a demonic figure who wreaks havoc after a plague kills most of the population. He makes his second appearance in the 1984 novel The Eyes of the Dragon as an evil wizard trying to plunge the fictional medieval city of Delain into chaos. Flagg was a primary antagonist in King's epic series, The Dark Tower, who tries to keep protagonist Roland Deschain from reaching the Tower—the linchpin of existence—so he can claim it for himself and become a god. The Dark Tower expanded on Flagg's background and motivation, linking his previous appearances.
context_section_description: King initially named Donald DeFreeze, lead kidnapper in the Patty Hearst case, as his inspiration for Randall Flagg. According to King, he remembered the Patty Hearst case when he began to write a description of DeFreeze: "Donald DeFreeze is a dark man". He remembered that in photographs of the bank robbery in which Patty Hearst participated that DeFreeze was only partially visible, hidden under a large hat. What he looked like was based on guesses made by people who only saw a portion of him. This inspired King, who then wrote "A dark man with no face". After reading "Once in every generation the plague will fall among them", King began writing The Stand and developing the character of Randall Flagg.
  In 2004, King said that Flagg had been a presence in his writing since the beginning of his career, with the idea coming to him in college. He first wrote a poem, "The Dark Man", about a man who rides the rails and confesses to murder and rape; written on the back of a placemat in a college restaurant, the one-page poem was published in 1969, but the character never left King's mind. To the author, what made Flagg interesting was "the idea of the villain as somebody who was always on the outside looking in, and hated people who had good fellowship and good conversation and friends".
caption: Stephen King has said that the inspiration for Flagg's character "came out of nowhere".[11]
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