The Tale of the Foolish King

The Tale of the Foolish King was a fairy tale which the Eighth Doctor at some point recited. It told the tale of a tyrannical king who outlawed music. (AUDIO: Scherzo) It was later appropriated by Light City as a propaganda broadcast. (AUDIO: The Natural History of Fear)
== History ==
At one point, the Eighth Doctor recited the tale out loud. (AUDIO: Scherzo) Later, when the Eighth Doctor, Charlotte Pollard, and C'rizz visited Light City, their memories were copied and used in an experiment. One such memory that was taken was this tale, which was used as one of the broadcasts which the proles were obligated to view. (AUDIO: The Natural History of Fear)
== Story text ==
== Behind the scenes ==
The history of the usage of this tale in Doctor Who is slightly confusing from a strict in-universe perspective. When it first appeared, in Scherzo, it was split up into four parts, each one serving as a "cold opening" for each of the four episodes of the story. There was no indication towards the context of why and to whom the Eighth Doctor was actually tellling this story, nor to the in-universe source of the story itself, and indeed it would have been an entirely reasonable assumption for a listener at the time to take that the tale segments were not supposed to be taken as having literally occurred in-universe, but were rather simple thematic and non-diegetic complements to the story and to the Divergent Universe arc in general. In other words, that, in these sections, we are not hearing the Eighth Doctor, but Paul McGann, effectively reading an original short story, whose purpose is primarily as a metaphor to illustrate certain Divergent Universe concepts. However, shortly afterwards, the tale was featured in an explictly in-universe context of having been drawn from the Doctor's memories in the audio story The Natural History of Fear. This retroactively confirms the narrated portions of Scherzo to have "actually occurred" in the DWU, but the context to any of it is still unclear. Whatever the case, however, the actual content of the story itself can be safely taken as fiction (that is to say, fictional even within the context of Doctor Who), and one should not assume that, for instance, the reference to "Time [being] locked in in the deepest dungeons" constitutes a genuine description of events involving the Eternal of the same name.
Category:Fairy tales