Childeric

Childeric is one of the central villains of the Doctor Who Big Finish audio drama ''The Holy Terror. ''As the hunchbacked half-brother of Emperor Pepin VII, Lord Childeric is obsessed with removing his sibling from the throne and assuming his place as the supposedly immortal god-king; however, rather than simply leading the treacherous High Priest and a handful of other conspirators in an easily-quashed uprising, as was the tradition for previous half-brothers to the king, Childeric has something far more dangerous in mind. Having recognized that the Emperors of the land have not possessed immortality or omnipotence for centuries, he has been conducting an experiment that he believes will allow him to ascend to true godhood - a goal that naturally brings him into conflict with the Doctor and Frobisher when they arrive in the castle.

He is voiced by Peter Guinness.

Traditional Beginnings
As it eventually becomes clear, life within the castle follows strict patterns and traditions obeyed by both the people and the laws of reality in general: an Emperor will always be declared a god; he will always marry a woman who hates him and carries on affairs with other members of the royal entourage; he will always end up with two sons, one kind-hearted but neurotic and despised by his father, the other a bastard born of adultery, disfigured and malevolent. After a long life of tyranny and hedonism, the Emperor will die, immediately proving himself to not be a god after all, whereupon the people will destroy all traces of his rule and declare his kind-hearted son the new god. In an attempt to dislodge him from the throne, the half-brother will join forces with the duplicitous High Priest and lead a rebellion against the Emperor - one that always ends with the conspirators being rounded up and executed. The new Emperor puts aside all previous neuroses, settles into a loveless marriage, and the entire cycle begins anew.

At first, Childeric's existence seemed to follow the traditional patterns almost to a T: he was the result of an affair between Empress Berengaria and one of her husband's guards, chosen largely because he was the only member of the royal entourage who didn't smell; though he knew that being selected for the traditional role of the Empress's lover would mean his death, the nameless guard loved Berengaria with all his heart - until he was caught, as tradition demanded, and hanged, as tradition demanded. Nine months after their affair concluded, the Empress eventually gave birth to a son - disfigured, hunchbacked and by all accounts, repulsive. From an early age, Childeric showed all the signs of following in the footsteps of his villainous predecessors, including regularly pulling the wings off flies, and for a time, Berengaria had high hopes that her bastard child would be able to live up to tradition.

However, to Berengaria's immense disappointment, none of Childeric's villainous behavior seemed to progress much further beyond petty sadism, and she soon dismissed him as a failure.