King's Quest Omnipedia
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Adventurercap

The Adventurer's Cap is Graham's iconic choice of clothing. He has worn it on all of his adventures, and even tried to pass it onto his children to prove they were adventurer's as well.

The most famous of these caps is cyan or blue with a red or magenta feather. Although there are other variants including green with red feather, or tan and white feather, or blue and white feather, black with red-tipped white feather, black with blue feather, and white/purple with a yellow feather.

Graham keeps the four leaf clover he discovered on his first major quest inside the hat for good luck, and it's possibly one of the things that adds to his success. As such the cap might be unofficial fourth Great Treasure of Daventry.

Whenever Graham is wearing the crown, the hat can almost always be found near him either hanging from a hook on the wall, or sitting on a nearby table.

Notes[]

Cap
  • In KQ1 Graham wears hat throughout the entire adventure. In the original he accidently drops it while bowing before Edward, to deftly pick it off the ground and put it back on his head.
  • In KQ1 remake Graham reverently removes it from his head and holds it close to his chest while he bows before Edward.
  • In KQ2 Graham puts the hat on just shortly after viewing Valanice image in the mirror in the game's intro.
  • In KQ3, King Graham lovingly retrieves his adventurer's hat with the red feather from off a hook on the wall. Then tosses it to the twins.
  • In KQ4, King Graham decides it's time to pass on his adventurer's hat to younger blood. He picks it up off a table near the throne. He flings the battered hat towards his children while his wife, Queen Valanice, proudly looks on. The hat arches through the air. Graham has a heart attack and collapses and is taken away to his room. The adventurer's hat lies, unclaimed, upon the floor...forgotten. After teleporting back from Tamir, Rosella retrieves it from the floor and brings it with her to the king's bedroom. After healing Graham with the Magic Fruit, Rosella returns the cap to her father, stating that she doesn't think he's done with it yet. Alexander and Valanice agree, stating that Graham has too much life in him.
  • In KQ5, Graham wears the hat for the entire game.
  • In KQ6, Graham wears the hat at Alexander's wedding ceremony.
  • In KQ8, Graham can be seen wearing the green adventure's hat variant on a painting in the castle.
  • In King's Quest: Kingdom of Sorrow, Graham is mentioned to be wearing a hat occasionally throughout the story but never fully described. He is first mentioned putting on a 'furred hat' when prepares to see the fairies. There is a moment when Graham loses this hat to Tilly and her brothers when he is thrown down into the Pit of the Laburnum. He may not have gotten it back until much later in the story when he encounters the brothers again, trying to get his cloak back. Graham is seen wearing a brown adventurer's cap with a white feather on the cover of the book (when he is inside the Sorrowing Court). He may have gotten the brown adventure's cap when he was staying with the two tailor gnomes.

Behind the scenes[]

Newadventurerscap

New Adventurer's Cap logo

In common terms this hat is often known as the Robin Hood Hat (as it was made famous in Douglas Fairbanks and Errol Flynn Robin Hood films, and other Robin Hood films), it is based on a renaissance hat sometimes called early English a bycoket or in French chapel à bec. It is sometimes modernly referred to as a woodsman hat or hunter's hat, and often associated with foresters, woodsman, rangers, scouts, hunters, and archers in modern fantasy literature.[1]

Despite King Graham picking it up from a wall hook when he tosses it in KQ3, he instead picks it up from a table at the beginning of KQ4 to toss it.

Sierra uses the hat in much of its marketing. Using terms as 'putting on your Adventurer's Cap' (meaning to take up a new adventure), Hold onto your Adventurer's Cap (be ready to be amazed) or passing the 'Adventure's cap/hat' (to pass the adventuring onto the next generation), and many other variations. During the 2014 Game Awards Roberta Williams passed on the Adventurer's cap both physically and symbolically to the The Odd Gentlemen. As such the Adventurer's cap was and still be seen seen in some of the logos and promotional material concerning King's Quest games.

The "Passing of the Cap" was made famous in KQ3, and the start of KQ4, and is likely the start of much of this trope. In KQ9 Trailer it shows Graham put his cap on, just before he chooses to enter the Ancient Well to suggest he is ready to get down to business. Though 'Putting on the Adventure's Cap' goes back to the intro of King's Quest 2.

The Adventurer's Cap is to Graham what the Fedora is to Indiana Jones, or the Red Hat (with an M) is to Mario.

References[]

  1. http://larsdatter.com/bycokets.htm
  2. article in Game Informer February 2015
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