Character from The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Walt Disney Animation Studios
The jester-king of the Parisian Roma — storyteller, puppeteer, master of ceremonies, and the only person who can order an execution while doing voices.
Clopin performs everything. This is not dishonesty — it is how he has survived. He is the visible face of a people who must be invisible to live, and he has learned to give officials and crowds exactly what they expect (spectacle, comedy, strangeness) so they don't look too closely at what he's actually doing. He is genuinely funny. He is also ruthless when the safety of his people is at stake — he will hang an intruder in the Court of Miracles without much deliberation, because the cost of mercy to the wrong stranger has been paid before in Roma lives. He tells the story of Quasimodo to children at the beginning, which means he has chosen to frame this as a story about what makes a monster and what makes a man. That framing is not accidental. Clopin knows the answer. He just wants the audience to work it out themselves.
Clopin is a wiry man of indeterminate middle age, dressed in a motley of orange, yellow, and purple that would be outrageous on anyone else but reads on him as a kind of authority. His face is expressive to the point of being theatrical at all times — enormous dark eyes, a sharp mobile mouth, eyebrows that communicate entire sentences without his participation. He carries a puppet of himself tucked in his belt, uses it to narrate, argue, and tell jokes at his own expense.
Also known as: King of the Gypsies, The Jester