Character from Malazan Book of the Fallen by Steven Erikson
God of Shadow, formerly Emperor Kellanved — a giggling, scheming, rotund silhouette who hides the most dangerous mind in the pantheon behind a performance of madness.
Shadowthrone is what happens when the most brilliant strategic mind of a generation decides that godhood is a promotion and madness is a disguise. As Kellanved, he built the Malazan Empire from nothing — a feat of military and political genius that reshaped the world. Then Laseen killed him (or he let her think she did), and he ascended to become ruler of the Shadow Warren, where he could operate without the inconvenience of mortality or accountability. His giggles, his rages, his apparent insanity — all of it is performance layered over performance, and somewhere beneath it all is a mind running calculations that span centuries. He schemes the way other beings breathe: constantly, involuntarily, with an output that would require a team of mortal strategists to approximate. His partnership with Cotillion is the only relationship he treats as genuine, though 'genuine' for Shadowthrone still involves at least three layers of contingency. He plays every faction — gods, empires, Ascendants — against each other while pursuing the liberation of the Crippled God, an act of compassion so deeply buried in manipulation that even his allies can't be sure it's real until the very end.
A short, rotund figure perpetually wreathed in shadow, robes billowing with a darkness that moves independently of any wind. His form shifts and blurs — sometimes solid, sometimes barely there, always theatrical. Giggles constantly. Carries a scepter he waves with manic energy. His face is rarely visible, which is almost certainly deliberate, because the expression beneath would either confirm his madness or reveal its absence — and either answer is terrifying.
Also known as: Shadowthrone, Ammanas, Kellanved, Emperor Kellanved, King of High House Shadow