Sepulchrave

Sepulchrave, Earl of Groan is a character in Mervyn Peake's novels Titus Groan .

Character

Sepulchrave is the 76th Earl of Groan and Lord of Gormenghast, the gigantic, isolate citadel-state which forms the setting/otherworld for the Titus Groan novels of Mervyn Peake.

He is father to Titus Groan and Fuchsia Groan, brother to Cora and Clarice Groan, and estranged husband to the Countess Gertrude.

He is afflicted by an intense melancholia that leaves him psychologically paralyzed for most of the novel. The movements of his every waking hour are dictated by the “immemorial rites set down in the books of the lore of Groan”, a canon of meaningless, endlessly cross-referenced and encoded ritual that forms the foundation of the decaying Gormenghast society.

This lore is interpreted for Sepulchrave by his Master of Ritual, Sourdust, who meets him at a lavish breakfast every morning; a breakfast that is never eaten and which is left to waste. Sepulchrave has no appetite and is moved by no emotion other than weary and unrelenting depression. However, his frozen heart is mildly stirred at the outset of 'Titus Groan' by the news of the birth of his son.