Thomas becomes king instead; Flagg, whom he sees as his only friend, becomes his royal advisor. Due to his youth and inexperience, Thomas allows Flagg great power and is easily manipulated by the wizard. Flagg becomes the de facto ruler of Delain, plunging the kingdom into a dark age. Years later Thomas confronts Flagg about his father's murder, which he witnessed as a child but suppressed the memory out of fear. Thomas shoots Flagg in the eye with an arrow, and Flagg disappears from the kingdom. Peter is given his rightful throne; Thomas and his butler, Dennis, leave the kingdom in search of Flagg. The novel states that Thomas and Dennis find Flagg, but the nature of their encounter is never revealed and Flagg survives to engender chaos in later stories. The Dark Tower series Flagg makes several appearances in King's Dark Tower series (1982-2012), which follows gunslinger Roland Deschain as he travels in search of the Dark Tower. Flagg's presence is felt in the opening sentence of the first book: "The man in black fled across the desert and the gunslinger followed". In this series, Flagg assumes the guise of several individuals. He first appears as Walter o'Dim, chased across the desert by Roland. In flashbacks Flagg assumes the identity of Marten Broadcloak, a wizard who conspires with the Crimson King to cause the fall of the Dark Tower. In the original edition of the first novel Marten is a separate person from Walter, who is also not known to be Flagg, but Marten and Walter are retconned into one character in the revised version. When Roland was young, Marten had an affair with Roland's mother, Gabrielle, using the affair to provoke Roland to take the gunslinger test early. He hoped Roland would fail so he would be exiled but Roland passed the test. Eventually, Roland catches Walter; they have a long discussion about Roland's destiny and the Tower which causes him to slip into delirium. He awakens to find a pile of bones in Walter's place. In the original edition Walter and Marten are separate characters, with Walter dying at the end of the novel. When King published an expanded edition of the novel Walter and Marten are portrayed as identical, and Walter fakes his own death. Flagg appears briefly in a flashback in the second installment of the Dark Tower series, The Drawing of the Three. Roland