The Oriental despot’s monstrosity fuses political power, dark magic, and deviant sexuality

Evidence

Vathek is a typical Oriental despot, “pleasing and majestic,” but also malevolent and powerful, possessing magical powers, including the ability to strike someone dead with his angry stare. The towering “quasi-Babel” tower that Vathek constructs in Samarah follows him wherever he goes. In the original French edition, it is clear where he gets his magical powers—“se coi[t] initié dans les mystères astrologiques”—Vathek is a practitioner of dark magic. … Vathek’s monstrosity is also predicated on the character’s multiple sexualities, which includes a large harem of beautiful women: The fifth palace, denominated “The Retreat of Joy, or the Dangerous,” was frequented by troops of young females beautiful as the houris, and no less seducing, who never failed to receive with caresses all whom the Caliph allowed to approach them; for he was by no means disposed to be jealous, as his own women were secluded within the palace he inhabited himself. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 507

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s existing article on moral panics around immodesty — the harem/sexuality framing anticipates later Orientalist tropes of the repressed-but-lascivious East. — connects to: Delacroix depicted the Oriental despot as cruel, powerful, and sexually deviant
• DEFINE: Defines the ‘Oriental despot’ figure as one carrying both magical knowledge and sexual transgression — an analytical category the reader wants precisely defined.