Character Analysis
Dashing Dance-Pavilion Caretaker
No doubt about it, Keeper is a looker. When the girls first see him, they're totally blown away by how handsome he is:
A gentleman stood there, by the table. He was dressed all in black. Not boring black, but dashing black. One so smooth that stars would have gotten lost in it […] It complemented his face, a specter of high cheekbones with hints of long dimples. His midnight hair had been pulled back into a ponytail, and his eyes—even across the distance—blazed pure black. Azalea had never seen anyone so… beautiful. (7.76-77)
This stuff about him is all notable because the girls don't encounter many dashing gentlemen in their daily lives, and only Azalea is old enough to get to attend balls where people would dress up like this. So for Keeper to present such a charming image means that he'll have an easier time catching the girls' attention and making them want to like him.
Even his manners are impeccable. He eases into "the most graceful bow Azalea had ever seen" (7.117) upon first making their acquaintance—plus his voice is smooth, his etiquette phenomenal… and his dancing. Oh, his dancing, He dances "like he walked and spoke, with polished movements. Unhumanly graceful" (14.19). Emphasis on the unhuman part.
Because as Azalea begins to realize, there's something wrong with Keeper. His eyes are "dead and cold" (17.30) and in one dance, he grips Azalea's hands so tightly that the next day, her "fingers were bruised and swollen" (17.32). There's something off about this dude, and he's not as charming as he first appears.
High King D'Eathe
And the reason Keeper isn't as great as he first seems, of course, is because he's actually the High King D'Eathe. Azalea knows from a portrait that the High King looked like "An ancient, pockmarked fellow with no hair and dark eyes, scowling from the canvas" (3.84). As if that didn't make him seem like a winning fellow, consider the stories told about him:
He captured and tortured people foolish enough to wander onto the thorn-shrouded palace grounds. Stories of the High King tearing a person apart, starting with the thumbs, then to their ears and toes, tugging them to pieces like a cricket, to see how long they would stay alive, haunted Azalea in her worse nightmares. (3.84)
Ew. Even worse though, according to stories he liked to ensnare people's souls. This is pretty creepy stuff, according to Azalea, since "it involved a needle, a thread, and the soul's eyelids" (14.56) to complete the process. And the person had to be dead, too, obviously.
Keeper knows a fair bit of magic from back in the day when he was High King, but now, as an undead shadow of himself, he can only do so much—whenever he tries to do magic, it leaves him pale and "heaving for air" (26.73). Still, he's inventive enough to make up for any shortcomings on that front.
Sadistic Schemer
But wait: Keeper is actually the High King D'Eathe, who's totally revenge-driven, and yet he presents this charming image to the girls… What's up with that?
He's had around two hundred years to plan his revenge, to scheme and plot and come up with ways to fulfill his blood oath to kill the Captain General. He's powerful enough that when the girls entered the magic passage, he must've known of their presence immediately, even if he pretended not to notice them as they slipped into the pavilion. Heck, he even has a story prepped and ready to go for when he does talk to the girls: he was a lord in the High King's court, imprisoned here for his betrayal, blah blah blah.
In other words, he may not have known who would eventually discover the magic passage, but he's smooth enough to roll with it and incorporate them into his plot for revenge. Knowing that he needs their help to be released, he plays nice… for a time.
He reels in the girls so smoothly that they buy his story hook, line, and sinker. After their first night of dancing in the pavilion, he tells them: "I can see you are in mourning. But you are welcome to dance here, among the magic. Please. Come and mend your broken hearts here. Come back, every night" (8.99). Who could resist, right? He makes such a sweet offer.
It gets weirder from there, though. Keeper confesses to stealing little things from the girls, like Bramble's lace gloves, "one of Jessamine's stockings, Ivy's spoon, Eve's pen" (14.93) and so on. He somehow manages to rationalize this to Azalea:
"You must forgive me… But I am desperate. I need a favor from you, and your sisters. A great favor indeed, and I don't believe any of you would help me unless I did something, ah, unconventional." (14.97)
Even so, we later learn that the real reason Keeper steals things is that he can take on the appearance of anyone whose stuff he has, because objects that belong to people have a small piece of the person inside them. The fact that he obtains things from each of the sisters, and Mr. Bradford too, makes us grateful that Keeper didn't get a chance to use those items—just think what a train wreck it would've been if he'd impersonated Mr. Bradford in order to mess with Azalea. Egads.
Keeper does, however, emotionally blackmail Azalea by taking on the appearance of her dead mother, and making it look like she's really suffering. And he intends to kill Azalea, slowly, until her father shows up to take her place—and even then he plans to kill them all and make them suffer, saving the King for last so that he has to live through watching his daughters be murdered. Yep, sadist just seems like a more and more appropriate title for Keeper.
Always clever, willing to bide his time, Keeper gets his heart's wish and shoots the King fatally. He gloats, saying, "I win" (28.113) and then disappears into dust on the wind. And that, Shmoopsters, is the end of Keeper, High King D'Eathe. We won't miss him. Not even a little bit.