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Popular Culture Review
expelling usurpers and installing rightful heirs. Walpole’s Otranto
presents a castle actively in the process of expelling Manfred and his line
from the castle. The novel opens with the death of Coiuad courtesy of a
large helmet that falls from nowhere and proceeds from there to fulfill
the prophesy, ''That the Castle and Lordship o f Otranto should pass from
the present family, whenever the real owner should be grown too large to
inhabit it" (Walpole 73). This prophesy is ultimately fulfilled by the
ghost of Alfonso the Good who declares Theodore the rightful heir and
then ascends to heaven. Once Manfred relinquishes his claim to Otranto,
Theodore and Isabella are able to live in it, presumably without
supernatural interruption from the castle, which is now satisfied bec