Jareth, King of the Goblins, is an owl when we first see him watching over Sarah in the park. It looks as if he's already in love with the girl, which is substantiated later when Sarah is telling Toby the story and says "But what no one knew was that the king of the goblins was in love with the girl, and had given her certain powers." Did Jareth in deed give Sarah and ONLY Sarah the ability to call upon the goblins because he's in love with her?

When we next see Jareth, he's an owl again, flapping against the window, but he quickly turns into that most handsome of Fae. (His opinion, not mine. I still say he's a tights-wearing drag queen who's stuck in the 80's, but every time I express that opinion, I get dumped in the Bog...)

So, what else do we know about this enigmatic Fae? We know he never seems to take off those black leather gloves, except for in the final scene, when they're white. We also know he has a penchant for wearing tights and generally looking like he's stepped out of the middle ages and has become stuck somewhere between them and 80's glam rock.

We aren't quite sure if he's human, goblin, or Fae. Fae is what he's most often quoted as being, and I'm 100% sure that that's the case. He's definately not human, and he's too damn hot to be a goblin. However, like the racing goblins that Mr. Froud writes about in his book on the subject, Jareth does have a removable "package." It's little items of knowledge like this that have lead to the rumor that he stuffs his tights with socks when his package is not in use. (Yet something else I keep getting dumped in the Bog over.)

After he threatens Sarah and gives her the thirteen-hour time limit, we see Jareth in various other costumes, a different one for each occasion, be it the ball where he tries to once again get Sarah to forget about Toby, in the throne room where he entertains Toby with a song, in the Escher Room where he makes his final offer, or in the catacombs, where he alters time and threatens Hoggle and Sarah with the cleaners.

We know very little about Jareth's past. Who were his parents? Does he have any siblings? Of course, many many people have tried to assign him family. Some popular choices include giving him Oberon from Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream as a big brother or, thanks to SpiderGirl from the Labyrinth Fanfiction Mailing List, evil twin Jaden.

So, is Jareth really in love with Sarah? There certainly seems to be plenty of evidence to support that, and a list of the evidence can be seen in the Mysteries of Labyrinth page, coming soon.