2: Petit Trees (sketch)

"2", this comic's number, redirects here. For the comic named "2", see 2614: 2.

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Petit Trees (sketch)

Original title: Le Petit

Title text: "Petit" being a reference to Le Petit Prince, which I only thought about halfway through the sketch Original caption: Another fairly old drawing that I scanned.

Explanation

This was the fourth comic originally posted to LiveJournal. The previous one was 3: Island (sketch), and the next one was 1: Barrel - Part 1. It was among the first thirteen comics posted to LiveJournal within 12 minutes on September 30, 2005, on the first day of the xkcd LiveJournal account.

This comic does not present a particular point, it's just a picture drawn by Randall. The Little Prince (in French Le Petit Prince) is a novella written by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry in 1943, about the titular Little Prince, who lives on an asteroid and visits other inhabited asteroids and eventually the Earth. The book is filled with drawings of the asteroid, the prince, and the travels they make. It is noted how, on occasion, baobab trees can begin to grow on these asteroids, and should they not be immediately uprooted, the growth of their roots would tear the asteroid apart. The Little Prince would later be referenced in the what if? article Leap Seconds, in 618: Asteroid, and in 1350: Lorenz at the end of the space trip branch.

This was the first reference to the little prince, but is has become a recurrent theme on xkcd.

Transcript

[Two trees are growing on opposite sides of a very small world. Their roots cover most of the planet's surface.]

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Discussion

Randall says that he only thought of the reference to Le Petit Prince while he was drawing this picture. I think that it is likely that Randall was originally thinking of "pedigrees" and the tree structure of a genealogical chart. Since royalty is often descended from earlier royal ancestors, it would not be surprising that while drawing what was originally a pun, Randall thought of the book "Le Petit Prince." 162.158.123.79 16:55, 15 November 2019 (UTC)