Thieves' Guild

Thieves' Guilds are a common feature of old-fashioned organized crime in various types of fiction.

A central feature of Cervantes' story Rinconete y Cortadillo, set in 16th Century Seville, is the city's strong and well-organized Thieves' Guild - built to the model of the Medieval Guild. As in any other profession, a young thief must start as an apprentice and slowly work his way to become a Master craftsman - in this cae, a Master thief. No one could come into a city and start on a career as a thief without belonging to the local guild (as Cervantes' protagonists soon find out), which would have been in many cases true also for a Medieval tailor or carpenter wandering into a strange city. And the thieves have their own church where they go to pray (shared with the prostitutes) - which indeed was often the case with respectable professions in a Medieval city.

Historians are still divided on the issue to what degree this kind of depiction by Cervantes and others reflected the an actual social reality at Seville or other major European cities. An allied concept is the "King of Thieves" or "King of Beggars" who supposedly held power over all criminals in a given city, and on whom again it is sometimes difficult to separate fact from myth.

Modern fantasy fiction and role-playing games took up the concept extensively, starting with the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser story "Thieves' House" by Fritz Leiber, in 1943.

*Lankhmar is run by its Thieves' Guild
*Ankh-Morpork Thieves' Guild (Discworld)
*The Guild of Thieves, a computer game
*The Black Magician (novel series) involves a Thieves' Guild as a central plot element
* has a Thieves Guild
*Gambit is a member and heir of the New Orleans Thieves Guild, adopted son to Jean-Luc LeBeau, The King of Thieves.