The Man Who Would Be King
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"The Man Who Would Be King" (1888) is a short story by Rudyard Kipling concerning two 19th century British ex-soldiers now con-men who set off from British India in search of adventure and end up as kings of Kafiristan (now part of Afghanistan). The story was inspired by the exploits of Englishman James Brooke, who in 1841 became Rajah of the region of Sarawak in Borneo, as well as by the travels of American adventurer Josiah Harlan, who claimed the title Prince of Ghor around 1840, thanks to the military force he led into Afghanistan.
The story was first published in The Phantom Rickshaw and other Eerie Tales (Volume Five of the Indian Railway Library, published by Wheelers of Allahabad in 1888). It also appeared in Wee Willie Winkie and Other Stories in 1895, and in numerous later editions of that collection.
A radio adaption was broadcast on the show Escape on July 7, 1947. In 1975, it was adapted into a feature film by director John Huston, starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine.
Plot summary
The narrator of the story, a journalist, meets two scruffy adventurers basically con-men, ex-soldiers Daniel Dravot and Peachey Carnehan, who announce that they are off to Kafiristan, in the Afghan mountains, to set themselves up as kings. The narrator is persuaded to help them when they appeal to him as fellow Freemasons.
Two years later, on an exceptionally hot summer night, Carnehan creeps into the journalist's office a broken man, a crippled beggar clad in rags. For the rest of the evening, he tells an amazing story. Dravot and Carnehan succeeded in making themselves kings, persuading the natives that Dravot was a god (the son of Alexander the Great), mustering an army, taking over villages, and dreaming of building a unified nation.
Their schemes were dashed when Dravot tried to take a native woman for his wife. Believing that marrying a god would kill a mere mortal, the terrified girl bit Dravot when he tried to kiss her. Seeing him bleed, the people realized that he was "Not god, not devil, but a man!" Led by the priesthood, they turned against their rulers. Their army remained loyal and attempted to fight off the attack, but they were overwhelmed.
They forced Dravot, still wearing his crown, to walk out on a rope bridge over a ravine. He begged Carnehan's forgiveness for causing their downfall, then defiantly waited while they cut the rope, sending him plunging to his death. Carnehan they crucified between two pine trees. When he survived a day with wooden pegs driven through his hands and feet, the people concluded it was a miracle and let him go.
As proof of the veracity of his tale, Carnehan shows the journalist Dravot's head, still wearing his golden crown. He had recovered the head after the natives used it as part of a traditional polo like game which uses a wrapped head instead of a ball. Seeing that Carnehan is half-mad from his ordeal, the journalist takes him to a missionary to admit into a mental asylum. When he inquires two days later, he learns that Carnehan has died of sunstroke. ("a half hour in the sun without a hat.") No belongings are found with him.
Trivia
- J.M. Barrie described the story as "the most audacious thing in fiction".
- The explorer George Scott Robertson, whom Billy Fish reports as having died, was in real life rescued by a British military force in 1895, after Kipling wrote his story.
- The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "The Storyteller" was based on the short story, according to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion.
- "The Man Who Would Be King" is the name of a 2004 song written by Peter Doherty and Carl Barat of The Libertines for their self-titled second album. The songwriters are known fans of Kipling and his work. It is a reflection on the story, as two friends who seem to be at the top, drift away from each other and begin to despise each other.