The Man Who Would Be King

"The Man Who Would Be King" (1888) is a story by Rudyard Kipling about two British adventurers in British India who become kings of Kafiristan, a remote part of Afghanistan. The story was first published in The Phantom 'Rickshaw and Other Tales (1888); it also appeared in Wee Willie Winkie and Other Child Stories (1895) and numerous later editions of that collection. It has been adapted for other media a number of times. Plot summary The narrator of the story is a British Indian journalist, correspondent of "The Northern Star" in 19th century India: Kipling himself, in all but name. Whilst on a tour of some Indian native states, in 1886, he meets two scruffy adventurers, Daniel Dravot and Peachey Tolliver Carnehan. Softened by their stories, he agrees to help them in a small errand, but later he regrets this and informs the authorities about them, which prevents them from blackmailing a minor rajah. A few months later, the pair appear at the narrator's newspaper office in Lahore, where they tell him of a plan they have hatched. They declare that, after years of trying their hands at all manner of things, they have decided that India is not big enough for them, so they intend to go to Kafiristan and set themselves up as kings. Dravot, disguised as a mad priest, and Carnehan, as his servant, will go to the unexplored region armed with twenty Martini-Henry rifles and their British military knowledge. Once there, they plan to find a king or chief and help him defeat his enemies before taking over for themselves. They ask the narrator to see books, encyclopedias, and maps about the area as a favor, both because they are fellow Freemasons and because he spoiled their blackmail scheme. In an attempt to prove that they are not crazy, they show the narrator a contract they have drawn up between themselves which swears loyalty between the pair and total abstinence from women and alcohol until they are kings. Two years later, on a scorching hot summer night, Carnehan creeps into the narrator's office. He is a broken man, a crippled beggar clad in rags who has trouble staying focused, but he tells an amazing story: he says he and Dravot succeeded in becoming kings. They traversed treacherous mountains, found the Kafirs, mustered an army, and took over villages, all the while dreaming of building a unified nation or even an empire.