Quicknation    Man Who Would Be King, The

Images of: Man Who Would Be King, TheG Y AOL AV MSN Desc of: Man Who Would Be King, The IMDb  Y! DVD: DVD

Man Who Would Be King (1888Man Who Would Be King is a short story by Rudyard Kipling that tells the tale of two rogue British ex-soldiers who set off from 19th century British India in search of adventure, and end up as kings of Kafiristan. The story was inspired by the travels of American adventurer Josiah Harlan.

The story was first published in in 1895, and in numerous later editions of that collection.

In 1975, it was made into a feature film, adapted and directed by John Huston, and starring Sean Connery as Daniel Dravot, Michael Caine as Peachey Carnehan, and Christopher Plummer as Kipling (giving a name to the story's anonymous narrator).

The narrator of the story, an unnamed journalist, meets two scruffy adventurers, 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.

Two years later, on a hot summer night, Carnehan creeps into the journalist's office, a broken man: crippled, clad only in rags, a beggar. For the rest of the evening, he tells an amazing story. Dravot and Carnehan succeeded in making themselves kings, persuading the natives they were gods, mustering an army, wielding their power over local villages, and dreaming of building a unified nation. Their schemes were dashed when Dravot tried to take a native girl for his wife. Terrified of being united in matrimony with a god, she resisted, biting Dravot until he bled. At this point, he was seen to be "Not a God nor a Devil, but only a man!" Led by the order of the priesthood, the people turned against their rulers, pursuing them throughout the mountains and gorges of the countryside. Driving their quarry to ground, they dropped Dravot to his death and crucified Carnehan between two pine trees.

Seeing that he survived a day with wooden pegs driven through his hands and feet, the people concluded it was a miracle and released him. As proof of the veracity of his tale, Carnehan shows the journalist Dravot's head, still clad in its golden crown, which he has been carrying with him. He hobbles away into the rising sun of the morning. When the journalist searches him out two days later, he finds that Carnehan has died of exposure to the blistering mid-day sun. No belongings were found with him.

JM Barrie described the story as 'the most audacious thing in fiction'.

The explorer Robertson, whom Billy Fish reports has having died, did not die in real life but was rescued by a British military force in 1895, after Kipling wrote his story.