Человек, который хотел быть королём

1888 story by Rudyard Kipling
the Kipling story

"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.

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. The Kafirs were impressed by the rifles and Dravot's lack of fear of their pagan idols, and they soon began to acclaim him as a god and descendant of Alexander the Great; they exhibited a whiter complexion than the natives of the surrounding areas ("so hairy and white and fair it was just shaking hands with old friends"), implying an ancient lineage going back to Alexander and some of his troops themselves. Dravot and Carnehan were shocked to discover that the Kafirs practiced a form of Masonic ritual, and their reputations were cemented when they showed knowledge of Masonic secrets beyond those known by even the highest of the Kafir priests and chiefs. The schemes of Dravot and Carnehan were dashed, however, when Dravot, against the advice of Carnehan, decided it was time to marry a Kafir girl—kingship going to his head, he decided he needed a queen to give him a royal son. Terrified by the idea of marrying a god, the girl bit Dravot when he tried to kiss her during the wedding ceremony. Seeing him bleed, the priests cried that he was "Neither God nor Devil but a man!" and most of the Kafirs turned against Dravot and Carnehan. A few of their men remained loyal, but the army defected and the two kings were captured. Dravot, wearing his crown, stood on a rope bridge over a gorge while the Kafirs cut the ropes, and he fell to his death. Carnehan was crucified between two pine trees, but, when he survived this torture for a whole day, the Kafirs considered it a miracle and let him go. He then slowly begged his way back to India over the course of a year. As proof of his tale, Carnehan shows the narrator Dravot's severed head and golden crown before he leaves, taking the head and crown, which he swears never to sell, with him. The following day, the narrator sees Carnehan crawling along the road in the noon sun with his hat off. He has gone mad, so the narrator sends him to the local asylum. When he inquires two days later, he learns that Carnehan has died of sunstroke. No belongings were found with him.

In addition to Kipling's acknowledged sources, a number of individuals have been proposed as possible models for the story's main characters. Alexander Gardner (1785–1877), American adventurer captured in Afghanistan in 1823. Gardner "stated that he visited Kafiristan twice between 1826 and 1828, and his veracity was vouched for by reliable authorities" "Only Gardner provides the three essential ingredients of the Kipling novel," according to John Keay. Josiah Harlan (1799–1871), American adventurer enlisted as a surgeon with the British East India Company's army in 1824. Frederick "Pahari" Wilson (1817–1883), an English officer who deserted during the First Afghan War and later became "Raja of Harsil." James Brooke, an Englishman who in 1841 was made the first White Rajah of Sarawak in Borneo, in gratitude for military assistance to the Sultan of Brunei. Kipling alludes to Brooke twice in the story: when Dravot refers to Kafiristan as the "only one place now in the world that two strong men can Sar a whack" and when Dravot says "Rajah Brooke will be a suckling to us." Adolf Schlagintweit (1829–1857) German botanist and explorer of Central Asia. Suspected of being a Chinese spy, he was beheaded in Kashgar by the amir, Wali Khan. A Persian traveler subsequently delivered his supposed head to colonial administrators, much as Carnehan had brought Dravot's head to the narrator of the story. William Watts McNair (1849–1889), a surveyor in the Indian Survey Department who, in 1883, visited Kafiristan while on furlough disguised as a hakim or native doctor, disregarding Government regulations. His report to the Royal Geographical Society earned him the Murchison Award.

As a young man, the would be poet T. S. Eliot, already an ardent admirer of Kipling, wrote a short story called "The Man Who Was King". Published in 1905 in the Smith Academy Record, a school magazine of the school he was attending as a day boy, the story explicitly shows how the prospective poet was concerned with his own unique version of the "King". J. M. Barrie described the story as "the most audacious thing in fiction". Kingsley Amis called the story a "grossly overrated long tale" in which a "silly prank ends in predictable and thoroughly deserved disaster." Additional critical responses are collected in Bloom's Rudyard Kipling.

A CBS Radio adaption of the story by Les Crutchfield was broadcast on the anthology series Escape on 7 July 1947. It was rebroadcast on 1 August 1948. An adaptation by Mike Walker was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 22 July 2018 as part of the To The Ends of the Earth series.

The Man Who Would Be King (1975), adapted and directed by John Huston and starring Sean Connery as Dravot and Michael Caine as Carnehan, with Christopher Plummer as Kipling. (As early as 1954, Humphrey Bogart expressed the desire to star in The Man Who Would Be King and was in talks with Huston.) The DreamWorks 2D hand drawn animated movie The Road to El Dorado (2000) is loosely based on the story.

Gold and Glory: The Road to El Dorado (2000) (the video game tie in to The Road to El Dorado) was developed by Revolution Software and released on PlayStation, Game Boy Color, and Microsoft Windows.

The Libertines have a song called "The Man Who Would Be King" on their self titled second album (2004). It reflects on the story, as two friends—who seem to be at the top—drift away from each other and begin to despise each other, mirroring the bandmates' turbulent relationship and eventual splitting of the band shortly after the album's release. Songwriters Pete Doherty and Carl Barât are known fans of Kipling and his work.