The King who Doesn't Know It

[Michael Hopcroft]

I just had their weird idea, that is probably practically ludicrous but might be fun in a game.

Imagine a kigndom where kings have been ahbitulally been the targets of assassins for decades. They've been going through bthem the way temp agencies in our world go through data entry clerks. Finally the Privy Council comes up with a perfect solution. "We shall select a King to be the hope of our land, and nobody outside this room will know who he is -- not even him!"

In a way it makes a weird sense -- no mind control spell imaginable can cause anyone to give away secrets he does not know. But here we have this guy, who could be anybody -- a peasant, a middle-class burgher, a prisonder in the dungeons, anybody -- who is King of all the Land and doesn't know it. Only the Councillors know his identity, so they will use their influence (temporal, spiritual and magical) to his benefit, but in such a way that he will have no idea where this aid is coming from. Only when the Plague of Assassins is lifted will anyone outside the Council learn the full truth.

[Curufea]

There would still be a short list of candidates - all kings were chosen or gained their rank through merit, through manipulation or through inheritance. If you have a council chosing a King, it rules out inheritance leaving council politics, and who they believe would be best for the job. Strong leadership qualities, a good warrior, stable personality - potential candidates could be watched by the potential regicides.

[DEFCON Clown]

And how is this King doing anything benefical to or for the kingdom?

I've got to say this idea reminds me of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. How there is one man running the universe but he doesn't know it and lives alone in a shack a empty world.

[oberon]

Perhaps the King is tied to the land by a mystic bond, such that when one prospers, they both prosper. Therefore, he could be fulfilling the most basic role of the regal position, without even knowing it. The remainder is just politics :)

oberon

[Lord Liaden]

Actually not that weird an idea. The king whose identity is hidden from him for his own protection isn't a new concept; Arthur is one example, Aragorn another. Of course these were born kings rather than ones chosen by committee. ;)

[Lucius]

For a minute, I thought you were talking about King Carrot of Ankh-Morpork

Lucius Alexander

I think the palindromedary would fit right into the Diskworld.

[Basil]

For a minute, I thought you were talking about King Carrot of Ankh-Morpork

Lucius Alexander
Actually, he does know who/what he is, he just chooses not to do anything about it.

I think the palindromedary would fit right into the Diskworld.
I think he'd drive most people who saw him knurd.

[Captain Obvious]

Actually not that weird an idea. The king whose identity is hidden from him for his own protection isn't a new concept; Arthur is one example, Aragorn another. Of course these were born kings rather than ones chosen by committee. ;)
Aragorn knew he was the rightful king of Gondor, and didn't want anything to do with it. He only took the position out of a sense of duty.

[Lucius]

Actually, he does know who/what he is, he just chooses not to do anything about it.


I think he'd drive most people who saw him knurd.

I think in the first novel he appears (Guards!Guards! it's obvious he DOESN'T know, or so it seems to me. In later novels, it's implied that he knows - sometimes very strongly implied - and sometimes it seems like everyone who's anyone knows too. But he never, ever comes out and SAYS that HE knows.



Interestingly enough, in Jingo a character from another country identifies Carrot as a king after, what was it, 3 days observation? On the other hand, Seventy One Hour Achmed (did I get the name right?) was also his own country's "supercop" and Detective Supreme.

Lucius Alexander

The palindromedary asks - knurd?

[Lord Liaden]

Aragorn knew he was the rightful king of Gondor, and didn't want anything to do with it. He only took the position out of a sense of duty.

Actually, that's later in his life, and much more the spin that the films took than what appears in the original books. In an appendix in The Return of the King, it's revealed that Aragorn was raised in Rivendell unaware of his true lineage until he reached manhood, when he was told by Elrond. He had been kept secret to protect him from his father's enemies - a parallel with Arthur's upbringing. Aragorn spent many years travelling the world and battling evil forces under many guises, to make himself worthy of kingship and the love of Arwen; because Elrond had told him that only one who was King of Gondor and Arnor would be worthy of Arwen giving up her immortality for him.

[keithcurtis]

The palindromedary asks - knurd?
Knurdness is the opposite of being drunk; not sober, but as far from sober as drunkenness, except in the opposite direction. It strips away all the illusion, all the comforting pink fog in which people normally spend their lives, and lets them see and think clearly for the first time ever. This, needless to say, is a very traumatic experience and sometimes leads to important discoveries. Those seeking to treat drunkenness by having the sufferer drink Klatchian coffee should take care, lest they send him too far the other way - through sobriety and out the other side.
Also, Samuel Vimes, one of the Discworld's most notable characters, is sometimes referred to as being constantly knurd and two drinks short of actual sobriety, which at least partially accounts for his depressive nature and tendency towards alcoholism—he started out looking for a cure to knurdness.

Keith "From Wikipedia, not memory" Curtis

[Thia Halmades]

... so, effectively, one who is knurd is self-aware without all the neat steps in between?

What a sucktastic state for most people to find themselves in!

[Basil]

I think in the first novel he appears (Guards!Guards! it's obvious he DOESN'T know, or so it seems to me. In later novels, it's implied that he knows - sometimes very strongly implied - and sometimes it seems like everyone who's anyone knows too. But he never, ever comes out and SAYS that HE knows.

Interestingly enough, in Jingo a character from another country identifies Carrot as a king after, what was it, 3 days observation? On the other hand, Seventy One Hour Achmed (did I get the name right?) was also his own country's "supercop" and Detective Supreme.

Lucius Alexander

The palindromedary asks - knurd?
True, though I was thinking in terms of the latest info from Diskworld, rather than the whole series.

Re. knurd, see Keith's post.

[CourtFool]

How about a dual personality with the 'king' personality currently 'inactive'?

[Cancer]

If you have a large pool of nonknowing kings, among whom the kinship rotates frequently with time, you're close to a hundred-monkeys situation.

Sounds like knurdness is very close to the situation that happens to key characters near the end of Lem's Futurological Congress.

[Frenchman]

I imagined a scenario where the king was kept close to the palace/court, as a squire, cook, guard, or even one of the council members, and was 'informed' of events and asked for guidance while he was asleep or under hypnosis - or maybe through dreamwalking spells.

[Cancer]

How about a dual personality with the 'king' personality currently 'inactive'?
Or a variation on this theme. Suppose the "king" is a nonmaterial presence that is "channeled" by any of a number of different human beings, but never more than one at a time? If the "presence" of the kingship is obvious to onlookers but not to the host, then the sovereign-at-the-moment might not know that he was in charge at any given moment.

You could make it really weird by having the condition of the host discovering he was the sovereign-of-the-moment cause the king-presence to be ejected from that host.

Hmm. This is sounding more interesting as I go along.

[Zeropoint]

Maybe the king-who-doesn't-know-it is just a guy who stops by the tavern for a beer after work, and always seems to find someone willing to listen to his opinions about domestic and foreign policy.