The Lady, or the Tiger?

Like most archetypal characters, the king is unnamed and defined by a few salient characteristics. He is introduced in the first paragraphs as the catalyst for the public arena, and his thought process is examined in detail. He is repeatedly described as “semi-barbaric” (Paragraphs 1, 7, 9) because he oscillates between the progressive influence of his “distant Latin neighbors” and his own “large, florid, and untrammeled” ideas (Paragraph 1). He can turn his most exuberant fancies into realities by sheer will and authority and is not shown to take counsel, as “when he and himself agreed upon anything, the thing was done” (Paragraph 1). He becomes “blander and more genial still” whenever “every member of his domestic and political systems [does not move] smoothly in its appointed course, [...] for nothing [pleases] him so much as to make the crooked straight and crush down uneven places” (Paragraph 1).

As an authoritarian ruler, the king enjoys the spectacle of the public arena under the guise of rationality and efficacy. The narrator constantly praises the king’s behavior, but the actions he describes belie his admiring tone. When the king discovers his daughter’s affair and sends her lover to prison, the narrator says, “No matter how the affair turned out, the youth would be disposed of, and the king would take an aesthetic pleasure in watching the course of events” (Paragraph 15).