Character of the White King in “Through the Looking Glass”

One of the earliest chess pieces introduced in Lewis Carroll's 1871 fantasy novel Through the Looking-Glass, the White King though not much interactive throughout, however, on some levels, plays the most important role within the story at least as far as the game is concerned. The king’s portrayal as quiet and naive is in fact tantamount to the moderate, juvenile nature of the King of Hearts in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland as reflected in his remark to Mad Hatter while acting as a judge at the Knave of Hearts’ trial “don't be nervous or I'll have you executed on the spot”.

Prior to the game, the White King appears to be an animate chess piece of normal size and, for whatever reason, cannot hear or see Alice after she passed through the eponymous looking glass. Alice, not realising this, picks both him and the White Queen off the floor and places them on a table, leading them to believe that some unseen volcano blew them up there. Afterwards, however, she has some mischievous fun by manipulating the King's handwriting from behind while he writes so that he comes out with nonsense in his memorandum book that reads “the White Knight is sliding down the poker. He balances very badly”. She soon leaves him alone, however, when she sees the poetry-book in which “Jabberwocky” is written.

In his effort to be helpful much like the King of Hearts in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, The White King sends his horses and men after Humpty Dumpty after his fall at the start of Chapter Seven though precognition of the “Humpty Dumpty” nursery rhyme suggests that his men will not actually save Humpty Dumpty. In almost all cases, however, the king is not able to be especially helpful. He and Alice begin characteristic Wonderland/Looking-Glass banter, as well as the usual Carrollian wordplay “I only wish I had such eyes...to be able to see Nobody”. His imperial status as a king, as well as his tendency to take things literally, is reflected in such statements as “it isn't respectable to beg” when Alice simply says “I beg your pardon” and he also remarks that he needs his two messengers Hatta and Haigha: “one to come and one to go... one to fetch and one to carry”. When Haigha arrives he claims, in all seriousness, that there is “nothing like eating hay when you're feeling faint”, and having eaten two ham sandwiches consumes some hay just as casually. Furthermore, despite being a king, the king seems uncomfortable in his role, as though he is not very powerful which is exemplified by his admittance that he can never quite catch up with his spouse, because, like all chess queens, she moves too fast and stays too many squares ahead for him to overtake her. He expresses mixed feelings about two other characters, the Lion and the Unicorn: amusement at the fact that they are “fighting for the crown” even though it is his own crown they are fighting over, but at the same time nervousness when the “two great creatures” stand on either side of him.

Overall, the White King is a passive observer, albeit not to the extreme that the sleeping Red King is.