The Man Who Would Be King (1888) is a short story by Rudyard Kipling that tells the tale of Daniel Dravot and "Peachy" Taliaferro Carnahan, 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 is based on the travels of American adventurer Josiah Harlan. The story was first published in The Phantom Rickshaw and Other Ghost Stories.

Film adaptation

In (1975), John Huston adapted the story into a feature film starring Sean Connery as Daniel, Michael Caine as Peachy, and Christopher Plummer as Kipling. The film is the only occasion in which these two giants of modern British cinema have appeared together. They both starred in A Bridge Too Far, but did not share any scenes.

Shot on location in Morocco, Huston had planned to make the film since the 1950's: originally with Humphrey Bogart and Clark Gable, then Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, and then Robert Redford and Paul Newman — Newman suggested Connery and Caine. Like much of his writing, Kipling's original story is overtly imperialist; in Huston's telling, both East and West have their faults and virtues.

Synopsis

While at the offices of the Northern Star newspaper, Kipling is approached by a ragged, seemingly crazed derelict, who reveals himself to be his old acquaintance Peachy Carnahan. Peachy tells Kipling the story of how he and his cohort Danny Dravot traveled to remote Kafiristan, become gods, and ultimately lose everything.

After meeting Kipling at his newspaper office a few years earlier and signing a contract pledging mutual loyalty, Carnahan and Dravot muster an army from the natives of a Kafiristan village. In their first battle, the natives decide that Daniel is a god after he is shot with an arrow in the chest but continues fighting. In fact, the arrow has struck a bandolier beneath his clothing and become lodged in it, but the natives don't know this. When they arrive in the holy city of Sikandergul, the natives confuse their Masonic medals for symbols of Alexander the Great and declare the men to be gods.

Danny has delusions of grandeur, while Peachy wants to sneak out of the city with chests of gold and jewels. Danny decides to take a wife from amongst the natives, much against Peachy's advice; he chooses Roxanna (played by Michael Caine's real-life wife Shakira). Roxanna fears no woman can live if they consort with a god, and so tries to escape from Daniel, biting him in the process. The bite draws blood, and when the natives see it they realise Daniel is human after all, and pursue him and Peachy through the streets of his erstwhile kingdom. Danny is killed when forced to walk to the middle of a rope bridge over a deep canyon; the ropes supporting it are cut and he falls to his death. Peachy is tortured and released. At the end of the film, as Peachy finishes his story, he presents Kipling with Danny's decaying head, still wearing its Kafiri crown.

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