Who is the King?

The King of Siam is a study in nineteenth-century contrasts. He is at once the patriarchal and despotic leader, unused to being defied and quick to anger; yet he is also a budding cosmopolitan leader, eager to learn the ways of the "scientific" modern world he wants his country to join. He thinks of himself as an innovative and open-minded leader, but, as Anna finds, he is blindly tied to traditional ways of thinking and acting. He is intelligent enough to read the Bible and find parallels between the words of Moses and new scientific thinking, but also brutal enough to want to beat an unhappy slave for running away. His chauvinism prevents him from directly seeking the advice he knows that Anna can pro vide him, so he cleverly challenges her to "guess" what he plans to do to impress the British Ambassador, and then implements her ideas as his own. The King pro'ves that he does, after all, have a heart, when he allows himself to waste away and die after Lun Tha drowns. He cannot manage to cross the chasm between his traditional, outmoded oriental world and the new, scientific world that Anna represents. He has to die so that his son, Prince Chulalongkorn, can take Siam into its future.