Red King

Red King may refer to:

Victor Kelleher

Victor Kelleher (born 1939) is an Australian author. Victor was born in London and moved to Africa with his parents, at the age of fifteen. He spent the next twenty years travelling and studying in Africa, before moving to New Zealand. Kelleher received a Masters from St Andrew's University and a PhD in English Literature from The University of South Africa has taught in Africa, New Zealand and Australia. While in New Zealand, he began writing part-time, prompted by homesickness for Africa. He moved to Australia in 1976, with his South African wife, Alison, and was Associate Professor at the University of New England, in Armidale, New South Wales, before moving to Sydney to write full-time. Many of the books he has written have been based on his childhood and his travellings in Africa.

Kelleher has won many awards for his books, such as the Australian Children's Book Award

Awards

Red King (Through the Looking-Glass)

The Red king is a character who appears in Lewis Carroll's fantasy story Through the Looking-Glass.

History

Since the whole story revolves around a game of chess, he is characteristic of the king in such a game in that he has all of the pieces on his side available to perform the work for him; unlike his white counterpart, though, he does not move at all throughout the story. Indeed, when Alice first meets him he is fast asleep ("fit to snore his head off", as Tweedledum says) and Alice, even prior to seeing him, mistakes the sound he is making for "lions or tigers". During this time, Tweedledum and Tweedledee state that if she is part of the Red King's dream, as they suspect, then she will "go out—bang!—like a candle" when he wakes.

The match ends by Alice's checkmating of the king, an action coincident with the taking of the Red Queen. In the final chapter of the book, Alice acknowledges that the Red King had, after all, been asleep throughout the whole game, and is left wondering whether the whole experience was her dream or his.