The Red King is a character who appears in Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson , better known by the pseudonym Lewis Carroll , was an English author, mathematician, logician, Anglican deacon and photographer. His most famous writings are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass, as well as the poems "The Hunting of the...

's fantasy story

Fantasy

Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...

 Through the Looking-Glass

Through the Looking-Glass

Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There is a work of literature by Lewis Carroll . It is the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland...

. Since the whole story revolves around a game of chess

Chess

Chess is a two-player board game played on a chessboard, a square-checkered board with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. It is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide at home, in clubs, online, by correspondence, and in tournaments.Each player...

, he is characteristic of the king

King (chess)

In chess, the king is the most important piece. The object of the game is to trap the opponent's king so that its escape is not possible . If a player's king is threatened with capture, it is said to be in check, and the player must remove the threat of capture on the next move. If this cannot be...

 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

White King (Through the Looking Glass)

The White King is a fictional character who appears in Lewis Carroll's fantasy story Through the Looking-Glass. Aside from Alice herself, he is one of the earliest chesspieces that are introduced into the story...

, 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

Dream

Dreams are successions of images, ideas, emotions, and sensations that occur involuntarily in the mind during certain stages of sleep. The content and purpose of dreams are not definitively understood, though they have been a topic of scientific speculation, philosophical intrigue and religious...

, as they suspect, then she will "go out—bang!—like a candle

Candle

A candle is a solid block or cylinder of wax with an embedded wick, which is lit to provide light, and sometimes heat.Today, most candles are made from paraffin. Candles can also be made from beeswax, soy, other plant waxes, and tallow...

" when he wakes.)

The match ends by Alice's checkmating

Checkmate

Checkmate is a situation in chess in which one player's king is threatened with capture and there is no way to meet that threat. Or, simply put, the king is under direct attack and cannot avoid being captured...

 of the king, an action coincident with the taking of the Red Queen

Red Queen (Through the Looking Glass)

The Red Queen is a fictional character in Lewis Carroll's fantasy novella, Through the Looking-Glass.- Overview :With a motif of Through the Looking-Glass being representations of the game of chess, the Red Queen could be viewed as an antagonist in the story as she is the queen for the side...

. 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.

Due to his inactivity, some authors, such as Martin Gardner

Martin Gardner

Martin Gardner was an American mathematics and science writer specializing in recreational mathematics, but with interests encompassing micromagic, stage magic, literature , philosophy, scientific skepticism, and religion...

 in The Annotated Alice

The Annotated Alice

The Annotated Alice is a work by Martin Gardner incorporating the text of Lewis Carroll's major tales: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass as well as the original illustrations by John Tenniel...

, have speculated that if Carroll intended to portray the red side of the chess-game as being representative of the negative sides of human nature, then the vice he had in mind for the Red King was idleness

Sloth (deadly sin)

In the Christian moral tradition, sloth is one of the seven capital sins, often called the seven deadly sins; these sins are called sins because they supposedly destroy the charity in a person's heart and thus may lead to eternal death.-Definition:Sloth is defined as spiritual or emotional...

.

In the 1999 film

Alice in Wonderland (1999 film)

Alice in Wonderland is a television film first broadcast in 1999 on NBC and then shown on British television on Channel 4. It is based upon Lewis Carroll's books Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass....

 the king is seen sleeping in the forest as he does in the book. It is also revealed that the Red King is the King of Hearts'

King of Hearts (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland)

The King of Hearts is a character from the book Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.-Alice's Adventures in Wonderland:He seems to, when compared to the Queen of Hearts, be the moderate part of the Wonderland government...

cousin.