King of Hearts
The King of Hearts, like the Queen of Hearts, was one of the deadly pawns used by the Toymaker against Steven Taylor and Dodo Chaplet when they were trapped in his realm. The Queen referred to him by the name Henry. When not in a contest, the King stayed in playing card form. (TV: "The Hall of Dolls" [+]Part of The Celestial Toymaker, Loading...{"namedep":"The Hall of Dolls (2)","1":"The Celestial Toymaker (TV story)"})
When Steven suggested that they were merely products of the Toymaker's imagination, the King and the Queen referred to themselves as "victims of the Toymaker" and "as real as you are" respectively, implying that they were indeed real people that the Toymaker had trapped and transformed for his own amusement, (TV: "The Hall of Dolls" [+]Part of The Celestial Toymaker, Loading...{"namedep":"The Hall of Dolls (2)","1":"The Celestial Toymaker (TV story)"}) as he later did to Charles Banerjee. (TV: The Giggle [+]Loading...["The Giggle (TV story)"])
Behind the scenes
- The King of Hearts appears like a living playing card. A living King of Hearts also appears in Alice in Wonderland.
- When the King recites the rhyme "Eeny, meeny, miny, moe" whilst deciding which of the seven chairs — six of which are deadly, while one remains safe — to choose, he uses the racial slur "n*gger" in the second line, which was still considered acceptable by the BBC at the time of the story's original 1966 broadcast. The rhyme is still present on BBC Audio's CD release of the story, but it has been obscured by Peter Purves's narration to correspond to modern views on the use of the "n-word".
- Bearing in mind that Cyril, the Knave of Hearts and the Kitchen Boy were all the same person, this may have been the case with Joey the Clown, the King of Hearts and Sergeant Rugg. However, this was never confirmed on-screen.
