The Three Kings: Compilation

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Warning: Mentions of infidelity, hinted sexism and racism, historical inaccuracy for the sake of propaganda, canonical character death, coups, and incest.

Kings and Queens: An Analysis of the Three Kings Legend
Author: James Warren Andrews
Written in 1992, to be published following his return to England after a series of guest lectures at Mahoutokoro School of Magic

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. The Birthplace of the Legend
3. The Controversy of a Female King
4. The Villain
5. The Fact Behind Fiction
6. Conclusion

Introduction

As first recorded by the best selling book The Tales of Beedle the Bard, the Legend of the Three Kings has become a favourite of young witches and wizards. It weaves a fantastical story of the first three people to ever use a wand, using their magic to rule over the ancient world of Egypt before sacrificing themselves in a duel against a mage by the name of Aknadin. The heroes remain nameless to this day, only referred to by their epitaphs: the King Commander, the Lady Pharaoh, and the Thief King.

However, Beedle's book is not the only place to find this tale. The Legend of the Three Kings is told all over the wizarding world, leading many historians to believe that they did exist at some point. For several decades, the effort to find proof drew researchers to Egypt, where they scavenged the desert to look for magical treasures - and find them they did.

Many magical historians have provided us with their versions of the tale. However, they sometimes vary in consistency: where one will declare that there was a marriage between the Lady Pharaoh and the King Commander, others will point at a rumoured relationship between her and the Thief King. Moreover, that is just the beginning. In this essay, I hope to bring some commonality to the Legend of the Three Kings and to discuss what might have happened versus what is just the stuff of legend.

2. The Birthplace of the Legend

World-renowned magical historian, Bathilda Bagshot, is the first place that many people go to when trying to understand the Kings. In her very first book, The Legend of the Three Kings: An Origin Story, Bagshot recounts the legend for us in a modern context, using facts to back up the fiction of Beedle's tale. She believes that the Kings were a trio of New Kingdom rulers that lived sometime during the Amarna Period, an era of Egyptian history that covers most of the late eighteenth dynasty.

Muggle archaeologists believe that the Amarna Period occurred after the Pharaoh Amenhotep IV, who was later known as Akhenaten, dramatically changed the ancient Egyptian polytheistic religion into one where the sun god, Aten, was worshipped over all the rest. However, Curse Breakers and magical historians know that this is false, as wizards created the Amarna Period shortly after the inauguration of the Statute of Secrecy (A History of Magic, 1947, issue 1).

The Amarna Period takes place roughly between 1351-1332 B.C. and is credited with the first emergence of magic. Even the truth of the time periods before and after are heavily monitored to ensure the safety of wizarding kind. The most commonly known cover-up took place in the early 1920s, where the body of the great Pharaoh Seth was replaced with the corpse that the muggle foolishly named Pharaoh Tutankhamun. Most of Seth's possessions were replicated and stuffed into the false king's burial chamber to preserve the sanctity of the Statute. A curse was also placed on the entrance to prevent others from venturing to the other side of its painted walls into the rest of the tomb (Near Misses: Five Cover-Ups That Saved The Statute, 2001, issue 1).

Bagshot's claims were later expanded upon by Japanese historian, Tamostu Kitamori. "Evidence points to a gap in between the reigns of Pharaoh Aknamkanon (1366-1334 B.C.) and Pharaoh Seth (1332-1292 B.C.), a period of roughly two years where records of the ruling powers of Egypt seem to have gone blank (The Known History of the Three Kings, 1988, issue 1)." One can then infer that the Kings must have taken up their thrones sometime between 1334 and 1332 B.C. This means that the common belief that they had ruled Egypt for decades, spawned by Beedle's tale, is false.

However, Kitamori's theories must be taken with a grain of salt. Later in his book, he puts forth the idea that the Kings were not all of Egyptian bloodlines, citing that the King Commander's mythical family (which he mistakenly calls Clan Ishtar) may have been from the neighbouring country of Assyria. He even goes as far as to claim that the Thief King may not have been a member of a royal branch clan but was born a peasant somewhere in the Sinai Peninsula (The Known History of the Three Kings, 1988, issue 1). These two theories go against the mountain of evidence that Bagshot and her contemporaries have accumulated over the years, so his testimony regarding the era in which the Kings may have reigns might be the only gem of truth to come out of his book.

3. The Controversy of a Female King

Reputable magical historians all agree that the Kings were born in the Egyptian city of Thebes. It is also a common belief that the Lady Pharaoh, the only one of the Kings with a direct connection to the royal line, may have been a daughter of Pharaoh Aknamkanon.

Many have postulated why she was selected to become the next ruler of Egypt over her brother and eventual successor, Seth. Violetta Black, a controversial but no less intriguing author who focused much of her research on the Lady Pharaoh herself rather than to include her as one of the Three Kings, attempts to answer such a question in her book Throne.

Black attacks the supposed proof of the Lady Pharaoh/King Commander marriage directly, stating that the document that was drawn up during the reign of Aknamkanon only refers to a possible marriage occurring between the pair. She speculates that this was because the contract was made in the years before the Lady Pharaoh's birth and that Aknamkanon did not know if his sister-wife Mukarramma was going to have a girl. As a result, Black doubts that a marriage between any of the Kings ever took place (Throne, 1940, issue 1).

Black puts forth the idea that the Lady Pharaoh may have ruled in her own right, with the other two 'Kings' being a pair of advisors who may have been close friends. However, to sow discord into the ranks of her followers, the rumour that the Lady Pharaoh had relations with both of these men behind their mages may have been spread by her political opponents. This idea was later expanded on in a novel authored by Black's daughter, Cassiopeia Zabini, in When Witches Rule: Female Leaders Throughout The Ages.

However surprisingly, Black did not include Pharaoh Seth as a member of those that wanted her off the throne. She says that "it is clear that [Seth] loved his sister very much and often referenced her as an inspiration in the poetry discovered within his tomb" (Throne, 1940, issue 1).

However, in direct contrast to Black's writing, we have the tale brought forth by Percival Selwyn. In his book, Tales of the Eternal, he put forth the idea that this may not have been the case:

"While it is clear that a war occurred sometime around the end of Aknamkanon's rule, it is unclear was the cause might have been," Selwyn tells us. "What is clear is that this war lead to two things: the death of the former Pharaoh and the passing over of Aknamkanon's son, Seth, in place of his daughter" (Tales of the Eternal, 1943, issue 3)

Selwyn goes on to explain that, perhaps, it was the marriage that occurred between the King Commander and the Lady Pharaoh that may have tipped the balance. The war that Selwyn sites in the text may have been a possible coup led by the Commander himself to place himself on the throne using his royal wife as a means to an end.

Selwyn also believes that this is where the Thief King comes into the picture. He says that, rather than be trapped in a loveless marriage, the Lady Pharaoh turned to one of her husband's spymaster to find comfort while he was away on military campaigns. The two were later discovered together by Seth himself, compromising the legitimacy of any of their children and leading to the removal of the 'Three Kings' from power, as well as the reinstatement of the true Pharaoh himself (Tales of the Eternal, 1943, issue 3).

"The true story of the Three Kings," Selwyn tells us, "is not a love story, but of a power-hungry man and his unfaithful wife. Seth had always been the heir, though he may have loved his poor sister enough to create the tale that we now know to preserve what was left of her legacy. It is not something that children are looking for a beautiful story before bedtime may want to hear, but it might just be the hard truth that we need to hear."

This, of course, brings up a character within the legend that is often ignored by historians: Akandin.

4. The Villain

Depending on whom you ask, the character of Aknadin has been many things. Bagshot believed Aknadin to be the first mage, created as a result of a muggle attempting an experiment in soul-based magic, a well-known taboo amongst wizarding kind. Many seem to agree with her, including Percival Selwyn. While there is very little proof of this claim, Beedle's legend does say that Aknadin had been a priest that made a contract with a god of Chaos. Since mages are often connected with the archaic notion of godhood, it is not a hard leap to thing that Beedle was trying to refer to a mage while writing a book geared toward children.

Black goes a step further, citing old texts from the rule of Aknamkanon's father: Pharaoh Shabaka. Very little is known about Shabaka, despite the long and prosperous reign he supposedly had. However, during the trips she made to Egypt while researching Throne, Black made a remarkable discovery.

"It was a tablet found in Deir el-Medina, a village of artisans and tomb builders that neighboured Thebes," Black tells us. "The tablet had been a royal order for the construction of the tombs for Shabaka's children. One in the Valley of the Kings for Aknamkanon, another in the Valley of the Queens for Mukarramma, and a final more private tomb to be built for Aknamkanon's twin brother.

The twin's name has since been removed from the tablet and the plot where the tomb was to be constructed was later given to a nineteenth dynasty scribe, but Black believes this twin brother may have been Aknadin himself. She postulates that the wars that plagued Aknamkanon's and the Lady Pharaoh's reigns may have been attempts made by Aknadin to put himself on the throne and that the Legend itself was a fantastical retelling of a civil war (Throne, 1940, issue 1).

"Perhaps the Lady Pharaoh and her fellow 'Kings' did die in the attempt to kill Aknadin and maybe he was a mage, but as Bagshot herself says: there is no evidence to support that claim," Black tells us. "I know that we like to blame mages for everything bad about our history, but maybe it is time to step back and take a good look at our past. Dark wizards and witches do exist. Maybe Aknadin was one of them."

However, not many people are inclined to agree with her.. Bagshot herself made a very rare public appearance following the release of Throne into Britain's bookstores, saying that Black had misinterpreted her quote and demanded that the book be stripped from the shelves. After a long court battle, the Wizengamot proclaimed that Bagshot was correct in her assumption that Aknadin was a mage, though did not grant her request to have Throne removed from publication Instead, the second and third issues of Black's book were heavily edited and significantly more factual (Black v. Bagshot, 1944).

Percival Selwyn gives us the best claim to support the idea of Aknadin the Mage and was included as a member of Bagshot's legal team. While he does not believe that Aknadin existed, Selwyn sites early wizarding records of mages with dark intentions cropping up in various cultures around the world, using the Signers of Nazca as an example. He tells us that, at least on a literary level, keeping Aknadin as a mage makes sense, considering that the wizarding world has yet to discover records of mages who had performed a deed worthy of looking at them as anything other than evil (Tales of the Eternal, 1943).

5. The Fact Behind Fiction

While many of these authors have given us a glimpse into the world the Three Kings may have inhabited, it is up those who come after them to figure out whether or not which aspects of their stories we chose to believe.

For the most part, I do agree with Bagshot's proposed period for the legend to have taken place. The Amarna Period has been confirmed as the birthplace of wizarding magic and it only fits for the Kings to have ruled within this era. I also accept the commonly believed and easily proven fact that the King were all born in the ancient city of Thebes.

Percival Selwyn has also made some excellent points about the Kings, pointing out that the King Commander's ascension to the throne may have been based in an attempted coup, using his marriage to the Lady Pharaoh as a stepping stone to achieve his goals. However, this is all that I agree on when it comes to Selwyn.

Selwyn has not considered all of the facts concerning the period in which the King Commander and his royal wife may have sat the throne. He has not looked at the state of the Egyptian economy at the end Aknamkanon's reign, nor has he seen what it was at the beginning of Seth's.

The documents left behind by the scripts of Aknamkanon's royal court tell us that the Pharaoh was severely in debt, having squandered his father's fortunes on parties and feasts for his enjoyment. It is even hinted in Beedle's original tale that he may have fallen gravely ill in the years leading up to his death, causing me take a closer look that the murals depicting Aknamkanon. I noted the distinctly feminine hips and slender torso, making me wonder if his sister-wife, Mukarramma, had been playing the role of Pharaoh during the latter half of her brother's reign.

It is possible that Mukarramma had wanted to be succeeded by her daughter and not her son, setting her up with an advantageous marriage to a high ranking military commander to provide her with protection. Perhaps Black was on the right track when she wrote that the Lady Pharaoh might have reigned in her own right, I believe that she may have missed the mark ever so slightly - the King Commander and Lady Pharaoh ruled as a ruling married couple.

During the two year gap when Kitamori believes that the Kings may have reigned, the economic bankruptcy that had plagued Egypt for decades ended. So by the time that Seth stepped up to the throne, he was left with vaults of gold and allies across the known world. The King Commander and Lady Pharaoh may have taken the throne from Seth, but what they did with the time that they had it changed the fate of the dynasty.

As for how the Thief King fits into all of this, I want that Beedle got it right: that he was the King Commander's closest friend and an equal in all aspects of political power who loved the Lady Pharaoh from afar. However, that is not likely the case. In far too many alternative versions of the tale that have been found across the world, the Lady Pharaoh and Thief King are often in bed with one another (an interesting Shang dynasty legend believed that they had married each other, instead of the King Commander). All evidence points to an affair held behind the King Commander's back, which might have lead to a disastrous end to their reign if not for the imminent threat of Aknadin.

While Selwyn may dismiss Aknadin as a literary invention by Pharaoh Seth to preserve his sister's honour, I do not. He may have been the twin brother of Aknamkanon that Black believed him to be, fixated on taking the crown to create his mage Empire. I even go as far as to dismiss Bagshot's claims that the fight that took place between the Kings and Aknadin was nothing more than "a glorified battle of red and green sparks" (A History of Magic, 1947, issue 1). During my trips to Egypt, I discovered evidence of a-

***THE REMAINDER OF THIS UNPUBLISHED THESIS HAS BEEN RIPPED AWAY AND THE PAGE THROWN OUT. ATTACHED TO THIS UNFINISHED WORK IS A LETTER OF EMPLOYMENT FROM THE DEPARTMENT OF MYSTERIES***

Hello once again!

This is going to be a place where I will be posting short stories and meta essays like this one about things that don't make it into the main storyline of the Three Kings series. I'm going to try and update it after I post a pair of chapters in Resist. However, the update schedule is always subject to change depending on my levels of inspiration.

I've got some plans for stories to go on from here. But if there is anything that you would like to see in the future, please don't be afraid to drop me some ideas at any time.

Until next time,

AlcatrazOutpatinet