The King with a Hundred Hearts

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The King with a Hundred Hearts
The King's Villa. Art from FL.
Name	Enkidu (?)
Location	Polythreme
Affiliation	The First City
Related	The Manager of the Royal Bethlehem Hotel (former lover)

"I no longer love him. How could I, after what he had done to me? But his love abides, over the sea in London. I am his heart's desire."

The King with a Hundred Hearts is the ruler of Polythreme and the progenitor of the Clay Men.

The Man, The Myth, The Legend

The King is thousands of years old, and a survivor of the First City. He was originally a human merchant from the East (presumably ancient China), who fell in love with the man now known as the Manager of the Royal Bethlehem Hotel. The merchant was dying of "fits," so the Manager brokered a deal with the Masters of the Bazaar to sell the First City to save his life - at a cost. The Masters, in their usual disregard for a mere human's feelings, took a jewel from the Mountain of Light and shoved it into the King's chest. This made the King very immortal, but also caused him to grow to the size of an island, and the fragment of Stone inside him has become the source of the island's unnatural vitality. The King with a Hundred Hearts is now a true (but giant) Clay Man, or otherwise an enormous statue, with diamond shards for hearts.

Very few are permitted an audience with the King, so naturally, his nature and exact appearance are something of a mystery. The King is best known for sending Clay Men to London as menial laborers who work for the Bazaar.

Historical Inspirations

If we use the hypothesis that the First City was Uruk and the Manager is Gilgamesh, then the King with a Hundred Hearts is Enkidu (Gilgamesh's lover). This is a surprisingly fitting role for old Enkidu, who in the epic was created from clay and saliva from the goddess Aruru to stop Gilgamesh from terrorizing his subjects in Uruk. In short, he was quite literally the first Clay Man.