The dewan

The dewan is the king's chief minister, and he is drawn as timid, cunning and eager to please. His main concern is always to keep the king satisfied and to save his own position, so he devotes his ingenuity to the king's absurd projects rather than to the good of the state. When the king cannot find his hundredth tiger, it is the dewan who works to solve the problem, going so far as to keep an old tiger of his own and have it brought to the spot so the king can shoot it. He fears the king's displeasure and flatters his vanity, and in his anxious scheming he becomes a comic figure himself — a picture of the courti …