Storytelling Week 10: The King Who Couldn't Stop Gambling

Once upon a time in a fairly small kingdom there lived a king named Max who just couldn’t stop gambling.  His kingdom would have been massive but he just kept betting on things and losing.  Sometimes he won though, which kept his kingdom afloat.  His subjects were pretty used to it, because a lot of crazy things happened as a result of his gambling. 

One day the king went out to his gambling spot and began his usual wagering with other people.  King Max was making all kinds of bets, and mostly losing them that day.  Eventually another king came along to bet with King Max, which was interesting because he usually didn’t get to bet with other kings.  The new king introduced himself as King Ben and he proceeded to describe a predicament that his kingdom was in.  They had a bunch of land, but it wouldn’t grow anything except mushrooms.  All of his subjects were so sick of eating the fungi and they needed a source of food with real nutritional value.  He wagered a bet to King Max and said that if he won he wanted all of the flower pots in the small kingdom and he wanted them filled with rich dirt that he could grow new crops in.  King Max agreed to the bet, as he always did, and they rolled the dice.  King Max lost the bet, and thus all the townspeople had to give up their flowerpots. 

Flower Pot- Pixabay

The next day King Max went to the gambling spot once again.  This time he met with a prince who was there on behalf of his town that had so many cows that they could not feed them all.  It had turned into quite the predicament for the small village, and he wagered with the king to take all of the cows off of his land.  The dice were rolled, and King Max lost once again.  This time, instead of losing something, his town gained thousands of cows, and there ended up being more cows than people in the village when they were done moving them all there.  This was the only way that King Max ever won anything in betting.  He lost almost every bet, but sometimes when people desperately needed to get rid of things, they bet them away, and King Max would take them back to his village. 

The townspeople were used to the craziness that came with being the subjects of the horrible gambler King Max, so they were prepared for almost anything.  The cows were a bit of a surprise, but these people were resourceful and they figured out just what to do.  They went to the town where king Ben lived and they offered him manure for his land to help it grow more good food.  In exchange they said they wanted their flower pots back and they wanted some mushrooms.  King Ben’s problems were solved so he quickly agreed to this solution.  The townspeople then returned to their village and began a thriving milk business where many people would come to buy supplies that came from cows.  The little village soon overcame king Max’s bad luck in gambling by making a good fortune for themselves from what they had available, and the village grew and grew into a thriving kingdom… with a king that still would not stop gambling!

AUTHOR’S NOTE:  This story was based on a part of the Mahabharata Epified Link to Reading Guide and Videos.  I liked the theme of gambling in the story and I thought it would be interesting to twist it and create a new story from it.  I kept the idea of a king doing the gambling so that it would be a person of power, but I changed pretty much everything else in the story so that it was something new. 

Week 10 Reading Notes: The Mahabharata Epified Part F

Notes- goodfreephotos

The Pandavas and Draupadi are gambled away by one of the brothers in the gambling match.  Draupadi is especially devastated by the event.  They take their clothes, but Draupadi's clothes don't come off because the material keeps multiplying.  Bheen pledges to get revenge for Draupadi's embarrassment.  The brothers vow to kill their capturers. 

It seems like there are a lot of themes of gambling in these two sections of the story so I think I might use that as a theme in my story that I write this week.  Maybe I will keep the Pandavas in the story or maybe I will remove the idea from the story and write about a different setting. 

Krishna is an interesting character.  He says that if he was present at the gambling match he would have stopped it from happening/ stop it from going wrong.  However, supposedly Draupadi prayed to Krishna in order to receive the miracle that kept her clothes from coming off when they tried to humiliate her.  I want to learn more about Krishna, so maybe I will watch the epified videos about him for my next reading notes for week eleven. 

The part of the story that involves Shiva and the crown is interesting.  He and Arjun fight and the crown shatters, but it is put back together by some form of miracle and then Arjun realizes who he is fighting. 

Source:  The Mahabharata Epified Part F

Week 10 Reading Notes: The Mahabharata Epified part E

I still like Arjun's story and I think it is interesting that he had to get blessings from his first wife in order to marry the second.  I could easily write a story about the relationship between the two wives.  They could resent each other at first and then become best friends and get into trouble running around being girls.  The idea is interesting because the first wife did not have any friends besides her five husbands from what I have seen. 

The idea of the unborn child who listened to the stories is interesting as well.  There could easily be some kind of twist on this story.  It was interesting that when they told the story in the Mahabharata they made the young boy absorb the story but not the end because the mother fell asleep. 

It is also really interesting that the Pandavs cannot lose.  They will always win in everything, so this could make an interesting story because the idea could be put in a bunch of different settings.  They could be holding a match so that people come to try to defeat them, they could be facing monsters, or they could be just fighting other bad people. 

The gambling part of the story is interesting as well.  I could use this to create a story of two kings that gamble with their kingdoms.  It could be funny if the townspeople in the kingdom were used to it and just got kind of mad about it but they didn't really care that much.  Weird things could happen in the town as a result of the gambling.  For example, if the king gambled and won a bunch of cows they would all have to live somewhere so they would show up overnight.  Maybe another day all of the flower pots are gone because the king gambled them away.  It could be interesting to write from the townspeople's perspectives. 

Reading:  Pixabay

Source:  The Mahabharata Epified Part E