Discworld Characters - Harry King

Harry King

One of Ankh-Morpork's most successful businessmen, Harry King appears in The Truth and Making Money, and is referred to in Going Postal and briefly in Night Watch by Lu Tze. He started out as a mudlark, and developed his career from there. His core business is that of "night soil" removal, but he is also involved in general rubbish collection and recycling. His basic philosophy is that there is nothing that someone will pay to have removed that someone else won't pay to acquire. The sign outside his yard reads "King of the Golden River, Recycling Nature's Bounty." This replaces, at his wife's insistence, the original: "H. King, taking the piss since 1961."

The moniker, "King of the Golden River," is unlikely to be a reference to the River Ankh, which is brown due to centuries of waste being dumped into it, but is more likely to be a scatological reference, as suggested by the previous sign. It may also be a reference to the classic fairy tale of the same name written in 1842 by John Ruskin, and also possibly a play on the mystical "King of the Silver River" character who appears in the Tolkien-derived fantasy Shannara series by American writer Terry Brooks. Of note is the fact that Harry King employs most of the gnolls in the city, (a race that spends all their time picking up trash,) never forgets a debtor and needs to take two baths just to elevate himself to the rank of dirty. One of his little fingers is missing.

He keeps ferocious mongrel guard dogs on his property. He wouldn't 'buy posh foreign dogs when he can buy the crossbreeds'. Moist von Lipwig mistakes the dogs for pedigree Lipwigzers, (probably Discworld Rottweilers, although Rottweilers are referred to as themselves in Carpe Jugulum,) a particularly savage breed of dog, but one which, as a Lipwig, he is familiar with, and is quite intrigued to find that the commands used to discipline lipwigzers still work on them, (though they may have only been responding to the tone and confidence shown by Moist.) Harry prefers it when burglars break in, so that he doesn't have to feed the dogs.

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