The short story “The Lady or the Tiger?” is about a trial system, that completely randomly decides if a person is guilty or innocent. If the person is innocent, the person is married to a lady that was chosen beforehand by the King, regardless of whether the man in the trial was married or not. If the person is guilty, he gets killed by a tiger. The main plot of the story is about the internal struggle of the princess, who has to choose whether to let her lover live and be married to a woman that she does not like, or to let him die painfully in the hands of a tiger. When the lover looks at the princess for help during the trial, the princess makes a short movement, which indicates the choice the lover should make. However, the story ends without us knowing whether the lover got killed or if the lover was married. However, what was it like for the King, who arranged the entire system of the trial?
Imagine the King’s point of view. The King is doing the things that a monarch would usually be doing, such as managing the food supply of the kingdom or seeing who didn’t pay their taxes, and minding his own business, when he hears that his daughter was in an affair with a man behind his back. The King is enraged, and tracks down the man and throws him in prison to await his trial. In the trial, the man will open one of two doors, one of which would hold a tiger ready to feast on the roles of the man, and another would hold a woman, who the King knew loved the man, and also knew that the man did not love her.
A few days pass, and finally the day arrives. The King watches as the man approaches the two doors. His daughter, who is seated next to him seems to be very focused. The man looks at both doors, and then back at the princess. In the corner off his eye, the king sees a small flash of movement from the princess’s direction. The King does not know to which door the princess showed, but it didn’t matter, as either way, the King would have his revenge. The man would either be torn to shreds by a tiger, or be trapped into a loveless marriage, where the man would suffer for the rest of his life. The man, looking more focused and confident walked over to the door on the right, and puts his hand on the doorknob. The King smiled, the man opened the door, and the confidence the man had shown opening the door quickly vanished, and out sprang the tiger. The man ran back, and right before the tiger got him, he looked at the princess, and through his pained expression, one could easily see what his was thinking: Why?
