Story summary
Samenvatting van Het Pad van de Koning
- 8 min. leestijd
- 10 parts
- Binnenkort te beluisteren
A Viking boy’s gold armlet becomes a ring passing through knights, spies and a frontier mother toward a hidden destiny.
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Het Pad van de Koning in het kort
Samenvatting: 8 min leestijd
- Leestijd
- Ongeveer 5 h 45 min4 h 35 min fast, 6 h 50 min slow
- Lengte
- 82.200 woorden
- Bibliotheekniveau
- Gemiddeld longer sentences, everyday words
- Voor het eerst verschenen
- 1921by John Buchan
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). Hoelang het duurt om de klassiekers te lezen · Bijgewerkt
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Het Pad van de Koning in short
The Path of the King asks whether a single line of blood can carry a purpose across a thousand years, through kings and thieves, scholars and soldiers, without anyone knowing what it is for. Buchan answers with vivid tales. A merchant widow, a crusader, a scholar, a Huguenot and a spy each hold the ring for a time.
What Het Pad van de Koning is about
Three tired men sit by a campfire in the Selkirk mountains of Canada, and one of them has an odd idea. Great men, he says, rarely come from palaces. They come from the younger sons of younger sons, who carry a spark of royal blood among ordinary people until its Appointed Time.
That talk begins The Path of the King, a chain of linked tales published by the Scottish novelist John Buchan in 1921. Each tale follows one heir of an ancient line, and a worn gold ring passes from hand to hand.
Voor wie is het?. Readers who love sweeping historical adventure, family sagas across the centuries, tales of knights, ships, spies and kings, and stories where one object ties distant lives together.
The story in 10 parts
Key idea 1 · free to read
A Viking boy walks into the dark
The first tale is set in a hall at Hightown, beneath a mountain called Sunfell. A small boy named Biorn invents a game for winter nights. He creeps toward a thin line of firelight on the floor, steps into the deeper dark beyond it, then runs back to bed. A lame, clever man called Leif the Outborn says that life is a passage from darkness to darkness with a brief light between.
Biorn is the son of King Thorwald, called Ironbeard. When famine strikes and the cattle die, the old remedy is a raid on Frankland. An old seer named Katla says that Biorn's thread runs westward and that his descendants will win great kingdoms beyond the sea.
After Ironbeard sails for Frankland with Biorn, Leif sees blood on the river and begs him to turn back, but the king answers that what will be, will be. Raiders burn the ships, and the Hightown men form a shield ring against eight times their number. Leif drags Biorn into the forest.
The long line begins with one frightened child who dared to walk into the dark.
- 2Begin gratis met lezen
Jehan the Outborn wins a home in England
The second tale opens after the great battle on the English coast.
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A merchant's wife builds a fortune for her heir
The third tale moves to Bruges in a bitter February.
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A French knight rides east to meet the Khakan
The fourth tale begins in 1249 at the port of Acre.
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Joan of Arc changes a proud girl's heart
The fifth tale opens at an inn at a crossroads north of Paris.
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A scholar sets out to find the Wood of Life
The sixth tale follows Philip de Laval, the younger grandson of old Countess Catherine.
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One night in Paris tests a Huguenot soldier
The seventh tale is set in Paris in August 1572.
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Lovels and Lauvals carry the secret through ages
The eighth movement jumps through several hands.
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Greatness grows in the poor and the unnoticed
The ninth movement is about what the tales add up to.
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How Buchan ties thirteen stories into one
The tenth idea is about how the book is built.
Read all 10 key ideas now
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Characters, plot and themes
Main characters
- Biorn A Norse chieftain's son who hears a seer foretell great kingdoms for his descendants and sets out on a raid that changes his life.
- Jehan the Hunter A tall soldier of unknown birth who wins an English fenland home by mercy and wants peace between conquerors and conquered.
- Aimery of Beaumanoir A learned young French knight sent by King Louis to find a Tartar ally and driven by a dream of Jerusalem.
- Catherine of Beaumanoir A proud, fiery heiress who quarrels with her lover over Joan of Arc and learns what she truly hungers for.
- Gaspard de Laval A Huguenot sea soldier who wants only to return to his garden but is caught in a night of slaughter in Paris.
- Sir Walter Raleigh An aging adventurer, ill and disgraced, who listens to a sailor's story of a golden city and wonders what his dreams have brought him.
- Nicholas Lovel A London lawyer who counsels Cromwell about the fate of a king and finds that fate has other plans for him.
- Abraham Lincoln A tall, humorous lawyer from the prairies who faces civil war with calm courage and tests his ideas in talk with Stanton.
How it ends (spoiler)
Lincoln is shot at Ford's Theatre on the evening of April 14, 1865, and carried to a small house across the street. Edwin Stanton stands by the bed through the night, now sure of the man's greatness. At dawn the President dies. Stanton says he now belongs to the ages. In the epilogue, the poet James Russell Lowell calls him the first American, and a young British observer calls him the last of the kings.
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Vragen over Het Pad van de Koning
What is The Path of the King about?
It follows a line of descendants from a Viking boy to Abraham Lincoln. Each chapter shows one heir, with a gold ring passing between them, as the book asks whether hidden royal blood can carry a destiny across centuries.
Who wrote The Path of the King and when?
John Buchan, the Scottish author of The Thirty-Nine Steps, wrote it. It was published in 1921 as a series of linked tales, built around a campfire conversation described in the prologue.
What does the gold ring mean in The Path of the King?
The ring is the badge of the royal line. It passes from hand to hand through the generations, and it ties together people who do not know each other, reminding the reader that the line continues.
Is The Path of the King a true story?
No, the family line is invented. But the settings and many figures are real, including the Norman Conquest, Joan of Arc, Walter Raleigh, Oliver Cromwell, Daniel Boone, Abraham Lincoln and Edwin Stanton.
Is The Path of the King easy to read?
Yes, it suits readers who like variety. Each chapter is a self-contained story with its own setting, characters and mood, so you can follow one tale at a time and enjoy its scenes.
Verwijs naar deze uitgave
Buchan, John. The Path of the King. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-path-of-the-king.
Buchan, J. (2026). The path of the king. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-path-of-the-king (Original work published 1921)
Buchan, John. The Path of the King. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-path-of-the-king.
@book{buchan2026path,
author = {Buchan, John},
title = {The Path of the King},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/the-path-of-the-king},
note = {First published 1921}
}
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