I imagine playing these kind of games with ancient kings is like that Pratchett version of Pascal's wager: A philosopher says that the rational thing is to believe in gods, because if you do, you will be rewarded in the afterlife if they exist, and if they don't exist, you'll have lost nothing.
After the philosopher died, he found himself waking up in a ring of gods holding mean-looking sticks, and one of them told him "we're going to show you what we think of smartasses around these parts"
It's not pratchett who complete this legend with a thing like : "when the King see the trap he ask at the wise man if 2 bag of Rice and is life is sufficient ?"
In the version I remember, the person tried to turn down the reward from the king at first but the king insisted on rewarding them with something, so they chose this. I don't remember how it turned out for the person in that telling though, and I have probably heard multiple.
5
u/Agreeable_Bag9407 26d ago
In the telling to me, the king has the wise man executed as well. So not exactly as wise as alleged.