The Three Dead Kings and Mad Men

A citizen questioned my use of the Three Living and Three Dead, or the Three Dead Kings, in my report on Mad Men The Suitcase. Don't forget creeps, I ask the questions here, and under normal circumstances that citizen would be doing time in the cubes, two years, minimum, Questioning a Judge's Authority. However, as part of our outreach and citizen learning programme, I am going to explain.

The Three Dead Kings is a story from before Brit-Cit, the 15th Century, of three kings hunting boar confronted by three corpses. One king wants to flee, one – and I approve of this – wants to confront them. These corpses say they are not evil (hah! No one is innocent, there's only degrees of guilt) but the kings' ancestors, stating: "While I was a man upon earth, pleasures were mine and now I pay the price". The kings are urged to change their ways and not forget them, much like Dickens' Christmas Carol (*Tharg note: this work is now banned so if you are aware of this report to the nearest Judge immediately).

Citizen, look at Mad Men The Suitcase. Duck Phillips, once like Don, an adman with depraving addiction to alcohol, now – while not in the cubes – fired from his office, his career dead but not his drinking.

Miss Blankenship, where a witness statement declares this old woman once was a "hellcat" and "Queen of the Perversions" - you don't have to be a Judge to deduce the connection with kings. But no more. Don is not into perversions, but he is still very much sexually active, unlike Miss Blankenship (citizens, report for a mind scrub if you have inadvertently thought of Miss Blankenship active with Roger Sterling). She is now a sexual laughing stock and without family, something the divorced Don risks alienating.

Finally, there is the truly dead, Anna Draper who apparently makes a brief appearance in spirit form and Don't ultimate fate (this was before rejuvenation chambers).

I have used the Three Dead Kings and not Three Living and Three Dead as each of the dead are an aspect of Don. Whether he will heed the warning like the Three Living I don't know, I'd need Psi Division to tell me, but he is showing signs of the horror that the Three Living had when they saw the Three Dead. In this case one of the Three Dead – Duck – beat him down while Don was covered in vomit from his drinking. If that doesn't hammer home the message nothing will.

Lesson ends.