Character Analysis
Serious Sovereign
It's not that the King is no fun, it's that… well… he's not much fun. Azalea notices that "He had a way of frowning that froze the air and made it crack like ice" (1.59). That makes him sound super pleasant, eh? Again with the ice language: he has an "icy blue stare" (11.112) that is beyond chilly. As far as fathers go, this guy's not exactly the warm fuzzy type.
He's super rules-oriented, which bugs Azalea and her sisters sometimes, but the way he puts it, "One cannot run the country without laws; one cannot manage a household without rules. It is so" (1.64). Well when you put it that way, it sorta makes sense. And it's not just rules—it's order in general. This comes into play with naming practices, as Azalea thinks to herself: "All her sisters had been named alphabetically, as the King liked everything very much in order. He even had the jam jars in the pantry indexed" (3.29). Hey, King—loosen up a bit.
By the end of the book, Azalea realizes that his orderliness is actually a good thing: "He was stiff and solid. She loved that about him" (30.29). It sure took her a while to get to this realization, though, and along the way she's felt heaps of resentment toward him.
Resentment or not, though, the King definitely wants to project an image of a happy, well-ordered household to outsiders. He tells the girls: "Despise me for it, as I know you all do, but when the guests arrive, we shall all be agreeable, and we shall all eat dinner together as though we are a very, very happy family! Which we are! Is that clear?" (14.200) Maybe he's coming on a little strong here, but we see that his family life is important to him, even though the girls have come to believe the opposite.
A Distant & Dour Daddy Figure
After his wife dies, the King distances himself from his daughters. He tells Mr. Pudding: "I cannot abide them… I cannot! Keep them away from me, Mr. Pudding!" (3.63) This seems kinda harsh, and it's even worse because the girls overhear him saying this, but our guess is that his daughters remind him of his wife and he's too heartbroken to deal with being reminded right then of how she's dead. He doesn't even say goodbye to them before leaving to fight in a war, which is really heart-breaking for the girls—but also probably means he's heartbroken himself.
When he finally does try to make things right with his daughters, he seems annoyed when they're not receptive to it. Like when he returns from war and has a nice breakfast of cinnamon bread with jam prepared, the girls are late to the meal—and things only go downhill from there: "The King's expression darkened […] He did not seem to like the turn this breakfast was taking" (11.65). We get that raising a dozen daughters can be a handful, but the King's distant, rules-oriented approach sure doesn't seem to be working too well.
Family Man
The King occupies a strange place in his family. For one thing, he's the only one who doesn't adore dancing, and Azalea characterizes her father as someone who "danced like a brick" (1.1). Perhaps that's not the kindest description, but it seems accurate. His wife, in contrast, "danced like an angel" (1.3). What's that saying about opposites and attraction?
It takes a while, but the King finally comes around to the fact that his daughters need him to be there for them. He lets them have dancing shoes, but under the conditions that they'll be on time to their lessons and that they won't speak of dancing, or their mother (12.85).
And of course, when things go south with Keeper trying to take over the palace again, the King rushes in to rescue his daughters. He helps Azalea get her sisters out of the mirrors, and he directs the move to get them somewhere warm—and in the end, he hesitates to shoot Keeper when he looks just like Azalea, which shows that he really does love his daughters. Of course, this also gets him shot—but with the power of the unnamed, warm magic, he lives.
We're happy that he gets another chance to try to work things out with his family, and be the father the girls need. He's got it in him, somewhere deep beneath his icy exterior.