Van Leeuwen attempts to find parallels in the conceptions of Eurasian kingship during the premodern period, from 1300 to 1800, scouring fictional texts across Europe and Asia for possible “relationships, influences, and patterns of transmission” (3). He argues that these texts helped to integrate the power of a king into the popular imagination, thus enhancing claims to legitimacy. He chose texts that fall between categories—between elite and popular culture, between oral and written, between history and fiction, etc. The stories of the 1001 Nights cycle play an important role in his analysis as an “integrating matrix”—bringing together stories from Indian, Persian, and Arabic backgrounds mediated through medieval Islamic culture and the transmission into nineteenth-century Europe (5).
Van Leeuwen is careful to point out that he presents the texts in their historical context only occasionally. His goal is to analyze the texts as literary narratives, establishing their place in discourses of...