Mr. Darcy- The King of Cups

The suit of cups is the suit of water and its domain is emotions and relationships. Before I began my research on tarot, I would have assumed that the King of Cups would represent a person who was extremely expressive and shared their emotions freely. I imagined the minor arcana as a simple scale of increasing intensity. But I’ve learned that each card expresses a different facet of its suit — the pages, knights, queens, and kings don’t just turn the volume up; they embody entirely different ways of being. My pick for the King of Cups is the opposite of my early assumptions about the card: Mr. Darcy, a character famously constrained in his expressions of emotions. And yet he is the perfect king.

The King of Cups is a person of purpose and competency. Though he tends to be academic, he is warm hearted with close friends. He can sometimes struggle with the balance of sharing his feelings versus holding back. Because of this he at times can seem distant. However he loves and feels deeply. My Rider-Waite Tarot guide described him as the “ideal romantic partner” While not every detail aligns, the core qualities are unmistakable in Darcy.

At the beginning of Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy arrives in Hertfordshire and is immediately despised for his cold unfeeling demeanor. Though he quickly becomes enamoured with the spirited Elizabeth Bennet, he masks his feelings so completely that when he first proposes to her she is wholly shocked. After Elizabeth’s initial rejection and humbling reproof, Darcy took to heart her critiques. While he did not expect a second chance with Elizabeth, he made significant adjustments to his demeanor and also righted the wrongs he had unwittingly committed. Whether Elizabeth noticed or not, he meant to be worthy of her. We begin to understand Darcy as a warm hearted, and deeply feeling as he becomes more and more open. Mr. Darcy’s arc exemplifies the struggles of the King of Cups, as well as the positive qualities. 

All of this comes together in the moment I chose to depict—Darcy walking through the mist just before he proposes to Elizabeth a second time. To connect to the card’s identity as the “air” of “water,” I emphasized and stylized the clouds and mist, echoing Matthew Macfadyen’s famous dawn walk in Joe Wright’s 2007 Pride and Prejudice. In my study I managed to capture Macfadyen, but in the final painting he transformed into Tristan Thorne from Stardust (played by Charlie Cox)—and honestly, I’m not mad about that.

Either way, the figure carries what I hoped to capture: the tension of vulnerability and devotion in action. In this moment, Darcy embodies the King of Cups—a man who feels deeply, learns from his flaws, and acts with integrity. His love is not only emotion but steadfast choice, and that is what makes him both the ideal romantic partner and the perfect King of Cups.

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