The short story "The Man Who Would Be King" by Rudyard Kipling takes place in India during the British Raj. A British journalist, the narrator, meets an adventurer named Daniel Dravot, who asks him to deliver a message to his friend named Peachey Carnehan. Realizing that the two men intend to blackmail a local rajah, the narrator alerts the authorities. Later Dravot and Carnehan appear at the narrator's office and tell him of their latest scheme, which is to travel into a small country called Kafiristan, a remote corner of modern Afghanistan, and set themselves up as kings. The narrator assists them with maps and information.

Long afterwards, Carnehan returns, crippled and broken, and tells their story to the narrator. After many adventures, he and Dravot found Kafiristan, and after the locals perceived Dravot to be a god, they set themselves up as kings. However, Dravot took a local woman as a wife, and after she bit him and he bled, the locals knew he was not a god. They killed Dravot and tortured Carnehan before letting him go. To prove his story, Carnehan shows the narrator the head of Dravot with a golden crown still on it.

According to the Oxford Dictionary, duty has to do with a person's moral or legal obligations or responsibilities, or tasks or actions that someone is required to perform. The concept of duty can apply to moral or legal obligations to God, governments, employers, relatives, or friends. Since the story has three main characters, we can look at how each person fulfills or does not fulfill his duty, and you can decide which two you want to write about.

In the story, the narrator has a duty to his country, represented by the presiding officials in India, the newspaper for which he works, and to his fellow Englishmen. He fulfills his duty to his country when he turns in Dravot and Carnehan after hearing about their nefarious scheme to blackmail the rajah. He performs his duty to his employer by doing his job, as the story tells, in "the daily manufacture of a newspaper." He fulfills his duty to his fellow countrymen by assisting Dravot and Carnehan when they come to him for maps and information. The narrator, then, is certainly a man who performs his duty in all respects.

Dravot and Carnehan seem to have no sense of duty or loyalty to their country's government. They are soldiers of fortune, and their only duty is to each other. To confirm their commitment to that duty, they draw up and sign a contract in the narrator's office before they leave for Kafiristan. The stipulations in that contract include an agreement to touch no liquor or women while they are on their quest. For a long time they do their duties and keep their agreement. However, Dravot breaks this contract by taking on a native wife. In doing so, he causes his own death and the torture of Carnehan. So Dravot, in this respect at least, does not fulfill his duty towards Carnehan. In contrast, Carnehan remains loyal to the end, even to the extent of refusing to sell the crown that Dravot won when he is reduced to poverty.