Benjamin King

Benjamin King is a character in Saints Row and Saints Row IV.
==Overview==
In Saints Row, Benjamin King is the founder and leader of the Vice Kings, one of three enemy gangs. The Vice Kings have been active in Stilwater since the '70s, where King formed the gang alongside best friend Julius to counter the Carnales' encroachment on their neighborhood of Sunnyvale. After King grew accustomed to power and refused to give it up, Julius retired to Saint's Row while King expanded his criminal empire.
By the events of Saints Row, the Vice Kings' demesne encompasses most of northern Stilwater. Under King, the Vice Kings control prostitution and gambling rings, hold numerous protection rackets, and have turned their attention to more legitimate business ventures, such as the music industry's Kingdom Come Records. King has become a "public darling" through his philanthropy and, in order to solidify his grip on the city, he works alongside the corrupt mayoral candidate Alderman Richard Hughes and Police Chief Monroe, forming a steady relationship with the Stilwater Police Department.
Described as both "a professional [and] a bad ass", Benjamin King exercises patience and commands the respect of his crew. After his enforcer Anthony Green is killed, however, King is soon betrayed by his two remaining lieutenants, Tanya Winters and Warren Williams, who stage a coup. King escapes and forms a temporary alliance with his old friend Julius; with the help of the 3rd Street Saints, he finishes off what remains of the Vice Kings.
With his influence on the city concluded, King obliges Julius and leaves the city. He writes a novel based on these events, Regicide: The Rise and Fall of the Vice Kings, sometime before Saints Row 2, which has been adapted into a movie at the time of Saints Row: The Third.
King returns in Saints Row IV, working alongside the 3rd Street Saints once again. King now has a shaved head and wears a scarf coloured Vice Kings yellow. Playa rescues him in a quest called "King of Stilwater" with the description "To get back your Chief of Staff, you'll have to revisit your mutual past".
==History==
===Saints Row===
In the 1970s, childhood friends Benjamin King and Julius Little formed the Vice Kings to fight back against Los Carnales, who had swept through their neighborhood of Sunnyvale, demanding protection fees, pushing drugs, and bringing gang warfare to the streets. King organized the kids in Sunnyvale to stand up for themselves, and "fueled by their desire to take back their neighborhood, the Vice Kings surged". Sunnyvale was liberated from the Carnales in a matter of days but King, who had grown accustomed to power, continued to battle the Carnales for control over the rest of Stilwater. Julius, unhappy with his friend's decision, decided to retire to Saint's Row.
In the following years, King increased his gang's influence and income, and decided to focus on "legitimate business ventures" instead of his criminal empire. This allowed the Carnales to regain their strength and a new gang, the Westside Rollerz, soon formed. The three gangs fought against each other, but once the violence spilled into Saint's Row, Julius was forced to follow King's footsteps, and thus started the 3rd Street Saints in an attempt to quell all the other gangs in the city.
As King cultivated his gang, he employed Anthony Green, "an old friend [...] from back in the day", as his enforcer and "go-to" guy, and Warren Williams, a "second rate rapper turned third rate gangster", to run Kingdom Come Records, the Vice Kings' record label. Tanya Winters, once nothing more than a "small time hooker", managed to be put in charge of the Vice Kings' brothel at the Raykins Hotel due to her relationship with Green. During this time, Chief Monroe had an undercover officer infiltrate the 3rd Street Saints; during the officer's preliminary report on the four gangs, he noted how Monroe doesn't want him investigating the Vice Kings any further, hinting at King's close relationship with the Stilwater Police Department.
During the year leading up to the events of Saints Row, King improves his public persona, going from a feared gang leader to a "public darling" through his philanthropy. The Stilwater Post did a human interest story on him, but the undercover officer noted his absolute distrust of him during his report on the Vice Kings.
King first becomes aware of the 3rd Street Saints after they destroy the Kingdom Come Records building and apparently kill Aisha, causing millions of dollars in loss of revenue. King remains completely calm as he is informed of the incident, much to the chagrin of his lieutenant Warren Williams. After then being informed by Tanya Winters of the 3rd Street Saints' seizure of Prawn Court, King states that he will call in a few favors and have Kingdom Come Records rebuilt, and have Chief of Police Richard Monroe put pressure on the Saints, allowing the Vice Kings to take back their territory.
The 3rd Street Saints fight back and eventually head to an abandoned police station to kill Tanya. There, Johnny Gat and Playa are ambushed by Anthony Green, who reveals that it was a trap devised by King. They capture Gat but Playa escapes. An eager Warren Williams insists on taking further action, but King is currently content with Julius' lieutenant captured and the police out for the Saints.
After Green is killed and Gat is rescued, Gat and Playa dress up as Vice Kings and cause chaos downtown, destroying The Pride of Stilwater. Furthermore, they kill the policemen on King's payroll and destroy the Kingdom Come Records building again, straining King's relationship with Alderman Richard Hughes and Chief Monroe. Warren Williams, who is upset with King's refusal to get into drug dealing and who now believes King to be selfish, stages a coup with Tanya Winters and other disloyal gang members.
King flees and requests help from Julius. Playa soon arrives under orders from Julius and rescues him, and together they go to the Saints' headquarters, leaving Warren for dead along the way.
After a discussion with his old friend Julius, King accepts to walk away from Stilwater; but only once he's dealt with Tanya, who has now taken control over what remains of the Vice Kings. With Playa, King lures several remaining gang members to police ambush points, paving the way to Tanya. King laments that Playa never joined the Vice Kings instead, believing that they could have owned the city.
Finally, alongside Playa and Johnny Gat, King heads to his old penthouse to finish off Tanya. After getting the codes to the elevator from Stefan, the three fight their way through the remnants of the Vice Kings and King personally kills Tanya, sending her plummeting to her death from his office. Outside the penthouse, King gives Playa the keys to the building and walks away.
Later, as Benjamin King prepares to board a private jet and leave the city, he briefly glimpses at an old photo of himself and Julius in their early days. During Richard Hughes speech to Playa prior to the yacht blowing up, King can be back in Stilwater, leaning against his car with his thoughts.
===Saints Row IV===
King returns in Saints Row IV once again working with the 3rd Street Saints, having appeared in the "Meet the President" and "War for Humanity" trailers. In the five years between the two games, he has written Regicide: The Rise and Fall of the Vice Kings, a novel based on the events of Saints Row that has been adapted into a movie.
After the events of Saints Row: The Third, King helps Playa become elected as President of the United States, with King becoming Chief of Staff. At the start, King and Pierce disapproved of Playa's reckless verbal missteps that alienated part of America. Then suddenly, when the alien Zin invade, King and Pierce are among those who are abducted.
King is placed in his own virtual simulation, where he experiences the betrayal of Anthony and Tanya and being killed by them on and on. When Playa arrives to rescue King, they first kill Anthony but Tanya escapes into the virtual Steelport. Playa then informed their plan to reunite the Saints and kill Zinyak. King then exclaimed, "That's not a plan, that's a goal!" They then start arguing, which escalates to when King points out that Playa needed his help in their election campaign.
==Gameplay==
===Saints Row===
King is a Homie in the final three missions of the Vice Kings storyline, first when he is rescued, as well as the following two missions.
King drives a Mag; it is used during the mission "All the King's Men" and unlocked in the Garage after completion of that mission.
In addition to Kingdom Come Records, King owns a Penthouse in the Downtown district which is unlocked as a Crib after completion of the Vice Kings storyline.
He also owns King's Grocery, which is used by the Vice Kings as a stronghold to stockpile weapons. It is still under construction during the fall of the Vice Kings, but is a fully operational, albeit inaccessible, grocery store when Playa awakes from the coma.
*During the mission "For King and Country", King has 2000 hitpoints and is armed with an AR-40 Xtnd and Hand Grenades.
*During the mission "The King and I", King has 750 hitpoints and is armed with a GDHC .50.
*During the mission "All the King's Men", King has 1000 hitpoints and is armed with a Tombstone.
===Saints Row IV===
King is briefly present during gameplay in "The Saints Wing" in which he along with Pierce are abducted by the Zin.
King is part of several story missions, first when he is saved from his simulation which unlocks him as a homie and also makes him a crew member of The Ship. He has his own loyalty mission which is required to unlock the full ending for the game.. Later, Playa escorts King, along with Pierce Washington, defending them from Zin, which is similar to the Heli Assault activity.
In Grand Finale, King is an option in either of the three missions. He is teamed up alongside Johnny Gat. If selected for Grand Finale Part Two, friendly Vice Kings arrive to assist him.
==Angela==
Angela is Benjamin King's sister. She is never seen throughout the Saints Row series but is mentioned by a paramedic in Saints Row, and alluded to twice in Saints Row IV. When talked to on the Ship after he is saved, King may say, "If only Angela could see me now. My sister never would believe any of this."
Julius Little's third Audio Log elaborates on her fate; he states how he has few regrets — "You make your choices [and] you live with 'em" — but is remorseful over how things ended for her — "It was all fun and games for her. She wanted to be just like Benjamin... I shouldn't have let her get in so deep."
==Trivia==
===Saints Row===
* King is one of only two enemy gang leaders not killed in the series, along with Matt Miller, both of whom later work alongside Playa.
* During the "Battlefield Promotion" cutscene, King looks at an old photograph of Julius and himself.
** This photo of Julius and King is based on a 1974 photograph of two black men in a Chicago ghetto.
** The picture looks to be taken at the Saints Row Church before it was trashed with graffiti and scum.
** Both are wearing their respective gang colours, although their taste in clothing may merely have served as an inspiration during the later formation of their respective gangs.
* In Saints Row, Benjamin King is voiced by . In Saints Row IV, he is voiced by .
* King's facial texture is reused by several gang members.
===Saints Row 2===
* After rescuing Johnny Gat from the courthouse he mentions that King wrote an autobiography (referencing to Regicide).
* Playa tells Julius that the latter should have dropped his flags and wrote a book like King, referring to Regicide.
===Saints Row IV===
* King's appearance in Saints Row IV was confirmed the day after the "Meet the President" trailer for the game was released, when the Saints Row Facebook account asked if anyone spotted "this royal blast-from-the-past" and linked to the Benjamin King page on the Saints Row Wiki.
** Michael Clarke Duncan is still posthumously credited for voicing King alongside Crews in Saints Row IV — "Michael Clarke Duncan (RIP) - Benjamin King" — and during these credits, when the song "" by is played, it finishes with Duncan singing and laughing.
**During the news reel in Appointed Defender in Saints Row 2 it states that Michael Clarke Duncan would play Benjamin in the Regicide movie. Roddy Piper references this during a Homie conversation with King in Saints Row IV when he states that "the guy who played you [King] sounds nothing like you.
*After completing his loyalty mission, King Me, in Saints Row IV, King's virtual appearance is changed to resemble Morpheus from The Matrix.
*King's Romance is the only one to not have Playa have sex; instead he asks King to sign a copy of his book.
*Even though Playa is responsible for killing Julius in Saints Row 2, King doesn't hold a grudge against them in Saints Row IV.
*When in Super Powered outfit Ben like Kinzie loses his everyday glasses which are replaced with sunglasses.
*The Super Powered Ben King is thinner than normal Ben King.
*As a homie, Ben King breaks the 4th wall in an idle remark saying "This game got weird since I was away" referring to the realism of Saints Row changing into the sci-fi theme of Saints Row IV.
*A character model resembling the Saints Row version of Benjamin King is present in the game files and can be used through editing the game files.
* Benjamin uses a .45 Fletcher when called in as a Homie.
* Benjamin is the only member of the ship to not make an appearance in Gat out of Hell.
==Quotes==
===Audio Logs===
===Homie Conversations===
==Gallery==
 
de:Benjamin King
Category:Characters in Saints Row
Category:Characters in Saints Row IV