What Is The Origin Story Of The Prince Dakkar Character?

There’s something deliciously tragic about Prince Dakkar’s origin that always pulls me back into Jules Verne’s worlds. Reading the reveal in 'The Mysterious Island' after meeting the brooding Captain Nemo in 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea' felt like peeling away a mask: Nemo isn’t just an enigmatic genius of the deep—he’s a displaced royal, a revolutionary, and a man hollowed out by colonial violence. Verne eventually gives him a name and a homeland: Prince Dakkar, a noble from Bundelkund (often rendered Bundelkhand in English), whose family and people were destroyed by foreign imperial powers. The shock and grief turn him inward, away from surface nations he sees as corrupt, and outward through the iron will of the Nautilus, a vessel he creates to live beyond their reach and to strike back in secret.

As someone who squirrelled away battered paperbacks in the margins of my twenties, I love how Verne layers Nemo’s backstory across books. In 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea' Nemo is the mythic captain—brilliant, obsessive, sometimes monstrous in his refusal to compromise. Then 'The Mysterious Island' rewrites that silhouette into flesh: Prince Dakkar is an Indian prince who experiences the brutal suppression of his people and the dispossession of his land. He becomes a self-made exile-scientist, using his prodigious knowledge of electricity, metallurgy, and biology to construct the Nautilus and its treasures. That submarine is half refuge, half weapon; his acts—rescuing the oppressed, attacking slavers and enemy ships—are filtered through a personal vendetta against imperialism, which makes him both sympathetic and morally ambiguous. The romance of a man living free under the sea sits beside the horror of his relentless cruelty to those he regards as enemies.

If you like comparing adaptations, there’s also a fun scatter of retellings that reshuffle Dakkar’s identity. Some films and comics change his background—turning him into a European noble or leaving his nationality vague—because different eras and creators wanted Nemo to embody other anxieties. Modern takes often emphasize his anti-colonial stance, which feels more satisfying and historically resonant to me: Prince Dakkar is not merely an eccentric genius, he’s a product of empire and resistance. I like to think of him in three overlapping ways: the grieving prince who lost a homeland, the brilliant inventor who built a new world beneath the waves, and the avenger who refuses to forgive the surface for its crimes. That messiness is precisely why he’s such a compelling figure—he’s heroic and monstrous at once.

On lazy evenings I still flip through those old scenes, savoring how Verne colors Nemo’s grief with technical wonder. If you’re diving into his story for the first time, read 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea' for the mystery, then follow up with 'The Mysterious Island' for the full portrait of Prince Dakkar—then maybe check out a few modern adaptations to see how different creators interpret his exile and anger. It’s one of those origin stories that keeps changing depending on who’s telling it, but it always leaves me thinking about how history, loss, and invention can twist a person into a legend.