The King of Swords as How Someone Sees You: Authoritative, Fair and Emotionally Distant

Written by Chaya the Medium.

The King of Swords as how someone sees you means they see the stone throne and the tilted blade. Here is what the picture includes, upright and reversed.

If you want the short answer, the King of Swords as how someone sees you means they see you as authoritative, principled, intelligent and reserved: the one whose judgment holds, who is fair, who does not let feeling cloud a decision. It is a picture of respect. It is rarely a picture of warmth, and people who hold it often admire you and do not know how you feel about them.

This is you as the King facing forward with the sword slightly tilted. They see the correctness. They may not be able to see the person.

The King of Swords upright as how someone sees you

Tina Gong's the King of Swords guide at Labyrinthos associates the upright card with authority, truth, intellectual power and ethical judgment. When the card lands in a position that asks how someone sees you, I read those meanings as the image the person holds of you, which is not the same as who you are and not the same as what they feel. the King of Swords as feelings covers what they feel; the King of Swords as intentions covers what they plan. This page covers the picture. The Minor Arcana overview at Biddy Tarot is a useful second reference.

Upright, I read the King of Swords as a person who sees you as someone of standards: honest, logical, fair, a little formal. They trust your decisions. They may find you difficult to read and assume that the difficulty is a kind of distance rather than a kind of privacy.

What I would not read into it is that they feel loved by you. The King of Swords is seen for his integrity. Whether the person has felt your care is the thing the card does not say.

What the card does not tell you

The card does not confirm the person feels close to you, that the respect is accompanied by affection, or that they would guess you had feelings for them. No card lets a reader see inside another person's head. What a card can do is describe the kind of image that fits the person's behaviour toward you, and give you something to check against how they actually treat you.

The King of Swords reversed as how someone sees you

Reversed, the King of Swords as how someone sees you means the picture has gone from fair to cold or from principled to controlling: they see you as harsh, rigid, manipulative with logic, or someone who uses rules to keep people at a distance. The authority they respected has started to feel like a cage.

In your own question, ask whether the person has lately avoided bringing you anything emotional, or whether they have said something about you being cold or unbending. A reversed card here is a prompt to notice whether the picture the person holds has gone sour or gone wrong, not a verdict on you.

The King of Swords as how an ex sees you

Asked how an ex sees you, the King of Swords suggests they remember you as fair, intelligent and emotionally unreachable, the one who did everything correctly and never quite let them in. It is a picture with respect and sadness in it. Exes who hold it rarely come back for warmth they did not find the first time. My guide to asking a psychic whether an ex will come back explains what a reading can and cannot say about that question.

The King of Swords as how a new person sees you

For someone new, this card means they respect you and are not sure you feel anything about them. Say something plain and kind, and the picture gains a pulse.

How to check the picture against reality

Look at whether the person ever brings you something that is not a problem to solve. Look at whether they seem to know what you feel about them. A King of Swords picture is respected and distant; the way to change it is to say the feeling out loud, once, in plain words.

What to record before drawing again

Keep three short notes: the question you asked, what the person seems to trust in you, and whether you have ever told them in words that you care. If the third note is no, the picture is accurate and your doing.

For comparison, the Queen of Swords as how someone sees you and the King of Wands as how someone sees you describe different pictures. The the King of Swords card meaning page covers the card in full, and the King of Swords as a person covers the card when it describes a temperament rather than an image. For a personal interpretation, my guide to a love psychic reading online explains how I work, and the three-card tarot listing and customer reviews are worth reading before deciding whether to order.