http://kanji.koohii.com/study/kanji/836

In both RTK and other user mnemonics, the primitive on the left is referred to as "jewel". But it looks more like "King" to me. I get that the jewel primitive loses its "drop" when its used in the left, but in that case, how am I supposed to distinguish it from king when I'm reading it?

Should I just use a story where the primitive is treated as "King" instead of "Jewel"? Or will doing that somehow come back to bite me in the ass later on?

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "when I'm reading it", but the 王 on the left side of a kanji is always jewel, never king (as far as I know).

It makes distinguishing the jewel and king primitives position easier.

It doesn't really matter. As long as your story allows you to write the kanji, that's all that matters. You don't have to stick to heisig's keywords (witness Mr T and spiderman etc). I use 王 on the left to mean king whenever doing so makes a better story. Just remember that jewel in that position doesn't have a drop, and you'll be fine.

Keep in mind that while heisig's primitive names are often based on the true etymology, RTK is not about teaching you etymology. You can rename the primitives to whatever you want, just make sure you don't clash with one from later in the book.

I'll stick to using "King" then. Thanks for the replies, folks.

I feel the same way about calling that piece "jewel," when it doesn't have the extra stroke in the bottom right. I compensated and decided to refer to it as "prince," because it's a smaller, slightly different version of king. I haven't finished all of RevTK though, so I'm not sure if this will conflict with future characters.