Ammon counters with a similar proposal, but one without a tie to privilege. Ammon asks to be a servant. To assuage the sensibilities of the king, there must have been some type of formal declaration, and perhaps Ammon was no simple servant, but rather a slave. Whatever the condition, Ammon was able to meet the requirement of calming the king's legitimate fears, and he was dispatched among the other servants of the king.
A servant, whether one with some rights, or a slave with few rights, was still a position of subservience, and contrasted with the probable life of a retainer that Ammon might have had as one married into the royal family. For Ammon, the difference was in the ability to serve. A servant had tasks. A retainer of the court would have become one of those who existed on the labor of others, one of the higher rank in society, one who did not work with his own hands. If Ammon had accepted the offer to be married into the royal family, he would have necessarily renounced some of the major tenets of his religion, clearly not something he was willing to do when he had come to do missionary work.