Visionary king spared in author's criticism (6)
I believe the answer is:
mystic
'visionary' is the definition.
(thesaurus)
'king spared in author's criticism' is the wordplay.
I cannot really understand how this works, but
'author's' could be 'my' (belonging to the person writing) and 'my' is found in the answer.
This explanation may well be incorrect...
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for mystic that I've seen before include "Allegorical; sacredly obscure" , "Of spiritual significance" , "Seer" , "One attaining high levels of spirituality" , "Esoteric" .)