Word: emperor
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Clearly shaken, the Emperor of Ethiopia, Lion of Judah, Elect of God and King of Kings mounted the balcony of his lion-guarded Jubilee Palace in Addis Ababa. Speaking to 600 members of the armed forces, Haile Selassie declared in a faltering and cracking voice: "This is a poor land. Your country cannot afford to give you more. I appeal to your loyalty!" From the palace courtyard, the Emperor received the expected cheers of support. But in Ethiopia's key garrison towns, where thousands of his soldiers were mutinying, the appeal fell on deaf ears. There, junior officers...
...find it. Only on rare occasions, with other ordinary soldiers, does Svejk let his real opinions show, and even on these rare occasions he usually allows himself not openness but sarcasm--long accounts of how overjoyed he'll be if only he's allowed to suffer for the Emperor, like Hasek's description of a patriotically religious painting of a dying soldier with his leg torn off, smiling blissfully, as though they were bringing him an ice cream...
...service of one's prince, repeated scolding can lead only to loss of favor." And in Imperial China, favor was with-drawn with a vengeance--China's greatest historian, Ssu-ma Ch'ien, was castrated for defending a general who had fallen into the disfavor of a Han emperor. Ssu's action had been morally correct, but he had violated another, more important Confucian precept--"First and foremost," The Master had said, "be faithful to your superiors." Confucians stood by parents, princes, and emperors, right or wrong...
This ethic of blind loyalty was the fatal flaw in the Confucian tradition. A young official served at the grace of the emperor, not China, because, for him, the emperor was the very essence of China. During the Opium War--China's disastrous contact with the naked force of Western imperialism--complete alteration of battle results was common. The deceptions protected individual officers in the eyes of the emperor at the expense of the entire people--but then "the people" was only a vague concept in the Confucian tradition. The ruling hierarchy could not handle conflicts greater than relations between...
...untypical of the residual royals is the self-styled "Doktor Habsburg," recognized by a handful of monarchist followers as Emperor Otto I of Austria and King Otto II of Hungary. Scion of one of the great European dynasties -along with the Bourbons, the Windsors and Hohenzollerns-Otto von Habsburg was exiled in 1919 with his then reigning father, Emperor Charles 1 of Austria (King Charles IV of Hungary). Before the Anschluss in 1938, Hitler offered to restore Otto to his throne if he would support Nazi ideology. He refused, and during World War II, when he lived...