Word: figurehead
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...more royal than the royals. She had a higher station than the Queen of England; she was the titular young monarch of her own country and of every other place in the world. She was the sentimental favorite figurehead, who was authorized to sign no treaties, command no armies, make no wars. All she had was the way she looked and sounded and behaved. No model or actress could hold a candle to her. She was the image every child has of a princess--the one who can feel the pea under the mattresses, who kisses the frog, who lets...
...ruled--quite literally in the case of the last Czar, Nicholas II (who comes across here as dull-minded and weak), and his wife Alexandra (dull-minded and forceful). At a time when Russia might have been transformed by shrewd and humane reforms into a parliamentary democracy with a figurehead monarch (a role that would have suited a Czar whose only talent was that he sat on a horse well), Nicholas saw himself as a stern 17th century autocrat. Liberalization was dangerous; had not his grandfather, the cautious reformer Alexander II, been assassinated by populists? The Czarina enthusiastically egged...
...Milosevic's rule is located in the corridors of an imposing steel-and-glass building on Belgrade's Knez Milos Street. It is here that one can find the office of Jovica Stanisic, the most powerful man in Serbia after the President. As a deputy of Serbia's figurehead Interior Minister, Stanisic controls most of the intelligence and security within Serbia. He is also Milosevic's most important adviser. Rarely appearing in public and never giving interviews, Stanisic meets or talks daily with the President, briefing his boss on everything from politics to finance to the use and deployment...
Even though Stoyanov is mostly a figurehead, his landslide election last November was read as a referendum against the Socialist government. What has to be put right, he says, searching for a compromise, is "not just a matter of mismanagement" but of "almost criminal, Mafia-like forms of governing the country." Stoyanov admits that if he cannot get the parties together, he will be legally bound to let Interior Minister Dobrev form a government. That could turn the next referendum over to the angry masses on the streets...
...director will continue his busy singing career, but he insists that he will be more than just a figurehead and that his outside connections can be an advantage for the company. "I know some of the people are giving money for productions because I am there," says Domingo, who last week was appearing in Vienna. "And I will take responsibility at any moment that it is required, even if it is a problem with unions or rediscussing contracts, so that I can add whatever I have learned in this business...