Word: queens
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...very charming young woman." - Queen Mary...
Alexander Pushkin once wrote a story which concerned an old countess and her granddaughter, three cards and the young girl's lover. The old countess was called Pique-Dame (Queen of Spades) because years before as Belle of St. Petersburg she had attended masquerades in such a costume and because-this was only whispered about the court-she knew three cards by which a gambler could infallibly make his fortune. The soldier, Heran, loved Lisa, the granddaughter, but he had no money. The countess's secret preyed upon him and he hid himself one night in her room...
...barracks she came to him, hissed the secret of the cards and disappeared. Lisa disappeared too, to the bottom of the Neva because he would not heed her warnings against the gaming-table. There he twice won fabulous sums, but the third card was wrong. It was the Queen of Spades instead of the Ace of Hearts and on it grinned the ghoulish face of the old countess, urging him to his suicide...
...Queen Victoria wanted her Leopold to marry Frances, comely and rich. There followed a course of petty intrigues in which Jane Austen would have delighted. In the end Leopold married the lady of his choice and Frances got his equerry, Lord Brooke ("Brookie"). ". . . Owing to an ill-timed attack of measles our wedding did not come off until the following April." With trumpet's clap and liturgy they were wedded in Westminster Abbey, surrounded by people with fairy-book names...
Brookie and Frances led a good life. They knew everybody, they went everywhere; to the Rothschilds' in France, to the Duke of Edinburgh's, to see the Queen in London. At Warwick they kept the castle full of relations and bigwigs, gave sumptuous parties, showed visitors a little elephant that roamed in the house, an ant bear that slept with the Countess...