Word: throned
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...handsome, brave as a lion, as full of twists as a corkscrew. He was ambitious beyond belief, but never lost his temper or learned to spell. Through sheer brilliance he worked himself up to the rank of general. But it was not until Queen Anne came to the throne that John Churchill had the chance to astonish Europe. And even then, he would never have succeeded without the backing of his amazing wife Sarah...
...Pope fired some of their nastiest arrows at the glittering Marlboroughs. He bridles at the refusal of most Britons (which persists to this day) to regard the mighty pair with proper awe and admiration. To have boundless ambition, to become fabulous millionaires, to seize the power behind the throne coldly and calculatingly-these, as Rowse sees them, are not only natural characteristics in great men and women, but a small price to pay for national greatness and security. Be that as it may, the Marlboroughs, all of whose five sons died young, left to no one their remarkable gusto...
...Madame de Montespan: "Last night I dreamt, Madame, that we were on the grand stairs of Versailles: I was going up; you were coming down." The King dies, and several deep orchestral chords seem to roll a tombstone over his entire century. Then Louis XV is on the throne; his meeting with Pompadour is set off by a lilting love song. Music marks a new culture, as from the palace windows twang the pure, shrill notes of the harpsichord. Explains Narrator Boyer: "Grace succeeds grandeur...
...same stage of political ethics as Russia is enjoying today. Lord Protector Richard arrested and executed his brother's advisers. Conveniently, a friar preached a sermon on the ominous text: "Bastard slips shall not take root," whereupon Richard declared his brother's children illegitimate, and took the throne himself. For a short time, the little prince and his brother were seen by passers-by "shooting at butts ... on the Tower greens." Then they disappeared. Atween Two Feather Beds. "Some said," writes a contemporary chronicler, "they were murdered atween two feather beds, some said they were drowned in malvesey...
Nevertheless, Kendall argues that Richard took the throne not because he was an unscrupulous villain but because the nation needed a strong ruler. Richard reigned for two years before he got his comeuppance. During that time he "laid down a coherent program of legal enactments, maintained an orderly society, and actively promoted the well-being of his subjects." Besides, murder was "the accustomed fate of deposed monarchs . . . Edward II was murdered, perhaps by a red hot spit thrust up his bowel. Richard II was starved, poisoned or hacked by steel . . . The feeble-witted Henry VI ... put to silence." So, guilty...