Word: thrones
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...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...
This obstetrician's nightmare is not confirmed by the records, which only say that Richard was a small, sickly infant, eleventh child of "quiet, solid" Richard, Duke of York. He was still a negligible, unnoticed boy when his big, handsome brother chopped his way to the throne as Edward IV. Richard became a Knight of the Bath and of the Garter. He was then nine. Next year he became Admiral of England. Ireland and Aquitaine. When he was 16, he wrote a letter asking a friend to lend him 100 pounds. That is substantially all that the records have...
...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...
Legend has it that the first emperor of Japan was descended from the sun and the sea, and ascended the throne on Feb.11, 660 B.C.* During the 26 centuries since. Japanese governments have often used the legend as an anchor when storms rocked the ship of state. During the deadly gale of World War II, the government played up the legend to bolster morale, even forced eminent scholars into backing the "divine nation" story...