Word: thrones
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...last time Afghanistan pinned its hopes on Mohammed Zahir Shah, he was not much more than a boy. In 1933, as a 19-year-old Prince, he witnessed the assassination of his father, King Nadir Shah, and was called on to take the throne to spare his nation from potentially bloody turmoil. He would go on to rule Afghanistan for 40 years, bringing an era of relative peace and prosperity and unprecedented democratic reforms. Displayed prominently today in Zahir Shah's plush, carpeted living room in Rome is a 1949 photograph of himself in military uniform, his piercing dark eyes...
...with Abdullah serving as day-to-day ruler with the consensus of other powerful princes. Insiders say that tensions on issues like the pace of reform and cleaning up corruption simmer between Abdullah and other ranking princes, notably influential Defense Minister Prince Sultan, the next in line to the throne after Abdullah. "The Crown Prince is in an unenviable position," says a prominent Jidda businessman close to royal circles. "He is in power, but he doesn't have all the power...
...Camilla, before Andrew and Fergie went their separate wiggy ways, before Prince Harry discovered pot. To be precise, it was the 1950s, in the still lingering aftermath of the abdication of Edward VIII, when the young Queen Elizabeth II was gamely reinforcing the credibility--meaning the dullness--of the throne and her younger sister Margaret was straining at the leash...
...sister's coronation in 1953, the year after Townsend had obtained a divorce, when Margaret was seen brushing a bit of dust from his jacket, not the kind of thing that royalty ordinarily does for commoners. In a nation where few had forgiven Edward VIII for giving up his throne because he insisted on marrying a divorced woman, the prospect that Margaret might wed a divorced man led to a huge public uproar...
...shipped off to Brussels. When he returned to London two years later, Margaret was 25 and no longer required her sister's permission to marry. But she soon was informed by Parliament that marriage to Townsend would require that she surrender her royal income, renounce her claim to the throne and leave England for at least five years. Not long after that, she issued her famous statement that "mindful of the Church's teaching that Christian marriage is indissoluble," she had decided to give...