Word: xiii
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...chore was royal, and it was the third which President Doumergue has had to do in as many weeks. First Spain's King Alfonso XIII came to say goodbye, then Albert King of the Belgians, and now Sweden's lank Gustaf V was at the door. All these kings no doubt meant well, but in their gracious goodbyes lurked an unintended sting, as though they said...
King by the Grace of God, His Catholic Majesty Alfonso XIII suddenly found himself this week no longer King by the Will of the People. In the first election Spain has had for eight years the People hurled an avalanche of Republican ballots against the Crown...
...candidates failed to carry even the constituency in which his palace stood, lost the Capital as a whole, lost Seville, Barcelona, Cordova, lost all the provincial capitals except three, lost what was supposed to be the invincible Catholic stronghold of the Crown, Toledo. "I feel," said deeply religious Alfonso XIII, "as though I had gone to visit a friend and, in reaching his house, learned that he was dead...
Just as the last King of Siam lay dying his only child was born. Had the babe been a boy and born a few hours later it would have been "born a king" like Spain's Alfonso XIII. Had the dying monarch been polygamous he might have had a son long before...
...quite so well known is the fact that Alfonso XIII is a fatalist with a great deal of personal courage and a macabre sense of humor. His pride is his private collection of objects which have been used in attempts to assassinate him. In neat glass cases are the poisoned feeding bottle which nearly did him in before he was a year old; a stone on which he nearly split his head as a boy; an assassin's rusty knife; the skeleton of the horse that was killed by a bomb in Paris as he drove with President Loubet...