Word: xiv
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...letter of 1745 in which the distinctly anticlerical skeptic Voltaire, praising a book written by Pope Benedict XIV, writes "allow me very humbly to kiss your holy feet and to ask with the deepest respect your benediction...
...censors threatened to squeeze all the genius out of the play before he could bring it to the stage. Moliere, bristling with artistic integrity, refused to change a single alexandrine. The play remained locked away. After five years, the playwright had added a few more lines flattering King Louis XIV, although he resisted substantial changes in the nature of the farce. He refused many more times to soften the sting of his wit, which he directed at the church, the aristocracy, the literary establishment--or anyone within reach...
...countless baskets of green plastic grass, jelly beans have never ranked high in the American sweet-tooth sweepstakes. Now, with Ronald Reagan in the White House, they seem fated to achieve the luster that the praline of sugar and nuts enjoyed in the court of France's Louis XIV.* Jelly bean consumption is jumping, not only in the capital but throughout the rest of the country as well...
Spaniards did not always have such confidence in Juan Carlos, a direct descendant of the Bourbon King Louis XIV and Queen Victoria. Once described as "the son Franco never had," Juan Carlos had been hand-picked by the Generalissimo as his heir for a modern Spain. With foresight Franco had instructed the future King that "you will have to manage in another way than I do." Yet, despite a reputation for libertarian ideals, Juan Carlos raised few expectations when he became King at age 37, two days after Franco's death. Indeed, political wags cynically dubbed the shy Commander...
Where he once delighted in gunning his Citroen through Paris traffic to lose his police escort for the evening, Giscard is now nearly as distant and imperious as Louis XIV. He has, for instance, decreed that when he dines, no one except a head of state or Mme. Giscard may sit opposite him. The President, now openly referred to as "the Monarch," and his family are served before any of the guests...