'He were a dark prince, and infinitely suspicious, and his times full of secret conspiracies and troubles', Sir Francis Bacon
A biography of Henry VII, what an awful money-grabbing man. I was trying to think of an English monarch I liked this morning when I finished reading it, as they’ve nearly all been vicious or venal or lazy or murderous or tyrannical or diseased or debauched, or any combination of the above. The best I could come up with was George III, an awful king who lost America and trampled all over civil liberties, but was a family man at least. Maybe I’m just naïve and missing the point, and you need to be a bastard to be an effective monarch for the Greater Good. It just too often seems to be about the Greater Glory of the monarch for that to be true, though. It is interesting that medieval monarchs managed to combine slaughter and despotism with an intense spirituality and dedication to God. God and Kings, eh? What a recipe for disaster. No wonder no one sings the national anthem other than the swivel-eyed.
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