K is for Kings

In Act III, Scene ii of Shakespeare’s History Play, Richard II, the eponymous hero has a moment of epiphany.

For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings…


He continues in the same vein talking of all the pomp and power of Kings that disappears with the pricking of a pin:

How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison’d by their wives: some sleeping kill’d;
All murder’d: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear’d and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humour’d thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!

Had Duleep Singh, the last Maharaja of the Punjab, heard Richard spouting these sentiments, he’d have concurred whole-heartedly for the man on whose birth, there was a shower of gold, took his last breath in a decrepit hotel in Paris with nothing but memories for company. The King who once wore the Koh-i-noor on his arm was reduced to selling eggs on a farm!

And then of course, there is Saint Peter, who seems aggrieved of all Kings who demand entry into Heaven, especially those like George III and Louis XVI:

“No,” quoth the Cherub: “George the Third is dead.”
   “And who is George the Third?” replied the apostle:
“What George? what Third?” “The King of England,” said
   The angel. “Well! he won’t find kings to jostle
Him on his way; but does he wear his head?
   Because the last we saw here had a tustle,
And ne’er would have got into Heaven’s good graces,
Had he not flung his head in all our faces.

He was – if I remember –King of France

That head of his, which could not keep a crown
On earth, yet ventured in my face to advance
   A claim to those of martyrs — like my own:
If I had had my sword, as I had once
   When I cut ears off, I had cut him down; 
But having but my keys, and not my brand,
I only knocked his head from out his hand.

“And then he set up such a headless howl,
   That all the Saints came out and took him in;
And there he sits by Saint Paul, cheek by jowl;
   That fellow Paul — the parven—! The skin
Of Saint Bartholomew, which makes his cowl
   In heaven, and upon earth redeemed his sin,

So as to make a martyr, never sped
Better than did this weak and wooden head. 

“But had it come up here upon its shoulders,
   There would have been a different tale to tell:
The fellow-feeling in the Saint’s beholders
   Seems to have acted on them like a spell;
And so this very foolish head Heaven solders 
   Back on its trunk: it may be very well,
And seems the custom here to overthrow
Whatever has been wisely done below.”

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Have their been stories of kings that have impressed you? Do share.

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Entry for letter K.

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The images used above, are to the best of my knowledge in the public domain, but in case that is not so than please let me know and I’ll remove them.