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Edward Hyde (1609-1674) may have been the most miserable speechwriter in history. I don’t mean that he was the worst: a fifth century Roman orator named Sidonius Apollinarus has that distinction and could be the reason that “ad nauseum” is a Latin term. No, Edward Hyde was likely the most frustrated, unappreciated and persecuted practitioner of “executive communications.” (That is the corporate designation for speechwriters; it sounds impressive but discreetly vague, avoiding the impression that our clients require ventriloquists.)

Our poor, sorry Hyde wrote speeches for Britain’s King Charles I. If you are familiar with his Majesty’s autopsy report, you can deduce that the speeches obviously were not a success. No, Hyde was not beheaded, too; speechwriters are never worth killing. But Hyde endured humiliation, disgrace and exile–and that was by his fellow Royalists.

Charles I felt that he had the Divine Right to bully and suppress Parliament; however, he also felt that good manners required some justification for his conduct. Of course, you can not expect a busy King to spend hours scribbling on parchment, nor could you really expect a Stuart to write an intelligible paragraph. So Edward Hyde offered his literary assistance to the King. Hyde had been one of Parliament’s few moderates. He was neither an obtuse Royalist nor a fulminating Puritan. When the Civil War began, however, he preferred traditional tyranny to the unforeseen excesses of a Parliamentary mob.

Working with Hyde, the King issued a series of proclamations and pamphlets that justified the Royalist cause in a persuasive and moderate voice. Charles may even have believed those balanced and temperate words while he was with Hyde. However, when Charles was in the company of his more belligerent advisors–particularly his battle-axe of a wife, the malleable monarch did what they told him. That created a dismaying dichotomy: Charles had the voice of reason and the actions of a thug. Worse for Charles, his belligerent advisors were far better at starting wars than winning them.

But the war faction did have one success: blaming Hyde. His moderate writings allegedly sullied the dignity of the monarchy: a king does not need reason. If you believed the Queen, Hyde was as great a danger as Cromwell. For his demeaning rationality and treacherous temperance, Hyde became a pariah at the Court. A man of Hyde’s character was obviously unfit for government, but he did seem a suitable choice as the official guardian (babysitter) for the Prince of Wales.

Unfortunately, being the moral authority to the future Charles II, Hyde had another hopeless task. At least, Hyde was not required to write speeches to justify and rationalize the young Prince’s misadventures in Britain and France, the debts and the illegitimate offspring. (If only he had, Hyde would have been the pioneer of Restoration Comedy. ) In fact, after the restoration of the monarchy, Charles II bestowed an earldom on his hapless but loyal guardian. The new Earl of Clarendon was further appointed to the Royal Council where he once again proved a political naif but a convenient scapegoat. Hyde ended up in exile again; he had plenty of free time to write his memoirs. On this day in 1674, Hyde had a permanent writer’s block.

At least Hyde died with an Earl’s title and income. Most of us will not have that comforting a retirement package. Edward Hyde may have been most miserable speechwriter in history but he was a successful failure.

The Marquis de La Fayette knew that there was more to life than just the minuet and syphilis. Marie-Joseph-Paul-Yves-Roch-Gilbert Du Motier–as he was known to his friends–wanted to help the American colonists in their heroic struggle for liberty, so long as he could be a major general. However, 19 year-olds were rarely granted that rank–even in an army where competence was irrelevant. Generals usually invested years of fawning sycophancy over some royal dolt or his favorite mistress.

But America was a land of opportunities for the ambitious teenager. He simply had to find the right official to bribe. Of the American emissaries, Arthur Lee was inconveniently ethical. Benjamin Franklin was skeptical although he might have been willing to let Madame Lafayette persuade him. (If historians had to choose”The Father of Our Country“, Franklin would be named in the paternity suit.) However, Silas Deane had an open mind and hand.

Deane was an operator. When the French government wanted to covertly supply the Americans with arms and money, Deane handled the smuggling and the money-laundering. A man with such entrepreneurial skills might be expected to have a few lucrative sidelines. So, if a rich teenager wanted to be a major general, it was just matter of paperwork. The Continental Congress had not given him that authority, but Deane was never one to be stymied by legality. On this day in 1776, Deane conferred on Lafayette the rank of major general.

Of course, the Continental Congress was somewhat surprised when a French teenager arrived in Philadephia and expected command of an army. The Congress was starting to catch on to Deane’s sidelines; it seems that he had issued a number of questionable commissions. Deane was recalled from Paris in November, 1777 and tried for financial irregularities. However, he was too clever to be convicted.

As for Lafayette, he could not be taken seriously but he proved a very likable young man. Congress did not have the heart to be rude. As long as he agreed not to be paid and stayed under the adult supervision of George Washington, Lafayette would be allowed the title of major general. The young marquis could feel like a hero, and George Washington got the world’s fanciest valet.

From a Russian perspective, the fight seemed fair. Outside the walls of Kiev was a besieging army of Mongols, but within Kiev there were 400 churches, all spiritually fortified with icons and relics. A miracle should have been effortless: a battalion of sword-wielding angels or at least a timely plague in the Mongol camp. The devout Russian garrison expected no less; otherwise, the outnumbered and beleaguered force should have surrendered when Mongols emissaries had demanded it.

In fact, a miracle was all that the Kievans could expect. No Russian army was coming to their relief; there was no more Russian army. The Mongols had demonstrated its customary exterminating efficiency; at least the buzzards ate well. And the Mongols would be impervious to the Russian winter. Raised in the Gobi Desert and inured to Siberia, the Mongols would have regarded December in Southern Russia as a vacation. So, the Kievans should have been reconciled to a servile surrender. Yet, they felt so confident and chipper that they murdered the Mongol diplomats.

Perhaps the Mongols were supposed to be intimidated by such bad manners. They weren’t. It turns out that their manners were even worse. When they stormed Kiev, on December 6, 1240, they massacred or enslaved the population of 50,000, then leveled the city. Kiev certainly was worth looting. Check your 13th century editions of “Let’s Go Europe.” Even with a second-hand Byzantine culture, Kiev would have been richer and more sophisticated than Paris and London.

Kiev was the undisputed cultural center and tenuous political capital of feudal Russia. After the Mongols, however, Kiev would have been hard to find. In the wake of this annihilation, the remnant Russian culture shifted from its southern, Black Sea orientation to the more isolated, less devastated principalities in the North.

What had been the heartland of Kievan Russ was no longer even Russian. The Mongols settled in the south, creating a Khanate along the Black Sea. And Poland occupied the western region. Under this Polish rule and its occidental influence, a hybrid culture with a distinct identity emerged: Ukrainian.

Among the remaining Russian states, Novgorod was so far in the northwest that the Mongols never reached it. (Out of prudence, the city still paid tribute to the Khan.) Its safe distance from the Mongols, however, also made it ominously close to the Swedes and the Germans. (This might make a good Eisenstein film.) But when it wasn’t fighting for its survival, Novgorod was willing to trade with the West.

And then there was Moscovy, battered but standing, isolated, brooding, plotting and waiting. Any resemblance between its policy and the Russian character may not be a coincidence.

December 4, 1829: 

In the good old days, one of the few pleasures of being in an airport was being accosted by Hare Krishnas. If I had the spare time–and the airlines always guaranteed that I did–I would ever so innocently ask my would-be missionary about the practice of “suttee.”

Western literature has its macabre romance of a widow dying of a broken heart. In India, suttee ensured it. The widow was expected to hurl herself on her late husband’s funeral pyre. The practice was limited to the upper castes; after all, who else could afford the pyrotechnics.  The dutiful kindling was promised a higher reincarnation–probably as a man. 

Although suttee is now being espoused by University of Chicago economists as a way to “reform” social security, the British were appalled by it.  Using Imperialism in a rare instance of benevolence, the British Governor General outlawed suttee on this day in 1829.  (Whitehall debated his decision but finally concurred.)

Even today there are still reports of suttee in India, but it is no longer officially sanctioned or included in tourist itineraries.

p.s. Of course, widowers were never expected to throw themselves on a funeral pyre. They were free to remarry a future piece of kindling.

p.p.s. The Taj Mahal was built by a Moslem.

Of course, the Emperor Alexius I would have preferred a son. But, knowing Byzantine women, he had no doubt that his infant daughter Anna would have a natural affinity for power. Yes, she would need a husband for propriety’s sake, but she would be perfectly capable of ruling through her hapless mate. So Anna Comnena, born December 1st in 1083, received the education and attitudes of an empress. By the time she was four, the princess knew her place in the world–at its apex.

But then the future Empress was undone by an act of treachery: the arrival of a little brother. Through the accident of gender, this unaccomplished infant replaced Anna as the heir to the Empire. Worse, this usurper had the further effrontery to survive the usual childhood diseases; Prince John grew to become a pleasant, dutiful if bland young man. There was nothing about him his sister could slander. Nonetheless, having a Byzantine aptitude for conspiracy, Anna did her best to disinherit her brother. The women in the royal family, including the Empress, sided with the dynamic Anna over the dull John. However, the Emperor Alexis had the final word and it was on his death bed in 1118. While his imminent widow and indignant daughter begged that the throne pass to Anna, the dying Emperor anointed his son.

As the ruler of Byzantium, John had to contend with invading Turks, encroaching Crusaders and a relentless sister; but only one of those three wanted him dead. And Anna wasn’t wasting time. The first assassination attempt was at their father’s funeral, but the Emperor was warned in time. Anna next choreographed a coup and murder at the summer palace. The conspirators assembled there, awaiting a signal from Anna’s husband. (Yes, Anna succumbed to that social expectation.) However, her husband decided that he actually liked the Emperor–certainly less frightening than Anna–and foiled the plot.

Something had to be done about Anna; she was impossible to ignore. The Emperor would have been entitled to execute his sister or at least subject her to the mutilations that were a Byzantine specialty. (Eyes, nose, tongue–when you lost face in Constantinople, it was literal.) But drab John also was remarkably merciful. He was content to have Anna banished to a comfortable convent for the rest of her life. Of course, John also knew that a sedentary existence would be the ultimate torture for his dynamic sibling.

She would spend her remaining 35 years in that convent: from 1118 to 1153.  But if Anna was banished from the Court, the politics and the glory, she found a way to relive it all. In fact, she attained a greatness that she might never have achieved on the throne. In her confinement, Anna wrote the definitive history of her era: “The Alexiad.” The chronicle of her father’s reign, it relates the history of the Byzantine Empire and the First Crusade from the unique and invaluable perspective of a member of the imperial family. Her account of the Crusaders is especially edifying. Through Anna, we know the Byzantine reaction and attitude to their dismaying and quite unwelcome allies: the Crusaders were more barbaric than the Turks and just as dangerous.

But it is Anna’s personal anecdotes and insights that distinguishes “The Alexiad” among histories of the period. The young princess saw, heard and all-too-often smelled the leading figures of the Western armies as they passed through Constantinople and imposed themselves on the Byzantine Court. Even after the passing of decades, the middle-aged writer still nursed a teenage crush on one of those fascinating barbarians: the tall, handsome and dangerous Bohemund of Southern Italy…”He had about him a certain charm…there was a hard, savage quality in his aspect–owing I suppose to his great stature and to his eyes: even his laugh sounded like a threat to others.”

(That was written eight centuries before Judith Krantz and Barbara Steele. No, the rest of “The Alexiad” is not as racy; otherwise, it would have been made into a movie by now.)

If Anna had become Empress, she would have been just a medieval Arianna Huffington. They were common enough in Byzantine history. In failing, however, Anna attained a greatness that eclipses her brother’s claim in history. Yes, he was the Emperor–and a good one–but he is best remembered for being the brother of Anna Comnena.

November 30, 1700:  Peter the Great Almost Loses His Adjective

In 1700, Peter the Great, along with the kings of Denmark and Saxony, expected to take candy from a baby. But the baby almost killed them. The candy was actually Sweden and the baby was its teenage king. Today’s Sweden is the kind of country that would make a perfect suburb: placid but sophisticated. (Many of us fondly remember that Swedish films had nudity when Hollywood still apparently believed in storks.) But three centuries ago, Sweden was the bully of the Baltic. With the best army and navy in the North, the overachieving Swedes had won control of Norway, Finland, the Baltic States, and most of the area that would have been Poland’s and Germany’s coasts.

However, Sweden’s resentful neighbors saw their chance for vengeance and territory when a fifteen year-old ascended the throne in Stockholm in 1697. His youth was not the only perceived handicap of Charles XII; the young man was very strange. Some thought him “backward”; we might diagnose him as autistic. He never mastered the charm or the etiquette of the Court; he had no interest in the pleasures and vices that were his royal privilege. All Charles ever wanted to do was to play soldier; but, as it turned out, he was very good at it.

When, in February 1700, Russia, Denmark and Saxony declared war on Sweden and its callow king, the allies must have based their strategy on an accountant’s assessment. Their amassed armies far outnumbered Sweden’s forces; the Swedes would inevitably be overwhelmed. However, Charles did not wait for the inevitable. He attacked. Denmark’s proximity was its misfortune; by the summer of 1700 an overrun, devastated Denmark was suing for peace and ceding more territory to Sweden. In fact, Denmark was lucky that Charles acceded to a peace treaty. He didn’t like treaties because they required him to stop fighting. At least, Charles found solace in that he still had a war with Russia and Saxony.

A Russian army threatened to wrest Estonia and Latvia from Sweden. Peter the Great commanded an impressive number–40,000 men–but the invasion had accomplished little more than trespassing. Cannons and muskets require aiming, but no one had provided the Russian horde with adequate training. Furthermore, many of the Russian soldiers did not even have muskets; they were armed with clubs, axes and halberds, weapons only fairly effective in the 15th century. (But Peter’s officers had the latest fashions in uniforms.) Charles felt that 10,000 of his highly trained soldiers could handle the Russian horde, and he proved it this day–November 30– at the battle of Narva in 1700.

With half of his force dead or captured and the rest scattered, his country at the mercy of an unscathed Swedish army, Peter was prepared for any demand and every humiliation; but he still was amazed by Charles. The Swedish king simply marched away to begin an invasion of Saxony. This was not an act of mercy or generosity but contempt. Charles thought so little of Russia that he snubbed it; he wanted his enemies to have some fight in them. So Russia could recuperate before Charles would demolish it again.

Peter certainly had underestimated the young Swedish king; but now Charles underestimated the Tsar. Having seen–and barely surviving–a highly trained army, Peter proved an apt student. Over the next few years, while Charles was rampaging through central Europe, Peter rebuilt the Russian army along the model of its Swedish nemesis. If Ikea had a military catalog, Peter would have bought out the store. By 1703, the Russian army was ready for a rematch, and this time it successfully invaded the Baltic States. On newly acquired territory along the gulf of Finland, the Tsar ordered the construction of a fortress-with room for expansion–named St. Petersburg.

Yet Charles ignored the reviving Russian menace. He was preoccupied with a relatively unimportant but endless campaign in Saxony and Poland. Did it really matter who would be the next figurehead king of a powerless Poland? Inexplicably, it did to Charles. By 1708, however, he finally turned his attention to Russia; and this time he was going to oust Peter. To do so, Charles would lead his army into the heartland of Russia, through the Ukraine and on to Moscow. At least, that was the plan. His over-extended, precarious supply lines might have seemed an obstacle, but Charles expected to be feted, supplied, and reinforced by the Ukrainians and Cossacks. They were known to hate the Russians, so wouldn’t they regard Charles as their liberator? If so, their gratitude did not extend to fighting along side the Swedes.

Of course, Charles stayed on the attack. What did it matter if the Russian army at Poltava was three times the size of his force? Vell–as they might say in Swedish, eight years of training did make a substantial difference in the Tsar’s army. Most of Charles’ army was either killed or captured. Now, if Charles wouldn’t end a war when he was winning, imagine how he felt when he was losing. Riding south, he avoided capture and managed to get to the Ottoman Empire. There, the celebrity refugee convinced the Turks to declare war on Russia.

Peter welcomed this additional war as a chance to advance Russia’s southern frontiers to the Black Sea. He was so eager that he repeated the same mistakes that Charles had made at Poltava. Now, it was a Russian army deep in enemy territory, with its supplies cut off, and badly outnumbered. There was one difference, however, in Peter’s disastrous loss at Pruth in 1711. He, along with his entire army, was captured. The Turks were in a position to exact any terms that they wanted; and their ally Charles was insisting on the restoration on everything he had lost. However, after two years of Charles, the Turks realized that they did not like him, either. All they asked of the captured Tsar was that he return any territory that the Russians had previously won from the Turks…and that Charles must be allowed safe passage through Russia back to Sweden. Yes, the Turks were that eager to get rid of him. In fact, they placed him under house arrest until he got the message.

When back in Sweden, Charles simply scrounged whatever he could to continue the war. He was oblivious to the fact that the war was irretrievably lost, and that his strickened country had neither the manpower nor the resources left to accommodate his bloody hobby. Of course, Charles would not be content until he was killed in battle; in 1718, in a pointless siege of a Norwegian town, someone finally obliged him. The marksman is unknown; it might even have been an exhausted Swede.

History has had a number of great yet self-destructive generals. Charles XII is unique among them in that he is so colorless. Perhaps that is the consequence of being Swedish.   History remembers him as “The Lion of the North” but he could have been an idiot savant whose savoir happened to be war.

November 24th

What was Charles Darwin writing? It had been five years since he had mesmerized Victorian Society with his latest revelation on the life of barnacles: “A Monograph on the Fossil Balanidæ and Verrucidæ of Great Britain.” Yes, it was a hard act to follow, the public was insatiable and Darwin himself was daunted by the prospect. But, after four treatises on barnacles, the critics were starting to dismiss Darwin as a one-subclass-of-crustaceans hack. That hurt.

He did have some notes from a sea voyage that he had taken 20 years earlier, and he had long pondered his observations of the wildlife of the Galapagos. That was it! Darwin would write a cookbook of finch recipes. The Galapagos natives had dozens of ways to prepare the bird, and the cuisine varied from island to island. In fact, he was amazed by the number and disparity of recipes; how and why did they originate? Darwin concluded that there was a scientific explanation for the evolution of all cuisines: an evolutionary process called “nutritional selection.” And so Darwin presented his theory in “On The Origin of Spices.”

(By no coincidence, the daguerrotypes of the prepared dishes would showcase the tableware of a certain British manufacturer. But that flagrant product placement was the least that the grandson of Josiah Wedgwood could do for his trust fund.)

Unfortunately, the publisher rejected Darwin’s manuscript explaining “The English public has never been interested in food, but we do love an animal story. Perhaps if you rewrote your work with an emphasis on the finches–and without eating the more likable ones–I am sure that you can do for those plucky little fellows what you have done for barnacles.”

So adapting his work to the publisher’s whims, (How else can a writer survive?) Charles Darwin wrote “Origin Twist: The Evolutionary Adventures of Phineas Finch.”

All right, it did not quite happen that way…although the gentle Mr. Darwin might have found it a more congenial approach to introduce evolution to Victorian society. Darwin had no delusions as to the public reaction to “On The Origin of Species”: the outrage, the personal attacks and the less than flattering caricatures in Punch. At least, the Church of England could not burn him at the stake. In fact, the dread of the ensuing controversy had deterred Darwin for many years from publishing his research on evolution. He probably hoped to avoid it altogether, keeping evolution a secret among the scientific community.

Yes, Darwin did not discover evolution; he merely divulged it. By the 19th century, science had becoming increasingly skeptical of the Bible’s explanation for Creation. If nothing else, the growing variety of fossils was raising doubts and questions. Geologists discovered fish skeletons in rock layers on mountains. Genesis did not explain that. Biologists were finding ample evident of extinct species. Had Adam killed them all or had the animals drown in Noah’s Flood? But science preferred to regard the accumulating data as anecdotes on a ribald topic that would only shock the public.

If evolution was science’s dirty secret, then Charles Darwin was–to put it a Sixties’ context–the kid with the best collection of Playboys. With his studies on geology, British barnacles and the wildlife of the Galapagos, he was the acknowledged expert on “you-know-what.” Among his scientist friends, he was even sharing his theory of an underlying principle of (not to to said aloud) evolution. Of course, he knew and dreaded the reaction if his theory ever began public. Natural selection was tantamount to denying God’s precise blueprint of Creation. Darwin was an affable man of fragile health, so he lacked both the temperament and the strength for controversy. To avoid the uproar, he was quite content to keep his theory a secret among friends. It remained so for more than ten years until 1856, when Darwin found himself forced to choose between infamy and obscurity.

That year, Darwin learned that a young British naturalist in Borneo had arrived at a theory of evolution based on a natural selection of the fittest member of a species. This unexpected rival, Alfred Russell Wallace, could not have known of Darwin’s long-standing but secret theory; the two men did not frequent the same drawing rooms. However, using the same empirical perspective, Wallace simply had arrived at the same conclusion as Darwin. Furthermore, being young and unestablished, Wallace was not the least reticent about being the center of controversy. He contacted the British scientific societies about his proposed paper on evolution, and that news reached Darwin.

Even then, Darwin was loathe to react and risk any uproar. He first wanted to see what Wallace actually had to say. Ironically, within a year, he knew. Wallace had written to him with an outline of his ideas. In his communications with the scientific community, Wallace had been told of Darwin’s expertise in evolution. So, looking for guidance, the chicken wrote to the fox. In fairness to Darwin, he never discouraged or disparaged Wallace; he analyzed his rival’s work with a remarkable and laudable objectivity. Wallace actually appreciated Darwin’s help and continued the correspondence, never realizing that he had goaded Darwin into writing his own work on the subject.

Evolution was no longer going to be a secret. Darwin had long hoped to avoid the controversy, but he would be damned if Wallace’s research would take precedence over his. Resigned to the infamy, Charles Darwin finally published his findings, “On The Origin of Species”, on November 24, 1859.

As for Wallace’s barely remembered role in history, “survival of the fittest” apparently applies to scientists, too.

November 23rd

If you were reading the death notices from 505 years ago, you would have been intrigued by Bona of Savoy’s obituary: she was almost Queen of England and sorta Duchess of Milan. Perhaps Bona (1449-1503) was born to be an underachiever and runner-up. She did have the abysmal timing to be a younger child in the Ducal House of Savoy. The older siblings got the properties and the better marriages. For instance, her older sister Charlotte was married to the King of France. True, he was old (20 years Charlotte’s senior), creepy and cheap; but he still had a status job. (He was also a superb king, but that would be of interest only to his subjects and historians.)

But then Prince Charming–or at least his ambassador–promised to rescue Bona. In 1464 the precariously throned Edward IV of England needed a wife, preferably one who could include a powerful ally in her dowry. The French had been lending support to Edward’s Lancastrian rivals, but a marriage to Bona might alter the Gallic bias. Edward’s chief advisors were encouraging the match, especially the Earl of Warwick. In fact, Warwick was in Paris to negotiate the marriage. Bona should have been enthusiastic about the prospective union. She would not only get a throne but a chance to finally outdo Charlotte. King Edward was young and said to be the most handsome man in England. Warwick, Bona and the French Court thought they had reached an agreement when some contradictory news arrived from London. The most handsome man in England had just married the most beautiful woman in England. Edward had affronted Bona, sabotaged a French alliance and betrayed the Earl of Warwick–and all for a penniless widow with a large, ravenous family.

France would continue to support the Lancastrians, and the Earl of Warrick was about to change sides. The next round in the Wars of the Roses was ready to begin.

However, our concern is Bona. Whether as compensation for the aggrieved or banishment of an embarrassment, the French Court now eagerly sought some acceptable marriage for her. The ruling family in Milan was receptive; the Sforza welcomed any class and legitimacy they could get. Francesco Sforza, a successful mercenary commander, had taken control of Lombardy in 1447. While his power could not be disputed, he was not acknowledged as the rightful Duke of Milan. (Of course, people addressed him as Duke to his face; if Al Capone demanded to be called Mayor of Chicago, would you have argued with him?) Francisco was illegitimate as was his wife; so the status-craving Sforza were eager to have an aristocrat–with royal connections–for a daughter-in-law.

Nonetheless, the negotiations took four years; the Sforza knew how to bargain. But in 1468 Bona became the wife of Galeazzo Sforza. He succeeded his father as the self-proclaimed Duke of Milan and showed himself to be a patron of art and torture. His assassination in 1476 may have only been a surprise to him. Galeazzo’s body was treated as a pinata, but the Sforza family was still in control. (They apparently did not miss him, either.) During the marriage, Bona had produced the prerequisite son, and the 7 year-old was now the sorta Duke of Milan. Bona was supposed to be Regent, but her brother-in-law Ludovico Sforza really was not one for formalities. After a short civil war, Bona was exiled and Uncle Ludovico established himself as regent for his nephew.

Would you be surprised that Uncle Ludovico outlived his nephew? Actually, to Uncle Lud’s credit, the young “Duke” lived for 18 years in comfortable confinement; those comforts included considerable latitude because the young man apparently died of syphilis in 1494.

As for Bona, she was a has-been at 31. Since she did not possess a conspiratorial nature, she was never involve in any political intrigues and so she also never had to hire a foodtaster. In the remaining two decades of her life, she was content to be a patron of the arts. And today’s museums would indicate that she had good taste.

p.s. What happened to the most beautiful woman in England? Her name was Elizabeth Woodville–England’s first queen Elizabeth–and in 1483 she found herself in a similar plight to Bona’s. Edward IV had died, leaving a young son as his heir and a fight-to-the-death over who would be the regent. Elizabeth also had a hostile brother-in-law; and her sons would not live long enough to get syphilis.

The fecundity of Queen Victoria and the diligence of Prince Albert produced nine children. In fact, their first child was born 40 weeks after the wedding. Princess Victoria debuted this day in 1840. Of course, she went into the family business and was married off by the time she was 18 to Frederick the Crown Prince of Prussia. Although named for her mother, Princess Victoria was the transgender replica of her father. She possessed an intelligent mind, a sterling character, industrious nature and progressive political sentiments. Otto von Bismarck immediately regarded her as an enemy and kept her and the like-minded Frederick isolated and powerless.

The ruthless chancellor even determined the upbringing and education of their children, becoming the seminal influence on the young Hohenzollerns. The future Wilhelm II was imbued with Bismarck’s mannerisms, militarism and politics; he just never acquired the Old Chancellor’s genius. However frustrated, Victoria and Frederick awaited their inevitable succession to the throne, when they could undo the worst of Bismarck’s polices. And wait they did. The reigning Kaiser Wilhelm I proved adamantly long-lived (1797-1888). When Frederick finally succeeded, he was dying of cancer. His reign lasted 88 days. Bismarck’s reign continued, in person until 1890, and in influence until 1918. Victoria, the Dowager Empress of Germany, really didn’t like her son and spent much of her later years staying with her far more congenial family in Britain. She and her mother, two elderly widows, kept each other company. Both Victorias died in 1901, the daughter six months after the mother. With more love of pomp than filial affection, Wilhelm gave his mother a state funeral and interred her in the dynastic tombs at Potsdam.

The influence of Wilhelm’s English heritage can be succinctly summarized: he spoke the language and he wanted a navy.

Today is the anniversary of the grand opening of St. Peter’s Basilica. So, if you are in Rome, drop in for the festivities. Free Eucharist gelato! Watch the Swiss Guard make balloon crucifixes for the bambinos. And today only, there will be no penance for sitting in the Pieta’s lap. (Come on, you know you always wanted to!)

According to legend, on this day in 326 the Emperor Constantine was at the groundbreaking ceremony and shoveled full 12 bags of dirt, one for each apostle. He really might have had a need for consecrated ground, if only to bury his recently executed trophy wife and oldest son. (The young man and his stepmother apparently got along too well, and Constantine never mastered the Christian concept of forgiving. To his credit, however, Constantine had had a trophy stepmother, too, and he never hit on her; in fact, he didn’t even slaughter his half-siblings when he finally got the chance.)

And, if Constantine had been in Rome for the groundbreaking of St. Peter’s, that must have been a miracle. The Roman army, a second army of contractors and slaves, and the uprooted populace of Byzantium had the impression that the Emperor was among them, laying the ground for a new city modestly named Constantinople. However, Constantine at least was in Rome in spirit and money, financing the new basilica. He even furnished the new church with a supply of relics and artifacts, purchased by his mother Helena on her legendary shopping expeditions. For example, one of his gifts was a pair of columns from Solomon’s Temple.

Of course, those columns were actually Greek and a thousand years younger than Solomon’s Temple, but the Imperial Mother was not exactly a classical scholar. In fact, she was a Greek barmaid who had become the concubine of Constantine’s father–and dumped when Pater needed a more prestigious mate; but Constantine proved a devoted son. So Helena was a gullible customer; but like most nouveau riche, she also could be a terror. When the Imperial Mother wanted the relic of a particular saint or some sacred artifact, it had to be supplied or else. A luckless merchant was tortured until he disclosed the location of the True Cross. He finally remembered that the holy wood was located at the bottom of a well. (As the holy terror of sale clerks, St. Helena might be the patron saint of Jewish Princesses.)

So, with Constantine’s money and Helena’s decorating, St. Peter’s Basilica began construction. It took seven years to complete, and allowing for accumulated additions over the next thousand years, the basilica stood until 1506. By then, the Church did not meet Renaissance standards and so was torn down. The replacement, the one we know and tour, took 120 years to complete. (The Holy Roman Emperors just weren’t as generous as the real Roman Emperors.) But with a commendable sense of history, the new St Peter’s reopened for business on this day in 1626.