kings

Well, what do they all amount to, these kings and captains and bishops and lawyers and such like? They just leave you in the ditch to bleed to death; and the next thing is, you meet them down there, for all the airs they give themselves.

Because a man plays a king superbly well does not mean that he would make a good king.

Those candle flames were like the lives of men. So fragile. So deadly. Left alone, they lit and warmed. Let run rampant, they would destroy the very things they were meant to illuminate. Embryonic bonfires, each bearing a seed of destruction so potent it could tumble cities and dash kings to their knees.

Yes, King Eirik, I can't do this alone. I'm not a knight or even a fighter for that matter. I'm just a normal boy, who is looking for his Grandfather.

Look at me!" he would shout as he ran laughing through the halls of Storm's End. "Look at me, I'm a dragon," or "Look at me, I'm a wizard," or "Look at me, look at me, I'm the rain

Am I supposed to feel so much awe and so on about the Godking? After all, he's just a man ... He's about fifty years old, and he's bald. And I'll bet he has to cut his toenails too like any other man. I know perfectly well he's a god, too. But what I think is, he'll be much godlier after he's dead.

I know perfectly well he's a god, too. But what I think is he'll be much godlier after he's dead.

When a society begins to lack men that, that they stand up against the collapse of equity in their land that is the kind of thing that brings sorrow to the heart of our King

Staying for your children is noble. However, staying with someone that teaches your children that "selective" evilness is okay is mental illness.

If you could disagree with kings, were gods so far above?

This light of history is pitiless; it has a strange and divine quality that, luminous as it is, and precisely because it is luminous, often casts a shadow just where we saw a radiance; out of the same man it makes two different phantoms, and the one attacks and punishes the other, the darkness of the despot struggles with the splendor of the captain. Hence a truer measure in the final judgment of the nations. Babylon violated diminishes Alexander; Rome enslaved diminishes Caesar; massacred Jerusalem diminishes Titus. Tyranny follows the tyrant. Woe to the man who leaves behind a shadow that bears his form.

Most of the mess that is called history comes about because kings and presidents cannot be satisfied with a nice chicken and a good loaf of bread.

There is a darkness in you. In all of us, probably. Beasts we keep chained. Ordinary men have to keep the chains strong, for if we let the beast loose then society will turn upon us with fiery vengeance. Kings though...well, who is there to turn upon them? So the chains are made of straw. It is the curse of kings, Helikaon, that they can become monsters. And they invariably do.

In the privacy of my dreams, I'm a warrior.

It's not you worries me. The king is a good man, and an old friend, but it has been a long time, and kings change. Even more than other people, kings change.

Everybody must be managed. Queens must be managed. Kings must be managed, for men want managing almost as much as women, and that's saying a good deal.

I know I have but the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a king of England too.

This is what you get when you found a political system on the family values of Henry VIII. At a point in the not-too-remote future, the stout heart of Queen Elizabeth II will cease to beat. At that precise moment, her firstborn son will become head of state, head of the armed forces, and head of the Church of England. In strict constitutional terms, this ought not to matter much. The English monarchy, as has been said, reigns but does not rule. From the aesthetic point of view it will matter a bit, because the prospect of a morose bat-eared and chinless man, prematurely aged, and with the most abysmal taste in royal consorts, is a distinctly lowering one.