salparadisewasright:elucubrare:this, you see, is how i will seduce the Duke - i shall attend his bal

salparadisewasright:elucubrare:this, you see, is how i will seduce the Duke - i shall attend his ball as a water nymph, and at first appear arrogant and distant; then, once i have his attention, i shall smile and become coquettish; i will let him see exactly where my necklace leads, making the best of my décolletage. and once i have seduced him, i will make him see that he is the best man to lead the country; and we will dispose of our weak king and rule the kingdom together, and he will never forget that i put him on the throne. One of the lesser-known facts about @elucubrare is that she is in fact the narrator of a Robert Browning monologue.The Queen on her Deathbed Nay, come not to me as suppliants, but stand proud in that glory that my beauty won for you. Yes, “my beauty”  – for once I was young, and beautiful. The king your father was a but a duke then, and I a maid of no good name. I came from the country, from an estate whose name I do not want to call to mind. And on the throne was a weak man, born in the purple but with a ruler’s mind, that must involve itself in plots while staying pure as the white lily. I saw the throne before my eyes, a beacon in the darkness of my obscurity. It must be mine – for some are rulers born, though they be born in barns. I cannot tell you, as my eyes grow dim, of the splendor of that brilliant night, when I, in a sea-nymph’s guise, caught your father’s eye. We danced, that night, in a sea of other dancers, and his eyes were caught in the reflection of my beauty. He did not care that my birth was low, or that my mind by far surpassed his own; he saw only that I rose from the depths of the sparkling night to love him, as he thought. And then the crime. We were wed by the new rite, and it was not long before my whispers in his eargave him the strength to do what must be done – to kill the king. He died. And the king your father was the king. Each policy, each hated measure was mine – but see how our kingdom flourishes, see how we keepthe wolves of hunger and of thirst at bay. See the new construction, the rise of towers in the new-rich towns. And they love me. I did not raise the taxes; that was him. I followed behind and gave them bread, and they gave me flowers, because they loved me. Now I am dying, and when I die I want a tomb with gilded lettering, of marble made, and it must read “she loved the people, who loved her.” Mark the comma. Your father lives. He will not live long. We have grown old. You, my eldest, do honor to the crown. And the rest – there is honor in servitude, to bend your back beneath the weight of honest labor, to build the State. The sight of your faces restored me. Now let me die in peace. -- source link

More pics about