Lehal Library

xxxv Introduction parliament or elections for fear the people might not see things God’s way. Meantime, across Europe, the princes and princesses of ancient noble families took to marrying and remarrying each other in an ­ever-­thickening web of defensive alliances, as if density of blood and lineage might offer protection against the threat of usurpers or, worse still, republicanism and democracy. No family was more practised at this upmarket dating game than the Medici, who, partly thanks to an extraordinary network of connections, would hang on in Florence in a c­ lient-­state twilight lasting more than 200 undistinguished years. Meantime, from Paris to Madrid to Naples, the court clothes became finer, the statues and monuments more pompous and the whole royal charade more colourful and more solemn, as though people might somehow be dazzled into believing that a king or a duke really did have a right to rule. Many prestigious works of art were commissioned with precisely this idea in mind. But most of all Europe’s rulers worked hard to put a halo round their crowned heads, to appear religious and at all costs to uphold the Faith, sensing that this too would bolster their position and draw attention away from the mystery of their privileges. Later still, particularly after the French Revolution had destroyed any illusions about the rights of monarchs, the rather desperate card of ‘respectability’ was played. Members of court, Napoleon ordered, shortly after usurping power, must attend soirées with their wives, to appear respectable and avoid gossip. xxxvi