Wednesday, September 7, 2016

1457, A Royal Seduction




       1457 England

 For assistance, I turn to an English-speaking friend in whom I have great faith,
so that I, a foreigner, to dare and write about Henry the Eighth.

Geoffrey Boleyn Lord Mayor of London in 1457
was knighted by King Henry VI and the Boleyn family was in 7th heaven.

He was the great grandfather of Queen Elizabeth, who the world would come to know,
because during her reign, the British Empire would grow.
Queen Elizabeth's mom was Anna Boleyn, Goffrey's Granddaughter...

In vain Henry VIII was taking continuous showers with cold water,
because his sexual desire for this woman, Anna, dominated his mind.

She kept saying to Henry “no marriage no sex” of this I will remind,
She encouraged him to break from the Catholic Church, when the Pope
refused to annul his marriage to Queen Catherine, for Catholicism
                                                                           [an historical "nope".

Henry succumbs to Anne's demands, he declared himself
                                                [Church of England's Supreme Head

"L’ etat c’est moi", like Louis XIV he said,
and got Cardinal Thomas Wolsey to annul the marriage.

Quickly a ceremony of a royal remarriage,
and Anne was crowned Queen of England on 1 June 1533.

She gave birth to the future Queen Elizabeth I, but all agree,
that Henry was disappointed to have a daughter rather than a son
and this marked the dramatic end to their love, and soon it was done.....

Jane Seymour was Henry's new love and to divorce he needed a reason,
so had Anne investigated for high treason...

She was arrested and was tried before a jury of peers.
Found guilty, and that in all righteous people brought tears.

She was beheaded four days later.
Alas my romantic ladies,
                      [man, king or beggar, of love is often traitor ...



1457 Scandinavia (Vikings)



The Kalmar Union, Latin: Unio Calmariensis,
marked for many years the end of solitariness
for Denmark, Sweden (then including Finland),
                                                             [and Norway,
a union of the Vikings, those Germanic Norse seafarers,
                                                            [and in this way,
raided and traded from their Scandinavian homelands
across wide areas of Europe, Russia and
                                                 [many remote lands.

This year the counts of Holstein made the Danish Privy Council appoint
                                                 [''Christian the ninth'' as king.

Five hundred years later, in "Anavryta school", I had a random conversation
                                               [with one of the male offspring .

Both at the age of twelve years, I and Constantine Christian Glücksburg,
                                                   [the future King of the Greeks,
and when I called him "Your Majesty" he blushed in his cheeks...

Apart from the Greek king (from our meeting this year is the sixty-ninth)
most current monarchs are members of the Danish Royal Family
                                                          [as descendants of Christian the ninth,
as the Queen Margrethe II Denmark,
                                [the Queen Elizabeth II United Kingdom,
and others, who all reigned hereditary, and certainly not because
                                    [of rare abilities or great wisdom ..


1457 China



It was possibly the Ming dynasty power games,
the coronation of the emperor with three names,
the first child emperor of this blood Line...

Even though he was only eight,
                     [pretty much everything went just fine.

This child Zhu Qizhen, ruled as the Emperor Zhengtong....
He made decisions as if he were an adult and strong....

For us the Orientals are somewhat mysterious...

We often see them as if they were from Mars or Sirius...

Their philosophy often for Westerners scares...

In fact their philosophy loves people and cares....

But we were talking about that crowned child
who from war was unable to shield,
after the failed attack on the Mongols to conquer them.

So the anger of the people displaced,
              [from the hawkish in the innocent who stayed dumb,
they all blamed the emperor- every prince, citizen and bum,

while he, after the defeat was a prisoner in Mongolia,
along with others from the Philippines, Taiwan and Cambodia.

Zhengtong was released one year later, but for him, what a pity,
he was put under house arrest in the southern palace of the Forbidden City,
by his brother Jingtai, the new emperor, for almost seven years.

In there he organize a coup with old friends as volunteers,
and returns as Tianshun Emperor, violently with swords and spears....

                                                                                           to be continued

The Forbidden City

____________________________________________________

''COULD IT BE OTHERWISE  in verse''  
Texts and Narration: Odysseus Heavilayias - ROTTERDAM //
Language adjustments and text adaptation: Kellene G Safis - CHICAGO//
Digital adaptation and text editing: Cathy Rapakoulia Mataraga - PIRAEUS//

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________


Constantine Christian
Glücksburg, 

the last king of Greece
* The House of Glücksburg, (Danish: Huset Glücksborg; German: Haus Glücksburg; Greek: Οίκος του Γκλύξμπουργκ, Íkos tou Glíksbourg) (shortened version of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg; Danish: Slesvig-Holsten-Sønderborg-Lyksborg, also spelled -Glücksborg) is a Dano-German ducal house and a branch of the House of Oldenburg.

Junior branches of the dynasty include the royal houses of Denmark, Iceland, Norway, and Greece. Charles, Prince of Wales, heir apparent to the thrones of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms, belongs by decree to the House of Windsor, but descends patrilineally from the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg.
The House is named after Glücksburg, a small coastal town in northernmost Germany near the Danish border. The family was itself a cadet branch of the House of Oldenburg that descends from Count Christian of Oldenburg, who became King of Denmark in 1448 and King of Norway in 1450. As the royal Danish line of Oldenburgs died out in 1863 and all other branches of the House of Schleswig-Holstein became extinct with the death of the last male of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg in 1931, the House of Glücksburg is now the senior surviving branch of the House of Oldenburg.
The House descends patrilineally from the Dukes of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Beck. The last of them was made Duke of Glücksburg by the King of Denmark in 1825 and changed his title accordingly to Friedrich Wilhelm, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg. He was married to Princess Louise Caroline of Hesse-Kassel, a granddaughter of King Frederick V of Denmark of the House of Oldenburg.
Neither the Dukes of Beck nor of Glücksburg were sovereign rulers; they held their lands in fief to the sovereign Dukes of Schleswig and Holstein, i.e. the Kings of Denmark and, before 1773, the Dukes of Holstein-Gottorp.

Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, the fourth son of Duke Friedrich Wilhelm, was recognized in the London Protocol of 1852 as successor to the childless King Frederick VII of Denmark, as Christian was married to Frederick's first cousin, Luise of Hesse-Kassel. He became King of Denmark as Christian IX on 15 November 1863.

Wilhelm, the second son of Crown Prince Christian and Crown Princess Luise, was elected King of the Hellenes on 30 March 1863 to succeed the deposed Wittelsbach Otto of Greece and took the name George I of Greece.

Prince Carl, the second son of Frederick VIII of Denmark, Christian IX's eldest son, became King of Norway on 18 November 1905 as Haakon VII of Norway.

Christian IX's daughters, Alexandra of Denmark and Dagmar of Denmark (who became Maria Feodorovna), married Edward VII of the United Kingdom and Alexander III of Russia, respectively. As a result, by 1914, descendants of King Christian IX held the crowns or consortships of several European realms; Christian IX became known as the Father-in-law of Europe.



* Classical Lyceum Anavryton -official name "Ethnikon Ekpaideftirio Anavryton", but commonly known as Anavryta) was an elite Greek lyceum (originally a boarding school only for boys ) that was established shortly before the beginning of the World War II in 1940, in order to provide education to the members of the Greek royal family and notable Athenian families and reestablished after the war in 1949. Since that year the school was named a "Lyceum Aristouhon" which only admitted students who distinguished themselves in other schools. After several educational reforms in Greece the school lost its elitistic character in 1976, but continued to have higher admissions standards until the end of the 80's.

Anavryta was originally based on the educational principles of Kurt Hahn, and modelled on Hahn’s own creations the Schule Schloss Salem and Gordonstoun. The effort to create an elite high school in Athens inspired by Hahn’s principles had originated from King George II of Greece following the tradition of the Greek royal family, members of which had attended Hahn schools. The effort was supported by the Greek academic society mainly because of the strong relationship of Hahn’s theories with ancient Greek philosophy. The main goal of the Lyceum was to focus on the pursuit of the Hahnian ideals and the study of Greek classics.

The school complex is located in the area of Maroussi, near Athens, in the middle of the pine forest of Anavryta, formerly the estate of banking magnate Andreas Syngros.

The fate of the Lyceum was closely tied with the Greek royal family but the only king of Greece who actually graduated from the Lyceum was Constantine II of Greece, in the class of 1955. After the support of Constantine to the military junta in the early months of 1967 and with the public strongly opposing monarchy, a referendum vote established the system of presidential democracy and denounced the king in 1974. (In an extraordinary turn of events, the graduate society of Anavryta chose not to support the king, an event that had an effect on the vote.)

Under circumstances that followed in the next years and especially in the 1980s it was increasingly difficult for a public school to maintain an elitist approach in Greece. Anavryta lost its exclusive character, but remained a school with a solid reputation for academic excellence. Eventually at the end of 1991–1992 the school was prohibited from setting absolutely any kind of admission standards and requirements. Thus the Lyceum completely lost its original characteristics.

The Anavryta experiment ended mainly because of the hostility that the democratic Greek governments have shown to what was considered to be the reminder of the previous regime and the complete transformation of Greek society in the decades that followed. Nevertheless the importance of the Lyceum and its educational role cannot be underestimated. The impressive alumni of the Classical Lyceum shows distinguished members since generations of spiritual leaders, academics, spokesmen, businessmen, and other prominent members of the Greek society had graduated from the Classical Lyceum in the decades following 1940 (http://www.anavryta.org/).

The school still exists but has been renamed. The Peiramatiko Lyceum Anavryton [1] is a public and experimental school on the site of the former Classical Lyceum. Sadly the school estate and facilities are now devastated and in a state of complete decay, since the buildings received almost no attention for thirty years. Most of the original buildings have been closed and the school facilities, although in ideal surroundings, have been found under a recent research to be the worst in Northern Athens. 



 ELEGHOS... at history 

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