“Was Charles I too stubborn to listen to reason? Could Civil War have been averted if the king had been more willing to negotiate? His great enemy Cromwell always maintained that the king had been swayed at the last moment by his queen, the beautiful Henrietta Maria. We can believe Cromwell's claim that the queen told her husband to be firm. But the wicked, spiteful, altogether irresistable quote often attributed to her by Puritan writers of the time is almost certainly false. "Oh my love, if you cannot remain firm in the bedchamber, at least try to remain firm with your subjects!”

“Mignon' said the King, 'soon you are going to be a great king'. But he also told Anjou, in a memorable phrase 'Try to remain at peace with your neighbors: I have loved war too much...”

“There was once a king, and he had a queen; and he was the manliest of his gender, and she was the loveliest of hers. They had nineteen children, and were always having more.”

“She put her hand in his, and he clasped it firmly, knowing he had been waiting for her all his life.”

“He saw the Queen and saw her for the first time with the mask of friendship removed, a figure suddenly as ruthless and terrible as ever her father had been... All their dazzling intimacy was an illusion, a mere straw in the wind, for in the last resort he was but a subject, as her mother had been.”

“It might have been preferable," Eddis admitted, dryly, "if you had thrown off your chains of bondage solely for love of me. It would certainly have been more flattering." Standing so near to him, she was looking up into his face and watching it closely. "I am willing to accept, however, that we are real people, not characters in a play. We do not, all of us, need to be throwing inkwells. If we are compatible with one another, is that not sufficient?""Were I a king in more than just name, it would be all, all I dreamed of," said Sounis, and it was Eddis who blushed."You wish to wait, then, until you are confirmed as Sounis?""If...""When," said Eddis, firmly."Yes," said Sounis, "then.”