“Kings kill; jesters don’t; therefore the jesters of the kings are more valuable than the kings!”

“Aye, then.Come and dance with the Ech'lon. You can be me bloody retinue. King o' Fools and 'is merry band o' jesters. If they don't laugh us out o' the tower, it'll be a bleedin' miracle.”

“The king killed his brother, who was actually king, so that he could be king. Then the dead king’s wife and baby disappeared, on account the baby would’ve been king, so the brother probably killed them, too. They do that kind of thing all the time, kings do. They can kill anybody they don’t like.”

“The gods don’t care about men, no more than kings care about peasants.”

“My father says there are more than twenty thousand turned out for the king. It seems that most men think that we will win, that York will be captured and killed, though the king in his tender heart has said he will forgive them all if they will surrender.~Will there be another battle?~Unless York decides he cannot face the king in person. It is one sort of sin to kill your friends and cousins, quite another to order your bowmen to fire at the king's banner and him beneath it. What if the king is killed in battle? What if York brings his broadsword down on the king's sanctified head?”

“The fact is, the king was a good deal more than a king, he was a man; and when a man is a man, you can't knock it out of him.”