Summary

Introduction – In text set in italics, narration explores the history of, and reasons behind, the power of kings – how people always wanted someone powerful to be in charge, even if that person was powerful, and how the concept of kingship evolved from being defined by military or territorial power to being defined by corporate power. The narrative also comments that in the City, where there were so many people trying to be kings (and succeeding), “citizens had more freedom from local kings” (126) – those kings, suggests the narrative, were so busy with their own agendas and plans to worry about those beneath them. Finally, the narrative comments on how, no matter what the form of kingship, those who were not kings had to pay, in one form or another, for what should have been theirs by human right. The introduction concludes with a reference...