A King Bee: Difference between revisions
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[[File:Rubens Władysław Vasa (detail).jpg|thumb|upright|Prince Vladislav Sigismund Vasa, future king of Poland (r. 1632–1648), as painted in 1624 by Peter Paul Rubens]] | [[File:Rubens Władysław Vasa (detail).jpg|thumb|upright|Prince Vladislav Sigismund Vasa, future king of Poland (r. 1632–1648), as painted in 1624 by Peter Paul Rubens]] | ||
So what's the deal with the king elected by bees? Did any of the Polish monarchs have anything to do with these little critters? Well, ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' for example, in its 1911 edition, says that King Vladislav IV, the ruler under whose reign Poland reached the zenith of its power (which means, if you think about it, that the realm's decline started under his watch), was known the "king of bees". How did he earn this moniker? | So what's the deal with the king elected by bees? Did any of the Polish monarchs have anything to do with these little critters? Well, ''Encyclopædia Britannica'' for example, in its 1911 edition, says that King Vladislav IV, the ruler under whose reign Poland reached the zenith of its power (which means, if you think about it, that the realm's decline started under his watch), was known the "king of bees". How did he earn this moniker? | ||
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In fact, the nobles, or ''szlachta'', loved Vladislav so much that his election was probably the calmest and shortest in the history of Polish monarchy – nobody else bother to run against everyone's favourite candidate. But the nobles loved those kings who gave them much and required little in return. The more inactive a king, the better. It turns out that the man who first compared the nobles' darling to a lazy drone was Paweł Piasecki, Bishop of Kamieniec, who criticized his majesty in these words: | |||
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