All hereditary rulers face the same blood-freezing problem: of being inescapably and for every moment of each day both the key political actor and the symbolic heart of a vast sequence of ritual – personal, religious, dynastic – by which that political role is made valid. This implacable orrery only ceases to function at the ruler’s death – and only then in the sense that the ruler himself is no longer able to appreciate the actions of the thousands of individuals who are engaging in a further series of actions, like singing in a sad way, or burying his body, heart and guts in three different
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