The only trouble was that and this is serious after 100 days, his aunt, the empress dowager, decided that she had had quite enough of him

The only trouble one which made me hesitant to bring up that example was that, after 100 days, his aunt, the empress dowager, decided that she had had quite enough and put him in prison for the rest of his life.

He had this line in his book that supposedly comes from the Habsburg Monarchy, where there was an empress Maria Theresa, who was having trouble conceiving.

Solzhenitsyn himself recently suggested that Russia s national idea should be based on Ivan Petrovich Shuvalov s proposal to Empress Elizabeth 250 years ago. Every move, every law should be assessed in terms of whether it helps to preserve the people, according to Solzhenitsyn.

Of course, Russia s rulers have usually preferred myth to reality. After all, it was during the reign of Catherine the Great that the Potemkin village was invented, whereby the squalor of the lives of Catherine s serfs was hidden behind cheerfully painted housing façades as the Empress toured her country.

NEW DELHI Japanese Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko, in a rare overseas trip, are scheduled to begin a tour of the Indian cities of New Delhi and Chennai on November 30. The imperial couple s weeklong visit is likely to mark a defining moment in Indo Japanese relations, fostering closer economic and security ties between Asia s two leading democracies as they seek a pluralistic, stable Asian order.