Читать книгу The People’s Queen - Vanora Bennett - Страница 5

The picture on the left shows the capricious goddess Fortune, as she was often displayed in the rose window of medieval English churches, teasing her victims with the hope of lasting wealth and power.

The greedy, feverish people rising up Fortune’s ever-turning wheel, on the left, are gloating, regnabo, boastful Latin for ‘I shall reign’.

The person at the top, who has achieved every ambition, crows, regno, or ‘I reign’.

The terrified people on the right of the wheel, going down, are looking back at their moment of glory, wailing, regnavi, or ‘I used to reign’.

And the one falling off at the bottom whimpers, sum sine regno; ‘I am without a kingdom’ or ‘I have been left with nothing’.

The message understood by every congregation – that pride comes before a fall – took on new significance after the Black Death. This devastating outbreak of plague killed off one-third of the people of Europe in the middle of the 14th century, when my novel begins. The catastrophe ended an era of belief that men were born to fixed and unchangeable positions in society. With survivors everywhere grabbing for a share of the spoils left by the departed, an ambitious few started rushing towards high estate with a speed and determination never seen before. Envious onlookers could only hope that these winners would soon fall from the pinnacle of power, as suddenly and dramatically as they had risen.