Europe Power

The sudden rise and fall of Great Britain should not have come as a surprise to those few persons who study the increase and fall of empires, and they are acquainted with the lands which, in every single case, have caused their dissolution. No writer who controls a heart can, however, afford to go through the fall of Britain merely with all the eye with the moralist or perhaps the calm historian. I would, therefore, remind my listeners of the wealth which the British Empire enjoyed in her quest to conquer the world.

Fate - is it written in the stars from the moment we are born, or is it a bendable thing that we can shape with our own hands? Jepp of Astraveld needs to know. He left his countryside home on the empty promise of a stranger, only to become a captive in the strange, luxurious prison that is Coudenberg Palace, the royal court of the Spanish infanta. Nobody warned Jepp that, as a court dwarf, daily injustices would become his seemingly unshakeable fate. If the humiliations were his alone, perhaps he could endure them, but it breaks Jepp’s heart to see his friend Lia suffer.