Marc:

First, very well written...I enjoyed it almost as much as the content.

Second, two books really highlight the sacrificial male cultural norm...other than of course that guy, a King of the Jews, supposedly bleeding up there on the cross for all of us.

One is Mary Renault's The King must Die. In it, a sacrificial Consort King, a young man who has been chosen every year, is sacrificed by the Maenads in a sacred acacia grove.

He is tied to a tree and torn apart by the hallucinogenically-crazed Queen and the Maenads. His blood and body parts are then plowed into the earth.

The underlying principal belief is that the blood and body of the King must fertilize the soil. Indeed, to ensure that the New King does not escape, the Queen orders his achilles tendon to be severed.

My point is that this went on for centuries in most Mediterranean bronze age cultures. Bullfinch and Joesph Campbell, later Graves and many many other anthropologists have elucidated on this subject far better than I can.

The second book is a fictionalized version of the King Must Die. It is Tom Robbin's 1985 Jitterbug Perfume. Alobar, a King, about to be sacrificed because of his greying hair and beard, escapes his blood thirsty priest to travel the world and experience many religions.

Lastly, Midwinterblot reminds me of the power in the Fisher King Myth:

"If the land is sick, the king is sick."

"And a people are nothing without their king and a king is nothing without his people. "

Pity as you say that Queen Victoria's grandchildren forgot to heed that principle.

For as you write their world war was, to further the territorial squabbling of one extended hereditary family and blight humanity forever.

Thank you.