A country operating at a feudal level in the late eighteenth century may, in the words of Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Ernest, “be regarded as a misfortune.” A country operating at a feudal level in the early twentieth century may be described by that same good lady as, “carelessness”.  And so it was that two kings, over a century apart, opted to ignore the march of time, the advancement of modernity with its ensuing benefits, the agricultural and industrial revolutions, and the Enlightenment. One was a Bourbon and one was a Romanov.

Produced and presented by Bernie Dwan