Kings and Queens aren’t always the best of us. Sometimes they’re weak, pathetic, unimpressive or downright evil! Just as history has shown us a range of glorious and exemplary monarchs, it is also full of examples of the kinds of men and women who might have been better suited to obscurity - men and women whose brief chapters in the story of their kingdom is one of great embarrassment or misery. Donald Trump would probably call them "losers”, but we thought they deserved a backward glance in the last episode of the season...
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In central Iran, at the foot of a low hill overlooking a seemingly endless plain, stand a few broken columns reaching impossibly high for ruins. Atop one or two are the stern, proud faces of bulls and eagles, battered by the sands of 2300 years of history. In the great appadana that once stood there, Darius, King of kings, used to sit and preside over a parade of nations that had come to honour him. The most diverse, multicultural empire of the ancient world: Persia.
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