Sad Stories of the Death of Kings

Some months ago I read Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon.  In one scene there is a flood on a Hollywood set that leaves two women stranded atop the head of a giant idol.  It was such an odd image that it stuck in my head.  I’ve changed the idol to a conquerer’s head and placed it in the ocean.

It reminds me somewhat of this passage from Richard II:

“… let us sit upon the ground

And tell sad stories of the death of kings;

How some have been deposed; some slain in war,

Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;

Some poison’d by their wives: some sleeping kill’d;

All murder’d: for within the hollow crown

That rounds the mortal temples of a king

Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,

Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp, …”