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Mad Kings and Queens: Raving Royals and How to Survive Them. -- Wednesday, May 14th, 2nd Period

Ghanima was sitting on her desk, absently eating lemon drops as she watched the students wander into the room. Once the last of them had arrived, her face lit up with a smile.

"Good morning," she said, her voice carrying effortlessly. “I am Lady Ghanima Atreides, and this is Mad Kings and Queens: Raving Royals and How to Survive Them. If you have not had one of my classes before, you may call me Lady Ghanima, Miss Ghanima, or Miss Atreides, whichever you are more comfortable with. The first person to call me Lady Atreides gets detention," Ghanima announced, smiling. "Lady Atreides is my grandmother, and I will not answer to it. I am much younger and prettier than Jessica."

"This is a class intended to give you a basic grounding in the history of royal insanity here on Earth, as well as providing a few tips on how to survive an unstable monarch, should you ever have the misfortune to encounter one." Ghanima hopped off her desk to wander along the rows of desks. "We will not be covering every ruler who has been termed 'mad', if we tried, it would take years rather than a single summer session."

"If you have a weak consitution, this is not the class for you. We will be discussing mental illness, torture, sexuality, violence, and murder. While I do not intend to sensationalize the topics, I will not sugar coat them for you either. I will not think any less of anyone who chooses not to return next week, I prefer that you are honest with yourself about your ability to handle the subject matter."

"That said, you’ll have a syllabus next week. I probably won't pay much attention to it, as anyone from my previous classes can tell you, but I hear students like to have them. Possibly for passing notes on instead of paying attention during the lecture."

"You may think that madness is rare," Ghanima mused, drifting down the rows of seats as she spoke. "It is not. As the Roman philosopher Seneca once said, 'There is no genius free from some tincture of madness.' He was correct."

"Caligula of Rome had his father, mother and two brothers killed to become emperor. Nero had his mother and first wife killed. These two emperors were hated so much by the people that all references to them were deleted from official Roman documentation."

"The first French king, Clovis II, went mad after stealing the arm of a martyr. His great-grandson, Childeric III was known as "the idiot". The mother of Louis IX complained that he was "not sound of mind". And his younger son, Robert of Clermont went mad after being hit on the head with a sledge hammer. Then there was Charles VI, called Charles the mad, who ruled France from 1380 to 1415. At stages, he believed that he was made of glass and inserted iron rods into his clothing to prevent him from breaking."

"The Habsburg Kings of Spain descended from Queen Juana la Loca of Castile, who was mentally unstable. Her ancestors increased her inheritance by inbreeding. These incestuous marriages resulted in the mentally and physically handicapped King Carlos II of Spain, who had an enormous, misshapen head, and a chin exaggerated to almost caricature-like proportions rendering him unable to chew and barely able to speak."

"No European country was immune from the dangers of royal inbreeding. Several British kings went mad as a result of a blood disorder that causes gout and mental derangement. The most famous was Mad George III, who ruled England in the 18th Century. George was afflicted with porphyria, a maddening disease which disrupted his reign as early as 1765. Several attacks strained his grip on reality and debilitated him in the last years of his reign. He died blind, deaf and mad at Windsor Castle on 29 January 29 1820. In those years, the British Princess Caroline Mathilda married, at age 15, the deranged Christian VII of Denmark."

"Very very few of these people were stupid," Ghanima said sternly. "Inbred, yes. Perhaps challenged. However, you do not hold a throne by stupidity, but by ruthlessness, fear, and a good dose of violence. To hold that balance intact takes at least a shrewd cunning, if not a reasonable intellect."

"Now that all of that is out of the way, I am in the market for a TA or two," she said. "Hands up, those of you whom have already had to deal with a power-mad leader of some sort or another." The grin on her face as she took count was not exactly reassuring. It was not meant to be. "Fantastic. Now, out of those of you who raised your hands, anyone interested in the position can come see me in a few moments."

"First, however, I will bow to tradition, and ask you to introduce yourselves to your classmates. Why don't you give us your name, summer cabin, and the reason you signed up for this class?"

[OOC: ~~Please wait for~~ the OCD is up! Go mad! If more than two people want the TA job, it will be chosen OOC by the RNG of DOOM. His name is Fred. Go Fred go!]

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For some strange reason, you think being her minion would be fun. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.

Lady Ghanima seemed like the perfect person to ask this question.

"What exactly is a TA?"

"A teaching assistant," she answered. "Someone to basically help me in class when needed, and to pass out the handouts should I be unable to teach unexpectedly. It's a student leadership position, since your classmates would look to you for guidance if they had any questions they did not want to ask me."

"Oh," Alice said uncertainly. "Similar to the school's sibling program, but individual to the class, then. I'm not sure if I would be helpful or not. I've had experience with madness and royals, but leadership I seem to ... falter at."

Presumably leading a class would be less dangerous than acquiring an army, and with less fatalities in the end result. Perhaps she was being morbid.

"What makes you think you lack leadership?" she asked. "Being willing to go against a monarch alone is not the act of a follower."

Honesty seemed best. It wasn't as though she'd blinked at any of the other topics.

"There was to have been an army, of those who could still be roused to fight," Alice said, clasping her hands behind her back, as she always did when worried she would fidget otherwise. "I was left standing at the end; all the others fell along the way. It seems poor testimony to my leadership skills, that my allies never reached Her Majesty's door."

Reno strolled up to Ghanima, his hands in his pockets and his eyebrow raised.

"There any bonuses to bein' a TA? Extra credit or even just advice or whatever?"

He didn't really need it, actually. But it didn't hurt to learn these things, did it?

Well now, if it wasn't one of the Lupi. Ghanima looked up from her notes and raised an eyebrow. "Advice is always available, Reno. I do not limit it to favorites, or any other hierarchical nonsense."

"The main bonuses would probably be raiding my stash of lemon drops, and getting to place the job on your resume. I don't believe in tests, so there would not be any grading for you to do, or any other paperwork for that matter, unless you really want to proofread my treaties with the Spacing Guild. I doubt you're that bored."

"If you were hoping to get a feel for teaching, however, that could be arranged. I would be happy to give you my notes, and allow you to lead the class one week."

Reno drummed his fingers against his hip, considering.

"I ain't much of a teacher," he admitted. "I mean, I kinda am, but not with anything..." He waved a hand idly, trying to find the word. "Scholarly? More the not-get-killed kinda teachin', yo. But paddin' the resume can't hurt. And lemon drops are always a bonus."

He paused, tilting his head to consider some more. "What do you want your TAs to do?"

"Keep an eye on their classmates, mostly," she said. "Many times, students will hesitate to come to their teacher if they have a problem. I do not shy away from disagreeable topics, and I need an extra pair of eyes, in case a student is in over their head. While I do pride myself on being observant, I cannot be everywhere at once."

That was her father's talent, and look what it had brought to Paul Atreides.

"Being observant is what I do," it took a bit of effort not to say 'Ma'am,' "Miss. If all you need is someone the other students can talk to, I can do that."

Reno had a bit of a protective streak.

"I take my jobs seriously, yo. Put my name in the hat, if you want."

"Into the hat you go, then," she said, writing his name out and tossing it in her bowl. Reno the Lupi was definately worth watching, even if he did not become one of the student assistants.

"Now then, regarding your particular problem." Ghanima leaned back against her desk and regarded him steadily. "It sounded more of a contemporary issue than a past problem. Am I correct?"

"One half the problem's already dead," Reno replied. "The other half is sittin' in a wheelchair waiting to die. He ain't really in power anymore, but..."

He shrugged. "World's a funny place. Never know what's gonna happen."

"The truly insane rarely wait to die, Reno," she warned him. "If you believe he is touched with madness, then he needs to be watched. Desperate people will do desperate things, and they don't care who goes down with them."

"Don't I know it," Reno mumbled, shrugging a shoulder. "Guy already tried to off us, once. When we were workin' for his old man."

He took a deep breath. Righto. Telling the teacher he'd just met about his employment situation probably wasn't on the list of things that he was supposed to be doing with his summer on the island.

... To hell with it, anyhow.

"He's apparently taken up a new leaf or whatever. Donatin' money anonymously to the World Regenesis Organization, crap like that. Dunno if it's a front to get the world to trust him again, or if he really means it. Between him and his old man, they damn near killed the planet."

"And the holy regent of the Imperium frequently provided money from her private accounts to build and maintain orphanages for the children of the jihad," Ghanima said dryly. "That didn't mean she wasn't busy engineering a stranglehold on the Known Universe."

"I think at this point, we're still workin' for him for two reasons," Reno ventured. "Because it'd be a freakin' disgrace for us to leave him to die alone, sure, but because... Damn, if we ain't there to keep an eye on what he's gonna do, who the hell will be?"

Savannah waited around and then approached Lady Ghanima. "I'd like to apply for the TA job?"

"Of course, Savannah," she said, jotting down Savannah's name and adding it to her bowl. "I'll draw names, like I did last semester, and announce the results in class next week."

She smiled. "Thank you much, ma'am."

"I take it you have experience with madness in some form, then?" Ghanima asked. "May I inquire as to the source?"

Savannah hadn't been expecting the question and she let out a breath. "When I was younger... twelve... there was a man named Tyrone that started this project. His goal was that he wanted one of every supernatural creature in his possession. My mother and I were kidnapped by thugs who worked for this man. His people would perform experiments on them to see how they worked and we were monitored at all times." She bit her lip, looking away to compose herself, then looked back. "If you didn't do everything like Tyrone wanted -- like agree to become his weapon or work for him or something like that -- he had hunting fields. He would turn lose the person that had angered or refused him and then he and his men and their dogs would hunt them like they were nothing. His men killed my mother while we were there. She was trying to get me out safely and they shot her." She swallowed. "If that's not an example of madness... I'm not sure what it is..."

"It raises an interesting question; where does ambition end and madness begin?" Ghanima replied, "if they're two separate things at all."

"I would argue that the line is drawn between ambition and obsession, with madness as a driving spark in both of them. It is the amount of madness which tips the scales to one side or another."

"Tyrone and others in his Project Gemini seem to have chosen to embrace the obsession portion of that."

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Mad Kings and Queens: Raving Royals and How to Survive Them. -- Wednesday, May 14th, 2nd Period

Talk to Ghanima: TA Job

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