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pronounced dead at eight twenty-seven Greenwich Mean Time. Official cause of death is yet to be determined, but preliminary reports indicate that Edward succumbed to a head wound caused by gunshots.”
    The Prime Minister raised his head slowly. “As Prime Minister, I wish, on behalf of the nation, to extend condolences to the members of the monarch’s surviving family, his many friends, and well-wishers the world over. Obviously, our thoughts and sympathies are with them in this time of grief. I have nothing more to say.” He made to step away from the microphones.
    At this, the journalists unleashed a volley of questions at the retreating politician. “Mr. Waring! One question, Prime Minister!” shouted someone over the rest of the pack. “You said
gunshots
— was it murder or suicide?”
    The Prime Minister hesitated, then returned to the microphone. “The Portuguese authorities are conducting an investigation. To offer any speculation now would be highly inappropriate. Thank you.”
    He turned away and started back to Number Ten.
    “Where does this leave your Magna Carta scheme?” another journalist shouted.
    The Prime Minister turned his face towards the camera but kept walking. “Not now,” Waring replied. “I have said all I have to say this evening. I will be making an announcement in Parliament tomorrow. Thank you.” He disappeared through the crush of his aides and bodyguards; the door opened before him, and he ducked quickly inside.
    A rare silence descended upon the Pipe & Drum — a spontaneous reverence for the passing of the nation’s monarch. Not so much the man, James thought, as for the monarchy itself. Ready Teddy had not been a particularly sparkling example of modern sovereignty.
    In common with some few of his predecessors, Edward IX was a wastrel and a womanizer, as often as not dragging his reign through the muck with his lascivious shenanigans. Twice he had been named corespondent in scandalous divorces, and he had once come within a hair’s breadth of being indicted for embezzling funds from a business venture in which he was a partner. His driving license was in a permanent state of revocation, and he owed huge sums of money to the banks of several countries. He spent far more time at his various properties abroad than he ever did at home — although he still opened Parliament and the racing season, and he was widely quoted as saying he wished he had inherited the crown of Spain because the food was better and weather did not impede one’s golf game.
    Magna Carta II made all this more or less irrelevant. A misnomer, to be sure, the term was a journalistic tag attached to the movement to dissolve the monarchy of Britain. Whereas the original Great Charter established the rule of law and curtailed the power of the monarch, Magna Carta II aimed to abolish both sovereign and sovereignty altogether.
    The scheme featured a series of closely orchestrated phases, each linking a referendum to the necessary legislation. Four times the Government had consulted the people and, four times, passed laws that moved the country ever closer to the final Act of Dissolution.
    Introduced by Parliament several years ago, the devolution process had been quietly and systematically working its way through its various stages, beginning with a few slight changes in the British Constitution and a moderate government reorganization which, among other things, abolished the House of Lords. Social reform eliminated all honors, titles, and other lingering vestiges of inherited privilege, while long-anticipated tax reform brought royal lands under the heavy thumb of the Inland Revenue, thereby producing the desired effect of pricing the nobility out of the market.
    No government could have pursued such drastic, sweeping measures without the sanction of the British people. Years of wretched excess and royal disgrace had soured public opinion to the point that no one cared anymore. Whatever legacy of loyalty the House