Regalia in The Abstract
The term can refer to rights, prerogatives and privileges enjoyed exclusively by any sovereign regardless of title (Emperor, Grand Duke, etc.) An example is the right to mint coins, especially with one's own effigy. In many cases, especially in feudal societies and generally weak states, such rights have in time been eroded by grants to or usurpations by lesser vassals.
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Famous quotes containing the word abstract:
“What persuades men and women to mistake each other from time to time for gods or vermin is ideology. One can understand well enough how human beings may struggle and murder for good material reasons—reasons connected, for instance, with their physical survival. It is much harder to grasp how they may come to do so in the name of something as apparently abstract as ideas. Yet ideas are what men and women live by, and will occasionally die for.”
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