Since that time it has inspired many to become saints, just as it has spawned bitter controversies over its application in changing circumstances of Church and society. The earliest draft of this Rule followed by Francis of Assisi and his brothers received its first approval in 1209. The Franciscan Rule thus requires those who profess it to pattern their lives according to the Gospel of Christ, putting its teachings into practice as members of a religious order of the Catholic Church. To ‘observe’ the Gospel can mean both looking at it carefully, as in ‘observing’ the stars, and carrying out what it asks, as in ‘observing’ a law or a principle. RB, I These opening lines of their Rule have guided the followers of Francis of Assisi for some 800 years. The Rule and life of the Friars Minor is this: to observe the Holy Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ by living in obedience, without anything of one’s own, and in chastity.
These pessimistic narratives of decline invoke the myth of the iron age, the inverse of the golden age. Such ambition led to Tacitus labeling Agrippina a dux femina (“woman commander”), among other imperial women whose “masculine” hunger for power was blamed for the catastrophic decline of their dynasty and of Rome itself – much as the coming of winter on Game of Thrones is correlated with the moral depravity, and dynastic collapse, in which Cersei is intimately implicated. In this strategy, both Agrippina and Cersei are challenged by another aspirant to power and competitor for influence, with deadly results. She compares Cersei Lannister to Roman historiography’s portrayal of Agrippina the Younger: granddaughter of Augustus, sister of Caligula, wife of Claudius, and mother of Nero, yet born into a patriarchal system in which she could only wield power by controlling men around her.
In the second of two chapters connecting the management of sexuality to the fortunes of Augustus, his dynasty, and the empire it governs, Prince explores how the dynamics shaping Rome also inform the characterization and narrative arc of Cersei Lannister in HBO’s Game of Thrones (2011-), another prestige cable series produced during the current golden age of television.
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