narrative essay on the topic uneasy lies the head that wears the crown

Additional Info

History of Henry IV, Part II

Program code and database © 2003-2024 George Mason University . All texts are in the public domain and can be used freely for any purpose. Privacy policy

• Website Inauguration Function.
• Vocational Placement Cell Inauguration
• Media Coverage.
• Certificate & Recommendations
• Privacy Policy
• Science Project Metric
• Social Studies 8 Class
• Computer Fundamentals
• Introduction to C++
• Programming Methodology
• Programming in C++
• Data structures
• Boolean Algebra
• Object Oriented Concepts
• Database Management Systems
• Open Source Software
• Operating System
• PHP Tutorials
• Earth Science
• Physical Science
• Sets & Functions
• Coordinate Geometry
• Mathematical Reasoning
• Statics and Probability
• Accountancy
• Business Studies
• Political Science
• English (Sr. Secondary)

Hindi (Sr. Secondary)

• Punjab (Sr. Secondary)
• Accountancy and Auditing
• Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Technology
• Automobile Technology
• Electrical Technology
• Electronics Technology
• Hotel Management and Catering Technology
• IT Application
• Marketing and Salesmanship
• Office Secretaryship
• Stenography
• Hindi Essays
• English Essays

Letter Writing

• Shorthand Dictation

Essay, Paragraph, Speech on “Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears the Crown” Complete Paragraph, Speech for Class 10, Class 12.

Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears the Crown

It means that a person holding a responsible position always faces problems. Lives of these types of people are full of cares and worries as they have to look after so many matters. For example, a King, a Prime Minister or a President has to attend to so many works. He has to look after the affairs of his government and also see the welfare of the people of his country. He also has to oversee the law and order in country and he must also maintain peace at the borders of the country. He also needs to keep his opponent in check. He must also be willing to listen to the public criticism. Similarly, the head of the family also has to worry about the welfare of his family. However the burden of responsibilities make one lose peace of mind, and this may affect the health of the person also.

About evirtualguru_ajaygour

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Quick Links

Popular Tags

Visitors question & answer.

• rrrr on Hindi Essay on “Pratahkal ki Sair” , ”प्रातःकाल की सैर ” Complete Hindi Essay for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.
• Mihir on CBSE ASL “Listening Test Worksheet” (ASL) 2017 for Class 11, Listening Test Audio Script 1
• Anska on Hindi Essay on “Parishram Saphalta ki Kunji Hai” , ”परिश्रम सफलता की कुंजी है ” Complete Hindi Essay for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.
• TEJAS on Hindi Essay on “Manoranjan Ke Adhunik Sadhan” , ” मनोरंजन के आधुनिक साधन” Complete Hindi Essay for Class 10, Class 12 and Graduation and other classes.
• Hania Shakeel on Hindi Essay on “Yadi mein Adhyapak Hota”, “यदि मैं अध्यापक होता” Complete Essay, Paragraph, Speech for Class 7, 8, 9, 10, 12 Students.

Download Our Educational Android Apps

Latest Desk

• Hindi me Suchna Lekhan kaise karein, 10 udahran suchna lekhan.
• Aaj Ka Yuva Sansar “आज का युवा संसार” Hindi Essay, Nibandh, Paragraph for Class 7, 8, 9 and 10 Class Students.
• Pradushan – Ek Stat Chunauti “प्रदूषण- एक सतत चुनौती” Hindi Essay, Nibandh, Paragraph for Class 7, 8, 9 and 10 Class Students.
• Ek Sainik Ki Aatmakatha “एक सैनिक की आत्मकथा” Hindi Essay, Nibandh, Paragraph for Class 7, 8, 9 and 10 Class Students.
• Example Letter regarding election victory.
• Example Letter regarding the award of a Ph.D.
• Example Letter regarding the birth of a child.
• Example Letter regarding going abroad.
• Letter regarding the publishing of a Novel.

Vocational Edu.

• English Shorthand Dictation “East and Dwellings” 80 and 100 wpm Legal Matters Dictation 500 Words with Outlines.
• English Shorthand Dictation “Haryana General Sales Tax Act” 80 and 100 wpm Legal Matters Dictation 500 Words with Outlines meaning.
• English Shorthand Dictation “Deal with Export of Goods” 80 and 100 wpm Legal Matters Dictation 500 Words with Outlines meaning.
• English Shorthand Dictation “Interpreting a State Law” 80 and 100 wpm Legal Matters Dictation 500 Words with Outlines meaning.

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown

What's the meaning of the phrase 'uneasy lies the head that wears a crown'.

The expression ‘uneasy lies the head that wears a crown’ means that a person with great power, such as a king, is constantly apprehensive.

The phrase is sometimes used as ‘uneasy lies the head that wears the crown’. That’s not the original Shakesperian line but it has the same meaning.

What's the origin of the phrase 'Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown'?

And in the visitation of the winds, Who take the ruffian billows by the top, Curling their monstrous heads and hanging them With deafening clamour in the slippery clouds, That, with the hurly, death itself awakes? Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude, And in the calmest and most stillest night, With all appliances and means to boot, Deny it to a king? Then happy low, lie down! Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.

In this piece Henry is bemoaning his position as king in that he, unlike even the most humble cabin-boy, cannot find a moments peace and repose.

Related phrases and meanings

Browse more phrases, about the author, gary martin, phrases & meanings.

HeinOnline Blog

Uneasy lies the head that wears ‘the crown’.

• By Stephanie Jacobson
• February 12, 2021
• History , Pop Culture

Last week, the  nominees for the Golden Globes  and  Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards  were announced, with Season 4 of the Netflix drama  The Crown  reigning as  the Globes’ most-nominated TV series of 2021  and  tying at the SAGs for the most nominations  for a TV show. Along with these accolades, this season of  The Crown  has also brought its fair share of controversy, primarily  urging from the United Kingdom’s culture secretary that Netflix add a disclaimer  warning viewers that the show is fictionalized, a call that stems primarily from Season 4’s portrayal of Prince Charles and Princess Diana’s tumultuous marriage; Netflix ultimately  refused   to add such a disclaimer. Adapted from Peter Morgan’s play  The Audience, The Crown  dramatizes the reign of Queen Elizabeth II. The show begins with her marriage in 1947 to Prince Philip and to date has covered through the end of Margaret Thatcher’s premiership in 1990, with two more seasons for the show in development.

With deference towards historical accuracy, let’s explore some of the events depicted in the show using resources from HeinOnline to dig deeper behind the drama. Follow along through these databases:

• Bar Journals
• Foreign Relations of the United States
• Law Journal Library
• Legal Classics
• Session Laws Library
• U.S. Congressional Documents
• U.S. Presidential Library
• World Constitutions Illustrated: Contemporary & Historical Documents and Resources

“The Woman I Love” (Seasons 1-4)

Permeating throughout all seasons of  The Crown  is the abdication of Edward VIII and the twin crises it created: the public constitutional crisis and the personal crisis within the Windsor family. Edward VIII, eldest son of George V and great-grandson of Queen Victoria, became monarch on January 20, 1936 upon the death of his father. By that time, he had already been having an affair with his future wife, Wallis Simpson, whom he had met in  1931 . Mrs. Simpson was an American divorcée and a  British subject  by her second marriage. Ten months into Edward’s reign, Wallis Simpson petitioned for divorce from her second husband. The following month, Edward announced his intention to marry her to Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin.

Cabinet objected to the King marrying a twice-divorced woman, arguing it was “ a grievous blow to the prestige of the Monarchy ,” primarily because remarriage after divorce was opposed by the Church of England if a former spouse was still alive, further complicated by the fact that, as monarch, Edward was the head of the Church.  Edward proposed a  morganatic marriage  as a potential compromise, in which Simpson would not be titled queen and any children they had would not be allowed to inherit the throne. A morganatic marriage, however, required a  statutory amendment of the Act of Settlement 1701  and the consent of all the Dominion Parliaments , as well as that of Baldwin’s own cabinet. At the end of November, with the King’s permission, Baldwin contacted the Dominion Parliaments and laid out the  three options  before them: 1) a traditional marriage, with Simpson as Queen, 2) a morganatic marriage, or 3) abdication. With Cabinet both  rejecting  a morganatic marriage and barring the King from appealing directly to his subjects in a radio broadcast for their support of his marriage, Edward formally signed his abdication act on December 10 th .

Two days after the signing of the Abdication Act, Edward’s brother Albert, the Duke of York, ascended the throne as George VI, making his then ten-year-old daughter Elizabeth heir apparent. Edward, meanwhile, left England for a self-imposed exile in   Austria . George VI later made his brother the Duke of Windsor; the following year, Edward and Wallis finally married and would remain together until  his death in 1972 .

The Marburg Files (Season 2)

The Abdication looms large over the dramatized persons in  The Crown ; it is a specter that haunts every intrapersonal scandal, from Princess Margaret’s barred marriage to (divorced) Group Captain Peter Townsend in the 1950s to Prince Charles’ thwarted romance with Camilla Parker-Bowles. Having witnessed first-hand the fragility of the monarchy,  The Crown’s  characters are cautious not to court another constitutional crisis.

But scandal, like true love, finds a way. After their marriage in 1937, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor visited Nazi Germany, where they were entertained by some of history’s most notorious malefactors, including Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, and Adolf Hitler, much to the horror of British officials back home. After the war,  American troops discovered a cache of files from the German Foreign Ministry  near Marburg Castle in the German countryside. Now known as the Marburg Files, or the Windsor File, found among the documents was correspondence between the Duke of Windsor and Nazi high-command. Upon learning of the documents, George VI demanded the files be  suppressed , but a large portion of them were released in 1957 (as relayed in the show, when Queen Elizabeth learns of and reviews the documents, eventually confronting her uncle about them). Of particular concern to the Royal Family was the Files’ alleged revelation of a  plot  by the Nazi government to reinstate the Duke of Windsor as king and Wallis Simpson as queen, even going so far to plan their kidnapping if the couple would not cooperate willingly. Prime Minister Winston Churchill, fearful of the couples’ public coziness with Nazi high-command, had appointed the Duke as the Governor of the Bahamas for the remainder of the war, a move that in hindsight seemed justified by the discovery of the files. The extent of any Nazi sympathies held by the couple or their involvement in a foreign plot to retake the throne is still debated by historians today.

The Profumo Affair (Seasons 2-3)

The release of the Marburg Files in 1957 was not the only political scandal featured in Season 2 of  The Crown . The 1960s would see one of the largest political scandals in modern British politics: the Profumo Affair.

As is the case with so many of history’s political scandals, sex was at the center of the Profumo Affair. John Profumo was the Secretary of State for War under Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, who had succeeded Anthony Eden upon his resignation in 1957 after fallout from the  Suez Canal crisis . Christine Keeler was a 19-year-old aspiring model who worked as a dancer at Murray’s Cabaret Club, where she met Stephen Ward. Ward was an osteopath who moved in high-end circles; he knew Prince Philip at least as an acquaintance, if not necessarily as a patient as portrayed in  The Crown . But Ward was definitely firm friends with Yevgeny Ivanov, a naval attaché at the Soviet Embassy in London.  MI5  approached Ward with hopes that he could help secure Ivanov’s defection, and the Foreign Office later used Ward’s connection to Ivanov as a backchannel to the Soviet Union, involving him in unofficial diplomacy during the  Cuban Missile Crisis  in 1962.

In July 1961, all the main players came together at a party held by Ward at the spring cottage at Cliveden, a magnificent estate in Buckinghamshire. While Keeler and Ivanov partied with Ward at the cottage, John Profumo and his wife were attending their own party at the estate’s main house. The two groups came together at the swimming pool. Shortly after the party,  Profumo and Keeler started a brief affair . Allegedly, she also slept with Ivanov around the same time, a rumored entanglement that becomes pertinent later.

The following year, after ending her affair with Profumo, Keeler became involved with a man named  Johnny Edgecombe . Their relationship ended badly; after their breakup, Edgecombe tracked Keeler down at Ward’s flat and fired gunshots at the front door. The police inquiry naturally attracted the attention of the press, especially with the involvement of the well-connected Ward, and journalists soon linked Ward, Keeler and Profumo together. Keeler began to  talk  both to reporters and to the members of the opposition Labour party.  Rumors  intensified when Keeler failed to appear to testify at Edgecombe’s trial, with the papers insinuating that Profumo had used his connections to whisk her out of the country.

Under pressure from his own party to explain himself, Profumo stood in the House of Commons and admitted to knowing Keeler, Ward, and Ivanov, but  denied  having a sexual relationship with Keeler ( sound familiar? ). But scrutiny from the press only intensified after another jilted lover attacked Keeler. Ward used his connections to approach the Prime Minister’s personal secretary to ask that the police not investigate, and also divulged the truth behind Profumo and Keeler’s affair. Further sensationalizing matters in both the press and in government— and even in the daily business of the U.S. House of Representatives —was the tangential involvement of Ivanov, with rumors flying about Russian spies and national security breaches—claims that  ultimately were never substantiated .

But with the affair confirmed and guilty of contempt in the Commons, Profumo  resigned  from office. Three days later, Ward was arrested on charges of immorality. Just as his trial began, however, Ward  committed suicide by overdosing on sleeping pills . Fallout from the scandal lead to a narrow Conservative Party defeat in the 1964 general election, and Harold Wilson became prime minister.

The Aberfan Disaster (Season 3)

One of the most tragic real-world events brought to life on  The Crown ’s small screen was the Aberfan disaster. On the morning of October 21, 1966, in the Welsh mining village of Aberfan, a colliery  spoil tip  (a pile of shale, dirt, rocks, and other waste material removed during the mining process) collapsed, sending   140,000 cubic yards  of sooty refuse avalanching into the village below. It crashed into the local school, where lessons had just begun,  killing 116 children, 5 teachers, and 23 other adults .

In a grizzly coincidence, all children who attended the school had been given  dental exams the month prior , and these recent dental records proved invaluable in identifying the bodies of the dead.

On the 25 th ,  a formal tribunal was appointed  to investigate the disaster and the liability of the National Coal Board, who controlled the colliery and who had received complaints from residents in the years before the disaster about the tip’s stability after problems with recent flooding.  Meanwhile, donations poured in to assist survivors, eventually being consolidated into the  Aberfan Disaster Fund , a trust that was regulated by the  Charity Commission under the Charities Act 1960 .

The Fund eventually amassed £1.75 million ( about £32 million today ). But controversy on how funds should be dispersed dogged the Fund’s work, from whether  £500 or £5,000  should be paid to surviving parents who had lost a child, to whether  children mentally scarred but physically unharmed  by the disaster deserved compensation, to whether funds should be used in  removing the remaining tips  in Aberfan.

In 1967, the inquiry into the National Coal Board released its final report, in which it  found  the Board guilty of neglecting to ensure the tip’s safety. Despite this, no one from the Board ever faced criminal prosecution over the disaster—and no one was fired. As a result of the disaster, the  Mines and Quarries (Tips) Act  1969 was passed to provide further oversight of tips to prevent another disaster like Aberfan from occurring. The Queen has reportedly described her decision to wait eight days after the disaster to visit the people of Aberfan her “ biggest regret .”

The Iron Lady (Season 4)

A new season always brings Elizabeth at least one new prime minister. Season four focused solely on the premiership of  Margaret Thatcher , the first woman to hold that office. Dubbed the “Iron Lady,” she was prime minister from 1975 to 1990, making her the longest-serving British prime minister of the 20 th  century. Thatcher’s time in office covered a period of great change in Britain, as a series of economic policies intended to pull the country out of a recession resulted in high levels of unemployment. The show chose to embody the effects of Thatcher’s philosophy, known as Thatcherism, into its portrayal of  Michael Fagan , an unemployed painter and decorator who in 1982 twice snuck inside Buckingham Palace and once into the Queen’s bedchamber. Fagan in the show is down on his luck, estranged from his wife and children, living in a flat that’s fallen into terrible disrepair, and unable to receive any kind of assistance from the government. He holds a captive, albeit unorthodox, audience with his Queen, begging her to pay attention to the effects Thatcher’s policies are having on the working man, and also disparaging the current state of the palace, saying it could use a fresh coat of paint. In reality, Fagan and Her Majesty likely had no such philosophical discussion during their brief nocturnal meeting. Fagan, having  technically broken no laws  for shimmying up Buckingham’s drainpipe, was instead charged with theft for drinking a bottle of wine while roaming the palace halls.

Thatcher’s economic policies placed a high priority on controlling inflation rather than unemployment, emphasizing the free market through  deregulation ,  privatizing state-owned companies , and reducing trade unions’ influence. She had a strong ally philosophically with her American counterpart Ronald Reagan, and the two shared a  close relationship ; on Regan’s death in 2004, Thatcher attended his funeral (against her doctor’s orders) and delivered a  eulogy .

High unemployment decimated Thatcher’s approval rating, but victory in the  Falklands War  helped her win re-election in 1983 (an international conflict that did not overlap with her son Mark’s disappearance in the Paris-Dakar rally, as portrayed in the show). But the implementation of the  Community Charge (poll tax)  to replace domestic rates (or property taxes) with a single flat-rate per-capita tax on every adult was disastrous;  protests  against the tax took place across Scotland and England, and the poll tax today is considered to be one of the  main reasons  for Thatcher leaving office in 1990. She did receive an Order of Merit from the Queen after her resignation, as seen on the show; among her many accolades,  she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991  by President George H.W. Bush. Margaret Thatcher  died   in 2013.

“In an increasingly complex world, we all need certainty”

And at the Hein blog, you can be certain we’ll give our readers the royal treatment, showing them ways to inspire their research. If you enjoyed this post, hit the subscribe button to receive future posts straight to your inbox, and leave us a comment below to let us know what you’re binging; you might inspire one of the Hein gurus on what to write about next.

Stephanie Jacobson

• Tags: law journal library , world constitutions illustrated

The History of the Independence Day Holiday

The Fourth of July commemorates colonial America’s declared independence from Great Britain. But, do you know how the Independence Day came to be a national holiday, and why it is held on July 4th?

London’s Great Stink

London, 1858. Citizens suffer through a very disgusting, very smelly summer that, almost 170 years later, is still ominously remembered as the Great Stink.

Buffalo History: The Caroline Affair and International Law

In 1837, a rebellion in Canada and the destruction of an American steamship brought the United States and Great Britain to the brink of war.

Like what you see?

There’s plenty more where that came from! Subscribe to the HeinOnline Blog to receive posts like these right to your inbox.

By entering your email, you agree to receive great content from the HeinOnline Blog. HeinOnline also uses the information you provide to contact you about other content, products, and services we think you’ll love.

Like what you're reading? Subscribe to the blog!

Uneasy Lies the Head That Wears the Crown

From the karmic to the dharmic

In Western philosophies, the binary of free will versus determinism underlies the discourse on human action—are we entirely free to choose what we can do, or are these choices constrained in some way? In the Subcontinent, these conflicting ideas about the extent of personal freedom are most creatively discussed in a radically different vocabulary in classical stories. In our myths and epics, characters have their actions contained and circumscribed by karma as well as by boons and curses. What they can do is often determined by their deeds in the past, sometimes even by the deeds of others. Further, the gods and powerful sages can intervene in the course of a character’s life by bestowing boons or curses as rewards and punishments.

If karma and powerful supernatural forces are what shape the lives of characters, where do we place free will in these narratives? We could argue that the moment of free will, however limited, occurs when characters have to make choices. Dharma, ie, what they pick from among several obligations that appear before them, is where free will resides in this complex universe of constrained choices.

Rama was exiled into the forest for 14 years because his father, Dasharatha, was cursed by the parents of a young man that he accidentally killed while he was hunting. The aged and infirm couple cursed the king that he, too, would be denied the comfort of his beloved son in his old age. Dasharatha is also bound by the boons that he gave Kaikeyi, his wife, when she saved his life in battle. When she demands that Rama be sent away, he cannot refuse her. Another story that seeks to explain Dasharatha’s actions is one where, in order to marry Kaikeyi, he had promised her father that her son, and not the sons born of his other wives, would rule Ayodhya. Nothing that Rama has done is the reason for his exile—for this cataclysmic event, he is acted upon entirely by forces outside his own life.

Rama’s moment of choice comes when he has to decide whether or not to respect his father’s outrageous decree. He chooses to be a dutiful son rather than a rebellious prince when he accepts the command and leaves for the forest with his wife and brother. Once Rama has been exiled, the choices he makes are relatively freer in terms of being defined by royal obligation and familial duty. In the confrontation with Shurpanakha, for example, Rama chooses not to kill the aggressive rakshasi but he does encourage his brother to attack her fiercely. Later, he ignores Lakshmana’s warnings and decides that he will chase the golden deer because Sita is so enamored of it and he will do anything to make her happy. Rama chooses Sugriva as an ally and then kills Vali as part of the pact of friendship that he has made with the exiled monkey. At the end of the war, Rama asks Sita to undergo a public test of her chastity, even though (apparently), he knew in his heart that she had done no wrong. And in the final act of the Ramayana, Rama the king, chooses to banish his wife because she does not have the trust and confidence of his people.

Nestled within the idea of free will is the corollary of being responsible for consequences of the choice that has been made, however painful they may be. Dasharatha had to choose between his obligations as a king and his promises as a husband when Kaikeyi asked him to send Rama away. He chose to be a husband. Rama was confronted with the same dilemma when he heard his citizens’ gossip about Sita—he had to choose between his duties as a public figure who must respect the opinions of his people and those of an ordinary man who loved his wife. He chose his public self, he chose to act as a king. The consequences of the choices that both Rama and Dasharatha make are devastating for them—each nurses a broken heart for the rest of his life, brutally aware that the situation in which he finds himself is of his own making.

Dharma lies not in the act itself or in the consequences of the act but in taking responsibility for what we have done

What happens when a character refuses to take responsibility for her or his actions or non-actions? In the Mahabharata, Bhishma renounces not only kingship and the company of women, he appears to renounce action itself. He will not save Amba when she returns to him after Shalva has rejected her, he will not prevent the assault on Draupadi and her humiliation in the grand assembly, he will not stop the war between his nephews. Whatever his unfathomable reasons, the grand patriarch of the Kaurava clan chooses not to act. Bhishma can choose not to act because he is powerful. He does not need to act in order to maintain his political position or his moral stature, both of which devolve to him simply because of who he is. Bhishma chooses the dharma of the renunciant where detachment is the ultimate value despite the fact that he remains a part of the family elders at court. He does not take responsibility for the multiple and bloody tragedies that happen around him, many of which are the consequences of his silence and inertia. Bhishma can choose the time of his own death and so it is that he dies 58 days after he has been felled by Arjuna’s arrows on the battle-field. Surely, it is not without some irony that we honour and respect Bhishma Pitamaha for giving discourses on dharma and right action at the end of a life that has been primarily about avoiding action and responsibility altogether.

If we think of Bhishma as not acting at all, we can think of Lakshmana as acting rather too much. Apart from what he does for and by himself, he also acts on his brother’s behalf. In doing so, Lakshmana assumes responsibility for the choices that others have made. To begin with, he chooses to follow Rama and Sita into the forest even though he himself has not been exiled. Once there, he absorbs not only Rama’s anger, but also performs the acts of violence that his brother will not. For instance, Lakshmana mutilates Shurpanakha and guards Sita when Rama chases the golden deer. It is Lakshmana who builds the fire in which Sita will prove her chastity to Rama after she has been won back. But most poignantly of all, it is Lakshmana who drives a pregnant Sita into the forest (under the false pretence of visiting the sages’ wives) when Rama banishes her from Ayodhya. As he leaves her by the banks of the river in the gathering gloom of twilight, Lakshmana breaks down and weeps openly, unable to endure the cruelty and injustice of what he has been asked to do.

No one and nothing has compelled Lakshmana to take on these additional deeds which, some would argue, more rightfully belong to his brother. He has chosen to do these things, acting as a good brother should, performing a dharma that he has selected for himself. But what of the burden of their consequences—where does that lie? Of course, Rama’s life is irrevocably changed, desolate, when he loses his wife forever. But Lakshmana, too, feels the weight of all that he has done at his brother’s command. At the end of the Valmiki Ramayana, Time arrives to see Rama and asks for a private meeting with him. Time says that whoever interrupts the meeting will die. Lakshmana himself stands guard at the door. An angry Durvasa demands to see Rama because he is hungry. He swears that he will curse Rama’s kingdom and all his people if he is not allowed to meet the king. Knowing what awaits him, Lakshmana opens the door and interrupts Rama’s meeting with Time. Time reminds Rama that Lakshmana must die for what he has done. To spare his brother the pain of having him killed, Lakshmana walks alone to the banks of the Sarayu, where he withdraws his senses and stills his breath.

Perhaps unwilling to carry these heavy responsibilities any more, Lakshmana placed himself in a position where he knows death would come to him. Or, perhaps he knew that Time had come to signal the end of Rama’s life on earth and since he, Lakshmana, could not bear to live alone in the shadow of all that he has done for his brother, he decides that he, too, must exit the world. Either way, whether out of desperation or a sense of completion, Lakshmana chooses to die when he might have lived. But, how different is Lakshmana’s lonely death from that of Bhishma’s celebrated one! Bhishma could choose the moment of his death because of a boon, he dies covered in glory and mourned by the royal family that he leaves behind. Lakshmana seeks out the moment of his death. His choice stands out in this universe of determinism, seeming more like the act of a modern Existentialist than that of a warrior prince in a classical epic.

In our contemporary lives, we are being increasingly coerced to adopt ways of thinking and being that are articulated in ancient texts. What would it be like if we used the past as a template for the present? If we turn to the Mahabharata, then it would appear that we live in troubled times—for, like Bhishma, the powerful do not speak, do not act and abjure responsibility for what they have unleashed. If we look to the Ramayana for ways to understand where we are and seek models for action, then the king must banish those who tarnish his image.

Without being literal and stifling our imaginations, there are ways that might expand the remit of these stories such that they speak to our lives and deepen our understanding of our own deeds in the real world. In the 21st century, whether or not we subscribe to a rigorously retributive theory of karma, we believe, in the main, that it is our own actions that chart the course of our lives.

If we like, we can also believe that, like the characters in the stories we have grown up with, dharma is what we choose to do when we are presented with a range of choices. Further, once we choose, we are responsible for our actions and their consequences. However, choosing to do the right thing does not always have good and happy consequences, as we learn from the story of Rama. Perhaps dharma, the right and the good, lies not in the act itself or in the consequences of the act, but in taking responsibility for what we have done. If determinism denies us a sense of responsibility for what happens, then free will hands it back to us. If it is karma that has made our lives what they are, then it has to be dharma that makes us the people we are.

About The Auth o r

Current issue.

Open Minds 2024

More st o ries.

Murder and Memories

The Mozart of Poetry

Joint Protection Tips

M o st popular, the art of winning a defeat, misreading bhagwat, the sordid saga of jagan mohan reddy.

Sandeep Balakrishna

Love Is Plural

Lhendup G Bhutia

The Rise of Hyper Hindus

Makarand R Paranjape

More C o lumns

Murder and Memories Shylashri Shankar

The Mozart of Poetry Sabin Iqbal

Joint Protection Tips Dr Manjunath Kodihally

REC O MMENDED STORIES

The Other Mutiny: 1946 Naval Rebellion

Pramod Kapoor Spare a thought for the heroes of the 1946 naval rebellion

The Past is a Divided Country

Nayanjot Lahiri Is it possible for the Mohenjodaro necklace and girdle to be reunited?

Partition: Lives Apart

TCA Raghavan Three contrarian Partition stories: a Punjabi Muslim, a Frontier Pathan, and a sensationalist

© 2019 Open Media Network Pvt. Ltd.

Design & Developed by Pixelvj

• Free Samples
• Premium Essays
• Editing Services Editing Proofreading Rewriting
• Extra Tools Essay Topic Generator Thesis Generator Citation Generator GPA Calculator Study Guides Donate Paper
• Essay Writing Help
• About Us About Us Testimonials FAQ

Essays on uneasy lies the head that wears the crown

• Studentshare
• uneasy lies the head that wears the crown
• TERMS & CONDITIONS
• PRIVACY POLICY
• COOKIES POLICY

Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears a Crown – Meaning, Origin and Usage

Are you looking for a way to express the frustration and anxiety of making hard decisions? You could use the phrase 'uneasy is the head that wears a crown' to describe their emotional state.

This phrase unpacks the meaning and origin of this expression.

The expression 'uneasy lies the head that wears a crown' means that you’re dealing with stress and anxiety caused by carrying a heavy burden in your life.

The person feels stressed and on edge all the time and operates under huge pressure. The expression means that you struggle with maintaining a balance in your life due to environmental and social pressures.

Example Usage

“I’m under a lot of pressure at work at the moment. We’re bleeding cash this quarter, and everyone is looking to me to provide direction. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.”

“We have a crisis and need effective leadership to navigate us through this time. Look at how stressed the Prime minister is at the situation. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.”

“Making tough decisions as a manager is just part of the job. I must do it to grow in the company and as a person. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.”

The expression ‘uneasy lies the head that wears a crown’ originates from a misquote of a line from a play by William Shakespeare.

The original phrase appears in his play, ‘King Richard IV Part 2’, during the first scene in act 3. The expression appears in its original form as follows.

“That, with the hurly, death itself awakes?

Canst thou, O partial sleep, give thy repose

To the wet sea-boy in an hour so rude,

And in the calmest and most stillest night,

With all appliances and means to boot,

Deny it to a king? Then happy low, lie down!

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.”

It’s unclear when the more popular version, ‘uneasy is the head that wears the crown,’ appeared as a replacement for the original phrase, but it’s the more common variant today.

Phrases Similar to Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears a Crown

• With great power comes great responsibility.

Phrases Opposite to Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears a Crown

• No responsibilities, no worries.
• Don’t worry, be happy.

What is the Correct Saying?

• Uneasy is the head that wears a crown.
• Uneasy is the head that wears the crown.

Ways People May Say Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears a Crown Incorrectly

The phrase has nothing do with wearing crows. The crown is your responsibilities and duties in life, and ‘Uneasy’ means that they weigh on your conscience. It’s common for people to phrase the expression as ‘uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.’ Both sayings are correct and used interchangeably.

Acceptable Ways to Phrase Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears a Crown

You can use the phrase ‘uneasy lies the head that wears a crown’ in situations where you want to express your burden of responsibility to others. It suits professional and social situations. You could use it at work to describe making difficult management decisions. Use it at home to explain the burden associated with being a breadwinner for your family.

The expression ‘uneasy lies the head that wears a crown’ describes a situation where you feel stressed and anxious. It’s a way of saying that you’re having difficulty handling a situation and don’t know what to do. It can also refer to feelings of regret or sorrow for making bad or hard decisions that impact other people’s lives.

Related posts:

• Head Over Heels - Meaning, Origin and Usage
• The Fish Rots from the Head – Meaning, Origin and Usage
• Hit the Nail on the Head – Meaning, Origin and Usage
• Banging Your Head Against a Wall – Meaning, Origin and Usage
• Keep Your Head on a Swivel - Meaning, Origin and Usage
• Beyond the Pale – Meaning, Origin and Usage

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.

To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to  upgrade your browser .

Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.

• We're Hiring!
• Help Center

Uneasy Lies the Head that Wears the Crown: Why Content's Kingdom is Slipping Away

2008, Vand. J. Ent. & Tech. L.

Related Papers

Northwestern University Law Review

Olufunmilayo Arewa

Colum J L Arts

Sonia Katyal

Yafit Lev-Aretz

SSRN Electronic Journal

Abstract The rise of Nollywood illustrates the revolutionary potential of digital technologies in Africa. Nollywood, or the Nigerian video film industry, reflects technology leapfrogging that is increasingly prominent in Africa today. Such leapfrogging, however, may raise significant issues with respect to legal and other institutions. Film production had largely ceased in Nigeria by the end of the 1980s. Despite this absence, in the early 1990s, Nigeria started on a path that has led it to become the top producer of digital video films in the world. Nigeria ...

Diversity in Intellectual Property Identities, Interests, and Intersections EDITED BY

Nigeria's Nollywood film industry has emerged as a global phenomenon based to a significant degree on local Nigerian and African cultural meanings. The growth of Nollywood highlights complexities of place, identity, and status in global cultural production. Nollywood also underscores the role of technology in redefining cultural space. Nollywood has floucished through widespread use of digital technologies and represents one potential outcome of access to the tools of cultural production that have been significantly unconstrained by legal, regulatory, and industry control. Nollywood also exemplifies cultural production by groups and societies that have typically been objects of representation, often in quite negative ways.2 As such, Nollywood is an important lens through which to consider persistent questions about cultural diversity in the film industry.

Debora Halbert

American University International Law Review

Bill D Herman

Scholars who discuss copyright often observe that the voices for stronger copyright have more financial and political capital than their opponents and thus tend to win in Congress. While those facts are historically true, since the turn of the century, the politics around the issue have shifted substantially and become much messier and less predictable. This study illustrates this changing policy dynamic via a detailed political and legislative history of the major proposals regarding digital rights management and related areas of ...

ABSTRACT Scholars who discuss copyright often observe that the voices for stronger copyright have more financial and political capital than their opponents and thus tend to win in Congress. While those facts are historically true, since the turn of the century, the politics around the issue have shifted substantially and become much messier and less predictable.

Loading Preview

Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.

RELATED PAPERS

Mark Bartholomew

Nicolas Jondet

Santa Clara Comp. & High Tech. L.J

Eldar Haber

Maria Lillà Montagnani

Jonathan J Darrow

Ben Depoorter

Michael J Madison

Friedrichsen, Mike y Wolfgang Mülh-Benninghaus (eds.), Handbook of Social Media Management: Value Chain and Business Models in Changing Media Markets, Berlin: Springer-Verlag, pp. 329-348

Alejandro Pardo

Brian Pearl

Mike Van Esler

Adam Tanielian

Oregon Law Review

Georgetown Law Journal

Julie Cohen

Nw. J. Tech. & Intell. Prop.

Brett Lunceford

Jeremy de Beer

Tanner Mirrlees

15 North Carolina Journal of Law and Technology 101

Benton Martin , Jeremiah Newhall

In: Ramon Lobato, Jonathan Meese (eds.) Geoblocking and Global Video Culture. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 86–93.

Florian Hoof

Stanford Law Review

Jonathan Zittrain

American Journal of Comparative Law

Tianxiang He

michael einhorn

Alex Fischer

andre cummings

Sven Vanneste

NYU Annual Survey of American Law

Jorge R Roig

Harv. JL & Tech.

Case W Res L Rev

Hofstra L. Rev.

Amit M Schejter

3 Arizona State University Sports and Entertainment Law Journal 1

Tiffany Lee

Valentina Re

RELATED TOPICS

•   We're Hiring!
•   Help Center
• Find new research papers in:
• Health Sciences
• Earth Sciences
• Cognitive Science
• Mathematics
• Computer Science
• Academia ©2024

• DOI: 10.1037/a0028127
• Corpus ID: 18610738

Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown: the link between guilt proneness and leadership.

• R. Schaumberg , Francis J. Flynn
• Published in Journal of Personality and… 30 April 2012

Figures and Tables from this paper

69 Citations

Running head : guilt proneness guilt proneness and moral character, guilt proneness and interdependence 1 running head: guilt proneness and interdependence “i’d only let you down”: guilt proneness and the avoidance of harmful interdependence april 12, 2014, guilt proneness and moral character, 'i'd only let you down': guilt proneness and the avoidance of harmful interdependence, guilt-proneness is a marker of integrity and employment suitability, empathy, guilt proneness, and gender: relative contributions to prosocial behaviour, clarifying the link between job satisfaction and absenteeism: the role of guilt proneness, the moralizing effect: self-directed emotions and their impact on culpability attributions, too insecure to be a leader: the role of attachment in leadership emergence, feeling proud but guilty unpacking the paradoxical nature of unethical pro-organizational behavior, 114 references, shame, guilt, and personality judgment., moral affect: the good, the bad, and the ugly..

• Highly Influential

Introducing the GASP scale: a new measure of guilt and shame proneness.

Empathy, shame, guilt, and narratives of interpersonal conflicts: guilt‐prone people are better at perspective taking, shame-proneness, guilt-proneness, and interpersonal problem solving: a social cognitive analysis, leader emergence: the case of the narcissistic leader, stirring the hearts of followers: charismatic leadership as the transferal of affect., personal narratives about guilt: role in action control and interpersonal relationships., guilt: an interpersonal approach., assessing individual differences in proneness to shame and guilt: development of the self-conscious affect and attribution inventory..

• 20 Excerpts

Related Papers

Showing 1 through 3 of 0 Related Papers

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown: Narcoqueens, beauty queens, and melodrama in narconarratives

The melodramatic narrative mode creates complex realities and news events as logical and consumable stories. This article considers the ways that popular media portray the cases of Sandra Avila Beltrán and Laura Zúñiga, both arrested on drug-related charges in separate incidents that overlap with narconarratives. My analysis demonstrates that Avila Beltrán’s and Zúñiga’s life stories intrigued audiences because, in the context of melodramas, women as criminals is an attractive trope that counters expected “feminine” behavior and challenges constructions of national ideals and respectable femininity. While Avila Beltrán embodies a femme fatale figure, Zúñiga maps to an ingénue. These tropes of idealized femininity soften the transgressive acts of the two women suspected of participating in criminality associated with the transnational drug trade, which is coded as masculine. Their narratives redefine melodramatic gendered performance in the context of a hypermasculine narcoculture that thrives in an age of globalization and neoliberal policies. Their stories are emblematic of the ways that women in narcoculture are narrated, revealing cultural anxieties about changing gender roles in the context of political instability and excessive violence.

Author supplied keywords

• Criminality
• Feminist cultural studies
• Narcoculture

Register to see more suggestions

Mendeley helps you to discover research relevant for your work.

CITATION STYLE

Ruiz, M. L. (2021). Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown: Narcoqueens, beauty queens, and melodrama in narconarratives. Middle Atlantic Review of Latin American Studies , 5 (1), 42–60. https://doi.org/10.23870/marlas.360

Readers' Discipline

Social Sciences 1

Save time finding and organizing research with Mendeley