The Queen Must Live: Mythic Patterns of Royalty, Sexuality, and Mortality

"The Queen Must Live" is a study of the eternal struggle between male strengths and female powers. Stories from every corner of the globe and throughout millennia reconstruct the mythic and ritual scenarios of this struggle. The object, rather than unilateral dominance, is the achievement a workable equilibrium. There are thousands of paths to be followed, sets of variable conditions from hundreds of societies and cultures; but there are also many recurrent and shared motifs in the stories. These motifs are what structure the analysis, resulting in an argument that asserts the need for human beings, as a species that could be termed Homo narratans, to acknowledge and honor both sides of the perpetual, persistent conflict.