This is why you should read history.
Because sometimes you get The Good Stuff:
On April 20, 1532, on a night as soft as a cloak of moist satin, Saif al-Haram, performing his conjugal “duty” with his four step-mothersseriatimand all together, had the imprudent weakness to overindulge and in the very midst of his dutiful delights gave up the ghost…the next day his raven-eyed minister Al Hadj Abd al-Hassana, having established a stripling boy and Hawa, the most beautiful of Saif’s stepmothers in his bed, was stung by an asp which he was caressing in the belief that he was holding something else, opened his mouth three times and died…his successor was Holongo, “a horrible biped with the brutal expression of a buffalo,” humped in front and in back; after a reign of two years, moaning in enviable torment, he died in the arms of a courtesan, Aiosha, who strangled him as he was crying out in ecstasy. His successor was Saif Ali, a pederast with pious airs, as vicious as a red donkey, who succumbed six months later to the sin of gluttony, leaving the crowning to Saif Jibril, Ali’s younger brother, who, slain by the sin of indiscretion, was replaced by Saif Yussufi, one of the sons of Ramina (mother of Sair Hal-Haram, got with child by her son at the cost of a great effort). An albino notorious for his ugliness, he was twice felled by one of his wife’s admirers; the third time—at last!—much to his amazement, he was carried off by an ill wind, ceding his place to Saif Medioni of Mostanagem, who was recalled to God ten days later, torn to pieces, so it is said, by the contrary angels of Mercy and Justice.
