The Final Indignity

At the start of every year, the Kingdom of Urbania elected a new monarch.

Of course, the old royals had to be disposed of in some way. They were driven away from the capital in an old cart owned by Farmer Putnam. They had already been stripped of most of their pomp and circumstance, though the former sovereigns were allowed to keep their scepters.

Farmer Putnam deposited his charges on the outskirts of the city where they would live out their remaining days. It was at this point he informed them that his transport fee was exactly one royal scepter.

Tiny King Seamus

He was the tiny king of the world's smallest microdictatorship.

He referred to it as his island nation though it was really just seven-ninths of a square meter that was cordoned off in the vacant lot next to Baxter Park.

"Sing to me not of your troubled refrains and broken governments. We will not recognize your sovereignty until you recognize ours." He always spouted such nonsense through the broken megaphone he carried with him like a scepter.

When they came to haul him off to the mental ward, they found that he'd appointed a rabid rottweiler as Minister of Defense.