This volume presents a personal selection of great kings and queens, the word 'great' implying no moral judgment but used as a simple descriptive label for those whose significance for Used or bad has been considerable. Most of them exercised absolute or near - absolute power, for the emergence of the constitutional monarch is a comparatively recent phenomenon. Also included are rulers who seemed to partake wholly or to a large extent in the royal mystique. Thus there is a certain resemblance between, say, Pericles, on the one hand and Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy on the other.