Two hundred years. So this year we’re celebrating the ascendancy of the Prince Regent (how much is enough? minimal, unlike the person of His Highness), surely one of the more useless and despicable members of the doltish dullards who were the Hapsburgs.

The actual Regency itself–those nine years–were not the best of times. Political oppression, check. Galloping inflation, check. Warfare, check. Gowns dropping the lovely Grecian simplicity and developing silly frills at the hems, check.