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ETERNAL ROMANCE - by Peter William Gribble When someone sent a single rose to the acerbic wit Dorothy Parker of the Algonquin Round Table in New York, she wrote a poem called 'One Perfect Rose.' In it she considered the language of love where every flower conveys a message and how much more meaningful it would be if she received one perfect limousine instead of 'just my luck' one perfect rose. Romance is in the eye -- and heart -- of the beholder. Many factors can go into the successful romance or only one: the beloved. After the limousines and the perfect roses -- should come 'and they lived happily ever after.' It leaves us with the comforting assumption that the romance continues and deepens. For millennia, folk tales and legends, history and literature -- and film and television more recently - have more often than not, happy endings, but not always. If the love is true, the happily-ever-after ending should be inevitable. One of the most famous romances of the ancient world was that of Anthony and Cleopatra. To counter Rome's growing power, Cleopatra needed a battle-tested man to help forge her own dreams of an Eastern Empire, and she set her sights on Anthony. She left Egypt to meet him and sailed up to Tarsus on the Cydnus River in a silver-oared and gilded barge with purple sails. Reclining under a gold-spangled canopy and adorned as Aphrodite, she was fanned by little boys painted as Cupids, accompanied by her most beautiful handmaidens, arrayed as Graces and Nereids were stationed at the tillers and ropes while from huge incense fires exotic perfumes wafted to the crowd-lined river banks...Cleopatra's version of the 'perfect limousine'. Her Roman was entranced. As their love intensified and her ambitions flowered, Anthony discovered in himself attributes of the God Dionysus. Anthony and Cleopatra loved each other, true, but it was tempestuous --politics, kingdoms and empires got in the way. Octavian in Rome bristled at their declaration of a breakaway Eastern Empire run by Egypt and so moved against them. Anthony lost the battle of Actium and catastrophe loomed. In 30 B.C., when the Roman army invaded Egypt, Cleopatra barricaded herself in her mausoleum with her Treasury. Anthony, believing Cleopatra had committed suicide, fell on his sword. When his still living body was brought to her, they had time to forgive each other all the wrongs that had occurred over the years...then he died. It sounds romantic, but it really was only a small mercy. Cleopatra took her own life with a venomous bite from an asp. For all the fascinating complexity of drama and pageantry, this does not constitute a happy ending -- a hint that romance with an agenda -- political or otherwise -- may not end well. By contrast, virtually two millennia later, in 1936, Edward VIII, groomed for the throne of England, found himself at loggerheads with the government, the establishment and the Church of England. He wanted to marry the twice-divorced American socialite Wallis Simpson. Everyone was horrified that a divorced foreigner could become Queen. The government threatened to resign if he went through with it. His decision to follow his heart became the most romantic gesture of the twentieth century, On December 11th, 1936, a nation, an empire and the world wept hearing Edward's last radio broadcast as King. '... You all know the reasons which have impelled me to renounce the throne. But I want you to understand that in making up my mind I did not forget the country or the empire, which, as Prince of Wales and lately as King, I have for twenty-five years tried to serve. But you must believe me when I tell you that I have found it Page 20 Perfect Wedding Magazine / Fall Winter 2009-2010