title: I (2015 film)

text: The film was scheduled to be released in 15,000 screens across the world, with 10,000 screens being allotted for the Chinese and English dubbed versions of the film. But, the plan was later backed off. The film was released in 3000 screens worldwide, including the Tamil, dubbed Telugu and Hindi versions of the film. In Tamil Nadu, the film was screened in more than 400–500 screens. In Kerala, the film was premiered at more than 232 theatres, the highest release for a Tamil film in that state. In the United States, the film was showcased 400 screens including the Tamil, Telugu and Hindi versions. It was also showcased in other overseas countries, such as United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia and Singapore. The Telugu and Hindi-dubbed version of the film screened a day after the Tamil version's release, 15 January 2015. It is the first Tamil film to be released in Pakistan.


title: I (2015 film)

text: The advance bookings for the film began on 11 January 2015, and saw a "tremendous response". On the evening of 11 January, the advance bookings began at Sathyam Cinemas and tickets for three days of the opening weekend, were almost sold out. The film also saw "solid booking" in major theatres such as AGS Entertainment's cinemas, PVR Cinemas' Sangam Theatre at R.K. Puram and the Abhirami theatre. Owing to the ticketing response, several single screens theatres, including Kasi theatre conducted a special early morning show for celebrities and noted VIP personalities.


title: I (2015 film)

text: In September 2014, Sushma Cine Arts announced that they have acquired the Tamil Nadu theatrical rights. The distribution rights for the Telugu-dubbed version titled "I: Manoharudu" were purchased by Tirupathy Prasad and R. B. Choudary's joint distribution firm Mega Super Good Films, for a price of , thereby beating the distribution rights for "Robo", the Telugu-dubbed version of Shankar's previous film "Enthiran" (2010) which was sold for . The Kerala theatrical rights were sold to Global United Media. AGS Entertainment acquired the theatrical distribution rights in the Chennai and Chengalpet regions.


title: I (2015 film)

text: The first look production poster of the film was unveiled on 15 July 2012. Stills featuring the lead pair were released in March 2014. The official motion poster teaser of the film was released on YouTube on 8 September 2014. The motion poster crossed 1 million views by the third day of its release. Two posters released on 12 September 2014, with J. Hurtado of "Twitch Film" labelling them as "out of this world". The producer screened a sneak preview of the teaser and the song "Ennodu Nee Irundhaal" for the critics in late August 2014. The teaser carried a dummy music score that was not composed by A. R. Rahman.


title: I (2015 film)

text: The complete teaser trailer of the film was leaked on the internet on 2 September 2014. Although the leaked teaser lacked decipherability, the person who had leaked the teaser openly informed the team about it and challenged them to take action against him. After further inquiries, it was revealed that the culprit broke into producer Ravichandran's office during the night and had copied the teaser. However, Ravichandran refused to make changes to the leaked teaser, and planned to release it as per the original schedule.


title: I (2015 film)

text: The teaser was unveiled at the audio launch of the film. Hurtado in his teaser review wrote, "We see Vikram taking on multiple characters including a Quasimodo-type, kicking monstrous amounts of ass in various action sequences, running across water, riding a cyborg motorcycle, and dancing up a storm in some absurdly colorful backgrounds" and concluded by saying "Shankar is nothing if not a visual stylist, and it looks like he's pulling out all the stops for this one". Prajakta Hebbar of "IBNLive" wrote, "When we heard that Tamil filmmaker Shankar was making a new film, we fully expected it to be larger-than-life, with a funky storyline and starring popular actors. But what we didn't expect was that feeling of thrill and intrigue", asserting that "Vikram and Shankar have us hooked with the teaser". Nivedita Mishra of the "Hindustan Times" elaborated in her teaser review, "Without doubt, the film's special effects are great by any standards. Now, whether or not, they have been indigenously put together or have been outsourced from the West, the producers alone will know, but just the desire to make a film that gets its production value right yet doesn't overdo it, is good enough. Here's hoping it will ignite a desire among Indians to go for the skies." and praised the spectacular landscapes, edgy camera angles, action sequences before concluding that "Shankar has put in a lot of effort to make this magnum opus worth a watch if teasers are to go by." "Behindwoods" wrote, "Anyone who sees this remarkably impactful teaser would keep rewinding what he / she saw, to relive the experience over and over again." The teaser crossed 1 million views in just 12 hours of its release, making it the first Indian film to do so, beating the record set by the teaser of the Bollywood film, "Bang Bang!" (2014), which crossed 1 million views in 13 hours. It reached 7 million views in 2 weeks after its release, becoming the only Tamil film to cross the mark till date.


title: I (2015 film)

text: The making video of the film was released on 31 October 2014. The official trailer of the film was released on 17 December 2014. The Hindi-version of the trailer was attached with the prints of Aamir Khan-starrer "PK" (2014). Reviewing for the trailer, International Business Times stated: "The trailer which runs for two minutes will catch your breath for its wholesomeness. Revealing a very interesting or rather a fantasy type story with jaw dropping visuals, wonderful locations, thrilling stunts, beautiful heroine, colorful songs, multi-dimensional Vikram and above all great amount of hard work." The film was promoted by Vikram on Bigg Boss 8.


title: I (2015 film)

text: The media rights of the film were purchased by Jaya TV for . The media rights included satellite rights and ringtones.


title: I (2015 film)

text: According to Box Office India, "I" earned around nett in South India on its first day, setting records in Kerala and Telangana/AP. The film grossed over worldwide on its opening day. The film went on to collect nett in India in three days from all its versions.


title: I (2015 film)

text: In its extended five-day weekend, the film earned nett in India from all three versions, with the Hindi version netting .


title: I (2015 film)

text: According to Andhra Box Office, the film had collected worldwide and eventually became a commercial success. The final domestic net(India net) collections were 148.65 crore. In crores final domestic net collections were 148.65 crore, domestic gross 185 crore and worldwide 239.35 crore.


title: I (2015 film)

text: "I" grossed US$697,346 in Tamil version and US$10,373 in dubbed Hindi version in USA in its first weekend. "I"(Tamil) grossed US$201,207 and "I"(Hindi) grossed US$4,009 in Canada in its first weekend. "I"(Tamil) grossed US$258,764 in UK-Ireland in first weekend. "I"(Tamil) grossed MYR 2,162,742 in Malaysia in first weekend. In first 10 days, "I"(Tamil) grossed US$789,298 in USA, US$323,714 in Canada, MYR 3,146,295 in Malaysia. In first 17 days, I(Tamil) grossed £386,542 in UK-Ireland and MYR 3,404,582 in Malaysia.


title: I (2015 film)

text: "I" received positive reviews from film critics who praised Vikram's and Amy Jackson's performances and technical aspects but criticised the pace and editing


title: I (2015 film)

text: On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes the movie has an approval score of 56% on the basis of 9 reviews with an average rating of 5.7 out of 10.


title: I (2015 film)

text: "Variety" magazine's Ronnie Scheib wrote, "Shankar's visual ingenuity keeps things zippy for much of the hefty 188-minute running time, and star Chiyaan Vikram delivers a knockout three-pronged performance, but this cinematic bravura is offset by underdeveloped scripting, flatly one-dimensional villains and overdone lone-hero-vs.-swarms-of-murderous-attackers setpieces". Rachel Saltz from "The New York Times" wrote, ""I" is exuberant and unselfconscious but too cartoonish to engage your emotions. The onslaught of images and music will engage your senses, though, even as you're left giggling at the too-muchness of it all". J Hurtado from "Twitch Film" wrote, ""I" strains the boundaries of self-indulgence and modern tolerance in a way that has become something of a plague among Indian blockbusters. The film is amazing to look at, features a number of amazing set pieces, and some appropriately over the top action sequences, but even with everything including a few kitchen sinks thrown in, it may go on a bit too long for its own good". Subhash K. Jha gave 4 stars out of 5 describing "I" as the "most exceptional" film from Shankar and wrote that it "takes us beyond the imaginable and the conceivable, fusing with fabulous flamboyance the fantasy element with a level of heightened reality that's commercial cinema's forte". Filmfare also gave it 4 stars out of 5, stating that "Shankar balances a social critique along with technical gimmickry and here the message centres about our obsession with physical perfection and beauty." Komal Nahta felt that Shankar's direction was "first rate" and wrote "His vision is unique and the translation of his vision on to the celluloid is brilliant. He has kept the narration so interesting that the viewer's eyes remain glued to the screen. He has given the film a huge canvas and has made it an audio-visual treat. Rajeev Masand from "IBN Live" gave 3 out of 5 and wrote, ""I" from visionary Tamil director Shankar is a work of staggering ambition, somewhat weighed down by the filmmaker's own indulgence...(it) may be far from perfect, but for the most part it's pretty entertaining stuff". "The Times of India" gave it 3.5 stars out of 5 and wrote, "Shot mesmerisingly by PC Sreeram on virgin locales in China and India, with world class CG work, this spectacle works because at the core, it's a romantic-thriller told simplistically...This is pure escapist fare but will resonate with those who read fairy tales at bedtime". "Rediff" gave 3.5 stars out of 5 and wrote, "The narrative lacks the pace; we usually associate with a Shankar's film. But he does tell a beautiful tale of love sullied by jealousies, greed and anger. The intriguing screenplay as the director alternates between the light-hearted past and the thrilling present keeps you engrossed". "Behindwoods.com" rated the film 3 out of 5 and stated, "though the story is predictable beyond a point, it's an amalgamation of 'Masters' at play which works to a larger extent because of their huge efforts". "India Today" rated the film 3 out of and wrote "It's not everyday you will get to watch a visually rich movie like this".


title: I (2015 film)

text: "The Hindu" stated, "Vikram's terrific performance is let down by an uninspired, exhausting movie". "Daily News & Analysis" gave the film 3 out of 5 stars, too, calling it a "great looking film but with shoddy writing and poorly sketched characters". Haricharan Pudipeddi, writing for "IANS", rated the film 2 out of 5 and said, "All that's big may not necessarily be great. Hope Shankar realises that much better films can be made on a smaller canvas and much lower budget." "Sify" wrote, ""I" is definitely not the best of Shankar and he has to take the blame for poor writing. His story is predictable and there are no twists or scenes which keeps you engaged. Barring few eye-popping stunt scenes, a slew of beautiful unseen locations, breathtaking camera by PC Sreeram and few hummable songs by AR Rahman, "I" is very ordinary". "Deccan Chronicle" gave the film 2.5 stars out of 5 and said, "While the movie and the effort is good technically, its content is just average". "Oneindia" also rated the film 2.5 out of 5 saying, "For a movie which had so much of anticipation, "I" doesn't feed its audience enough to fulfill their expectations. The story is plain and doesn't look like a normal Shankar movie which would otherwise have interesting twists and turns." Gautaman Bhaskaran, writing for "The Hindustan Times", rated the film two and a half stars, stating that Vikram's performance was the film's "only high point"; he noted that the film had similarities to the novel "The Hunchback of Notre-Dame" (1831) and the fairy tale "Beauty and the Beast" (1756), "without infusing any novelty into these age-old yarns." Deepanjana Pal from "Firstpost" wrote, ""I" is too long, too stupid and too regressive to be entertaining" and also called it "superficial and the least fun Shankar film ever".


title: Philip III of Spain

text: Philip III (; 14 April 1578 – 31 March 1621) was King of Spain. As Philip II, he was also King of Portugal, Naples, Sicily and Sardinia and Duke of Milan from 1598 until his death in 1621.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: A member of the House of Habsburg, Philip III was born in Madrid to King Philip II of Spain and his fourth wife and niece Anna, the daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II and Maria of Spain. Philip III later married his cousin Margaret of Austria, sister of Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: Although also known in Spain as Philip the Pious, Philip's political reputation abroad has been largely negative. Historians C. V. Wedgwood, R. Stradling and J. H. Elliott have described him, respectively, as an "undistinguished and insignificant man," a "miserable monarch," and a "pallid, anonymous creature, whose only virtue appeared to reside in a total absence of vice." In particular, Philip's reliance on his corrupt chief minister, the Duke of Lerma, drew much criticism at the time and afterwards. For many, the decline of Spain can be dated to the economic difficulties that set in during the early years of his reign. Nonetheless, as the ruler of the Spanish Empire at its height and as the king who achieved a temporary peace with the Dutch (1609–1621) and brought Spain into the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648) through an (initially) extremely successful campaign, Philip's reign remains a critical period in Spanish history.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: After Philip III's older half-brother Don Carlos died insane, their father Philip II had concluded that one of the causes of Carlos' condition had been the influence of the warring factions at the Spanish court. He believed that Carlos' education and upbringing had been badly affected by this, resulting in his lunacy and disobedience, and accordingly he set out to pay much greater attention to arrangements for his later sons. Philip II appointed Juan de Zúñiga, then Prince Diego's governor, to continue this role for Philip, and chose García de Loaysa as his tutor. They were joined by Cristóbal de Moura, a close supporter of Philip II. In combination, Philip believed, they would provide a consistent, stable upbringing for Prince Philip, and ensure he avoided the same fate as Carlos. Philip's education was to follow the model for royal princes laid down by Father Juan de Mariana, focusing on the imposition of restraints and encouragement to form the personality of the individual at an early age, aiming to deliver a king who was neither tyrannical nor excessively under the influence of his courtiers.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: Prince Philip appears to have been generally liked by his contemporaries: 'dynamic, good-natured and earnest,' suitably pious, having a 'lively body and a peaceful disposition,' albeit with a relatively weak constitution. The comparison with the memory of the disobedient and ultimately insane Carlos was usually a positive one, although some commented that Prince Philip appeared less intelligent and politically competent than his late brother. Indeed, although Philip was educated in Latin, French, Portuguese and astronomy, and appears to have been a competent linguist, recent historians suspect that much of his tutors' focus on Philip's undeniably pleasant, pious and respectful disposition was to avoid reporting that, languages aside, he was not in fact particularly intelligent or academically gifted. Nonetheless, Philip does not appear to have been naive—his correspondence to his daughters shows a distinctive cautious streak in his advice on dealing with court intrigue.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: Philip first met the Marquis of Denia—the future Duke of Lerma—then, a gentleman of the King's chamber, in his early teens. Lerma and Philip became close friends, but Lerma was considered unsuitable by the King and Philip's tutors. Lerma was dispatched to Valencia as a Viceroy in 1595, with the aim of removing Philip from his influence; but after Lerma pleaded poor health, he was allowed to return two years later. By now in poor health himself, King Philip II was becoming increasingly concerned over the prince's future, and he attempted to establish de Moura as a future, trusted advisor to his son, reinforcing de Loaysa's position by appointing him archbishop. The prince received a new, conservative Dominican confessor. The following year, Philip II died after a painful illness, leaving the Spanish Empire to his son (and grandnephew), King Philip III.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: Philip married his cousin, Margaret of Austria, on 18 April 1599, a year after becoming king. Margaret, the sister of the future Emperor Ferdinand II, would be one of three women at Philip's court who would apply considerable influence over the king. Margaret was considered by contemporaries to be extremely pious—in some cases, excessively pious, and too influenced by the Church—'astute and very skillful' in her political dealings, although 'melancholic' and unhappy over the influence of the Duke of Lerma over her husband at court. Margaret continued to fight an ongoing battle with Lerma for influence up until her death in 1611. Philip had an 'affectionate, close relationship' with Margaret, and paid her additional attention after she bore him a son in 1605.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: Margaret, alongside Philip's grandmother/aunt, Empress Maria—the Austrian representative to the Spanish court—and Margaret of the Cross, Maria's daughter—formed a powerful, uncompromising Catholic and pro-Austrian voice within Philip's life. They were successful, for example, in convincing Philip to provide financial support to Ferdinand from 1600 onwards. Philip steadily acquired other religious advisors. Father Juan de Santa Maria—confessor to Philip's daughter, doña Maria, was felt by contemporaries to have an excessive influence over Philip at the end of his life, and both he and Luis de Aliaga, Philip's own confessor, were credited with influencing the overthrow of Lerma in 1618. Similarly Mariana de San Jose, a favoured nun of Queen Margaret's, was also criticised for her later influence over the King's actions.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: The Spanish crown at the time ruled through a system of royal councils. The most significant of these were the Councils of State and its subordinate Council for War, that were in turn supported by the seven professional councils for the different regions, and four specialised councils for the Inquisition, the Military Orders, Finance and the Crusade tax. These councils were then supplemented by small committees, or "juntas", as necessary, such as the 'junta of the night' through which Philip II exercised personal authority towards the end of his reign. As a matter of policy, Philip had tried to avoid appointing grandees to major positions of power within his government and relied heavily on the lesser nobles, the so-called 'service' nobility. Philip II had taken the traditional system of councils and applied a high degree of personal scrutiny to them, especially in matters of paperwork, which he declined to delegate—the result was a 'ponderous' process. To his contemporaries, the degree of personal oversight he exercised was excessive; his 'self-imposed role as the chief clerk to the Spanish empire' was not thought entirely appropriate. Philip first started to become engaged in practical government at the age of 15, when he joined Philip II's private committee.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: Philip III's approach to government appears to have stemmed from three main drivers. Firstly, he was heavily influenced by the eirenic ideas being circulated in Italian circles in reaction to the new Humanist theories of governance, typified by Machiavelli. Writers such as Girolamo Frachetta, who became a particular favourite of Philip, had propagated a conservative definition of 'reason of state' which centred on exercising a princely prudence and a strict obedience to the laws and customs of the country that one ruled. Secondly, Philip may have shared Lerma's view that the governmental system of Philip II was fast proving impractical and unnecessarily excluded the great nobles of the kingdoms—it had been creaking badly in the last decades of his father's life. Lastly, Philip's own personality and his friendship with Lerma heavily shaped his approach to policy-making. The result was a radical shift in the role of the crown in government from the model of Philip II.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: Within a few hours of Philip ascending to the throne, Lerma had been made a royal counsellor by the new king and set about establishing himself as a fully fledged "valido", or royal favourite. Lerma, in due course declared a duke, positioned himself as the gateway to the king. All the business of government, Philip instructed, was to arrive in writing and be channeled through Lerma before reaching him. Whilst Philip was not hugely active in government in other ways, once these memoranda, or "consulta", had reached him he appears to have been assiduous in commenting on them. Debates in royal councils would now only begin upon the written instruction of the king—again, through Lerma. All members of royal councils were under orders to maintain complete transparency with Lerma as the king's personal representative; indeed, in 1612 the councils were ordered by Philip to obey Lerma as if he were the king. The degree to which Lerma himself played an active role in government has been disputed. Contemporaries were inclined to see Lerma's hand in every action of government; others have since thought Lerma to have 'neither the temperament nor the energy' to impose himself greatly on the actions of government; still others consider Lerma to have carefully attended only those Councils of State that addressed matters of great importance to the king, creating a space for the wider professionalisation of government that had been lacking under Philip II.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: This new system of government became increasingly unpopular very quickly. The novel idea of a "valido" exercising power went against the long-standing popular conception that the king should exercise his powers personally, not through another. Before long, the apparatus of the Spanish government was packed with Lerma's relatives, Lerma's servants and Lerma's political friends, to the exclusion of others. Lerma responded by further limiting his public visibility in politics, avoiding signing and writing documents personally, and constantly stressing that he was, humbly, only working on behalf of his master, Philip III.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: De Lerma's role as royal favourite at court was further complicated by the rise of various 'proconsuls' under Philip III's reign—significant Spanish representatives overseas, who came to exercise independent judgement and even independent policies in the absence of strong leadership from the centre. The challenges to government communication during the period encouraged aspects of this, but the phenomenon was much more marked under Philip III than under either the reign of his father or son.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: In the Netherlands, his father Philip II had bequeathed his remaining territories in the Low Countries to his daughter Isabella of Spain and her husband, Archduke Albert, under the condition that if she died without heirs, the province would return to the Spanish Crown. Given that Isabella was notoriously childless, it was clear that this was only intended to be a temporary measure, and that Philip II had envisaged an early revision to Philip III. As a result, Philip's foreign policy in the Netherlands would be exercised through the strong-willed archdukes, but in the knowledge that ultimately the Spanish Netherlands would return to him as king. Meanwhile, the Italian-born Ambrosio Spinola was to perform a crucial role as a Spanish general in the Army of Flanders. Having demonstrated his military prowess at the siege of Ostend in 1603, Spinola rapidly started to propose and implement policies almost independently of the central councils in Madrid, somehow managing to achieve military victories even without central funding from Spain. De Lerma was uncertain of how to deal with Spinola; on the one hand, de Lerma desperately needed a successful military commander in the Netherlands—on the other, de Lerma was contemptuous of Spinola's relatively low origins and scared of his potential to destabilise de Lerma at court. In the years leading to the outbreak of war in 1618, Spinola was working to produce a plan to finally defeat the Dutch, involving an intervention in the Rhineland followed by fresh hostilities aiming to cut the Low Countries in two: portrayed at the time as the 'spider in the web' of Catholic politics in the region, Spinola was operating without significant consultation with Philip in Madrid.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: In Italy, a parallel situation emerged. The Count of Fuentes, as governor of Lombardy, exploited the lack of guidance from Madrid to pursue his own highly interventionist policy across north Italy, including making independent offers to support the Papacy by invading the Venetian Republic in 1607. Fuentes remained in power and pursuing his own policies until his death. The Marquis of Villafranca, as governor of Milan, similarly exercised his own considerable judgement on foreign policy. The Duke of Osuna, who had married into the Sandovel family as a close ally of Lerma, again showed significant independence as the Viceroy of Naples towards the end of Philip's reign. In conjunction with the Spanish ambassador to Venice, the influential Marquis of Bedmar, Osuna pursued a policy of raising an extensive army, intercepting Venetian shipping and imposing sufficiently high taxes that threats of a revolt began to emerge. To exacerbate matters, Osuna was found to have prevented the local Neapolitans from petitioning Philip III to complain. Osuna fell from power only when de Lerma had lost his royal favour, and Osuna's negative impact on Philip's plans for intervention in Germany had become intolerable.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: From 1612 onwards, and certainly by 1617, the Lerma administration was crumbling. The monopoly of power in the hands of the Lerma's Sandoval family had generated numerous enemies; Lerma's personal enrichment in office had become a scandal; Lerma's extravagant spending and personal debts were beginning to alarm his own son, Cristóbal de Sandoval, Duke of Uceda; lastly, ten years of quiet diplomacy by Fathers Luis de Aliaga, Philip's confessor, and Juan de Santa Maria, Philip's daughter's confessor and a former client of Queen Margaret, had begun to apply personal and religious pressure on the king to alter his method of government. Philip remained close to Lerma, however, and supported him in becoming a cardinal in March 1618 under Pope Paul V, a position which would offer Lerma some protection as his government collapsed.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: Lerma fell to an alliance of interests—Uceda, his son, led the attack, aiming to protect his future interests, allied with Don Baltasar de Zúñiga, a well-connected noble with a background in diplomacy across Europe, whose nephew, Olivares was close to the heir to the throne, Prince Philip. Lerma departed for his ducal seat, and for six weeks Philip did nothing; then, in October, Philip signed a decree renouncing the powers of his former "valido", and announcing that he would rule in person. Uceda initially took over as the primary voice at court, but without his father's extensive powers, whilst De Zúñiga became Philip's minister for foreign and military affairs. Philip, whilst unwilling to move further against Lerma, took politically symbolic action against Lerma's former secretary Rodrigo Calderón, a figure emblematic of the former administration. Calderón, suspected of having killed Philip's wife Queen Margaret by witchcraft in 1611, was ultimately tortured and then executed by Philip for the more plausible murder of the soldier Francisco de Juaras.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: Philip inherited an empire considerably enlarged by his father. On the peninsula itself, Philip II had successfully acquired Portugal in 1580; across Europe, despite the ongoing Dutch revolt, Spanish possessions in Italy and along the Spanish Road appeared secure; globally, the combination of Castilian and Portuguese colonial territories gave a Spanish ruler unparalleled reach from the Americas to the Philippines and beyond through India to Africa. The challenge for such a ruler was that these territories were in legal reality separate bodies, different entities bound together through the 'supraterritorial' royal institutions of the Spanish crown, utilising Castilian nobility as a ruling caste. Even within the peninsula itself, Philip would rule through the kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, Valencia and Portugal, the autonomous provinces of Catalonia and Andalusia—all only loosely joined together through the institution of the Castile monarchy and the person of Philip III. Each part had different taxation, privileges and military arrangements; in practice, the level of taxation in many of the more peripheral provinces was less than in Castile, but the privileged position of the Castilian nobility at all senior levels of royal appointment was a contentious issue for the less favoured provinces.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: One of Philip's first domestic changes was the issuing of a decree in 1609 for the expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain, timed to coincide with the declaration of a truce in the war for the Netherlands. The Moriscos were the descendants of those Muslims that had converted to Christianity during the Reconquista of the previous centuries; despite their conversion, they retained a distinctive culture, including many Islamic practices. Philip II had made the elimination of the Morisco threat a key part of his domestic strategy in the south, attempting an assimilation campaign in the 1560s, which had resulted in the revolt that concluded in 1570. In the final years of his rule, Philip's father had reinvigorated efforts to convert and assimilate the Moriscos, but with almost 200,000 in the south of Spain alone, it was clear by the early years of the new century that this policy was failing.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: The idea of completely cleansing Spain of the Moriscos was proposed by Juan de Ribera, the Archbishop and Viceroy of Valencia, whose views were influential with Philip III. Philip's eventual decree to expel a nationality that had lived in Spain for over 800 years and was assimilated within it was based less on doctrinal than financial considerations—confiscating the 'wealth' of the Moriscos - which caused jealousy and resentment by other Christians in Spain, especially in Valencia. Financially, the royal treasury stood to gain by seizing the assets of the removed peoples, whilst in due course those close to the crown would benefit from cheap land or gifts of estates. Estimates vary slightly, but between around 275,000 to over 300,000 Moriscos were forced out of Spain between 1609 and 1614. To accomplish this, the "armada", or navy, and 30,000 soldiers were mobilized with the mission of transporting the families to Tunis or Morocco. Philip intervened in the problematic decision of what to do with Morisco children—should they be allowed to take them to Islamic countries, where they would be brought up as Muslims—and if they were to remain in Spain, what should be done with them? Philip paternalistically decreed that Morisco children under the age of seven could not be taken to Islamic countries, but that any children remaining in Valencia should be free from the threat of enslavement, and rejected some of Ribera's more extreme suggestions.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: Whilst popular at the time, and in keeping with earlier policies, this measure significantly damaged the economies of the Kingdom of Valencia, Aragon and Murcia. The supply of cheap labour and the number of rent paying property owners in these areas decreased considerably, as did agricultural outputs. The cultivation of sugarcane and rice had to be substituted for white mulberry, vineyards and wheat.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: Philip III's reign was marked by significant economic problems across Spain. Famine struck during the 1590s through a sequence of bad harvests, whilst from 1599 to 1600 and for several years afterwards there was a terrible outbreak of bubonic plague across Spain, killing over 10% of the population. Mateo Alemán, one of the first modern novelists in Europe, captured the despondent mood of the period, describing 'the plague that came down from Castile and the famine that rose from Andalusia' to grip the country. Whilst the failing harvests affected the rural areas most, the plagues reduced the urban population most significantly, in turn reducing the demand for manufactured goods and undermining the economy further. The result was an economically weakened Spain with a rapidly falling population.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: Financially, Philip's situation did not appear much better. He had inherited huge debts from his father, Philip II, and an unhelpful tradition that the kingdom of Castile bore the brunt of royal taxation—Castile carried 65% of total imperial costs by 1616. Philip III received no money from the "cortes", or parliaments, of Aragon, the Basque provinces or Portugal; Valencia only provided one contribution, in 1604. Philip did not openly challenge this situation, but instead depended more and more heavily on the Castilian "cortes"; in turn, the "cortes" increasingly began to tie new grants of money to specific projects, subtly but steadily altering the relationship between the king and "cortes". By the financial crisis of 1607, the "cortes" had even insisted that it be recalled every three years, and that Philip take an oath—on pain of excommunication—to promise that he had spent the royal funds in line with the promises made previously to the "cortes".


title: Philip III of Spain

text: Philip and Lerma's attempts to resolve this crisis largely failed, and were not helped by the increasing size of the royal household—an attempt to increase royal prestige and political authority—Philip's own household costs rose enormously at a time of falling income. Philip's attempts to issue new currency—in particular the issues of the copper "vélon" coinage in 1603–04, 1617 and 1621—simply created considerable instability. The costs of the Dutch campaign resulted in Philip's bankruptcy in 1607, and the crown's attempt to resolve this by converting the "asiento" tax system—high-interest loans owed to tax farmers—into longer-term "juros" bonds paying a much lower interest, produced a short-term benefit, but at the price of losing financial flexibility during future crises. By 1618, almost all Philip's incoming crown income was already assigned to its various creditors and he had almost no spending discretion left. Financially, the Spanish state had become dominated by Genoese bankers and lenders under Philip II, whose lines of credit had allowed the Spanish state to continue during its moments of financial crisis; under Philip III this process remained unchecked, building up considerable resentment against this foreign influence, some going so far as to term the bankers 'white moors'.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: Throughout Philip's reign, a body of analysis of Spain's condition began to emerge through the work of the numerous "arbitristas", or commentators, that dominated public discussions from around 1600 through to the 1630s. These different voices focused heavily on the political economy of Spain—the rural depopulation, the diverse and bureaucratic administrative methods, the social hierarchies and corruption, offering numerous, if often contradictory, solutions. Nonetheless, through most of Philip's reign there was no significant attempt at reform—Philip continued to rule in line with local laws and customs. Philip encouraged consolidation of noble estates, selling off large quantities of crown lands to favoured nobles and creditors. There were no attempts to create an equivalent to the French "intendant" position—the closest equivalent, the "corregidor", lacked the strong links to the crown required to overcome local opposition. Only in Philip's final years did reform begin to gain momentum; a reform committee, or "Junta de Reformación", was established in Lerma's final months in 1618. Under the incoming administration, including the reformist Baltasar de Zúñiga, this committee ground on, but would only deliver substantial, if ill-fated results, when rejuvenated under Philip IV's reign.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: On his accession, Philip inherited two major conflicts from his father. The first of these, the ongoing and long-running Dutch revolt, represented a serious challenge to Spanish power from the Protestant United Provinces in a crucial part of the Spanish Empire. The second, the Anglo–Spanish War was a newer, and less critical conflict with Protestant England, marked by a Spanish failure to successfully bring its huge military resources to bear on the smaller English military.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: Philip's own foreign policy can be divided into three phases. For the first nine years of his reign, he pursued a highly aggressive set of policies, aiming to deliver a 'great victory'. His instructions to Lerma to wage a war of 'blood and iron' on his rebellious subjects in the Netherlands reflects this. After 1609, when it became evident that Spain was financially exhausted and Philip sought a truce with the Dutch, there followed a period of retrenchment; in the background, tensions continued to grow, however, and by 1618 the policies of Philip's 'proconsuls'—men like Spinola, Fuentes, Villafranca, Osuna and Bedmar—were increasingly at odds with de Lerma's policy from Madrid. The final period, in which Philip intervened in the Holy Roman Empire to secure the election of Ferdinand II as Emperor and in which preparations were made for renewed conflict with the Dutch, largely occurred after the fall of de Lerma and the rise of a new, more aggressive set of advisors in the Madrid court.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: Philip's initial aim was to achieve a decisive 'great victory' in the long-running war against the rebellious Dutch provinces of the Spanish Netherlands, whilst placing renewed pressure on the English government of Queen Elizabeth I in an effort to terminate English support for their Dutch colleagues. The Spanish "armada", or navy, rebuilt in the 1590s, remained effective against the English, but after the failure of the Spanish invasion of Ireland, leading to the defeat at the Battle of Kinsale, Philip reluctantly accepted that further attacks on England were unlikely to succeed. In the Netherlands, a new war strategy resulted in a re-establishment of Spanish power on the north side of the great rivers Meuse and Rhine, stepping up the military pressure on the rebel provinces. The strategy of a 'great victory,' however, began to descend into a financial war of attrition: the Southern Netherlands—still under Spanish control—and the Dutch Republic in the north—dominated by Calvinist Protestants—were both exhausted, and after the 1607 financial crisis, Spain too was unable to pursue the war. Philip III turned to peace negotiations instead; with the accession to the throne of James I of England it became possible to terminate both the war and English support to the Dutch, with the signature in 1604 of the Treaty of London.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: The Twelve Years' Truce with the Dutch followed in 1609, which enabled the Southern Netherlands to recover, but it was a de facto recognition of the independence of the Dutch Republic, and many European powers established diplomatic relations with the Dutch. The truce did not stop the commercial and colonial expansion of the Dutch into the Caribbean and the East-Indies, although Spain had tried to impose the liquidation of the Dutch East India Company as a treaty condition. Minor concessions of the Dutch Republic were the scrapping of the plan to create a Dutch West India Company and to stop the harassment of the Portuguese in Asia. Both concessions were temporary as the Dutch soon recommenced preying upon Portuguese interests, which had already led to the Dutch–Portuguese War in 1602 and would continue till 1654. At least with peace in Europe, the Twelve Year's truce gave Philip's regime an opportunity to begin to recover its financial position.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: With the death of Henry IV of France—a supporter of the war against Spain—a period of instability commenced in the Kingdom of France. In a sequence of aggressive policy moves, and largely without firm direction from Philip, his regional proconsuls of the Duke of Osuna, viceroy of Naples and the Marquess of Villafranca, the Governor of Milan, directed the Spanish policy in Italy that encountered resistance from the Duchy of Savoy and the Republic of Venice. To secure the connection between Milan and the Netherlands a new route was opened through Valtellina, then part of the independent state of the Three Leagues (the present-day canton of Graubünden, Switzerland), and in 1618 the plot of Venice occurred in which the authorities engaged in the persecution of pro-Spanish agents.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: In the final years of Philip's reign, Spain entered the initial part of the conflict that would become known as the Thirty Years' War (1618–48). The result was a decisive Spanish victory in the Holy Roman Empire that would lead to a recommencement of the war with the Dutch shortly after Philip's death. Europe was anticipating a fresh election for the position of Emperor upon the likely death of Matthias, who was heirless. Spain and Austria's common Habsburg ancestry influenced Spain's involvement in the convoluted politics of the Empire: on the one hand, Philip had a vested interest in the success of his cousin Ferdinand of Bohemia, who intended to follow Matthias to the throne; on the other, Philip had hopes of appointing one of his own family, such as Prince Philip, to the Imperial throne and worried that a failed bid by Ferdinand might reduce collective Habsburg prestige.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: Philip finally chose to intervene behind Ferdinand. Prince Philip had been rejected as unacceptable to the German nobility. Philip had also been increasingly influenced over the years by first Queen Margaret, and later the other, powerful Habsburg women at court, whilst the incoming set of advisors that replaced de Lerma, especially de Zúñiga, also saw Spain's future as part of a strong alliance with a Habsburg Holy Roman Empire. Finally, by the Oñate treaty of 29 July 1617, Ferdinand made a successful appeal to Philip's self-interest by promising Spain the Habsburg lands in Alsace in return for Spanish support for his election.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: Crisis broke out in Ferdinand's kingdom of Bohemia during 1618–19, with a confrontation between Catholic and Protestant factions. Ferdinand asked Spain for help to put down the rebellion; the Protestant rebels turned to Frederick V of the Palatinate as a new ruler and Emperor. The situation in the Empire was in many ways auspicious for Spanish strategy; in the Spanish Netherlands Ambrosio Spinola had been conspiring to find an opportunity to intervene with the Army of Flanders into the Electorate of the Palatinate. The Palatinate was a vital, Protestant set of territories along the Rhine guarding the most obvious route for reinforcements from other Spanish territories to arrive into the rebellious Dutch provinces (through Genoa). France, assumed bound to support Frederick against Ferdinand, was in fact inclined to remain neutral. The Spanish troops headed by Spinola in the Palatinate and by Johann Tserclaes, Count of Tilly in Bohemia achieved a decisive victory against the Czechs in the Battle of White Mountain in 1620. With the Dutch now vulnerable to a strike through the Rhine valley, a renewed war against the Provinces, with the aim of forcing the Dutch to a more suitable permanent peace, appeared inevitable. Philip died in 1621 shortly before the recommencement of war—his son, Philip IV, retained his chief foreign policy advisor, de Zúñiga, and an initially highly successful campaign against the Dutch began the same year.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: In the Americas Philip inherited a difficult situation in Chile, where the Arauco War raged and the local Mapuche succeeded in razing seven Spanish cities (1598–1604). An estimate by Alonso González de Nájera put the toll at 3,000 Spanish settlers killed and 500 Spanish women taken into captivity by Mapuche. In retaliation the proscription against enslaving Indians captured in war was lifted by Philip in 1608. This decree was abused when Spanish settlers in Chiloé Archipelago used it to justify slave raids against groups such as the Chono of northwestern Patagonia who had never been under Spanish rule and never rebelled.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: Jesuit missionary Luis de Valdivia believed the Mapuche could be voluntarily converted to Christianity only if there was peace. To diminish hostilities Valdivia proposed a Defensive War in a letter to Philip. The king supported the idea, issuing a decree that established the Defensive War as an official policy in 1612. By the time Defensive War was established war between Spanish and Mapuche had been going on for 70 years.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: These policies were not without criticism. Maestre de campo and corregidor of Concepción Santiago de Tesillo claimed the Defensive War gave the Mapuche a much needed respite to replenish their forces that should have been denied. The Real Audiencia of Santiago opined in the 1650s that slavery of Mapuches was one of the reasons for constant state of war between the Spanish and the Mapuche.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: Philip III died in Madrid on 31 March 1621, and was succeeded by his son, Philip IV, who rapidly completed the process of removing the last elements of the Sandoval family regime from court. The story told in the memoirs of the French ambassador Bassompierre, that he was killed by the heat of a "brasero" (a pan of hot charcoal), because the proper official to take it away was not at hand, is a humorous exaggeration of the formal etiquette of the court.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: Philip has generally left a poor legacy with historians. Three major historians of the period have described an 'undistinguished and insignificant man', a 'miserable monarch', whose 'only virtue appeared to reside in a total absence of vice'. More generally, Philip has largely retained the reputation of 'a weak, dim-witted monarch who preferred hunting and traveling to governing'. Unlike Philip IV, whose reputation has improved significantly in the light of recent analysis, Philip III's reign has been relatively unstudied, possibly because of the negative interpretation given to the role of Philip and Lerma during the period. Traditionally, the decline of Spain has been placed from the 1590s onwards; revisionist historians from the 1960s, however, presented an alternative analysis, arguing that in many ways Philip III's Spain of 1621—reinforced with new territories in Alsace, at peace with France, dominant in the Holy Roman Empire, and about to begin a successful campaign against the Dutch—was in a much stronger position than in 1598, despite the poor personal performance of her king during the period. Philip's use of Lerma as his "valido" has formed one of the key historical and contemporary criticisms against him; recent work has perhaps begun to present a more nuanced picture of the relationship and the institution that survived for the next forty years in Spanish royal government.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: In the 1604 Treaty of London, Philip was styled ""Philip the Third, by the grace of God, king of Castile, Leon, Aragon and the Two Sicilies, Jerusalem, Portugal, Navarre, Granada, Toledo, Valencia, Galicia, the Majorcas, Seville, Cordoba, Corsica, Murcia, Guinea, Algarve, Gibraltar, the Canary Islands, also of the Eastern and Western Indies, and the islands and "terra firma" of the Ocean Sea, archduke of Austria, duke of Burgundy and Milan, count of Habsburg, Barcelona, and Biscay, and lord of Molina, etc."" in full and "Philip III, King of the Spains" for short.


title: Philip III of Spain

text: Like many Habsburgs, Philip III was the product of extensive inbreeding. His father, Philip II, a product of marriage between first cousins, married his niece, Anna of Austria, herself the product of a cousin couple. Philip III in turn married his first cousin once removed, Margaret of Austria. This pattern would continue in the next generation, ultimately culminating in the end of the Spanish Habsburg line in the person of Philip's feeble grandson, Charles II.


title: Leigh-Anne Pinnock

text: Leigh-Anne Pinnock (born 4 October 1991) is an English singer, actress and songwriter. She rose to prominence in the 2010s as a member of the girl group Little Mix, one of the world's best-selling girl groups ever. With Little Mix, she released six studio albums and achieved five number-one singles on the UK Singles Chart.


title: Leigh-Anne Pinnock

text: While in Little Mix, Pinnock released her documentary "" (2021), which was met with critical acclaim. At the 26th National Television Awards, it received a nomination for "Best Authored Documentary". In the same year, she made her acting debut in the film "Boxing Day", which became the first British festive rom-com to be led by an all-black cast. Besides music, she is also known for her activism in fighting against racism and in 2020, she won the Equality Award in recognition for her work towards racial equality in the UK.


title: Leigh-Anne Pinnock

text: Leigh-Anne Pinnock was born on 4 October 1991, to black mixed-race parents Deborah Thornhill, a history teacher, and John Pinnock, and was raised in a Caribbean household. Pinnock lived in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. with her two older sisters Sian-Louise and Sairah. Pinnock has Barbadian and Jamaican ancestry and counts Jamaica as her second home. She has been spending her holidays there since she was a child, with many of her relatives still living there.


title: Leigh-Anne Pinnock

text: Before joining Little Mix, she worked as a waitress at Pizza Hut. Her early experience of organised singing came when she joined a youth club and choir then run by Jay Blades, who later became a trustee of her charity "The Black Fund" that she founded in 2021. In 2020, she spoke about the first time she experienced racism at the age of nine, for a documentary that was later aired on Channel 4.


title: Leigh-Anne Pinnock

text: Pinnock's first audition on "The X Factor" was "Only Girl (In the World)" by Rihanna. After she failed the first bootcamp challenge she was placed in a three-piece group named "Orion" alongside Jade Thirlwall. Orion performed rendition of "Yeah" by Chris Brown. Perrie Edwards and Jesy Nelson were in another group called "Faux Pas". Faux Pas performed a rendition of "Survivor" by Destiny's Child. Both groups, however, were eliminated. Later, the four were called back by the judges to form into the four-piece group Rhythmix, and they progressed to judges' houses. They eventually reached the live shows and were mentored by Tulisa Contostavlos. On 28 October 2011, it was announced that the band's new name would be Little Mix. In December 2011, Little Mix were announced as the winners, making them the first group to ever win the British version of the show.


title: Leigh-Anne Pinnock

text: As of 2022, Pinnock has released seven albums with the group: "DNA" (2012), "Salute" (2013), "Get Weird" (2015), "Glory Days" (2016), "LM5" (2018) "Confetti" (2020), and "Between Us" (2021).


title: Leigh-Anne Pinnock

text: Outside of the group Pinnock has ventured into her own solo projects. In February 2015, she launched a Tumblr fashion blog called "Leigh Loves". In 2016, Pinnock was attacked at a London restaurant by a male diner. In December 2017 while performing alongside Little Mix as an opening act for Ariana Grande, Dangerous Woman Tour, she suffered a burn backstage at one of their gigs. In April 2019, she signed to Sony/ATV via joint venture TwentySeven as a published songwriter. Later that month, Pinnock released her own swimwear range with Gabrielle Urquhart, titled In'A'Seashell.


title: Leigh-Anne Pinnock

text: In March 2019, Pinnock was named as the new face of the sports brand Umbro. In April 2020, she revealed she would be launching a documentary with BBC, detailing experiences of racism and colourism in the United Kingdom. In October 2020, the singer launched her own production house named "Pinnock Productions," to help embrace diversity and cultures that are underrepresented in the media. In 2020, she released a style edit collection with ASOS, a British online fashion retailer. Later that month, it was announced that she would be making her acting debut in the upcoming Christmas film "Boxing Day". "Pinnock Productions" contributed to the production of the film, which she also stars in.


title: Leigh-Anne Pinnock

text: In December 2020, Pinnock won the Equality Award at the Ethnicity Awards, along with group member Jade Thirlwall; in recognition for their work towards racial equality in the UK. In March 2021, it was announced she had signed to Taps Music to focus on her solo career; she stated her intent to pursue solo projects alongside her Little Mix commitments. In May 2021, her released documentary "" was released on BBC iPlayer and BBC One talking about racial issues and colourism in the music industry and her personal experiences. The documentary has been nominated for a National Television Award for Best Authored Documentary. In June 2021, Pinnock was announced as the new ambassador for Maybelline New York, an American cosmetic brand, and launched the "Brave Together" initiative in October.


title: Leigh-Anne Pinnock

text: In September 2021, journalist Charlie Brinkhurst-Cuff and Timi Sotire release the book "Black Joy" which includes a personal essay by Leigh-Anne, titled "The Power Within: Finding Purpose in Raising My Voice". In November 2021, it was announced that Pinnock would be one of the hosts for the 2021 MOBO Awards. In December 2021, she made her acting debut in the film "Boxing Day" for which she also recorded original music for the first time.


title: Leigh-Anne Pinnock

text: In February 2022, Pinnock signed a record deal with Warner Records, and spent time between the UK and Jamaica recording for her debut album. A demo track of hers was later leaked online before being taken down. In July 2022, she joined the social media app Twitter, and revealed she is dropping her solo music when she's ready. In September 2022, Pinnock attended and spoke at the One Young World Summit in Manchester.


title: Leigh-Anne Pinnock

text: In 2012 during the release party for Little Mix's single "Wings", Pinnock met footballer Jordan Kiffin, and the pair were in an on-off relationship, from 2013 to 2016. In 2016 she started dating professional footballer Andre Gray. The couple eventually moved in together in December 2018 and in 2020 got engaged on their four-year anniversary. In May 2021, she announced that she was pregnant, and on 16 August 2021, she gave birth to twins. The gender and the names of twins remains unknown as Pinnock wishes to keep it private. In an interview for Women's Health, she spoke about her struggles with breastfeeding her twins and the sleep deprivation she was experiencing following their births. The couple currently resides in Surrey, England, but also due to Gray signing a four-year contract with the Greek football team of Aris, the couple will be splitting their time between the UK and the Greek city of Thessaloniki.


title: Leigh-Anne Pinnock

text: Pinnock has been open about her struggles with racism. In an interview with "Glamour" magazine in March 2019, she spoke about her experiences with racism and comments she received on social media, while feeling "invisible" for the first three years as the only black girl in Little Mix. In the same year she and band member Jade Thirlwall, with other British celebrities, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro to raise funds for Comic Relief's Red Nose Day.


title: Leigh-Anne Pinnock

text: In the rise of Black Lives Matter, during the summer of 2020, Pinnock spoke about racism in Britain and shared her own experiences in the music industry. In 2020, she attended the Black Lives Matter protests in London, and spoke out about the murder of African American George Floyd and the killing of Breonna Taylor by American police. Pinnock has since acknowledged her own privilege as a light-skinned, mixed-race woman. In her documentary: "", she cites group member Jade Thirlwall, as someone she could turn to for support, who also shared similar experiences with racism for her mixed ethnicity. In the documentary she and her fiancé Andre Gray also expressed their intent in helping the black community by using their platforms.


title: Leigh-Anne Pinnock

text: On 14 May 2021, Pinnock, in partnership with her fiancé and sister Sairah, launched a charity called "The Black Fund". The charity is made to support existing charities and groups who deliver support to the black community, including financial support. In the same month she called British Media for mistaking her for band member Jade Thirlwall, after her pregnancy announcement. Pinnock also pointed out that this wasn't the first time that the Little Mix stars have been mistaken for each other.


title: Valeria Golino

text: Valeria Golino (born 22 October 1965) is an Italian actress and film director. She is best known to English-language audiences for her roles in "Rain Man", "Big Top Pee-wee" and the two "Hot Shots!" films, particularly the olive-in-the-belly-button scene. In addition to David di Donatello, Silver Ribbon, Golden Ciak and Italian Golden Globe awards, she is one of four actresses to have twice won the Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival.


title: Valeria Golino

text: Golino was born in Naples, Italy, the daughter of an Italian father who was a Germanist scholar, and a Greek mother, Lalla, who was a painter. One of her grandmothers was Egyptian-French. She grew up in an "artistic household", and after her parents split up, was raised alternating between Athens and Sorrento (near Naples). Golino is the niece of the journalist Enzo Golino at "L'Espresso", and her brother is a musician. When she was a girl, her mother frequently took her to the cinema, and she quickly became interested in films. In spite of this, though, she never thought about pursuing a film career until she made her first movie. Instead, she wanted to be a cardiologist.


title: Valeria Golino

text: Valeria was diagnosed with scoliosis at age 11, and she had to have a steel rod implanted in her back for five years. She remained in the care of a surgeon in Chicago for six months, where she learned to speak English. At age 14, she started to work as a fashion model in Athens, Milan, London, and Los Angeles. She was in TV commercials for beer, perfume, and cosmetics, and she modeled swimsuits and blue jeans. Being an unfocused student, she dropped out of high school after acting in her first movie.


title: Valeria Golino

text: Golino never formally studied acting. Her career started by chance when her uncle Enzo received a phone call from the director Lina Wertmüller, who was searching for a young girl for her movie, and encouraged Golino to go to Wertmuller's house to meet her.


title: Valeria Golino

text: The two met and Valeria was eventually cast in her first film, "A Joke of Destiny" (1983), alongside Ugo Tognazzi after an audition where she performed Shakespeare. Despite her parents' reservations and Wertmuller's demanding on-set behavior, she liked the experience so much that she decided to pursue an acting career. She gave up modeling, which she had never found fulfilling or interesting, and started to study diction and elocution. Among her early auditions were "Una spina nel cuore" (an audition that she called "distasteful") and "The Name of the Rose" but was passed over for both films. She was offered roles in "Giochi d'estate" (1984) and other similarly themed romantic films about teenagers, but she turned them down to focus on smaller and more challenging projects.


title: Valeria Golino

text: She followed her first with a string of independent films, including roles in "My Dearest Son" and "Little Flames" (both 1985), her first leading role, both of which won her a Golden Globe award for Best Breakthrough Actress. Later that year, she was involved in a car accident which displaced the metal bar in her back and had to have surgery in order to fix it: she was bedridden for five months.


title: Valeria Golino

text: Her star-making role came the following year, when she played the life-loving cleaning lady who romances two different men in "Storia d'amore" (A Tale of Love) by Francesco Maselli. Her performance received rave reviews and earned her two prizes at the 1986 Venice Film Festival, the official Best Actress award (now called Volpi Cup) and the Golden Ciak award. The same film also won her the oldest and most prestigious critics' prize of the Italian cinema, the Silver Ribbon award for Best Actress.


title: Valeria Golino

text: Her following projects were once again independent, auteur-driven films, "The Gold Rimmed Glasses" and "Three Sisters". She was supposed to reunite with Maselli for his following film "L'uomo della casa di fronte", co-starring Marcello Mastroianni, but the project never happened. The same director then moved on to another film, "Codice privato", and Golino turned down the role that was eventually played by Ornella Muti.


title: Valeria Golino

text: She moved to Los Angeles and began to work in Hollywood, with the movie "Big Top Pee-wee" (1988). She was cast in "Rain Man" (also 1988) as Susanna, the girlfriend of Tom Cruise's character, and in the comedy films "Hot Shots!" (1991) and "Hot Shots! Part Deux" (1993), as the girlfriend of the hero ("Hot Shots!" was a direct spoof of "Top Gun"). Her character's nationality in "Rain Man" was changed from American to Italian-American to accommodate her accent. Even though she was known as a dramatic actress in Italy, most of the offers she received in Hollywood were for comedies.


title: Valeria Golino

text: Golino auditioned for lead roles in "Pretty Woman" and "Flatliners", but both times she lost the part to Julia Roberts during the final audition. She was first runner-up for both roles and, in the case of "Pretty Woman", she revealed many years later: "I was in the running until the final audition: it came down to Julia Roberts and me. The director asked us to walk in the same corridor, wearing the same clothes and makeup. As soon as I saw her [Roberts], I knew that she would have been chosen. And since she knew that, she told me: 'Go and get them, big mama!' I wouldn't have dared to say that to my rival. I would have been good in that film but she was perfect". She also turned down the leading role in the Ken Loach film "Hidden Agenda", which she called "an offer that I still regret having declined".


title: Valeria Golino

text: In 1993, she was heavily involved in producing and starring in an independent feature film, "Cat in the Box", which was never made, and because of that project, she was forced to turn down a role in a movie directed by Carlo Verdone.


title: Valeria Golino

text: During the following year, she was offered the leading role in "True Lies", but she had to turn that down because of conflicts in scheduling with "I Sfagi tou kokora" (1996), an independent film made in Cyprus. She had joined this film project in 1992, while it was still in preproduction, and she fervently wanted to be a part of it. Later on that year, she was supposed to act with Gian Maria Volonté in the film "Treni sull'acqua". This project would have marked her third collaboration with the director Peter Del Monte, but it was canceled after the death of Volonté.


title: Valeria Golino

text: In early 1996, she was supposed to play a journalist in the film "Bravo Randy", directed by Alessandro D'Alatri and also starring Jovanotti in the titular role of a tramp who falls into a coma after an accident. However, the project fell apart just a few months before shooting was slated to begin: fearing a lack of influence, the Italian production company blocked the funds as the film would have been shot in California.


title: Valeria Golino

text: In January 2001, she was supposed to star with Claudio Amendola in a TV mini-series called "Cuore di ghiaccio", directed by Luciano Casciani, produced by Mediaset and set in Cefalù, but the project never took off the ground.


title: Valeria Golino

text: She had a supporting role in the successful French thriller "36, Quai des Orfèvres" (2004) and a leading role in "Cash" (2008), although the producers of the film had wanted Kristin Scott Thomas instead. Her role as Irene in "Sacred Heart" (2004) had been written specifically for her by director Ferzan Ozpetek, but she was forced to abandon the project for personal reasons. She was replaced by Barbora Bobuľová.


title: Valeria Golino

text: In 2005, she was offered the leading role in "Fine pena mai" (2008) but she turned it down, considering herself to be too old for the part. The role was eventually played by Valentina Cervi.


title: Valeria Golino

text: In 2006, Theodoros Angelopoulos cast her in "The Dust of Time" (2008) after being impressed by Golino's work in "Respiro". However the many delays in the shooting forced her to drop out of the project in late 2007 for scheduling conflicts. She was replaced by Irène Jacob.


title: Valeria Golino

text: The following year she was offered the chance to direct a short film by the company Pasta Garofalo, "Armandino e il Madre", for which she also wrote the script. Her first feature film as director, "Honey" (2013), was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival and won a commendation from the Ecumenical Jury.


title: Valeria Golino

text: She played Armida Miserere, high security warden in "Like the Wind" (2013) directed by Marco Simon Puccioni a difficult leading role praised by the critics and awarded in festival.


title: Valeria Golino

text: Despite her self-deprecating reluctance, she also sang in several films, most notably her English-language films "Hot Shots!" and "Big Top Pee-wee" and in Italian in "Like the Wind". She recorded two LPs in 1987, the song "Maybe Once More" for "L'inverno" and 'Piangi Roma' for "Giulia Doesn't Date at Night" (featuring Baustelle), the latter of which won her a Silver Ribbon award for Best Song.


title: Admiral (United States)

text: Admiral (abbreviated as ADM) is a four-star commissioned officer rank in the United States Navy, the United States Coast Guard, and the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps with the pay grade of O-10. Admiral ranks above vice admiral and below fleet admiral in the Navy; the Coast Guard and the Public Health Service do not have an established grade above admiral. Admiral is equivalent to the rank of general in the other uniformed services. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Commissioned Officer Corps (NOAA Corps) has never had an officer hold the grade of admiral. However, of the U.S. Code established the grade for the NOAA Corps, in case a position is created that merits the four-star grade.


title: Admiral (United States)

text: Since the five-star grade of fleet admiral has not been used since 1946, the grade of admiral is effectively the highest appointment an officer can achieve in the United States Navy, the United States Coast Guard, and the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.


title: Admiral (United States)

text: Formally, "Admiral" is always used when referring to a four-star admiral, and informally "Full Admiral", "Four-star Admiral" (or simply four-star), or "O-10" (in reference to pay grade). The informal terms are used to distinguish a four-star admiral from the lower-ranking admirals who may also be referred to as "Admiral".


title: Admiral (United States)

text: The United States Navy did not have any admirals until 1862, because many people felt the title too reminiscent of royalty—such as the British Royal Navy—to be used in the country's navy. Others saw the need for ranks above captain, among them John Paul Jones, who pointed out that the Navy had to have officers who "ranked" with army generals. He also felt there must be ranks above captain to avoid disputes among senior captains. The various secretaries of the navy repeatedly recommended to Congress that admiral ranks be created because the other navies of the world used them and American senior officers were "often subjected to serious difficulties and embarrassments in the interchange of civilities with those of other nations." Congress finally authorized nine rear admirals on July 16, 1862, although that was probably more for the needs of the rapidly expanding navy during the American Civil War than any international considerations.


title: Admiral (United States)

text: Two years later, Congress authorized the appointment of a vice admiral from among the nine rear admirals: David Farragut. Another bill allowed the President of the United States to appoint Farragut to admiral on July 25, 1866, and David Dixon Porter to vice admiral. When Farragut died in 1870, Porter became admiral and Stephen C. Rowan was promoted to vice admiral. Even after they died, Congress did not allow the promotion of any of the rear admirals to succeed them, so there were no more admirals or vice admirals by promotion until 1915 when Congress authorized an admiral and a vice admiral each for the Atlantic, Pacific and Asiatic Fleets.


title: Admiral (United States)

text: There was one admiral in the interim, however. In 1899, Congress recognized George Dewey's accomplishments during the Spanish–American War by authorizing the President to appoint him Admiral of the Navy. He held that rank until he died in 1917. Nobody has since held that title. In 1944, Congress approved the five-star grade of fleet admiral. The first to hold it were William D. Leahy, Ernest J. King, and Chester W. Nimitz. The Senate confirmed their appointments December 15, 1944. Fleet Admiral William F. Halsey got his fifth star in December 1945. None has been appointed since.


title: Admiral (United States)

text: The sleeve stripes now used by admirals and vice admirals in the United States date from March 11, 1869, when General Order Number 90 specified that for their "undress" uniforms admirals would wear a two-inch stripe with three half-inch stripes above it and vice admirals the two-inch stripe with two half-inch stripes above it. The rear admiral got his two-inch stripe and one half-inch stripe in 1866.


title: Admiral (United States)

text: The sleeve stripes had been more elaborate. When the rear admiral rank started in 1862 the sleeve arrangement was three stripes of three-quarter-inch lace alternating with three stripes of quarter-inch lace. It was some ten inches from top to bottom. The vice admiral, of course, had even more stripes and when Farragut became admiral in 1866, he had so many stripes they reached from his cuffs almost to his elbow. On their dress uniforms the admirals wore bands of gold embroidery of live oak leaves and acorns.


title: Admiral (United States)

text: The admirals of the 1860s wore the same number of stars on their shoulders as admirals of corresponding grades do today. In 1899, the navy's one admiral (Dewey) and 18 rear admirals put on the new shoulder marks, as did the other officers when wearing their white uniforms, but kept their stars instead of repeating the sleeve cuff stripes.


title: Admiral (United States)

text: During the 20th century, the ranks of the modern U.S. admiralty were firmly established. An oddity that did exist was that the navy did not have a one-star rank except briefly during World War II when Congress established a temporary war rank of commodore. The one-star rank was later established permanently in 1986.


title: Admiral (United States)

text: U.S. law limits the number of four-star admirals that may be on active duty at any time. The total number of active-duty flag officers is capped at 160 for the Navy. For the Army, Navy, and Air Force, no more than about 25% of the service's active-duty general or flag officers may have more than two stars, and statute sets the total number of four-star officers allowed in each service. This is set at 6 four-star Navy admirals. However, exceptions to this limit are made to meet operational needs. As of July 2020, there were 9 four star admirals serving on active duty with the U.S. Navy.


title: Admiral (United States)

text: Some of these slots are reserved by statute. For the Navy, the chief of naval operations and vice chief of naval operations are admirals; for the Coast Guard the commandant of the coast guard and vice commandant of the coast guard are admirals; for the Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, the Assistant Secretary for Health is an admiral if they hold an appointment to the regular corps.


title: Admiral (United States)

text: There are several exceptions to these limits allowing more than allotted within the statute. A Navy admiral serving as Chairman or Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff does not count against the Navy's flag-officer cap. A Navy admiral serving in one of several joint positions does not count against his or her service's four-star limit; these positions include the commander of a unified combatant command, the commander of U.S. Forces Korea, and the deputy commander of U.S. European Command but only if the commander of that command is also the Supreme Allied Commander, Europe. Officers serving in certain intelligence positions are not counted against either limit, including the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The President may also add admirals to the Navy if they are offset by removing an equivalent number of four-stars from other services. Finally, all statutory limits may be waived at the President's discretion during time of war or national emergency.


title: Admiral (United States)

text: Four-star grades go hand-in-hand with the positions of office they are linked to, so these ranks are temporary. Officers may only achieve four-star grade if they are appointed to positions that require the officer to hold such a rank. Their rank expires with the expiration of their term of office, which is usually set by statute. Admirals are nominated for appointment by the President from any eligible officers holding the rank of rear admiral (lower half) or above, who also meets the requirements for the position, under the advice and/or suggestion of their respective department secretary, service secretary, and if applicable the joint chiefs. For some specific positions, statute allows the President to waive those requirements for a nominee whom he deems would serve national interests. The nominee must be confirmed via majority vote by the Senate before the appointee can take office and thus assume the rank. The standard tour length for most four-star positions is three years, bundled as a two-year term plus a one-year extension, with the following exceptions:


title: Admiral (United States)

text: Extensions of the standard tour length can be approved, within statutory limits, by their respective service secretaries, the secretary of defense, the President, and/or Congress but these are rare, as they block other officers from being promoted. Some statutory limits under the U.S. Code can be waived in times of national emergency or war. Admiral ranks may also be given by act of Congress but this is extremely rare.


title: Admiral (United States)

text: Other than voluntary retirement, statute sets a number of mandates for retirement. Four-star officers must retire after 40 years of service unless reappointed to grade to serve longer. Otherwise all flag officers must retire the month after their 64th birthday. However, the Secretary of Defense can defer a four-star officer's retirement until the officer's 66th birthday and the President can defer it until the officer's 68th birthday.


title: Admiral (United States)

text: Since there are a limited number of four-star slots available to each service, typically one officer must leave office before another can be promoted. Maintaining a four-star rank is a game of musical chairs; once an officer vacates a position bearing that rank, they have no more than 60 days to be appointed or reappointed to a position of equal importance before they must involuntarily retire. Historically, officers leaving four-star positions were allowed to revert to their permanent two-star ranks to mark time in lesser jobs until statutory retirement, but now such officers are expected to retire immediately to avoid obstructing the promotion flow.


title: Graham's number

text: Graham's number is an immense number that arose as an upper bound on the answer of a problem in the mathematical field of Ramsey theory. It is much larger than many other large numbers such as Skewes's number and Moser's number, both of which are in turn much larger than a googolplex. As with these, it is so large that the observable universe is far too small to contain an ordinary digital representation of Graham's number, assuming that each digit occupies one Planck volume, possibly the smallest measurable space. But even the number of digits in this digital representation of Graham's number would itself be a number so large that its digital representation cannot be represented in the observable universe. Nor even can the number of digits of "that" number—and so forth, for a number of times far exceeding the total number of Planck volumes in the observable universe. Thus Graham's number cannot be expressed even by physical universe-scale power towers of the form formula_1.


title: Graham's number

text: However, Graham's number can be explicitly given by computable recursive formulas using Knuth's up-arrow notation or equivalent, as was done by Ronald Graham, the number's namesake. As there is a recursive formula to define it, it is much smaller than typical busy beaver numbers. Though too large to be computed in full, the sequence of digits of Graham's number can be computed explicitly via simple algorithms; the last 13 digits are ...7262464195387. With Knuth's up-arrow notation, Graham's number is formula_2, where


title: Graham's number

text: Graham's number was used by Graham in conversations with popular science writer Martin Gardner as a simplified explanation of the upper bounds of the problem he was working on. In 1977, Gardner described the number in "Scientific American", introducing it to the general public. At the time of its introduction, it was the largest specific positive integer ever to have been used in a published mathematical proof. The number was described in the 1980 "Guinness Book of World Records", adding to its popular interest. Other specific integers (such as TREE(3)) known to be far larger than Graham's number have since appeared in many serious mathematical proofs, for example in connection with Harvey Friedman's various finite forms of Kruskal's theorem. Additionally, smaller upper bounds on the Ramsey theory problem from which Graham's number derived have since been proven to be valid.


title: Graham's number

text: In 1971, Graham and Rothschild proved the Graham–Rothschild theorem on the Ramsey theory of parameter words, a special case of which shows that this problem has a solution "N*". They bounded the value of "N*" by 6 ≤ "N*" ≤ "N", with "N" being a large but explicitly defined number


title: Graham's number

text: where formula_5 in Knuth's up-arrow notation; the number is between 4 → 2 → 8 → 2 and 2 → 3 → 9 → 2 in Conway chained arrow notation. This was reduced in 2014 via upper bounds on the Hales–Jewett number to


title: Graham's number

text: The lower bound of 6 was later improved to 11 by Geoffrey Exoo in 2003, and to 13 by Jerome Barkley in 2008. Thus, the best known bounds for "N*" are .


title: Graham's number

text: Graham's number, "G", is much larger than "N": formula_8, where formula_9. This weaker upper bound for the problem, attributed to an unpublished work of Graham, was eventually published and named by Martin Gardner in "Scientific American" in November 1977.


title: Graham's number

text: The number gained a degree of popular attention when Martin Gardner described it in the "Mathematical Games" section of "Scientific American" in November 1977, writing that Graham had recently established, in an unpublished proof, "a bound so vast that it holds the record for the largest number ever used in a serious mathematical proof." The 1980 "Guinness Book of World Records" repeated Gardner's claim, adding to the popular interest in this number. According to physicist John Baez, Graham invented the quantity now known as Graham's number in conversation with Gardner. While Graham was trying to explain a result in Ramsey theory which he had derived with his collaborator Bruce Lee Rothschild, Graham found that the said quantity was easier to explain than the actual number appearing in the proof. Because the number which Graham described to Gardner is larger than the number in the paper itself, both are valid upper bounds for the solution to the problem studied by Graham and Rothschild.


title: Graham's number

text: Using Knuth's up-arrow notation, Graham's number "G" (as defined in Gardner's "Scientific American" article) is


title: Graham's number

text: where the number of "arrows" in each subsequent layer is specified by the value of the next layer below it; that is,


title: Graham's number

text: and where a superscript on an up-arrow indicates how many arrows there are. In other words, "G" is calculated in 64 steps: the first step is to calculate "g" with four up-arrows between 3s; the second step is to calculate "g" with "g" up-arrows between 3s; the third step is to calculate "g" with "g" up-arrows between 3s; and so on, until finally calculating "G" = "g" with "g" up-arrows between 3s.


title: Graham's number

text: and the superscript on "f" indicates an iteration of the function, e.g., formula_15. Expressed in terms of the family of hyperoperations formula_16, the function "f" is the particular sequence formula_17, which is a version of the rapidly growing Ackermann function "A"("n", "n"). (In fact, formula_18 for all "n".) The function "f" can also be expressed in Conway chained arrow notation as formula_19, and this notation also provides the following bounds on "G":


title: Graham's number

text: To convey the difficulty of appreciating the enormous size of Graham's number, it may be helpful to express—in terms of exponentiation alone—just the first term ("g") of the rapidly growing 64-term sequence. First, in terms of tetration (formula_21) alone:


title: Graham's number

text: Now each tetration (formula_24) operation reduces to a power tower (formula_25) according to the definition


title: Graham's number

text: and where the number of 3s in each tower, starting from the leftmost tower, is specified by the value of the next tower to the right.


title: Graham's number

text: In other words, "g" is computed by first calculating the number of towers, formula_29 (where the number of 3s is formula_30), and then computing the "n" tower in the following sequence:


title: Graham's number

text: where the number of 3s in each successive tower is given by the tower just before it. Note that the result of calculating the third tower is the value of "n", the number of towers for "g".


title: Graham's number

text: The magnitude of this first term, "g", is so large that it is practically incomprehensible, even though the above display is relatively easy to comprehend. Even "n", the mere "number of towers" in this formula for "g", is far greater than the number of Planck volumes (roughly 10 of them) into which one can imagine subdividing the observable universe. And after this first term, still another 63 terms remain in the rapidly growing "g" sequence before Graham's number "G" = "g" is reached. To illustrate just how fast this sequence grows, while "g" is equal to formula_31 with only four up arrows, the number of up arrows in "g" is this incomprehensibly large number "g".


title: Graham's number

text: Graham's number is a "power tower" of the form 3↑↑"n" (with a very large value of "n"), so its rightmost decimal digits must satisfy certain properties common to all such towers. One of these properties is that "all such towers of height greater than d (say), have the same sequence of d rightmost decimal digits". This is a special case of a more general property: The "d" rightmost decimal digits of all such towers of height greater than "d"+2, are "independent" of the topmost "3" in the tower; i.e., the topmost "3" can be changed to any other non-negative integer without affecting the "d" rightmost digits.


title: Graham's number

text: The following table illustrates, for a few values of "d", how this happens. For a given height of tower and number of digits "d", the full range of "d"-digit numbers (10 of them) does "not" occur; instead, a certain smaller subset of values repeats itself in a cycle. The length of the cycle and some of the values (in parentheses) are shown in each cell of this table:


title: Graham's number

text: The particular rightmost "d" digits that are ultimately shared by all sufficiently tall towers of 3s are in bold text, and can be seen developing as the tower height increases. For any fixed number of digits "d" (row in the table), the number of values possible for 3formula_323↑…3↑"x" mod 10, as "x" ranges over all nonnegative integers, is seen to decrease steadily as the height increases, until eventually reducing the "possibility set" to a single number (colored cells) when the height exceeds "d"+2.


title: Graham's number

text: A simple algorithm for computing these digits may be described as follows: let x = 3, then iterate, "d" times, the assignment "x" = 3 mod 10. Except for omitting any leading 0s, the final value assigned to "x" (as a base-ten numeral) is then composed of the "d" rightmost decimal digits of 3↑↑"n", for all "n" > "d". (If the final value of "x" has fewer than "d" digits, then the required number of leading 0s must be added.)


title: Graham's number

text: Let "k" be the numerousness of these "stable" digits, which satisfy the congruence relation G(mod 10)≡[G](mod 10).


title: Dandy

text: A dandy is a man who places particular importance upon physical appearance, refined language, and leisurely hobbies, pursued with the appearance of nonchalance. A dandy could be a self-made man who strove to imitate an aristocratic lifestyle despite coming from a middle-class background, especially in late 18th- and early 19th-century Britain.


title: Dandy

text: Previous manifestations of the "petit-maître" (French for "small master") and the Muscadin have been noted by John C. Prevost, but the modern practice of dandyism first appeared in the revolutionary 1790s, both in London and in Paris. The dandy cultivated cynical reserve, yet to such extremes that novelist George Meredith, himself no dandy, once defined cynicism as "intellectual dandyism". Some took a more benign view; Thomas Carlyle wrote in "Sartor Resartus" that a dandy was no more than "a clothes-wearing man". Honoré de Balzac introduced the perfectly worldly and unmoved Henri de Marsay in "La fille aux yeux d'or" (1835), a part of "La Comédie Humaine", who fulfils at first the model of a perfect dandy, until an obsessive love-pursuit unravels him in passionate and murderous jealousy.


title: Dandy

text: Charles Baudelaire defined the dandy, in the later "metaphysical" phase of dandyism, as one who elevates aesthetics to a living religion, that the dandy's mere existence reproaches the responsible citizen of the middle class: "Dandyism in certain respects comes close to spirituality and to stoicism" and "These beings have no other status, but that of cultivating the idea of beauty in their own persons, of satisfying their passions, of feeling and thinking . . . Dandyism is a form of Romanticism. Contrary to what many thoughtless people seem to believe, dandyism is not even an excessive delight in clothes and material elegance. For the perfect dandy, these things are no more than the symbol of the aristocratic superiority of mind."


title: Dandy

text: The linkage of clothing with political protest had become a particularly English characteristic during the 18th century. Given these connotations, dandyism can be seen as a political protest against the levelling effect of egalitarian principles, often including nostalgic adherence to feudal or pre-industrial values, such as the ideals of "the perfect gentleman" or "the autonomous aristocrat". Paradoxically, the dandy required an audience, as Susann Schmid observed in examining the "successfully marketed lives" of Oscar Wilde and Lord Byron, who exemplify the dandy's roles in the public sphere, both as writers and as "personae" providing sources of gossip and scandal. Nigel Rodgers in "The Dandy: Peacock or Enigma?" questions Wilde's status as a genuine dandy, seeing him as someone who only assumed a dandified stance in passing, not a man dedicated to the exacting ideals of dandyism.


title: Dandy

text: The origin of the word is uncertain. "Eccentricity", defined as taking characteristics such as dress and appearance to extremes, began to be applied generally to human behavior in the 1770s. Similarly, the word "dandy" first appears in the late 18th century. In the years immediately preceding the American Revolution, the first verse and chorus of "Yankee Doodle" derided the perceived poverty and rustic manners of American colonists, suggesting that whereas a fine horse and gold-braided clothing ("mac[c]aroni") were required to set a dandy apart from those around him, the average American colonist's means were so meager that ownership of a mere pony and a few feathers for personal ornamentation would qualify one of them as a "dandy" by comparison to and/or in the minds of his even less sophisticated Eurasian compatriots. A slightly later Scottish border ballad, circa 1780, also features the word, but probably without all the contextual aspects of its more recent meaning. The original, full form of 'dandy' may have been "jack-a-dandy". It was a vogue word during the Napoleonic Wars. In that contemporary slang, a "dandy" was differentiated from a "fop" in that the dandy's dress was more refined and sober than the fop's.


title: Dandy

text: In the twenty-first century, the word "dandy" is a jocular, often sarcastic adjective meaning "fine" or "great"; when used in the form of a noun, it refers to a well-groomed and well-dressed man, but often to one who is also self-absorbed.


title: Dandy

text: The model dandy in British society was George Bryan "Beau" Brummell (1778–1840), in his early days, an undergraduate student at Oriel College, Oxford and later, an associate of the Prince Regent. Brummell was not from an aristocratic background; indeed, his greatness was "based on nothing at all," as J.A. Barbey d'Aurevilly observed in 1845. Never unpowdered or unperfumed, immaculately bathed and shaved, and dressed in a plain dark blue coat, he was always perfectly brushed, perfectly fitted, showing much perfectly starched linen, all freshly laundered, and composed with an elaborately knotted cravat. From the mid-1790s, Beau Brummell was the early incarnation of "the celebrity", a man chiefly famous for "being" famous.


title: Dandy

text: By the time Pitt taxed hair powder in 1795 to help pay for the war against France and to discourage the use of flour (which had recently increased in both rarity and price, owing to bad harvests) in such a frivolous product, Brummell had already abandoned wearing a wig, and had his hair cut in the Roman fashion, "à la Brutus". Moreover, he led the transition from breeches to snugly tailored dark "pantaloons," which directly led to modern trousers, the sartorial mainstay of men's clothes in the Western world for the past two centuries. In 1799, upon coming of age, Beau Brummell inherited from his father a fortune of thirty thousand pounds, which he spent mostly on costume, gambling, and high living. In 1816 he suffered bankruptcy, the dandy's stereotyped fate; he fled his creditors to France, quietly dying in 1840, in a lunatic asylum in Caen, aged 61.


title: Dandy

text: Men of more notable accomplishments than Beau Brummell also adopted the dandiacal pose: Lord Byron occasionally dressed the part, helping reintroduce the frilled, lace-cuffed and lace-collared "poet shirt". In that spirit, he had his portrait painted in Albanian costume.


title: Dandy

text: Another prominent dandy of the period was Alfred Guillaume Gabriel d'Orsay, the Count d'Orsay, who had been friends with Byron and who moved in the highest social circles of London.


title: Dandy

text: Thomas Carlyle, in "Sartor Resartus" (1833–34), wrote: A Dandy is a Clothes-wearing Man, a Man whose trade, office and existence consists in the wearing of Clothes. Every faculty of his soul, spirit, purse, and person is heroically consecrated to this one object, the wearing of Clothes wisely and well: so that as others dress to live, he lives to dress. . . . And now, for all this perennial Martyrdom, and Poesy, and even Prophecy, what is it that the Dandy asks in return? Solely, we may say, that you would recognise his existence; would admit him to be a living object; or even failing this, a visual object, or thing that will reflect rays of light. . . .


title: Dandy

text: By the mid-19th century, the English dandy, within the muted palette of male fashion, exhibited minute refinements—"The quality of the fine woollen cloth, the slope of a pocket flap or coat revers, exactly the right colour for the gloves, the correct amount of shine on boots and shoes, and so on. It was an image of a well-dressed man who, while taking infinite pains about his appearance, affected indifference to it. This refined dandyism continued to be regarded as an essential strand of male Englishness."


title: Dandy

text: The beginnings of dandyism in France were bound to the politics of the French revolution; the initial stage of dandyism, the gilded youth, was a political statement of dressing in an aristocratic style to distinguish its members from the sans-culottes.


title: Dandy

text: During his heyday, Beau Brummell's "dictat" on both fashion and etiquette reigned supreme. His habits of dress and fashion were much imitated, especially in France, where, in a curious development, they became the rage, especially in bohemian quarters. There, dandies sometimes were celebrated in revolutionary terms: self-created men of consciously designed personality, radically breaking with past traditions. With elaborate dress and idle, decadent styles of life, French bohemian dandies sought to convey contempt for and superiority to bourgeois society. In the latter 19th century, this fancy-dress bohemianism was a major influence on the Symbolist movement in French literature.


title: Dandy

text: Baudelaire was deeply interested in dandyism, and memorably wrote that a dandy aspirant must have "no profession other than elegance . . . no other status, but that of cultivating the idea of beauty in their own persons . . . The dandy must aspire to be sublime without interruption; he must live and sleep before a mirror." Other French intellectuals also were interested in the dandies strolling the streets and boulevards of Paris. Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly wrote "On Dandyism and George Brummell", an essay devoted, in great measure, to examining the career of Beau Brummell.


title: Dandy

text: The literary dandy is a familiar figure in the writings, and sometimes the self-presentation, of Oscar Wilde, H.H. Munro (Clovis and Reginald), P.G. Wodehouse (Bertie Wooster) and Ronald Firbank, writers linked by their subversive air.


title: Dandy

text: The poets Algernon Charles Swinburne and Oscar Wilde, Walter Pater, the American artist James McNeill Whistler, Joris-Karl Huysmans, and Max Beerbohm were dandies of the Belle Époque, as was Robert de Montesquiou — Marcel Proust's inspiration for the Baron de Charlus. In Italy, Gabriele d'Annunzio and Carlo Bugatti exemplified the artistic bohemian dandyism of the fin de siecle. Wilde wrote that, "One should either be a work of Art, or wear a work of Art."


title: Dandy

text: At the end of the 19th century, American dandies were called dudes. Evander Berry Wall was nicknamed the "King of the Dudes".


title: Dandy

text: George Walden, in the essay "Who's a Dandy?", identifies Noël Coward, Andy Warhol, and Quentin Crisp as modern dandies. The character Psmith in the novels of P. G. Wodehouse is considered a dandy, both physically and intellectually. Agatha Christie's Poirot is said to be a dandy.


title: Dandy

text: The artist Sebastian Horsley described himself as a "dandy in the underworld" in his eponymous autobiography.


title: Dandy

text: In Spain during the early 19th century a curious phenomenon developed linked to the idea of dandyism. While in England and France individuals from the middle classes adopted aristocratic manners, the Spanish aristocracy adopted the fashions of the lower classes, called majos. They were characterized by their elaborate outfits and sense of style as opposed to the modern Frenchified "afrancesados", as for their cheeky arrogant attitude.


title: Dandy

text: Some famous dandies in later times were amongst other the Duke of Osuna, Mariano Tellez-Girón, artist Salvador Dalí and poet Luís Cernuda.