Mardi Volume 1 Chapter 80 - Donjalolo in the Bosom of his Family

In which we enter the secluded and verdant realm of Donjalolo’s extensive harem, a carefully ordered yet complex assembly of thirty wives who each reign in turn according to the nights of the lunar month, attended by weary, long-suffering old men charged with their every whim. This chapter reveals the paradox of royal domesticity’s harmony and strife, marked notably by the king’s peculiar domestic trials and the absence of an heir to continue his line.