SWEDEN: Last of the Brakes

Many a Swede mourned last week the passing of Magnus, last of the Counts of Brahe. To honor properly the total extinction of a great name three Swedish dignitaries in funeral frock coats and toppers climbed into a teetering rowboat and rowed out to the middle of a lake.

For half a millennium the Kings of Sweden have been loyally served by the House of Brahe. Per Brahe, third of the Swedish Brahes, married a sister of King Gustaf Vasa, "father of modern Sweden,'' in the early 16th...

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