The Potentate surveryed his creamsicle tower coolly.

It hadn't been his idea to build it, it was the idea of his latest duchess. It had been a stupid idea when she had begged for it, but, after she had begun to withhold her affections, he had relented.

It wasn't, you understand, that her pouting had worked on him mind, more that he had been advised by his cabinet that it would not do anything for his public image for him to behead another duchess.

Not that he fancied beheading this one, oh no, burning at the stake felt much more appropriate for her.

So he had commissioned the best in the land to build the infernal thing. Landowners with cattle milked them from morn till night to produce the necessary base material and he had an architect who was charging him through the nose to design the building.

Seven months the entire thing had taken what with union strike after planning dispute after problem.

And here it stood, for the whole world to see, The Duchess' Folly.

"Burn her." He muttered to the guards, damned if he was going to let her get away with making him look like a fool.