“Government expenditure continued to mount through the year 1389 to an excess as extravagant as the uncles’, although its purpose was civil rather than military. Its climax was the ceremonial entry into Paris of Isabeau of Bavaria, for her coronation as Queen, an event of spectacular splendor and unparalleled marvels of public entertainment. Though its cost contradicted the good intentions of the new government, the performance was in itself a form of government in the same sense as a Roman circus.

What is government but an arrangement by which the many accept the authority of the few?

Circuses and ceremonies are meant to encourage the acceptance; they either succeed or, by costing too much, accomplish the opposite.”

– Barbara Tuchman
A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century
Chapter 21: “The Fiction Cracks,” p. 455 (emphasis added)