blackmail Her Majesty into acceding to their irresponsible, vulgar demands.

In better times, they'd have been drowned in butts of wine, locked in a dungeon to starve to death or pressed between boards and dispatched with red-hot pokers for such impudence. At the very least we'd have had a proper civil war between the different Houses resulting in various bloody and cathartic pitched battles.

Honestly, the place has gone to the dogs.