(1) These ducal states originated in the supreme command of large bodies of troops, and then in the administration of large territories by dukes.(2) Nevertheless, the visual evidence and written documentation suggest ducal involvement.(3) He wants grandchildren, legitimate ones, to carry on the illustrious ducal line.(4) He reached Rouen, the ducal capital, in May.(5) Considered over a lifetime, written by a dying old man in the remnants of his ducal palace in Palermo, it is a threnody to a fallen patrician class.(6) This was especially evident in the Lombard period, from which some twenty judgements have survived that throw light on the judicial activity of royal or ducal officers who came directly from the palace.(7) Oh, I'm sure it's nothing like that fancy ducal estate you have, but we'll make do.(8) Loyet's materials - gold, silver, gems, and pearls - ensured that every commission for the ducal household, however trivial, was recorded in the expense books.(9) In Oscar Wilde's play Lady Windermere's Fan a venal London duchess is hoping to marry her daughter to a rich young man from Sydney, whose father cans food that even the servants in the ducal house refuse to eat.(10) In this production, the grave duke seems an ill match for the mercurial Lucio, and he must rouse all his ducal authority to muzzle the fool.(11) Norman ducal revenues were insufficient to meet even the cost of garrisoning its defences and so, to fund Richard's seemingly never-ending wars against Philip, England was subjected to unprecedented levels of financial exaction.(12) Posing as an injured painter of noble birth, Castagno infiltrates the ducal palace and courts Marguerite, who secretly shelters him in her chambers and restores him to health.(13) Antoine Busnois was one of the most prominent composers in the Burgundian ducal court in the second half of the 15th century.(14) For the first time Churchill, by now on the brink of old age, shed the ÔÇÿgalloping majorÔÇÖ image and became, oddly for someone of ducal provenance in what was quickly turning into the Age of the Common Man, a folk hero.(15) In Florence, Michelangelo Buonarroti's ducal tombs in the Medici church of San Lorenzo particularly impressed him.(16) The same criticism can be made of ducal palaces like Chatsworth, Stowe, Woburn, Blenheim, sequestered in their parks.
