Okay, here is a new essay. When I showed it to my AI editor, ChatGPT, and called this a silly essay, it wrote:
Is it really a silly essay?
Not quite—and I think that distinction matters.
The title is deliberately bawdy, and there are moments of dry humor, especially in the opening and closing. But most of the essay is a serious piece of popular history with an irreverent frame.
That is not a criticism. It is useful to recognize what the piece actually does. Its pleasures are discovery, historical reconstruction, local connections, and the contrast between the sexual behavior of monarchs and the elaborate institutions and monuments through which their lives are remembered.
