Look on me now.

I am misshapen, hideous, am I not?
Born thus, it is said, because before my birth my mother was frightened by a dwarf.

Yet the law of the Ethiopians is that their kings must marry within a year of their crowning.

Therefore I chose a woman to be the queen whom I had long desired in secret.

She scorned me, vowing that not for all the thrones of all the world would she be mated to a monster, and that if it were done by force she would kill herself, a saying that went abroad throughout the land.