The winds of fate blow randomly, as much in the literal sense as the poetic. Certainly we will never know what random climatological event caused the Great Divide which led to the fall of so ancient and historical of a nation. What butterfly's ill-timed flap of wing? What unfortunate Bantu sneeze? What incontinent sheep did deliver so fateful of a change in winds such that the fated Leaf Of A Thousand Tons would fall, as it did, onto the lawn of discord?
It is said to have begun as an argument over said leaf, last of the season's yellowed autumn foliage. All of its compatriots had days since fallen as they are wont to do in the autumnal season, yet this lone straggler had held on until late in October when the fateful wind caused it to drift lazily to the west over onto the lawn of Ingrid Ganz. This minor event might have met with nary a shrug had Frau Ganz not already been in regular and heated argument with neighbor Helga Ingersol over the dispositions of the latter's leaves. This was, it would seem, the leaf that broke the donkey's back. Frau Ganz, lost in that moment to the passions of vengeful anger, stormed down Frongassstrasse in Eschen to her neighbor's house where the ensuing argument turned violent, then bloody.
With the trickling line of blood rushing from Frau Ingersol's nose the die had been cast. The first blood had been spilt in the Great Liechtensteiner Civil War.
From Fall of the House of Liechtenstein: History of the Great Liechtensteiner Balkanization of 1982 by Professor Helmuth von Munkey, University of Trimport.
It is said to have begun as an argument over said leaf, last of the season's yellowed autumn foliage. All of its compatriots had days since fallen as they are wont to do in the autumnal season, yet this lone straggler had held on until late in October when the fateful wind caused it to drift lazily to the west over onto the lawn of Ingrid Ganz. This minor event might have met with nary a shrug had Frau Ganz not already been in regular and heated argument with neighbor Helga Ingersol over the dispositions of the latter's leaves. This was, it would seem, the leaf that broke the donkey's back. Frau Ganz, lost in that moment to the passions of vengeful anger, stormed down Frongassstrasse in Eschen to her neighbor's house where the ensuing argument turned violent, then bloody.
With the trickling line of blood rushing from Frau Ingersol's nose the die had been cast. The first blood had been spilt in the Great Liechtensteiner Civil War.
From Fall of the House of Liechtenstein: History of the Great Liechtensteiner Balkanization of 1982 by Professor Helmuth von Munkey, University of Trimport.