History is never kind.

It took a child who didn't know any better to ask, "But why is the emperor buck naked?" He never got an answer. His mother, horrified, mortified and petrified in equal measure, more or less, smacked the snot out that boy. Down the road he knew to keep his mouth shut every time he saw something he thought everyone else should have seen. Needless to say that regardless of the child's innocent question, the emperor, his acolytes, mandarins, factotums and hangers-on all agreed that he was not buck naked and that he never, ever was, and that everything would carry on as before. The people pretended to believe that he was not buck naked, the preachers preached that he was not buck naked, the court criers broadcast for all to hear that he was not buck naked. 

The emperor was never naked. That is the consensus. Nothing is amiss. That is the received wisdom. Things are under control. That is faith. Though, there are peculiar aspects to the emperor's nudity. He did tell some of the tailors in his chambers to shape up or be shipped out. Many shipped out. One refused. He was made to ship out. He did not go quietly. We remained faithful that the tailors were enemies of the emperor and that their removal from his court was but what fate prescribed.

Then again, an empress far, far away proved to the world that she wasn't naked. In proving herself clad in the finest regalia, she informed the emperor that some of his most trusted courtiers were a risk, that they would expose everything about his non-wardrobe. He ignored her. His courtiers ignored her. She let it go. After all she prefers to deal with naked men; it makes it very easy to lead them by their...well, you get my drift.

The emperor's nudity makes us a laughingstock. If only he admitted his nudity things would be much more simpler. For one, innocent children would not have their mouths washed out by soap for pointing out that his pointer was out. Then he could make the decrees he wanted, either decreeing that everyone went about buck naked like him or everyone was under a duty to point out all nudity regardless of the stature of the nudist.

But he won't. He will pretend to, but he won't. In his pretend-decrees will be hidden the seeds of his humiliation in the pages of history. For the squander of so much promise, he will be portrayed by the dispassionate historian in the dimmest light, so dim it is practically dark. All his beautiful achievements will pale in comparison to how many nude pictures of him circulated in secret among the people, all of them laughing in derision every time he came out in public and made his periodic pretend-decrees. History and historians will not be kind. They never are.