Assassination

It can not have been anything but heedless
arrogance that he offered himself as a
prime candidate for disappearance. A
man reckless in his scorn for a potentate
known to brook no adversarial positions
to his own, believing that since everyone
who mattered in the Byzantine world he
inhabited of royalty, pomp and circumstances
knew of his high-profile estrangement from
the man whose power was absolute; to
order his untimely demise would be too
blatant an act of cold, unreasoning vengeance
one that would bring down upon the royal
head accusations running counter to the
image he had so carefully groomed of
self as wise, honourably dedicated to
justice not of the tribal variety. And he
gambled wrong, walked into a trap he had
himself unwisely designed and from which
he would never emerge whole; bludgeoned
decapitated, dismembered, his pathetic
remains fired to ashes. Electrifying news 
spurring the tyrant of the nation where he
met his end to salivate in glee that this
atrocity eclipsed even his own, though not
in numbers as the world looked on and
reported the clumsy nature of the act that had
a witness waiting for her fiance to emerge.
The world media transformed the petty little
scribbler, plotter, conspiracist into a noble
trusty whose savagely brutal death represented
a loss to the world. Another legend was born.