The North American journalist Ambrose Bierce published the successive entries of his
biting The Devil’s Dictionary in a variety of newspapers between 1881 and 1906.
Although the words that introduce this chapter appear on the very first pages of the book
thanks to pure alphabetical logic, they must have been amongst the last to be written. The
first meaning for the term ‘abdication’, in fact, was explicitly dedicated to the death of
the former queen of Spain, Isabel II, which occurred in Paris in 1904. Bierce later wrote
the second meaning, which does not appear in all the editions of the book. Here, he did
not only allude to only ‘poor Isabel’, but also condensed a conspicuously recurrent
tradition in recent Spanish history in a single satirical definition. At that time, the latest
Spanish king to carry on the tradition was the successor to Isabel II, Amadeo I of Savoy,
although technically speaking, the duke of Aosta never abdicated. According to the
Constitution of 1869, that required an uncomfortable parliamentary procedure. Amadeo
I simply renounced the Crown, leaving the way open for the proclamation of the First
Spanish Republic.
