title: Bhumibol Adulyadej

text: Estimates of the post-devaluation (c. 1997–1998) wealth of the royal household and the Crown Property Bureau (CPB) range from US$10–20 billion. In August 2008, "Forbes" published its 2008 version of "The World's Richest Royals" and King Bhumibol was listed first, with an estimated wealth of US$35 billion. A few days later, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand issued a statement that the "Forbes" report incorrectly conflated the wealth of the CPB and that of Bhumibol. In the 2009 "Forbes" list, the Thai government's objections were acknowledged, but "Forbes" justified the continued inclusion of the CPB's assets, as the bureau is responsible for handling the Crown's property and investments. The 2009 estimate was a reduced figure of US$30 billion due to declines in real estate and stocks, and this figure was also published in April 2014 by "Business Spectator", which also confirmed that the CPB is the body responsible for the management of the Crown's wealth.


title: Bhumibol Adulyadej

text: The wealth and properties of Bhumibol and the royal family are managed by the Privy Purse. The CPB manages the assets of the Crown as an institution. It was established by law, but is directed without the involvement of the Thai government and reports only to the king. The CPB receives many state privileges. Although the minister of finance presides over the CPB's board of directors, final decisions were made solely by Bhumibol. During his lifetime Bhumibol was the only person who could view the CPB's annual report, which was not released to the public.


title: Bhumibol Adulyadej

text: Through the CPB, the Crown owns equity in many companies and massive amounts of land, including 3,320 acres in central Bangkok, as well as 13,200 acres of rural land. The CPB owns 32 percent of Siam Cement (worth US$12.6 billion), 23 percent of Siam Commercial Bank (Thailand's largest bank), and interests in Christiani & Nielsen, Deves Insurance, and Shin Corporation.


title: Bhumibol Adulyadej

text: The CPB also lets or leases about 36,000 properties to third parties, including the sites of the Anantara Siam Bangkok Hotel, the Suan Lum Night Bazaar, Siam Paragon, and the Central World Tower. The CPB spearheaded a plan to turn Bangkok's historical Ratchadamnoen Avenue into a shopping street known as the "Champs-Élysées of Asia" and in 2007, shocked longtime residents of traditional marketplace districts by serving them with eviction notices. The Crown's substantial income from the CPB, estimated to be at least five billion baht in 2004, is exempt from taxes.


title: Bhumibol Adulyadej

text: King Bhumibol was the owner of the Golden Jubilee Diamond, the largest faceted diamond in the world, which is estimated to be worth between US$4–12 million in April 2014.


title: Bhumibol Adulyadej

text: Although Bhumibol was held in great respect by many Thais, he was also protected by some of the strictest "lèse-majesté" laws in the world. Under these laws, critics could be jailed for three to fifteen years. After the Thammasat University Massacre in 1976, the laws were toughened during the dictatorship of royalist and anti-communist Premier Thanin Kraivichien. Criticism of any member of the royal family, the royal development projects, the royal institution, the Chakri Dynasty or any previous Thai king was also banned.


title: Bhumibol Adulyadej

text: During his 2005 birthday speech, Bhumibol invited criticism: "Actually, I must also be criticised. I am not afraid if the criticism concerns what I do wrong, because then I know. Because if you say the king cannot be criticised, it means that the king is not human", he claimed. "If the king can do no wrong, it is akin to looking down upon him because the king is not being treated as a human being. But the king can do wrong." A widespread barrage of criticisms resulted, followed by a sharp rise in "lèse-majesté" prosecutions. "Lèse-majesté" cases rose from five or six a year pre-2005 to 478 in 2010.


title: Bhumibol Adulyadej

text: Although "lèse-majesté" officially only applies to current kings, in practice the laws are very broadly construed and flexible. Even after his death, Bhumibol remains protected by "lèse-majesté".


title: Bhumibol Adulyadej

text: American journalist Paul Handley, who spent thirteen years in Thailand, wrote the biography "The King Never Smiles". The Information and Communications Ministry banned the book and blocked the book's page on the Yale University Press website in January 2006. In a statement dated 19 January 2006, Thai National Police Chief General Kowit Wattana said the book had "contents which could affect national security and the good morality of the people". The book provided a detailed discussion of Bhumibol's role in Thai political history, and it also analyzed the factors behind Bhumibol's popularity.


title: Bhumibol Adulyadej

text: William Stevenson, who had access to the royal court and the royal family, wrote the biography "The Revolutionary King" in 2001. An article in "Time" said the idea for the book was suggested by Bhumibol. Critics noted that the book displayed intimate knowledge about personal aspects of Bhumibol. However, the book was unofficially banned in Thailand and the Bureau of the Royal Household warned the Thai media about even referring to it in print. An official ban was not possible as it was written with Bhumibol's blessing. The book was criticised for factual inaccuracies, disrespecting Bhumibol (it refers to him by his personal nickname "Lek"), and proposing a controversial theory explaining the mysterious death of King Ananda. Stevenson said: "The king said from the beginning the book would be dangerous for him and for me."


title: Bhumibol Adulyadej

text: Prior to 1972, there was widespread speculation that Bhumibol had been considering his eldest child Ubol Ratana as successor. Ubol Ratana, considered Bhumibol's most intelligent and favorite child, disobeyed her parents by marrying Peter Ladd Jensen, her classmate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her parents stripped her of her royal title and banished her from the court, not returning to Thailand for nearly 8 years. After this, Bhumibol's only son, Prince Vajiralongkorn, was given the title "Somdej Phra Boroma Orasadhiraj Chao Fah Maha Vajiralongkorn Sayam Makutrajakuman" (Crown Prince of Siam) on 28 December 1972 and made heir apparent (องค์รัชทายาท) to the throne in accordance with the Palace Law on Succession of 1924.


title: Bhumibol Adulyadej

text: On 5 December 1977, Princess Sirindhorn was given the title "Siam Boromrajakumari" (Princess Royal of Siam). Her title is often translated by the English-language press as "Crown Princess", although her official English-language title is simply "Princess".


title: Bhumibol Adulyadej

text: Although the constitution was later amended to allow the Privy Council to appoint a princess as successor to the throne, this would only occur in the absence of an heir apparent. This amendment is retained in Section 23 of the 1997 "People's Constitution". This effectively allowed Princess Sirindhorn to potentially be second in line to the throne, but did not affect Prince Vajiralongkorn's status as heir apparent.


title: Bhumibol Adulyadej

text: Recent constitutions of Thailand have made the amendment of the Palace Law of Succession the sole prerogative of the reigning king. According to Assoc. Prof. Gothom Arya, former election commissioner, this allows the reigning king, if he so chooses, to appoint his son or any of his daughters to the throne.


title: Bhumibol Adulyadej

text: Bhumibol's US birth certificate reads simply "Baby Songkla", as the parents had to consult his uncle, King Rama VII (Prajadhipok), then head of the House of Chakri, for an auspicious name. The king chose a name of Sanskrit origin, "Bhumibol Adulyadej" (Devanagari: भूमिबल अतुल्यतेज, : "Bhūmibala Atulyateja"), a compound of "Bhūmi" (भूमि), meaning "Land"; "Bala" (बल), meaning "Strength" or "Power"; "Atulya" (अतुल्य), meaning "Incomparable"; and "Tej" (तेज), meaning "Power". Thus, "Bhūmibala Atulyateja", or "Bhumibol Adulyadej" as it is transliterated in Thai, can be literally translated as "Strength of the Land, Incomparable Power".


title: Bhumibol Adulyadej

text: His highest rank was as a field marshal. His other ranks in the military include Admiral of the Fleet and Marshal of the Royal Thai Air Force.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: Margaret Tudor (28 November 1489 – 18 October 1541) was Queen of Scotland from 1503 until 1513 by marriage to King James IV. She then served as regent of Scotland during her son's minority, and successfully fought to extend her regency. Margaret was the eldest daughter and second child of King Henry VII of England and Elizabeth of York, and the elder sister of King Henry VIII of England.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: Margaret married James IV at the age of 13, in accordance with the Treaty of Perpetual Peace between England and Scotland. Together, they had six children, though only one of them reached adulthood. Margaret's marriage to James IV linked the royal houses of England and Scotland, which a century later resulted in the Union of the Crowns. Following the death of James IV at the Battle of Flodden in 1513, Margaret, as queen dowager, was appointed as regent for their son, King James V. A pro-French party took shape among the nobility, urging that she should be replaced by John, Duke of Albany, the closest male relative to the infant king. In seeking allies, Margaret turned to the Douglases, and in 1514 she married Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus, which alienated the nobility and saw her replaced as regent by Albany. In 1524, Margaret, with the help of the Hamiltons, removed Albany from power in a "coup d'état" while he was in France, and was recognised by Parliament as regent, then later as chief counsellor to King James V.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: Following her divorce from Angus in 1527, Margaret married her third husband, Henry Stewart, 1st Lord Methven. Through her first and second marriages, Margaret was the grandmother of both Mary, Queen of Scots, and Mary's second husband, Lord Darnley.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: Margaret was born on 28 November 1489 in the Palace of Westminster in London to King Henry VII and his wife, Elizabeth of York. She was their second child and firstborn daughter. Her siblings included Arthur, Prince of Wales, the future King Henry VIII, and Mary, who would briefly become Queen of France. Margaret was baptised in St. Margaret's, Westminster on St Andrew's Day. She was named after Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby, her paternal grandmother. Her nurse was Alice Davy.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: On 30 September 1497, James IV's commissioner, the Spaniard Pedro de Ayala concluded a lengthy truce with England, and now the marriage was again a serious possibility. James was in his late twenties and still unmarried. The Italian historian Polydore Vergil said that some of the English royal council objected to the match, saying that it would bring the Stewarts directly into the line of English succession, to which the wily and astute Henry replied:What then? Should anything of the kind happen (and God avert the omen), I foresee that our realm would suffer no harm, since England would not be absorbed by Scotland, but rather Scotland by England, being the noblest head of the entire island, since there is always less glory and honour in being joined to that which is far the greater, just as Normandy once came under the rule and power of our ancestors the English.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: On 24 January 1502, Scotland and England concluded the Treaty of Perpetual Peace, the first peace agreement between the two realms in over 170 years. The marriage treaty was concluded the same day and was viewed as a guarantee of the new peace. Margaret, who was still a child, remained in England, but was now known as the "Queen of Scots".


title: Margaret Tudor

text: The marriage was completed by proxy on 25 January 1503 at Richmond Palace. The Earl of Bothwell was proxy for the Scottish king and wore a gown of cloth-of-gold at the ceremony in the Queen's great chamber. He was accompanied by Robert Blackadder, archbishop of Glasgow, and Andrew Forman, postulate of Moray. The herald, John Young, reported that "right notable jousts" followed the ceremony. Prizes were awarded the next morning, and the tournament continued another day.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: The new queen was provided with a large wardrobe of clothes, and her crimson state bed curtains made of Italian sarcenet were embroidered with red Lancastrian roses. Clothes were also made for her companion, Lady Catherine Gordon, the widow of Perkin Warbeck. The clothes were embroidered by John Flee. In May 1503, James IV confirmed her possession of lands and houses in Scotland, including Methven Castle, Stirling Castle, Doune Castle, Linlithgow Palace and Newark Castle in Ettrick Forest, with the incomes from the corresponding earldom and lordship lands.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: Later in 1503, months after the death of her mother, Margaret came to Scotland; her progress was a grand journey northward. She left Richmond Palace on 27 June with Henry VII, and they travelled first to Collyweston in Northamptonshire. At York a plaque commemorates the exact spot where the Queen of Scots entered its gates. After crossing the border at Berwick upon Tweed on 1 August 1503, Margaret was met by the Scottish court at Lamberton. At Dalkeith Palace, James came to kiss her goodnight. He came again to console her on 4 August after a stable fire had killed some of her favourite horses. Her riding gear, including a new sumpter cloth or pallion of cloth-of-gold worth £127 was destroyed in the fire.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: At a meadow a mile from Edinburgh, there was a pavilion where Sir Patrick Hamilton and Patrick Sinclair played and fought in the guise of knights defending their ladies. On 8 August 1503, the marriage was celebrated in person in Holyrood Abbey. The rites were performed by the archbishop of Glasgow and Thomas Savage, archbishop of York, and Margaret was anointed during the ceremony. Two days later, on St Lawrence's day, Margaret went to mass at St Giles', the town's Kirk, as her first public appointment. The details of the proxy marriage, progress, arrival, and reception in Edinburgh were recorded by the Somerset Herald, John Young.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: By her marriage contract, Margaret was allowed a household with 24 English courtiers or servants. These included her cook Hunt, her chamberer Margaret, John Camner who played the lute, her ushers Hamnet Clegg and Edmund Livesay, and her ladies in waiting, Margaret Dennet, Eleanor Johns, Eleanor Verney, Agnes Musgrave, and Elizabeth Berlay. Some of her ladies in waiting had been members of the household of Elizabeth of York. Richard Justice and Harry Roper worked in the wardrobe, making her sheets, washing clothes, mending her tapestries and perfuming them with violet powder. Roper had been Page of the Beds to Elizabeth of York, and Justice was her Page of Robes. Roper returned to England to serve Catherine of Aragon. Elizabeth Maxtoun, a Scottish woman, washed the queen's linen. Rich fabrics were provided by an Italian merchant Jerome Frescobaldi. After a few years, she employed a Scottish cook Alexander Kerse. Some members of her household were described in a humorous poem by William Dunbar, "Ane Dance in the Quenis Chalmer".


title: Margaret Tudor

text: On Maundy Thursday, known as Skyre Thursday or "Cena Domini", it was the custom for the monarch and consort to give gifts to the poor and symbolically wash their feet. On 4 April 1504 Margaret gave 15 poor women blue gowns, shoes, a purse with 15 English pennies, and a wooden tankard with a jug and a plate, a token of the Last Supper. The number of poor women matched her age. Another custom was to give gifts on New Year's Day, and in 1507 James IV gave Margaret a "serpent's tongue" (really a shark tooth) set in gold with precious stones, which was believed to guard against poison. She gave a French knight Antoine d'Arces a gold salt cellar with an image of the Virgin Mary. In January 1513 the gifts included gold rings for eight ladies of her chamber, made by John Aitkin, a goldsmith who worked in Stirling Castle, and the "two black ladies" Ellen and Margaret More were given 10 gold French crowns.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: Margaret suffered from nosebleeds, and an apothecary William Foular provided a blood stone or heliotrope as a remedy. Foular also sent the queen medicinal spices including pepper, cinnamon, "cubebarum", and "galiga", with glass urinals. Margaret went on pilgrimages to Whitekirk in East Lothian, and in July 1507, after recovering from a period of ill-health, to Whithorn in Galloway, dressed in green velvet and riding on a saddle covered with the pelt of a reindeer, accompanied by her ladies and the court musicians.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: The king named the Scottish warship "Margaret" after her. The treaty of 1502, far from being perpetual, barely survived the death of Henry VII in 1509. His successor, the young Henry VIII, had little time for his father's cautious diplomacy, and was soon heading towards a war with France, Scotland's historic ally. In 1513, James invaded England to honour his commitment to the Auld Alliance, only to meet death and disaster at the Battle of Flodden. Margaret had opposed the war, but was still named in the royal will as regent for the infant king, James V, for as long as she remained a widow.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: Parliament met at Stirling not long after Flodden, and confirmed Margaret in the office of regent. A woman was rarely welcome in a position of supreme power, and Margaret was the sister of an enemy king, which served to compound her problems. Before long a pro-French party took shape among the nobility, urging that she should be replaced by John Stewart, 2nd Duke of Albany, the closest male relative to the infant prince, and now third in line to the throne.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: Albany, who had been born and raised in France, was seen as a living representative of the Auld Alliance, in contrast with the pro-English Margaret. She is considered to have acted calmly and with some degree of political skill. By July 1514, she had managed to reconcile the contending parties, and Scotland – along with France – concluded peace with England that same month. But in her search for political allies amongst the fractious Scottish nobility she took a fatal step, allowing good sense and prudence to be overruled by emotion and the personal magnetism of Archibald Douglas, 6th Earl of Angus.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: In seeking allies Margaret turned more and more to the powerful House of Douglas. She found herself particularly attracted to the Earl of Angus, whom even his uncle, the cleric and poet Gavin Douglas, called a "young witless fool". Margaret and Douglas were secretly married in the parish church of Kinnoull, near Perth, on 6 August 1514. Not only did this alienate the other noble houses but it immediately strengthened the pro-French faction on the council, headed by James Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow. By the terms of the late king's will she had sacrificed her position as Regent of Scotland, and before the month was out, she was obliged to consent to the appointment of Albany.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: In September, the Privy Council decided that she had also forfeited her rights to the supervision of her sons, whereupon in defiance she and her allies took the princes to Stirling Castle. In November, Margaret devised a code for letters sent to Henry VIII, saying that those signed "Your loving sister, Margaret R" would be genuine, and others might be the result of coercion by her enemies.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: Albany arrived in Scotland in May 1515, and was finally installed as regent in July. His first task was to get custody of James and Alexander, politically essential for the authority of the regency. Margaret, after some initial defiance, surrendered at Stirling in August. With the princes in the hands of their uncle, Margaret, now expecting a child by Angus, retired to Edinburgh. For some time her brother had been urging her to flee to England with her sons; but she had steadily refused to do so, fearing such a step might lead to James's loss of the Scottish crown.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: However, once Margaret's two sons were in the custody of their uncle, Margaret secretly accepted her brother's offer of her personal safety at the English Court. Pregnant with Angus' child, Margaret feared for her life under the rule of the Privy Council of Scotland. As queen dowager she was forced to beg permission from the Privy Council even to travel. She obtained permission to go to Linlithgow Palace for her lying-in.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: She escaped to Tantallon Castle and then, via Blackadder Castle and Coldstream Priory, crossed the border to England. She left valuable costume and jewels behind at Tantallon, including several velvet hoods embroidered with pearls with jewel-set front borders called "chaffrons", and a silk hat with a diamond jewel that had been a present from Louis XII of France. Her jewels were later collected by Thomas Dacre's agent, John Whelpdale, the Master of College of Greystoke.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: Margaret was received by Thomas Dacre, Henry's Warden of the Marches, and taken to Harbottle Castle in Northumberland. Here in early October she gave birth to Lady Margaret Douglas, the future Countess of Lennox and mother of Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, cousin and second husband to Mary, Queen of Scots, and father of the future James VI.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: While still in the north of England, Queen Margaret learned of the death of her younger son, Alexander. Dacre hinted that Albany – cast in the role of Richard III — was responsible. Margaret, even in her vulnerable state, refused to accept this, saying that if he really aimed at securing the throne for himself the death of James would have suited his purpose better.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: It was also at this time that she at last began to get the measure of Angus, who, with an eye on his own welfare, returned to Scotland to make peace with the Regent, "which much made Margaret to muse". When Henry VIII learned that Angus would not be accompanying his sister to London he said, "Done like a Scot". However, all of Angus's power, wealth and influence was in Scotland; to abandon the country would mean possible forfeiture for treason. In this regard he would have had before him the example of his kinsman James Douglas, 9th Earl of Douglas, who had fled to England the previous century, living out his life as a landless mercenary.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: Margaret was well received by Henry and, to confirm her status, was lodged in Scotland Yard, the ancient London residence of the Scottish kings. In 1517, having spent a year in England, she returned north, after a treaty of reconciliation had been worked out by Albany, Henry and Cardinal Wolsey. Albany was temporarily absent in France – where he renewed the Auld Alliance once more and arranged for the future marriage of James V — but the queen dowager was received at the border by Sieur de la Bastie, his deputy, as well as by her husband.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: Although Margaret and Angus were temporarily reconciled, it was not long before their relationship entered a phase of terminal decline. She discovered that while she was in England her husband had been living with Lady Jane Stewart, a former lover. This was bad enough; what was worse, he had been living on his wife's money. In October 1518, she wrote to her brother, hinting at divorce:"I am sore troubled with my Lord of Angus since my last coming into Scotland, and every day more and more, so that we have not been together this half-year… I am so minded that, an I may by law of God and to my honour, to part with him, for I wit well he loves me not, as he shows me daily."


title: Margaret Tudor

text: This was a difficult issue for Henry; a man of conservative and orthodox belief, he was opposed to divorce on principle – which was highly ironic, considering his later marital career. Just as important, Angus was a useful ally and an effective counter-weight to Albany and the pro-French faction. Angered by his attitude, Margaret drew closer to the Albany faction and joined others in calling for his return from France. Albany, seemingly in no hurry to return to the fractious northern kingdom, suggested that she resume the regency herself. The dispute between husband and wife was set to dominate Scottish politics for the next three years, complicated even more by a bitter feud between Angus and James Hamilton, 1st Earl of Arran; with bewildering rapidity Margaret sided with one and then the other.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: Albany finally arrived back in Scotland in November 1521 and was warmly received by Margaret. It was soon rumoured that their cordial relations embraced more than politics. Angus went into exile while the Regent – with the full cooperation of the queen dowager – set about restoring order to a country riven by three years of intense factional conflict. Albany was useful to Margaret: he was known to have influence in Rome, which would help ease her application for a divorce. Angus and his allies spread the rumour that the two were lovers, to such effect that even the sober-headed Lord Dacre wrote to Wolsey, predicting that James would be murdered and Albany would become king and marry Margaret. But the relationship between the two was never more than one of calculated self-interest, as events were soon to prove.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: In most essentials, Margaret remained an Englishwoman in attitude and outlook, and at root, she genuinely desired a better understanding between the land of her birth and her adopted home. Necessity demanded an alliance with Albany and the French faction, especially after the devastating border wars with England in the early 1520s.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: But no sooner was Albany off the scene than she set about organising a party of her own. In 1524, the Regent was finally removed from power in a simple but effective "coup d'état". With Albany once more in France (where he was to die in 1536), Margaret, with the help of Arran and the Hamiltons, brought James, now 12 years old, from Stirling to Edinburgh. It was a bold and popular move.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: In August, Parliament declared the regency at an end, and James was elevated to full kingly powers. In practice, he would continue to be governed by others, his mother above all. When Beaton objected to the new arrangements, Margaret had him arrested and thrown into jail. In November, Parliament formally recognised Margaret as the chief councillor to the King.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: Margaret's alliance inevitably alienated other noble houses. Her situation was not eased when her brother, Henry VIII, allowed Angus to return to Scotland. Both of these factors were to some degree beyond her control. The most damaging move of all was not. She formed a new attachment, this time to Henry Stewart, a younger brother of Lord Avondale.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: Stewart was promoted to senior office, angering the Earl of Lennox, among others, who promptly entered into an alliance with her estranged husband. That same November, when Parliament confirmed Margaret's political office, her war with Angus descended into a murderous farce. When he arrived in Edinburgh with a large group of armed men, claiming his right to attend Parliament, she ordered cannons to be fired on him from both the Castle and Holyrood House. When the two English ambassadors present at court, Thomas Magnus and Roger Radclyff, objected that she should not attack her lawful husband she responded in anger, telling them to "go home and not meddle with Scottish matters".


title: Margaret Tudor

text: Angus withdrew for the time being, but under pressure from various sources, the Queen finally admitted him to the council of regency in February 1525. It was all the leverage he needed. Taking custody of James, he refused to give him up, exercising full power on his behalf for a period of three years. James' experience during this time left him with an abiding hatred of both the house of Douglas and the English.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: Margaret attempted to resist but was forced to bend to the new political realities. Besides, by this time her desire for a divorce had become obsessive, taking precedence over all other matters. She was prepared to use all arguments, including the widespread myth that James IV had not been killed at Flodden. Despite the coup of 1524, she corresponded warmly with Albany, who continued his efforts on her behalf in Rome. In March 1527, Pope Clement VII granted her petition. Because of the political situation in Europe at the time it was not until December that she learned of her good fortune. She married Henry Stewart on 3 March 1528, ignoring the pious warnings of Cardinal Wolsey that marriage was "divinely ordained" and his protests against the "shameless sentence sent from Rome".


title: Margaret Tudor

text: In June 1528, James V finally freed himself from the tutelage of Angus – who once more fled into exile – and began to rule in his own right. Margaret was an early beneficiary of the royal coup, she and her husband emerging as the leading advisors to the king. James created Stewart Lord Methven "for the great love he bore to his dearest mother". It was rumoured – falsely – that the Queen favoured a marriage between her son and her niece Mary, but she was instrumental in bringing about the Anglo-Scottish peace agreement of May 1534.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: The central aim of Margaret's political life – besides assuring her own survival – was to bring about a better understanding between England and Scotland, a position she held to through some difficult times. James was suspicious of Henry, especially because of his continuing support for Angus, a man he loathed with a passion. Even so, in early 1536 his mother persuaded him to meet with her brother. It was her moment of triumph and she wrote to Henry and Thomas Cromwell, now his chief advisor, saying that it was "by advice of us and no other living person". She was looking for a grand occasion on the lines of the Field of Cloth of Gold, and spent a huge sum in preparation. In the end it came to nothing because there were too many voices raised in objection and because James would not be managed by his mother or anyone else. In a private interview with the English ambassador, William Howard, her disappointment was obvious – "I am weary of Scotland", she confessed. Her weariness even extended to betraying state secrets to Henry.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: Weary of Scotland she may have been: she was now even more tired of Lord Methven, who was proving himself to be even worse than Angus in his desire both for other women and for his wife's money. She was once again eager for divorce but proceedings were frustrated by James, whom she believed her husband had bribed. As so often in Margaret's life, tragedy and unhappiness were closely pursued by intrigue and farce. At one point she ran away toward the border, only to be intercepted and brought back to Edinburgh. Time and again she wrote to Henry with complaints about her poverty and appeals for money and protection – she wished for ease and comfort instead of being obliged "to follow her son about like a poor gentlewoman".


title: Margaret Tudor

text: In the first months of 1536 Henry VIII sent her £200 and a parcel of luxury fabrics including lengths of purple cloth, tawny cloth of gold tissue, russet tinsel, satin, and velvet. The fabric was for costume to wear to welcome her son's bride Madeleine of Valois. Margaret welcomed Mary of Guise, James's second French bride to Scotland in June 1538. These two women, among the most formidable in Scottish history, established a good understanding. Mary made sure that her mother-in-law, who had now been reconciled with Methven, made regular appearances at court and it was reported to Henry that "the young queen was all papist, and the old queen not much less."


title: Margaret Tudor

text: Margaret died at Methven Castle on 18 October 1541. Henry Ray, the Berwick Pursuivant, reported that she had palsy (possibly resulting from a stroke) on Friday and died on the following Tuesday. As she thought she would recover she did not trouble to make a will. She sent for King James, who was at Falkland Palace, but he did not come in time. Near the end she wished that the friars who attended her would seek the reconciliation of the King and the Earl of Angus. She hoped the King would give her possessions to her daughter, Lady Margaret Douglas. James arrived after her death, and he ordered Oliver Sinclair and John Tennent to pack up her belongings for his use.


title: Margaret Tudor

text: She was buried at the Charterhouse in Perth (demolished during the Reformation, 1559, its site now occupied by the former King James VI Hospital). The funeral ceremony itself was possibly not as elaborate as that held in Edinburgh for Madeleine of Valois in 1537, but James V and his household were provided with expensive black clothes for a mourning period.


title: Katherine Ryan

text: Katherine Louisa Ryan (born 30 June 1983) is a Canadian comedian, writer, presenter, and actress based in the United Kingdom.


title: Katherine Ryan

text: She has appeared on many British panel shows, including as a regular team captain on "8 Out of 10 Cats" and "Never Mind the Buzzcocks", "A League of Their Own", "Mock the Week", "Would I Lie to You?", "QI", "Just a Minute, Safeword", and "Have I Got News for You". In 2015, she replaced Steve Jones as the presenter of "Hair" on BBC Two. As an actress, Ryan has appeared on numerous television series in the UK, including the sitcoms "Campus", "Episodes", and her Netflix show "The Duchess".


title: Katherine Ryan

text: As a stand-up comedian, Ryan has appeared on the BBC's "Live at the Apollo", both as a featured act and as a lead act. She has had two live stand-up specials released on Netflix: "Katherine Ryan: In Trouble" (2017) and "" (2019).


title: Katherine Ryan

text: Ryan's father, Finbar, is a draughtsman and owner of an engineering company who originally emigrated from Ireland to Canada. Her mother Julie McCarthy is British/Canadian and owns an IT consulting company. Ryan and her two younger sisters were born and raised in Sarnia, Ontario. The three siblings spent time in Cork, Ireland, visiting their paternal grandparents.


title: Katherine Ryan

text: Ryan's parents separated when she was a teenager. When she was 18, she decided to leave home and chose to study city planning at Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly Ryerson University) in Toronto. While attending university, she worked at restaurant chain Hooters, and she then began training other waitresses. In her spare time she undertook open mic nights as an alternative form of personal entertainment, and by graduation, she had developed a basic comedic routine. She was one of the many dancers in MuchMusic's "Electric Circus" program.


title: Katherine Ryan

text: After graduation, Ryan continued working for Hooters as a corporate trainer, travelling around Canada to train other waitresses, and helping to open the then-only UK branch in Nottingham. Her partner at the time wanted to explore London, so she agreed to do so for an initial month from summer 2007, moving there permanently from January 2008.


title: Katherine Ryan

text: Ryan first appeared on television as herself in episodes of the Canadian music video review show "Video on Trial" between season one in 2005 and her last appearance in 2008 in season three. After relocating to England, she first appeared on Channel 4's "8 Out of 10 Cats" in 2012. She had previously appeared in the cast of Channel 4's "Campus". On 23 February 2013, she appeared as a celebrity contestant on BBC One's "Let's Dance for Comic Relief" as Nicki Minaj dancing to "Starships". Ryan reached the final, and finished in fourth place. Ryan was later featured on the Whitney Cummings Just for Laughs 2013 Gala that was taped before a live audience on 28 July 2013. She has since taken new routines to the Edinburgh Festival.


title: Katherine Ryan

text: In 2015, Ryan replaced Steve Jones as the presenter of "Hair" on BBC Two. Also in 2015, Ryan became a panellist for Tinie Tempah's team on Sky 1's music/comedy panel show "Bring the Noise" and on the ITV2 show, "Safeword". In 2016, Ryan appeared on series 2 of "Taskmaster". She beat Doc Brown, Joe Wilkinson, Richard Osman and Jon Richardson, to win the season.


title: Katherine Ryan

text: Ryan went on a comedy tour in 2016, called "Kathbum", a name her toddler sister used to call her. In February 2017, Netflix released "Katherine Ryan: In Trouble", featuring her stand-up comedy live performance at the Hammersmith Apollo in London, during that tour.


title: Katherine Ryan

text: She joined Jimmy Carr in 2017 to host four series of the reboot of "Your Face or Mine?". In 2018, Ryan joined American comedy panel show, "The Fix" as a team captain. In July 2019, Netflix released her second live stand-up special, "".


title: Katherine Ryan

text: As an actress, Ryan has appeared on numerous television series in the UK, including the sitcoms "Campus", "Episodes" and "Badults". Ryan stars in the August 2020 season 1, Netflix comedy "The Duchess," based on a single mother's life in London; she is credited as its writer, executive producer, and creator.


title: Katherine Ryan

text: On 6 June 2014, YouTube comedy duo Jack and Dean released a music video for their song "Consent" featuring Ryan in an acting role.


title: Katherine Ryan

text: In 2015 and 2016 Ryan wrote a weekly column in the British entertainment magazine "NME". In 2016 she featured in Disney XD and Teletoon's animated television series "Counterfeit Cat", where she voiced Ranceford, the stuck-up, white, odd-eyed cat and leader of the Sunshine Circle for Cats.


title: Katherine Ryan

text: In 2021 Ryan hosted the six-part reality competition "All That Glitters: Britain's Next Jewellery Star" on BBC2. Also in 2021 she presented the ITV2 dating show "Ready to Mingle".


title: Katherine Ryan

text: In November 2022 Ryan was the subject of an interview in the BBC series "Louis Theroux Interviews..." with Louis Theroux, during which she told Theroux about the "open secret" of an alleged sexual abuser who was a prominent TV personality.


title: Katherine Ryan

text: For her comedy work, Ryan won the 2008 Funny Women Award and was described as "the funniest new female stand up in Britain" by a national newspaper.


title: Katherine Ryan

text: Ryan has previously dated British actor and TV presenter Jeff Leach and had a relationship with American comedian Alex Edelman.


title: Katherine Ryan

text: In 2019, Ryan entered into a civil partnership with Bobby Kootstra. The ceremony took place in Denmark in the presence of her daughter. The two had dated in Canada as teenagers and were reunited when Ryan returned to her hometown while filming an episode of the TV show "Who Do You Think You Are?" Ryan lives with her partner and daughter in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire. Her second child, a son, was born in June 2021. In July 2022 Ryan announced that she was expecting her third child. A girl was born in 2022.


title: Katherine Ryan

text: Her family lives in London in a house described as "stunning" and "incredibly stylish"; "Hello!" magazine said, "With its double-height ceilings, beautiful garden space and modern interiors, it could rival a Kardashian pad."


title: Katherine Ryan

text: Ryan has been open about the cosmetic surgery she has had. She had her first breast augmentation in her early 20s, while employed at Hooters, and then a second augmentation after a relationship ended. She has twice been treated for skin cancer.


title: Watchmen

text: Watchmen is an American comic book maxiseries by the British creative team of writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons and colorist John Higgins. It was published monthly by DC Comics in 1986 and 1987 before being collected in a single-volume edition in 1987. "Watchmen" originated from a story proposal Moore submitted to DC featuring superhero characters that the company had acquired from Charlton Comics. As Moore's proposed story would have left many of the characters unusable for future stories, managing editor Dick Giordano convinced Moore to create original characters instead.


title: Watchmen

text: Moore used the story as a means to reflect contemporary anxieties, to deconstruct and satirize the superhero concept and political commentary. "Watchmen" depicts an alternate history in which superheroes emerged in the 1940s and 1960s and their presence changed history so that the United States won the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal was never exposed. In 1985, the country is edging toward World War III with the Soviet Union, freelance costumed vigilantes have been outlawed and most former superheroes are in retirement or working for the government. The story focuses on the protagonists' personal development and moral struggles as an investigation into the murder of a government-sponsored superhero pulls them out of retirement.


title: Watchmen

text: Gibbons used a nine-panel grid layout throughout the series and added recurring symbols such as a blood-stained smiley face. All but the last issue feature supplemental fictional documents that add to the series' backstory, and the narrative is intertwined with that of another story, an in-story pirate comic titled "Tales of the Black Freighter", which one of the characters reads. Structured at times as a nonlinear narrative, the story skips through space, time and plot. In the same manner, entire scenes and dialogue have parallels with others through synchronicity, coincidence and repeated imagery.


title: Watchmen

text: A commercial success, "Watchmen" has received critical acclaim both in the comics and mainstream press. "Watchmen" was recognized in "Time"s List of the 100 Best Novels as one of the best English language novels published since 1923. In a retrospective review, the BBC's Nicholas Barber described it as "the moment comic books grew up". Moore opposed this idea, stating, "I tend to think that, no, comics hadn’t grown up. There were a few titles that were more adult than people were used to. But the majority of comics titles were pretty much the same as they'd ever been. It wasn’t comics growing up. I think it was more comics meeting the emotional age of the audience coming the other way."


title: Watchmen

text: After a number of attempts to adapt the series into a feature film, director Zack Snyder's "Watchmen" was released in 2009. A video game series, "", was released in the same year to coincide with the film's release.


title: Watchmen

text: DC Comics published "Before Watchmen", a series of nine prequel miniseries, in 2012, and "Doomsday Clock", a 12-issue limited series and sequel to the original "Watchmen" series, from 2017 to 2019 – both without Moore's or Gibbons' involvement. The second series integrated the "Watchmen" characters within the DC Universe, home to more recognizable DC superheroes like Superman and Batman. A television continuation to the original comic, set 34 years after the comic's timeline, was broadcast on HBO from October to December 2019 with Gibbons' involvement. A comic continuation of the HBO series, titled "Rorschach" and written by Tom King, began publication in October 2020. Moore has expressed his displeasure with later adaptations and asked that "Watchmen" not be adapted for future works.


title: Watchmen

text: "Watchmen", created by writer Alan Moore and artist Dave Gibbons, first appeared in the 1985 issue of DC Spotlight, the 50th anniversary special. It was eventually published as a 12-issue maxiseries from DC Comics, cover-dated September 1986 to October 1987.


title: Watchmen

text: It was subsequently collected in 1987 as a DC Comics trade paperback that has had at least 24 printings as of March 2017; another trade paperback was published by Warner Books, a DC sister company, in 1987. In February 1988, DC published a limited-edition, slipcased hardcover volume, produced by Graphitti Design, that contained 48 pages of bonus material, including the original proposal and concept art. In 2005, DC released "Absolute Watchmen", an oversized slipcased hardcover edition of the series in DC's Absolute Edition format. Assembled under the supervision of Dave Gibbons, "Absolute Watchmen" included the Graphitti materials, as well as restored and recolored art by John Higgins. That December DC published a new printing of "Watchmen" issue #1 at the original 1986 cover price of $1.50 as part of its "Millennium Edition" line.


title: Watchmen

text: In 2012, DC published "Before Watchmen", a series of nine prequel miniseries, with various creative teams producing the characters' early adventures set before the events of the original series.


title: Watchmen

text: In the 2016 one-shot "", numerous symbols and visual references to "Watchmen", such as the blood-splattered smiley face, and the dialogue between Doctor Manhattan and Ozymandias in the last issue of "Watchmen", are shown. Further "Watchmen" imagery was added in the "DC Universe: Rebirth Special" #1 second printing, which featured an update to Gary Frank's cover, better revealing the outstretched hand of Doctor Manhattan in the top right corner. Doctor Manhattan later appeared in the 2017 four-part DC miniseries "The Button" serving as a direct sequel to both "DC Universe Rebirth" and the 2011 storyline "Flashpoint". Manhattan reappears in the 2017–19 twelve-part sequel series "Doomsday Clock".


title: Watchmen

text: In 1983, DC Comics acquired a line of characters from Charlton Comics. During that period, writer Alan Moore contemplated writing a story that featured an unused line of superheroes that he could revamp, as he had done in his "Miracleman" series in the early 1980s. Moore reasoned that MLJ Comics' Mighty Crusaders might be available for such a project, so he devised a murder mystery plot which would begin with the discovery of the body of the Shield in a harbor. The writer felt it did not matter which set of characters he ultimately used, as long as readers recognized them "so it would have the shock and surprise value when you saw what the reality of these characters was". Moore used this premise and crafted a proposal featuring the Charlton characters titled "Who Killed the Peacemaker", and submitted the unsolicited proposal to DC managing editor Dick Giordano. Giordano was receptive to the proposal, but opposed the idea of using the Charlton characters for the story. Moore said, "DC realized their expensive characters would end up either dead or dysfunctional." Instead, Giordano persuaded Moore to continue with new characters. Moore had initially believed that original characters would not provide emotional resonance for the readers, but later changed his mind. He said, "Eventually, I realized that if I wrote the substitute characters well enough, so that they seemed familiar in certain ways, certain aspects of them brought back a kind of generic super-hero resonance or familiarity to the reader, then it might work."


title: Watchmen

text: Artist Dave Gibbons, who had collaborated with Moore on previous projects, recalled he "must have heard on the grapevine that he was doing a treatment for a new miniseries. I rang Alan up, saying I’d like to be involved with what he was doing", and Moore sent him the story outline. Gibbons told Giordano he wanted to draw the series Moore proposed and Moore approved. Gibbons brought colorist John Higgins onto the project because he liked his "unusual" style; Higgins lived near the artist, which allowed the two to "discuss [the art] and have some kind of human contact rather than just sending it across the ocean". Len Wein joined the project as its editor, while Giordano stayed on to oversee it. Both Wein and Giordano stood back and "got out of their way"; Giordano remarked later, "Who copy-edits Alan Moore, for God's sake?"


title: Watchmen

text: After receiving the go-ahead to work on the project, Moore and Gibbons spent a day at the latter's house creating characters, crafting details for the story's milieu and discussing influences. The pair was particularly influenced by a "Mad" parody of Superman named "Superduperman"; Moore said, "We wanted to take Superduperman 180 degrees—dramatic, instead of comedic". Moore and Gibbons conceived of a story that would take "familiar old-fashioned superheroes into a completely new realm"; Moore said his intention was to create "a superhero "Moby Dick"; something that had that sort of weight, that sort of density". Moore came up with the character names and descriptions, but left the specifics of how they looked to Gibbons. Gibbons did not sit down and design the characters deliberately, but rather "did it at odd times [...] spend[ing] maybe two or three weeks just doing sketches." Gibbons designed his characters to make them easy to draw; Rorschach was his favorite to draw because "you just have to draw a hat. If you can draw a hat, then you've drawn Rorschach, you just draw kind of a shape for his face and put some black blobs on it and you're done."


title: Watchmen

text: Moore began writing the series very early on, hoping to avoid publication delays such as those faced by the DC limited series "Camelot 3000". When writing the script for the first issue, Moore said he realized, "I only had enough plot for six issues. We were contracted for 12!" His solution was to alternate issues that dealt with the overall plot of the series with origin issues for the characters. Moore wrote very detailed scripts for Gibbons to work from. Gibbons recalled that "[t]he script for the first issue of "Watchmen" was, I think, 101 pages of typescript—single-spaced—with no gaps between the individual panel descriptions or, indeed, even between the pages." Upon receiving the scripts, the artist had to number each page "in case I drop them on the floor, because it would take me two days to put them back in the right order", and used a highlighter pen to single out lettering and shot descriptions; he remarked, "It takes quite a bit of organizing before you can actually put pen to paper." Despite Moore's detailed scripts, his panel descriptions would often end with the note "If that doesn't work for you, do what works best"; Gibbons nevertheless worked to Moore's instructions. In fact, Gibbons only suggested a single change to the script: a compression of Ozymandias' narration while he was preventing a sneak attack by Rorschach, as he felt that the dialogue was too long to fit with the amount of action expressed; Moore agreed and re-wrote the scene. Gibbons had a great deal of autonomy in developing the visual look of "Watchmen", and frequently inserted background details that Moore admitted he did not notice until later. Moore occasionally contacted fellow comics writer Neil Gaiman for answers to research questions and for quotes to include in issues.


title: Watchmen

text: Despite his intentions, Moore admitted in November 1986 that there were likely to be delays, stating that he was, with issue five on the stands, still writing issue nine. Gibbons mentioned that a major factor in the delays was the "piecemeal way" in which he received Moore's scripts. Gibbons said the team's pace slowed around the fourth issue; from that point onward the two undertook their work "just several pages at a time. I'll get three pages of script from Alan and draw it and then toward the end, call him up and say, 'Feed me!' And he'll send another two or three pages or maybe one page or sometimes six pages." As the creators began to hit deadlines, Moore would hire a taxi driver to drive 50 miles and deliver scripts to Gibbons. On later issues the artist even had his wife and son draw panel grids on pages to help save time.


title: Watchmen

text: Near the end of the project, Moore realized that the story bore some similarity to "The Architects of Fear", an episode of "The Outer Limits" television series. The writer and Wein (an editor) argued over changing the ending, and when Moore refused to give in, Wein quit the book. Wein explained, "I kept telling him, 'Be more original, Alan, you've got the capability, do something different, not something that's already been done!' And he didn't seem to care enough to do that." Moore acknowledged the "Outer Limits" episode by referencing it in the series' last issue.


title: Watchmen

text: "Watchmen" is set in an alternate reality that closely mirrors the contemporary world of the 1980s. The primary difference is the presence of superheroes. The point of divergence occurs in the year 1938. Their existence in this version of the United States is shown to have dramatically affected and altered the outcomes of real-world events such as the Vietnam War and the presidency of Richard Nixon. In keeping with the realism of the series, although the costumed crimefighters of "Watchmen" are commonly called "superheroes", only one, named Doctor Manhattan, possesses any superhuman abilities. The war in Vietnam ends with an American victory in 1971 and Nixon is still president as of October 1985 upon the repeal of term limits and the Watergate scandal not coming to pass. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan occurs approximately six years later than in real life.


title: Watchmen

text: When the story begins, the existence of Doctor Manhattan has given the U.S. a strategic advantage over the Soviet Union, which has dramatically increased Cold War tensions. Eventually, by 1977, superheroes grow unpopular among the police and the public, leading them to be outlawed with the passage of the Keene Act. While many of the heroes retired, Doctor Manhattan and another superhero, known as The Comedian, operate as government-sanctioned agents. Another named Rorschach continues to operate outside the law.


title: Watchmen

text: In October 1985, New York City detectives are investigating the murder of Edward Blake. With the police having no leads, costumed vigilante Rorschach decides to probe further. Rorschach deduces Blake to have been the true identity of The Comedian, a costumed hero employed by the U.S. government, after finding his costume and signature smiley-face pin badge. Rorschach believes he has discovered a plot to terminate costumed adventurers and sets about warning four of his retired comrades: Daniel Dreiberg (an inventor and formerly the second Nite Owl), the superpowered and emotionally detached Jon Osterman (codenamed Doctor Manhattan) and his lover Laurie Juspeczyk (the second Silk Spectre), and Adrian Veidt (once the hero Ozymandias, and now a successful businessman).


title: Watchmen

text: Dreiberg, Veidt, and Manhattan attend Blake's funeral, where Dreiberg tosses Blake's pin badge in his coffin before he is buried. Manhattan is later accused on national television of being the cause of cancer in friends and former colleagues. When the government takes the accusations seriously, Manhattan exiles himself to Mars. As the U.S. depends on Manhattan as a strategic military asset, his departure throws humanity into political turmoil, with the Soviets invading Afghanistan to capitalize on the perceived American weakness. Rorschach's concerns appear vindicated when Veidt narrowly survives an assassination attempt. Rorschach himself is framed for murdering a former supervillain named Moloch. Though he attempted to flee from the authorities, Rorschach is ultimately captured and unmasked as Walter Kovacs.


title: Watchmen

text: Neglected in her relationship with the once-human Manhattan, whose now-godlike powers and transformation have removed him completely from the everyday concerns of living beings, and no longer kept on retainer by the government, Juspeczyk stays with Dreiberg. They begin a romance, don their costumes, and resume vigilante work as they grow closer together. With Dreiberg starting to believe some aspects of Rorschach's conspiracy theory, the pair take it upon themselves to break him out of prison. After looking back on his own personal history, Manhattan places the fate of his involvement with human affairs in Juspeczyk's hands. He teleports her to Mars to make the case for emotional investment. During the course of the argument, Juspeczyk is forced to come to terms with the fact that Blake, who once attempted to rape her mother (the original Silk Spectre), was, in fact, her biological father following a second, consensual relationship. This discovery, reflecting the complexity of human emotions and relationships, reignites Manhattan's interest in humanity.


title: Watchmen

text: On Earth, Nite Owl and Rorschach continue to uncover the conspiracy and find evidence that Veidt may be behind the plan. Rorschach writes his suspicions about Veidt in his journal, in which he has been recording his entire investigation, and mails it to "New Frontiersman", a local right-wing newspaper. The pair then confront Veidt at his Antarctic retreat. Veidt explains his underlying plan is to save humanity from impending nuclear war by faking an alien invasion in New York, which will annihilate half the city's population. He hopes this will unite the superpowers against a perceived common enemy. He also reveals that he had murdered The Comedian when he discovered his plan, arranged for Manhattan's past associates to contract cancer, staged the attempt on his own life in order to place himself above suspicion, and killed Moloch in order to frame Rorschach. This was all done in an attempt to prevent his plan from being exposed. Nite Owl and Rorschach find Veidt's logic callous and abhorrent. They say that they will stop him, but Veidt reveals that he already enacted his plan before they arrived.


title: Watchmen

text: When Manhattan and Juspeczyk arrive back on Earth, they are confronted by mass destruction and death in New York, with a gigantic squid-like creature, created by Veidt's laboratories, dead in the middle of the city. Manhattan notices his prescient abilities are limited by tachyons emanating from the Antarctic and the pair teleport there. They discover Veidt's involvement and confront him. Veidt shows everyone news broadcasts confirming that the emergence of a new threat has indeed prompted peaceful co-operation between the superpowers; this leads almost all present to agree that concealing the truth is in the best interests of world peace. Rorschach refuses to compromise and leaves, intent on revealing the truth. As he is making his way back, he is confronted by Manhattan who argues that at this point, the truth can only hurt. Rorschach declares that Manhattan will have to kill him to stop him from exposing Veidt, which Manhattan duly does. Manhattan then wanders through the base and finds Veidt, who asks him if he did the right thing in the end. Manhattan cryptically responds that "nothing ever ends" before leaving Earth. Dreiberg and Juspeczyk go into hiding under new identities and continue their romance.


title: Watchmen

text: Back in New York, the editor at "New Frontiersman" asks his assistant to find some filler material from the "crank file", a collection of rejected submissions to the paper, many of which have not been reviewed yet. The series ends with the young man reaching toward the pile of discarded submissions, near the top of which is Rorschach's journal.


title: Watchmen

text: With "Watchmen", Alan Moore's intention was to create four or five "radically opposing ways" to perceive the world and to give readers of the story the privilege of determining which one was most morally comprehensible. Moore did not believe in the notion of "[cramming] regurgitated morals" down the readers' throats and instead sought to show heroes in an ambivalent light. Moore said, "What we wanted to do was show all of these people, warts and all. Show that even the worst of them had something going for them, and even the best of them had their flaws."


title: Watchmen

text: Moore and Gibbons designed "Watchmen" to showcase the unique qualities of the comics medium and to highlight its particular strengths. In a 1986 interview, Moore said, "What I'd like to explore is the areas that comics succeed in where no other media is capable of operating", and emphasized this by stressing the differences between comics and film. Moore said that "Watchmen" was designed to be read "four or five times", with some links and allusions only becoming apparent to the reader after several readings. Dave Gibbons notes that, "[a]s it progressed, "Watchmen" became much more about the telling than the tale itself. The main thrust of the story essentially hinges on what is called a macguffin, a gimmick ... So really the plot itself is of no great consequence ... it just really isn't the most interesting thing about "Watchmen". As we actually came to tell the tale, that's where the real creativity came in."


title: Watchmen

text: Gibbons said he deliberately constructed the visual look of "Watchmen" so that each page would be identifiable as part of that particular series and "not some other comic book". He made a concerted effort to draw the characters in a manner different from that commonly seen in comics. The artist tried to draw the series with "a particular weight of line, using a hard, stiff pen that didn't have much modulation in terms of thick and thin" which he hoped "would differentiate it from the usual lush, fluid kind of comic book line". In a 2009 interview, Moore recalled that he took advantage of Gibbons' training as a former surveyor for "including incredible amounts of detail in every tiny panel, so we could choreograph every little thing". Gibbons described the series as "a comic about comics". Gibbons felt that "Alan is more concerned with the social implications of [the presence of super-heroes] and I've gotten involved in the technical implications." The story's alternate world setting allowed Gibbons to change details of the American landscape, such as adding electric cars, slightly different buildings, and spark hydrants instead of fire hydrants, which Moore said, "perhaps gives the American readership a chance in some ways to see their own culture as an outsider would". Gibbons noted that the setting was liberating for him because he did not have to rely primarily on reference books.


title: Watchmen

text: Colorist John Higgins used a template that was "moodier" and favored secondary colors. Moore stated that he had also "always loved John's coloring, but always associated him with being an airbrush colorist", which Moore was not fond of; Higgins subsequently decided to color "Watchmen" in European-style flat color. Moore noted that the artist paid particular attention to lighting and subtle color changes; in issue six, Higgins began with "warm and cheerful" colors and throughout the issue gradually made it darker to give the story a dark and bleak feeling.


title: Watchmen

text: Structurally, certain aspects of "Watchmen" deviated from the norm in comic books at the time, particularly the panel layout and the coloring. Instead of panels of various sizes, the creators divided each page into a nine-panel grid. Gibbons favored the nine-panel grid system due to its "authority". Moore accepted the use of the nine-panel grid format, which "gave him a level of control over the storytelling he hadn't had previously", according to Gibbons. "There was this element of the pacing and visual impact that he could now predict and use to dramatic effect." Bhob Stewart of "The Comics Journal" mentioned to Gibbons in 1987, that the page layouts recalled those of EC Comics, in addition to the art itself, which Stewart felt particularly echoed that of John Severin. Gibbons agreed that the echoing of the EC-style layouts "was a very deliberate thing", although his inspiration was rather Harvey Kurtzman, but it was altered enough to give the series a unique look. The artist also cited Steve Ditko's work on early issues of "The Amazing Spider-Man" as an influence, as well as "Doctor Strange", where "even at his most psychedelic [he] would still keep a pretty straight page layout".


title: Watchmen

text: The cover of each issue serves as the first panel to the story. Gibbons said, "The cover of the "Watchmen" is in the real world and looks quite real, but it's starting to turn into a comic book, a portal to another dimension." The covers were designed as close-ups that focused on a single detail with no human elements present. The creators on occasion experimented with the layout of the issue contents. Gibbons drew issue five, titled "Fearful Symmetry", so the first page mirrors the last (in terms of frame disposition), with the following pages mirroring each other before the center-spread is (broadly) symmetrical in layout.


title: Watchmen

text: The end of each issue, with the exception of issue twelve, contains supplemental prose pieces written by Moore. Among the contents are fictional book chapters, letters, reports, and articles written by various "Watchmen" characters. DC had trouble selling ad space in issues of "Watchmen", which left an extra eight to nine pages per issue. DC planned to insert house ads and a longer letters column to fill the space, but editor Len Wein felt this would be unfair to anyone who wrote in during the last four issues of the series. He decided to use the extra pages to fill in the series' backstory. Moore said, "By the time we got around to issue #3, #4, and so on, we thought that the book looked nice without a letters page. It looks less like a comic book, so we stuck with it."


title: Watchmen

text: "Watchmen" features a story within a story in the form of "Tales of the Black Freighter", a fictional comic book from which scenes appear in issues three, five, eight, ten, and eleven. The fictional comic's story, "Marooned", is read by a youth in New York City. Moore and Gibbons conceived a pirate comic because they reasoned that since the characters of "Watchmen" experience superheroes in real life, "they probably wouldn't be at all interested in superhero comics." Gibbons suggested a pirate theme, and Moore agreed in part because he is "a big Bertolt Brecht fan": the "Black Freighter" alludes to the song "Seeräuberjenny" ("Pirate Jenny") from Brecht's "Threepenny Opera". Moore theorized that since superheroes existed, and existed as "objects of fear, loathing, and scorn, the main superheroes quickly fell out of popularity in comic books, as we suggest. Mainly, genres like horror, science fiction, and piracy, particularly piracy, became prominent—with EC riding the crest of the wave." Moore felt "the imagery of the whole pirate genre is so rich and dark that it provided a perfect counterpoint to the contemporary world of "Watchmen"". The writer expanded upon the premise so that its presence in the story would add subtext and allegory. The supplemental article detailing the fictional history of "Tales of the Black Freighter" at the end of issue five credits real-life artist Joe Orlando as a major contributor to the series. Moore chose Orlando because he felt that if pirate stories were popular in the "Watchmen" universe that DC editor Julius Schwartz might have tried to lure the artist over to the company to draw a pirate comic book. Orlando contributed a drawing designed as if it were a page from the fake title to the supplemental piece.


title: Watchmen

text: In "Marooned", a young mariner (called "The Sea Captain") journeys to warn his hometown of the coming of "The Black Freighter", after he survives the destruction of his own ship. He uses the bodies of his dead shipmates as a makeshift raft and sails home, gradually descending into insanity. When he finally returns to his hometown, believing it to be already under the occupation of "The Black Freighter"s crew, he makes his way to his house and slays everyone he finds there, only to discover that the person he mistook for a pirate was in fact his wife. He returns to the seashore, where he realizes that "The Black Freighter" has not come to claim the town, but rather to claim him; he swims out to sea and climbs aboard the ship. According to Richard Reynolds, the mariner is "forced by the urgency of his mission to shed one inhibition after another." Just like Adrian Veidt, he "hopes to stave off disaster by using the dead bodies of his former comrades as a means of reaching his goal". Moore stated that the story of "The Black Freighter" ends up specifically describing "the story of Adrian Veidt" and that it can also be used as a counterpoint to other parts of the story, such as Rorschach's capture and Dr. Manhattan's self-exile on Mars.


title: Watchmen

text: Moore named William S. Burroughs as one of his main influences during the conception of "Watchmen". He admired Burroughs' use of "repeated symbols that would become laden with meaning" in Burroughs' only comic strip, "The Unspeakable Mr. Hart", which appeared in the British underground magazine "Cyclops". Not every intertextual link in the series was planned by Moore, who remarked that "there's stuff in there Dave had put in that even I only noticed on the sixth or seventh read", while other "things [...] turned up in there by accident."


title: Watchmen

text: A stained smiley face is a recurring image in the story, appearing in many forms. In "The System of Comics", Thierry Groensteen described the symbol as a recurring motif that produces "rhyme and remarkable configurations" by appearing in key segments of "Watchmen", notably the first and last pages of the series—spattered with blood on the first, and sauce from a hamburger on the last. Groensteen cites it as one form of the circle shape that appears throughout the story, as a "recurrent geometric motif" and due to its symbolic connotations. Gibbons created a smiley face badge as an element of The Comedian's costume in order to "lighten" the overall design, later adding a splash of blood to the badge to imply his murder. Gibbons said the creators came to regard the blood-stained smiley face as "a symbol for the whole series", noting its resemblance to the Doomsday Clock ticking up to midnight. Moore drew inspiration from psychological tests of behaviorism, explaining that the tests had presented the face as "a symbol of complete innocence". With the addition of a blood splash over the eye, the face's meaning was altered to become simultaneously radical and simple enough for the first issue's cover to avoid human detail. Although most evocations of the central image were created on purpose, others were coincidental. Moore mentioned in particular that on "the little plugs on the spark hydrants if you turn them upside down, you discover a little smiley face".


title: Watchmen

text: Other symbols, images, and allusions that appeared throughout the series often emerged unexpectedly. Moore mentioned that "[t]he whole thing with "Watchmen" has just been loads of these little bits of synchronicity popping up all over the place". Gibbons noted an unintended theme was contrasting the mundane and the romantic, citing the separate sex scenes between Nite Owl and Silk Spectre on his couch and then high in the sky on Nite Owl's airship. In a book of the craters and boulders of Mars, Gibbons discovered a photograph of the Galle crater, which resembles a happy face, which they worked into an issue. Moore said, "We found a lot of these things started to generate themselves as if by magic", in particular citing an occasion where they decided to name a lock company the "Gordian Knot Lock Company".


title: Watchmen

text: The initial premise of the series was to examine what superheroes would be like "in a credible, real world". As the story became more complex, Moore said "Watchmen" became about "power and about the idea of the superman manifest within society." The title of the series refers to the question "Who will watch the watchmen themselves?", famously posed by the Roman satirist Juvenal (as ""Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?""), although Moore was not aware of the phrase's classical origins until Harlan Ellison informed him. Moore commented in 1987, "In the context of "Watchmen", that fits. 'They're watching out for us, who's watching out for them? The writer stated in the introduction to the Graffiti hardcover of "Watchmen" that while writing the series he was able to purge himself of his nostalgia for superheroes, and instead he found an interest in real human beings.


title: Watchmen

text: Bradford Wright described "Watchmen" as "Moore's obituary for the concept of heroes in general and superheroes in particular." Putting the story in a contemporary sociological context, Wright wrote that the characters of "Watchmen" were Moore's "admonition to those who trusted in 'heroes' and leaders to guard the world's fate". He added that to place faith in such icons was to give up personal responsibility to "the Reagans, Thatchers, and other 'Watchmen' of the world who supposed to 'rescue' us and perhaps lay waste to the planet in the process". Moore specifically stated in 1986 that he was writing "Watchmen" to be "not anti-Americanism, [but] anti-Reaganism", specifically believing that "at the moment a certain part of Reagan's America isn't scared. They think they're invulnerable." Before the series premiered, Gibbons stated: "There's no overt political message at all. It's a fantasy extrapolation of what might happen and if people can see things in it that apply to the real America, then they're reading it into the comic [...]." While Moore wanted to write about "power politics" and the "worrying" times he lived in, he stated the reason that the story was set in an alternate reality was because he was worried that readers would "switch off" if he attacked a leader they admired. Moore stated in 1986 that he "was consciously trying to do something that would make people feel uneasy."


title: Watchmen

text: Citing "Watchmen" as the point where the comic book medium "came of age", Iain Thomson wrote in his essay "Deconstructing the Hero" that the story accomplished this by "developing its heroes precisely in order to "deconstruct" the very idea of the hero and so encouraging us to reflect upon its significance from the many different angles of the shards left lying on the ground". Thomson stated that the heroes in "Watchmen" almost all share a nihilistic outlook, and that Moore presents this outlook "as the simple, unvarnished truth" to "deconstruct the would-be hero's ultimate motivation, namely, to provide a secular salvation and so attain a mortal immortality". He wrote that the story "develops its heroes precisely in order to ask us if we would not in fact be better off without heroes". Thomson added that the story's deconstruction of the hero concept "suggests that perhaps the time for heroes has passed", which he feels distinguishes "this postmodern work" from the deconstructions of the hero in the existentialism movement. Richard Reynolds states that without any supervillains in the story, the superheroes of "Watchmen" are forced to confront "more intangible social and moral concerns", adding that this removes the superhero concept from the normal narrative expectations of the genre. Reynolds concludes that the series' ironic self-awareness of the genre "all mark out "Watchmen" either as the last key superhero text, or the first in a new maturity of the genre".


title: Watchmen

text: Geoff Klock eschewed the term "deconstruction" in favor of describing "Watchmen" as a "revisionary superhero narrative". He considers "Watchmen" and Frank Miller's "" to be "the first instances [...] of [a] new kind of comic book [...] a first phase of development, the transition of the superhero from fantasy to literature." He elaborates by noting that "Alan Moore's realism [...] performs a "kenosis" towards comic book history [...] [which] does not ennoble and empower his characters [...] Rather, it sends a wave of disruption back through superhero history [...] devalue[ing] one of the basic superhero conventions by placing his masked crime fighters in a realistic world". First and foremost, "Moore's exploration of the [often compromised] motives for costumed crimefighting sheds a disturbing light on past superhero stories, and forces the reader to reevaluate—to revision—every superhero in terms of Moore's "kenosis"—his emptying out of the tradition". Klock relates the title to the quote by Juvenal to highlight the problem of controlling those who hold power and quoted repeatedly within the work itself. The deconstructive nature of "Watchmen" is, Klock notes, played out on the page also as, "[l]ike Alan Moore's "kenosis", [Veidt] must destroy, then reconstruct, in order to build 'a unity which would survive him.


title: Watchmen

text: Moore has expressed dismay that "[t]he gritty, deconstructivist postmodern superhero comic, as exemplified by "Watchmen" [...] became a genre". He said in 2003 that "to some degree there has been, in the 15 years since "Watchmen", an awful lot of the comics field devoted to these grim, pessimistic, nasty, violent stories which kind of use "Watchmen" to validate what are, in effect, often just some very nasty stories that don't have a lot to recommend them". Gibbons said that while readers "were left with the idea that it was a grim and gritty kind of thing", he said in his view the series was "a wonderful celebration of superheroes as much as anything else".


title: Watchmen

text: "Watchmen" was first mentioned publicly in the 1985 "Amazing Heroes Preview". When Moore and Gibbons turned in the first issue of their series to DC, Gibbons recalled, "What really clinched it [...] was [writer/artist] Howard Chaykin, who doesn't give praise lightly, and who came up and said, 'Dave what you've done on "Watchmen" is freaking A.'" Speaking in 1986, Moore said, "DC backed us all the way [...] and have been really supportive about even the most graphic excesses". To promote the series, DC Comics released a limited-edition badge ("button") display card set, featuring characters and images from the series. Ten thousand sets of the four badges, including a replica of the blood-stained smiley face badge worn by the Comedian in the story, were released and sold. Mayfair Games introduced a "Watchmen" module for its "DC Heroes" Role-playing Game series that was released before the series concluded. The module, which was endorsed by Moore, adds details to the series' backstory by portraying events that occurred in 1966.


title: Watchmen

text: "Watchmen" was published in single-issue form over the course of 1986 and 1987. The limited series was a commercial success, and its sales helped DC Comics briefly overtake its competitor Marvel Comics in the comic book direct market. The series' publishing schedule ran into delays because it was scheduled with three issues completed instead of the six editor Len Wein believed were necessary. Further delays were caused when later issues each took more than a month to complete. One contemporaneous report noted that although DC solicited issue #12 for publication in April 1987, it became apparent "it [wouldn't] debut until July or August".


title: Watchmen

text: After the series concluded, the individual issues were collected and sold in trade paperback form. Along with Frank Miller's 1986 "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns" miniseries, "Watchmen" was marketed as a "graphic novel", a term that allowed DC and other publishers to sell similar comic book collections in a way that associated them with novels and dissociated them from comics. As a result of the publicity given to the books like the "Watchmen" trade in 1987, bookstores and public libraries began to devote special shelves to them. Subsequently, new comics series were commissioned on the basis of reprinting them in a collected form for these markets.


title: Watchmen

text: "Watchmen" received critical praise, both inside and outside of the comics industry. "Time" magazine, which noted that the series was "by common assent the best of breed" of the new wave of comics published at the time, praised "Watchmen" as "a superlative feat of imagination, combining sci-fi, political satire, knowing evocations of comics past and bold reworkings of current graphic formats into a mystery story". In 1988, "Watchmen" received a Hugo Award in the Other Forms category. According to Gibbons, Moore had his award placed upside down in his garden and used it as a bird table.


title: Watchmen

text: Dave Langford reviewed "Watchmen" for "White Dwarf" #96, and stated that "The modern myth of the Superhero is curiously powerful despite its usual silliness; "Watchmen" lovingly disassembles the mythology into bloodstained cogs and ratchets, concluding with the famous quotation "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?""


title: Watchmen

text: Disagreements about the ownership of the story ultimately led Moore to sever ties with DC Comics. Not wanting to work under a work for hire arrangement, Moore and Gibbons had a reversion clause in their contract for "Watchmen". Speaking at the 1985 San Diego Comic-Con, Moore said: "The way it works, if I understand it, is that DC owns it for the time they're publishing it, and then it reverts to Dave and me, so we can make all the money from the Slurpee cups." For "Watchmen", Moore and Gibbons received eight percent of the series' earnings. Moore explained in 1986 that his understanding was that when "DC have not used the characters for a year, they're ours." Both Moore and Gibbons said DC paid them "a substantial amount of money" to retain the rights. Moore added, "So basically they're not ours, but if DC is working with the characters in our interests then they might as well be. On the other hand, if the characters have outlived their natural life span and DC doesn't want to do anything with them, then after a year we've got them and we can do what we want with them, which I'm perfectly happy with."


title: Watchmen

text: Moore said he left DC in 1989 due to the language in his contracts for "Watchmen" and his "V for Vendetta" series with artist David Lloyd. Moore felt the reversion clauses were ultimately meaningless because DC did not intend to let the publications go out of print. He told "The New York Times" in 2006, "I said, 'Fair enough,' [...] 'You have managed to successfully swindle me, and so I will never work for you again. In 2000, Moore publicly distanced himself from DC's plans for a 15th anniversary "Watchmen" hardcover release as well as a proposed line of action figures from DC Direct. While DC wanted to mend its relationship with the writer, Moore felt the company was not treating him fairly in regard to his America's Best Comics imprint (launched under the WildStorm comic imprint, which was bought by DC in 1998; Moore was promised no direct interference by DC as part of the arrangement). Moore added, "As far as I'm concerned, the 15th anniversary of "Watchmen" is purely a 15th Anniversary of when DC managed to take the "Watchmen" property from me and Dave [Gibbons]." Soon afterward, DC Direct canceled the "Watchmen" action-figure line, despite the company having displayed prototypes at the 2000 San Diego Comic-Con International.


title: Watchmen

text: Moore stated in 1985 that if the limited series was well-received, he and Gibbons would possibly create a 12-issue prequel series called "Minutemen" featuring the 1940s superhero group from the story. DC offered Moore and Gibbons chances to publish prequels to the series, such as "Rorschach's Journal" or "The Comedian's Vietnam War Diary", as well as hinting at the possibility of other authors using the same universe. Tales of the Comedian's Vietnam War experiences were floated because "The 'Nam" was popular at the time, while another suggestion was, according to Gibbons, for a "Nite Owl/Rorschach team" (in the manner of "Randall and Hopkirk (Deceased)"). Neither man felt the stories would have gone anywhere, with Moore particularly adamant that DC not go forward with stories by other individuals. Gibbons was more attracted to the idea of a "Minutemen" series because it would have "[paid] homage to the simplicity and unsophisticated nature of Golden Age comic books—with the added dramatic interest that it would be a story whose conclusion is already known. It would be, perhaps, interesting to see how we got to the conclusion."


title: Watchmen

text: In 2010, Moore told "Wired" that DC offered him the rights to "Watchmen" back if he would agree to prequel and sequel projects. Moore said that "if they said that 10 years ago, when I asked them for that, then yeah it might have worked [...] But these days I don't want "Watchmen" back. Certainly, I don't want it back under those kinds of terms." DC Comics co-publishers Dan DiDio and Jim Lee responded: "DC Comics would only revisit these iconic characters if the creative vision of any proposed new stories matched the quality set by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons nearly 25 years ago, and our first discussion on any of this would naturally be with the creators themselves." Following months of rumors about a potential "Watchmen" follow-up project, in February 2012 DC announced it was publishing seven prequel series under the ""Before Watchmen"" banner. Among the creators involved were writers J. Michael Straczynski, Brian Azzarello, Darwyn Cooke, and Len Wein, and artists Lee Bermejo, J. G. Jones, Adam Hughes, Andy Kubert, Joe Kubert, and Amanda Conner. Though Moore had no involvement with "Before Watchmen", Gibbons supplied the project with a statement in the initial press announcement:


title: Watchmen

text: The sequel to "Watchmen", entitled "Doomsday Clock", is part of the DC Rebirth line of comics, additionally continuing a narrative established with 2016's one-shot "" and 2017's crossover "The Button", both of which featured Doctor Manhattan in a minor capacity. The miniseries, taking place seven years after the events of "Watchmen" in November 1992, follows Ozymandias as he attempts to locate Doctor Manhattan alongside Reginald Long, the successor of Walter Kovacs as Rorschach, following the exposure and subsequent failure of his plan for peace and the subsequent impending nuclear war between the United States and Russia. The series was revealed on May 14, 2017, with a teaser image displaying the Superman logo in the 12 o'clock slot of the clock depicted in "Watchmen" and the series title in the bold typeface used for "Watchmen". The first of a planned twelve issues was released on November 22, 2017.


title: Watchmen

text: The story includes many DC characters but has a particular focus on Superman and Doctor Manhattan, despite Superman stated as being a fictional character in the original series—the series uses the plot element of the multiverse. Writer Geoff Johns felt like there was an interesting story to be told in Rebirth with Doctor Manhattan. He thought there was an interesting dichotomy between Superman—an alien who embodies and is compassionate for humanity—and Doctor Manhattan—a human who has detached himself from humanity. This led to over six months of debates amongst the creative team about whether to intersect the "Watchmen" universe with the DC Universe, through the plot element of alternate realities. He explained that "Doomsday Clock" was the "most personal and most epic, utterly mind-bending project" that he had worked on in his career.


title: Watchmen

text: HBO brought on Damon Lindelof to develop a "Watchmen" television show, which premiered on October 20, 2019. Lindelof, a fan of the limited series, made the show a "remix" of the comic, narratively a sequel while introducing a new set of characters and story that he felt made the work unique enough without being a full reboot of the comic series. Among its main cast are Regina King, Don Johnson, Tim Blake Nelson, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, and Jeremy Irons. The television show takes place in 2019, 34 years after the end of the limited series, and is primarily set in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Due to liberal policies set by President Robert Redford to provide reparations to those affected by racial violence, white supremacist groups (following the writings of Rorschach) attack the police who enforce these policies, leading to laws requiring police to hide their identity and wear masks. This has allowed new masked crime fighters to assist the police against the supremacists. Doctor Manhattan, Adrian Veidt / Ozymandias, and Laurie Blake / Silk Spectre are central characters to the show's plot.


title: Watchmen

text: There have been numerous attempts to make a film version of "Watchmen" since 1986, when producers Lawrence Gordon and Joel Silver acquired film rights to the series for 20th Century Fox. Fox asked Alan Moore to write a screenplay based on his story, but he declined, so the studio enlisted screenwriter Sam Hamm. Hamm took the liberty of re-writing "Watchmen"s complicated ending into a "more manageable" conclusion involving an assassination and a time paradox. Fox put the project into turnaround in 1991, and the project was moved to Warner Bros. Pictures, where Terry Gilliam was attached to direct and Charles McKeown to rewrite it. They used the character Rorschach's diary as a voice-over and restored scenes from the comic book that Hamm had removed. Gilliam and Silver were only able to raise $25 million for the film (a quarter of the necessary budget) because their previous films had gone over budget. Gilliam abandoned the project because he decided that "Watchmen" would have been unfilmable. "Reducing [the story] to a two or two-and-a-half hour film [...] seemed to me to take away the essence of what "Watchmen" is about," he said. After Warner Bros. dropped the project, Gordon invited Gilliam back to helm the film independently. The director again declined, believing that the comic book would be better directed as a five-hour miniseries.


title: Watchmen

text: In October 2001, Gordon partnered with Lloyd Levin and Universal Studios, hiring David Hayter to write and direct. Hayter and the producers left Universal due to creative differences, and Gordon and Levin expressed interest in setting up "Watchmen" at Revolution Studios. The project did not hold together at Revolution Studios and subsequently fell apart. In July 2004, it was announced Paramount Pictures would produce "Watchmen", and they attached Darren Aronofsky to direct Hayter's script. Producers Gordon and Levin remained attached, collaborating with Aronofsky's producing partner, Eric Watson. Aronofsky left to focus on "The Fountain" and was replaced by Paul Greengrass. Ultimately, Paramount placed "Watchmen" in turnaround.


title: Watchmen

text: In October 2005, Gordon and Levin met with Warner Bros. to develop the film there again. Impressed with Zack Snyder's work on "300", Warner Bros. approached him to direct an adaptation of "Watchmen". Screenwriter Alex Tse drew from his favorite elements of Hayter's script, but also returned it to the original Cold War setting of the "Watchmen" comic. Similar to his approach to "300", Snyder used the comic book panel-grid as a storyboard and opted to shoot the entire film using live-action sets instead of green screens. He extended the fight scenes, and added a subplot about energy resources to make the film more topical. Although he intended to stay faithful to the look of the characters in the comic, Snyder intended Nite Owl to look scarier, and made Ozymandias' armor into a parody of the rubber muscle suits from the 1997 superhero film "Batman & Robin". After the trailer to the film premiered in July 2008, DC Comics president Paul Levitz said that the company had to print more than 900,000 copies of "Watchmen" trade collection to meet the additional demand for the book that the advertising campaign had generated, with the total annual print run expected to be over one million copies. While 20th Century Fox filed a lawsuit to block the film's release, the studios eventually settled, with Warner agreeing to give Fox 8.5 percent of the film's worldwide gross, including from sequels and spin-offs in return. The film was released to theaters in March 2009.


title: Watchmen

text: "Tales of the Black Freighter" was adapted as a direct-to-video animated feature from Warner Premiere and Warner Bros. Animation, which was released on March 24, 2009. It was originally included in the screenplay for the "Watchmen" film, but was cut due to budget restrictions, as the segment would have added $20 million to the budget, because Snyder wanted to film it in a stylized manner reminiscent of "300". Gerard Butler, who starred in "300", voices the Captain in the film.


title: Watchmen

text: Jared Harris voices his deceased friend Ridley, whom the Captain hallucinates is talking to him. Snyder had Butler and Harris record their parts together. Snyder considered including the animated film in the final cut, but the film was already approaching a three-hour running time. Gerard Butler, who starred in "300", voices the Captain in the film, having been promised a role in "Watchmen" that never materialized. The "Tales of the Black Freighter" was given standalone DVD release which also will "Under the Hood", a documentary detailing the characters' backstories, named after the character Hollis Mason's (the first Nite Owl) memoirs. The film itself was released on DVD four months after "Tales of the Black Freighter", and in November 2009, a four-disc set was released as the "Ultimate Cut" with the animated film edited back into the main picture. The director's cut and the extended version of "Watchmen" both include "Tales of the Black Freighter" on their DVD releases.


title: Watchmen

text: Dave Gibbons became an adviser on Snyder's film, but Moore has refused to have his name attached to any film adaptations of his work. Moore has stated he has no interest in seeing Snyder's adaptation; he told "Entertainment Weekly" in 2008 that "[t]here are things that we did with "Watchmen" that could only work in a comic, and were indeed designed to show off things that other media can't". While Moore believes that David Hayter's screenplay was "as close as I could imagine anyone getting to "Watchmen"", he asserted he did not intend to see the film if it were made.


title: Watchmen

text: In 2008, Warner Bros. Entertainment released "Watchmen Motion Comics", a series of narrated animations of the original comic book. The first chapter was released for purchase in the summer of 2008 on digital video stores, such as iTunes Store. A DVD compiling the full motion comic series was released in March 2009.


title: Watchmen

text: Warner Bros. announced in April 2017 that it is developing an R-rated animated film based on the comic book, but no further progress has been made since this announcement.


title: Watchmen

text: The HBO version of the "Watchmen" was referenced in the Arrowverse's "Crisis on Infinite Earths" crossover. A sign could be seen on a building on Earth-666 advertising the show. Earth-666 was an Earth inhabited by the Pre-Crisis version of Lucifer from the "Lucifer" television series. Tom Ellis reprised his role from that series.


title: Watchmen

text: A critical and commercial success, "Watchmen" is highly regarded in the comics industry and is frequently considered by several critics and reviewers as comics' greatest series and graphic novel. In addition to being one of the first major works to help popularize the graphic novel publishing format alongside "The Dark Knight Returns", "Watchmen" has also become one of the best-selling graphic novels ever published. "Watchmen" was the only graphic novel to appear on "Time"s 2005 "All-"Time" 100 Greatest Novels" list, where "Time" critic Lev Grossman described the story as "a heart-pounding, heartbreaking read and a watershed in the evolution of a young medium." It later appeared on "Time"s 2009 "Top 10 Graphic Novels" list, where Grossman further praised "Watchmen", proclaiming "It’s way beyond cliché at this point to call "Watchmen" the greatest superhero comic ever written-slash-drawn. But it’s true." In 2008, "Entertainment Weekly" placed "Watchmen" at number 13 on its list of the best 50 novels printed in the last 25 years, describing it as "The greatest superhero story ever told and proof that comics are capable of smart, emotionally resonant narratives worthy of the label 'literature'." "The Comics Journal", however, ranked "Watchmen" at number 91 on its list of the Top 100 English-language comics of the 20th century.


title: Watchmen

text: In "Art of the Comic Book: An Aesthetic History", Robert Harvey wrote that, with "Watchmen", Moore and Gibbons "had demonstrated as never before the capacity of the [comic book] medium to tell a sophisticated story that could be engineered only in comics". In his review of the Absolute Edition of the collection, Dave Itzkoff of "The New York Times" wrote that the dark legacy of "Watchmen", "one that Moore almost certainly never intended, whose DNA is encoded in the increasingly black inks and bleak storylines that have become the essential elements of the contemporary superhero comic book," is "a domain he has largely ceded to writers and artists who share his fascination with brutality but not his interest in its consequences, his eagerness to tear down old boundaries but not his drive to find new ones." Alan Moore himself said his intentions with works like "Marvelman" and "Watchmen" were to liberate comics and open them up to new and fresh ideas, thus creating more diversity in the comics world by showing the industry what could be done with already existing concepts. Instead it had the opposite effect, causing the superhero comic to end up stuck in a "depressive ghetto of grimness and psychosis". In 2009, Lydia Millet of "The Wall Street Journal" contested that "Watchmen" was worthy of such acclaim, and wrote that while the series' "vividly drawn panels, moody colors and lush imagery make its popularity well-deserved, if disproportionate", that "it's simply bizarre to assert that, as an illustrated literary narrative, it rivals in artistic merit, say, masterpieces like Chris Ware's 'Acme Novelty Library' or almost any part of the witty and brilliant work of Edward Gorey".


title: Watchmen

text: "Watchmen" was one of the two comic books, alongside "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns", that inspired designer Vincent Connare when he created the Comic Sans font.


title: Watchmen

text: In 2009, Brain Scan Studios released the parody "Watchmensch", a comic in which writer Rich Johnston chronicled "the debate surrounding "Watchmen", the original contracts, the current legal suits over the Fox contract".


title: Watchmen

text: Also in 2009, to coincide with the release of the "Watchmen" movie, IDW Publishing produced a parody one-shot comic titled "Whatmen?!"