I don't get many comments. If the number increases I'll switch to haloscan or MT. Until then, if I answer them in detail I'll do it in a post. It's simpler.
Tolkien: It doesn't matter where he got the structure, the question is what he does with it. If references were all it took we'd all be spending our off hours listening to Rachmaninoff and Emerson Lake and Palmer while gazing at reproductions of the greatest works of Norman Rockwell, Maxfield Parrish, the Pre-Raphaelites, and Jean-Leon Gerome. You tell me who we would be reading; I have no idea.

As to monarchy and asceticism, I posted a link -to a Padre Pio website- in the comments, but I could also add Mother Teresa, whose moral philosophy was from somewhere in the 13th century: the suffering of the poor is important in that it teaches the great and powerful the value of pity. I could add also that Duchamp referred to himself as a monarchist, following a logic that Europeans have always understood but that Americans tend to ignore. At a basic level, think of Christ himself. I never understood the absurd beauty of Catholicism until I spent an afternoon in Notre-Dame de Paris. I burst into tears in front of the Pieta.