"When you see a king," George Eliot wrote in 1868, "you see the work of many thousand men." The same might be said about the many TIME cover stories on monarchs over the decades. Totting them up in connection with this week's story on European royalty, we discovered that Kings, Queens, Princes, Princesses, Emperors and Shahs have been on our cover 91 times since 1923, when the first, King Fuad I of Egypt, appeared. A few royals, such as Elizabeth II and her father George VI of Great Britain, Alfonso XIII (grandfather of Juan Carlos, Spain's present King, who is one of this week's cover subjects), have made TIME'S cover three or more times. In preparing this week's cover story, TIME reporters found that even in modern democracies monarchs must still be approached with all due delicacy and deference. But the effort paid off. To report on Juan Carlos of Spain and Queen Sofia, Correspondent Gavin Scott and Photographer Eddie Adams were able to get close to the royal couple as they traveled the country. Later, at a cover portrait session Adams discovered that Juan Carlos, himself a dedicated amateur photographer, knew the Pulitzer prizewinner's work from camera magazines. In Brazil, Correspondent Barry Hillenbrand, invited to cocktails with Alexander Karageorgevitch, 30, heir to the nonexistent throne of Yugoslavia, was surprised when the prince talked about living costs and recommended a "wonderful hotel in Spain--for only $8 a night." In Stockholm, Stringer Mary Johnson headed for the palace by subway, fell downstairs smashing her knee. Still, she arrived in time to handle an interview and a painful curtsy to young Carl XVI Gustaf. Some rulers were unavailable. Since the Lockheed scandal, beleaguered Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands see no member of the press. Norway's sailor King Olav, 72, never gives formal interviews. TIME'S Dag Christensen, also a sailor, saw him recently on the water, where he failed to give Olav's red sloop Bingo right of way on the Oslofjord, and earned an icy glare from his monarch.

In New York, the story was written by Senior Writer Michael Demarest, who sifted through mounds of material with the help of Reporter-Researcher Rosemarie Tauris Zadikov. An American schooled in England, Demarest remembers glimpsing Elizabeth at the funeral of her grandfather King George V in 1936 and at the coronation of her father George VI. Recalls Demarest: "Those were the last great assemblages of empire. There were to be no more."

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