It seems apt to his preoccupations that – as King Xavier I – Marías laid a disputed claim to be King of Redonda, the semi-fictional monarch of an uninhabited Caribbean micro-nation. The supposed monarchy of Redonda goes back to a (probably hoax) claim by the Edwardian fantasy writer MP Shiel and his disciple John Gawsworth, who inherited the crown and whom Marías described approvingly as “poet/drunkard/beggar”. During his “reign”, the spurious aristocratic titles Marías doled out were a way, perhaps, of situating himself in a canon: John Ashbery, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, WG Sebald, AS Byatt, Pierre Bourdieu, Pedro Almodóvar and Jonathan Coe were among those given imaginary duchies.
