Why Mr Beaton and the director, Anthony Neilson, should have reached for nationalistic cracks and predictable jokes about greedy bankers and the perfidious English is a mystery.
State generals, but because of their greedy ambitions, he betrayed his own country, and promised to help them establish a kingdom of the Khitan aggressors.
Maybe it was only the beginning of something better in life, better than you could ever have thought possible before clamping your avid jaws down over the vital bait.
Popularly, one refers cynically to "human nature" in accepting the inevitability of such undesirable human behavior as greed, murder, cheating and lying.