In Welsh mythology, Arawn was the king of the otherworld realm of Annwn, appearing prominently in the first branch, alluded to in the fourth. In tradition, the role of king of Annwn was attributed to the Welsh psychopomp, Gwyn ap Nudd - meaning "white" a possible kenning for the god's true name. However, Arawn's memory is retained in a traditional saying found in an old Cardigan folktale: Hir yw'r dydd a hir yw'r nos, a hir yw aros Arawn "Long is the day and long is the night, long is the waiting of Arawn"The name Arawn is analogous to the continental theonym Arubianus. In the First Branch of the Mabinogi, Pwyll mistakenly stumbles into the realm of Annwn and finds white hounds with red ears feeding on a stag. Pwyll chases the hounds off, only to learn that the hounds belonged to ruler of Annwn. To pay for the misdeed, Arawn asks Pwyll to trade places with him for a year and a day and defeat Hafgan, Arawn's rival, at the end of this time, something Arawn has attempted but has been unable to do.

Arawn, takes Pwyll's place as lord of Dyfed. Arawn and Pwyll become good friends because when Pwyll wore Arawn's shape, he slept chastely with Arawn's wife. A friendship between the two realms is retained long after Pwyll's death; these pigs are stolen by Venedotian magician and trickster, Gwydion fab Don. Gwydion poses as a bard, asks to be rewarded for his poems and music with the pigs Pryderi owned. According to Pryderi, he can not give the pigs to anyone. Gwydion tricks Pryderi into trading him the pigs, which leads to Pryderi's invasion of Gwynedd. In the ensuing war, Gwydion kills Pryderi in single combat. While Arawn is noticeably missing from the Second through Fourth branches of the Mabinogi, some scholars claim this is due to the missing portions of the original text and that Arawn and the events of the First Branch of the Mabinogi directly lead to the birth of Pwyll's son Pryderi; the reasoning behind the birth of Pryderi having been a result of Pwyll and Arawn's meeting being missing from the original text is because while a quarter of the Mabinogi is spent talking about the mystical Otherworld of Annwn, but it is not mentioned in the other branches of the Mabinogi.

Other scholars disagree with this idea, as many of these newer translations create more problems within the story and do not ground themselves in the Llyfr Gwyn, from which the Mabinogi was translated. While Arawn is integral to the First Branch of the Mabinogi, his character seems to be more of a reinforcer of the lore behind Pwyll than a character that directly impacts the story of the Mabinogi Branches; the mysticism, involved within the entirety of the Mabinogi is first shown when Arawn and Pwyll switch bodies for a year. In Welsh folklore, the Cŵn Annwn or "Hounds of Annwn" ride through the skies in autumn and early spring; the baying of the hounds was identified with the crying of wild geese as they migrate and the quarry of the hounds as wandering spirits, being chased to Annwn. However, Arawn himself is not referred to in these traditions; the myth was Christianised to describe the "capturing of human souls and the chasing of damned souls to Annwn", Annwn was equated with the "Hell" of Christian tradition.

Some writers, notably Robert Graves, have written of an incident in which Amaethon steals a dog, lapwing and a white roebuck from Arawn, leading to the Cad Goddeu, which Arawn lost to Amaethon and his brother, Gwydion. The standard text of'Cad Goddeu' in the Book of Taliesin makes no mention of this, but the Welsh Triads records the Battle of Goddeu as one of the "Three Futile Battles of the Island of Britain...it was brought about by the cause of the bitch, together with the roebuck and the plover", while Lady Charlotte Guest notes in her Mabinogion an account in the Myvyrian Archaeology that the battle "was on account of a white roebuck and a whelp. And therefore Amathaon ab Don, Arawn, King of Annwn, fought, and there was a man in that battle. And Gwydion ab Don guessed the name of the man". In the Arthurian story Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the interplay of Gawain, his host Bertilak, Bertilak's wife are similar to the events of Pwyll and Arawn's encounter. In this case, Arawn seems to have been used as a basis for Bertilak/The Green Knight, while Gawain was similar to Pwyll.

The parallel between the Green Knight and Arawn extends to the treatment of the "newcomer." In both stories the Knight/Arawn's wife tries to sleep with the newcomer, but both remain loyal to the Knight/Arawn. In both stories as a result of their faithfulness, the newcomer is rewarded with the favor of the Knight/Arawn; the character of Arawn Death-Lord in the series The Chronicles of Prydain by Lloyd Alexander is based on King Arawn from the Mabinogi. However, many of the characters traits are altered within these books, as Arawn is depicted as an evil ruler; the stories still retain the idea that he is king of the Otherworld, that he is in a struggle to take over the land from another king. In this story Arawn is defeated by his foes instead of taking over his kingdom like in the Mabinogi. According to Koch, the name "Arawn" may be derived from the Biblical name Aaron, the name of Moses's brother, so could be of Hebrew origin and meaning "ex

Le Matin Bleu was a Swiss French-language free daily newspaper, published by Edipresse in Lausanne between 2005 and 2009. A tabloid-format newspaper, Le Matin Bleu was first published on 31 October 2005, had a circulation of about 100,000, it was launched in anticipation of 20 minutes, the French-language edition of 20 Minuten, starting 8 March 2006, both of which are free daily newspapers. The newspaper was distributed in the most-populated areas of Romandy. While it shared its name with the daily newspaper Le Matin published by Edipresse, it was edited independently. On 24 September 2009, the newspaper ceased publication because of the merger of Edipresse and Tamedia, publishing 20 minutes. List of free daily newspapers List of newspapers in Switzerland lematinbleu.ch, the newspaper's official website

Jorge Pérez y Guillermo was the husband of Princess Christina of the Netherlands between 1975 and the couple's divorce, which took place towards the end of 1996. He was accordingly brother-in-law to Queen Beatrix between 1980 and 1996. Since 1996 he has succeeded in avoiding gratuitous publicity. Jorge Guillermo was born in Havana where he attended school till 1960. Federico Gilberto Pérez y Castillo, his father, was a successful physician with excellent connections to the political establishment. Dr. Edenia Mercedes Guillermo y Marrero, his mother, held a series of senior positions in education administration, by 1960 combining her duties as director of education of the Province of Havana with a lectureship. Jorge Guillermo has an older brother, named after their father, Gilberto Perez, who became an American Professor of Film Studies; the decision that the family should leave the country was evidently taken, in the first instance, by Edenia Guillermo. In 1960, following the Cuban Revolution, the Pérez y Guillermo family relocated from Cuba to the United States.

Like thousands of other political refugees from Cuba, they settled in Miami, where Jorge Guillermo attended high school. Despite coming from a intellectualised family, there are indications that Jorge Guillermo did not share his elder brother's appetite for scholarship. There was evidently no doubt that he would complete a course of university-level education. In 1963 he entered Cornell College in Iowa, his one-year student visa expired after a year, but he and his brother were reclassified as refugees due to the political situation in Cuba. He switched to Monmouth College in Illinois, emerging with an Art History degree in 1968; the transfer had been arranged by his mother, who worked at Monmouth College, between 1964 and 1975, as a professor of Spanish. Between 1965 and 1968 mother and son shared an apartment in the little town. Jorge Guillermo's father died in 1967. In around 1973 Guillermo moved to New York where he became involved in the work of the charismatic poet-educator Frank "Ned" O'Gorman, a friend whom he had known since 1971.

Since 1966 Gorman had been building up the "storefront school" a day-care and education center for the disadvantaged young children of working mothers in the city's Harlem quarter. While O'Gorman ran the center, the focus of Guillermo's contribution was reported to be on fund raising. At one point Guillermo and O'Gorman became surrogate parents for one of the children attending the centre after his grandmother failed to retrieve the boy at the end of the day, it was not clear whether the two men were unable to trace the boy's parents, or the parents refused to take him back. Either way, young Ricky, two-and-a-half, ended up moving in, becoming a member of the friends' bachelor household. There was never any formal adoption, but Guillermo and O'Gorman shared parenting duties, which included toilet-training. Details of Ricky's condition never became clear: he was ill. O'Gorman himself recalled without elaboration that "it took him six years to die". Jorge Guillermo and Ned O'Gorman were drawn together by the fact.

O'Gorman, in particular, was an incorrigible socialite and networker. In 1968 he took a trip to the Netherlands. A fellow guest was Princess Christina, the youngest and most rebellious of the queen's four daughters. Christina was at the time studying for a teaching diploma while attending lectures and engaging as a semi-detached member of the student community at the University of Groningen. A couple of months the princess broke off her studies in Groningen and moved to Canada, which she had, she pointed out visited several times on vacation, she was accompanied, it was reported, by her two private secretaries, the Misses Vlieger and Berghout. Towards the end of 1968 Christina embarked on the study of voice teaching at the "École de musique Vincent-d'Indy in Montreal". Three years she moved on again, in order to complete her lengthy career as a music student at the Music Conservatorium of McGill University nearby, she in 1973/74, moved on to New York, taking a post at a Montessori school as one of that city's most educated teachers of music.

She gave private singing lessons and worked as a volunteer music teacher at Ned O'Gorman's "Storefront school" in Harlem. It is not clear if she had remained in touch with O'Gorman since their meeting at Frank Houben's wedding back in 1968, or whether the two re-established contact only after she had become, like him, a New Yorker. Either way, O'Gorman was still, at this point, living with Jorge Guillermo, whom he described as a "trusted colleague at the Storefront school for nearly three years". Sources differ over how Jorge Princess Christina first met. One states that their first encounter took place when they both attended the same performance at the Metropolitan Opera. Elsewhere it is asserted that Guillermo was introduced to Christina van Oranje as early as 1972 at a dinner party arranged by a mutual friend, though at this stage he was unaware of her royal family connections. Given their close involvement in Ned O'Gorman's "Storefront school", shared friendship with O'Gorman himself, it seems that directly or indirectly, the couple met through Ned O'Gorman.

They began dating going out together to the opera: Guillermo was writing a book on opera at the time. Romance developed, their engagement was announced, formally, by the Dutch national press agency on 14 February 1975, though among friends the princess contin