Heavy Greek Royal

Old English hefig, weighty — cognate with heave. Used as a color modifier since at least the seventeenth century to indicate weight in saturation as much as value: heavy with pigment, heavy-bodied. In the engine's adjective grid, heavy sits alongside deep and plush in the dark-and-saturated quadrant. Closer to a fabric description than a pure value word.

Latin Graecus, of-Greece. As a color modifier, greek implies a classical-and-marble-and-blue-sea quality, the visual register of Athens-and-Aegean classical-Hellenic temple-and-pottery hand-built marble-and-sea-blue surfaces under Greek-Aegean classical-temple Mediterranean light. Sits at the modifier-and-cultural end of the grid, parallel to roman and hellenic in usage.

The blue of European royal court dress and regalia from the late seventeenth century forward — the color of British peers' robes, French royal sashes, the lining of the crown-jewel cases. The color refers to a saturated, slightly violet-shifted blue with the matte finish of velvet or melton wool dyed to maximum intensity: deeper than cornflower, warmer than ultramarine, with the heraldic weight of a color reserved for monarchs and the official Crown.