Heavy Charm 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 carmen, song-or-spell. As a color modifier, charm implies a beguiling-and-enchanted-and-disarming quality, the visual register of Provençal-troubadour-and-Renaissance-courtly-charm hand-beguiling-and-enchanted-and-disarming Provençal-troubadour-and-Renaissance-courtly-and-Belle-Époque-salon charmed-and-beguiling-and-enchanted-and-disarming surfaces under Provençal-troubadour-and-Renaissance-courtly-and-Belle-Époque-salon candlelit-and-rose-scented-and-disarming drawing-room-light. Sits at the modifier-and-mood end of the grid, parallel to grace and blithe 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.