[For the entire collection see Zbl 0742.00065; for part I of this paper see Braids AMS-IMS-SIAM Jt. Summer Res. Conf., Santa Cruz/Calif. 1986, Contemp. Math. 78, 425-555 (1988; Zbl 0674.14019)].
Zariski was the first who showed the use of the arrangements of lines of the complex projective plane in his study of plane nodal curves (by degenerating such a curve to a union of lines in general position). Very little is known about the geometry of cuspidal curves. These curves are also important because the cusp singularities occur as singularities of proper stable morphisms onto the projective plane. The authors aim to pursue a program for studying the cuspidal curves by degenerating them to arrangements of lines and conics (where the tangency points become source of cusps in the regeneration process). The methods used is the braid group technique. Technically, the paper is a direct continuation of the author’s earlier paper [part I, loc. cit.].