The Book of Ancient Bastards (31 page)

Giving Away the Kingdom
to His Boyfriends

( A.D. 1284–1327)

You baseborn whoreson! Now you want to give lands away—you who have never gained any? As the Lord lives, were it not for fear of breaking up the kingdom, you should never enjoy your inheritance!
—King Edward I of England to his son, Edward, Prince of Wales (later Edward II)

In the bit of conversation quoted above, the person being called a prostitute’s progeny (as much of an insult in the fourteenth century as it is today) was the king’s own progeny, his eldest son and later successor, Edward II.

When it came to both the character and fitness to rule of his son and heir, Edward Longshanks was not only colorful, he was accurate.

The elder Edward had come taken the throne with an act of signal violence and then employed violence as a catchall solution to any number of problems both foreign and domestic. The example he set for his son was fearsome, decisive, and warlike.

And his son Edward of Caernarvon was nothing like him.

Where Longshanks was grimly competent, plainspoken, and blunt, the younger Edward was flowery, handsome, well-groomed, and ineffectual. Where Longshanks valued no one’s counsel so much as his own, his son was easily influenced by his retinue of hangers-on.

Edward I had grown up in the shadow of a weak father who also was a bad king. In attempting to be a stronger father figure to his own son and heir, he wound up producing a successor with more in common with his incompetent grandfather (Henry III) than with his force-of-nature father.

Oh, and Edward II was gay.

Definitely a cross to bear in thirteenth-century England, Edward made the situation all the worse by not bothering to worry what his subjects might think of his publicly treating his closest friends more like lovers than as boon companions.

The genuine problem wasn’t the king’s predilection for other men. It was his predilection for other men on whom he spent lavishly, heaping titles and cash and lands on them as a sign of both his largesse and his favor. And for their part, pretty boys like Piers Gaveston and Hugh le Despenser eagerly soaked up what the king gave away.

It couldn’t last.

Within five years, Edward II had bankrupted the kingdom with his spending. His nobles restless, his queen completely fed up with him, something had to give. By A.D. 1326 , Edward’s time had run out. His wife, Isabella (daughter of the king of France), had gone to France ostensibly on a diplomatic mission, only to return at the head of a mercenary army. She challenged Edward for his throne, all in the name of their underage son.

A couple of quick battles later, and Edward was soundly defeated, captured, and thrown into prison. Within a month, he had been secretly executed in one of the most barbaric manners imaginable.

End of a Bastard

Because the killing of a king was seen as both a sin and an act of treason, Edward was murdered in a way that made it look as if he’d died of natural causes. His killers pushed a red-hot soldering iron into the king’s body through his anus. It left not a mark on him to show the agony in which he had died.

Screwing the Queen
Doesn’t Make You King

( A.D. 1287–1330)

The King of Folly.
—Sir Geoffrey Mortimer, son of Roger Mortimer, about his father

Roger Mortimer came of age during a violent time in a violent place (the Anglo-Welsh borderlands), serving a prince (Edward II) who seemed in many ways his opposite: effete, capricious, soft. Fostered into the royal household while still in his teens after the death of his father, Mortimer saw firsthand how Edward indulged handsome favorites such as Piers Gaveston (who was briefly Mortimer’s guardian).

When Edward appropriated some of the Mortimer family lands in order to make a gift of them to another of his favorites (Edward le Despenser), Mortimer rose in opposition to the king, lost in battle, and was thrown into the Tower of London for a time. Escaping by drugging his jailer, he fled the kingdom and went into exile in France.

It was while in exile in France that Mortimer became first acquainted with, and then attached to, Isabella, princess of France, and Edward’s queen. Ostensibly in France on a diplomatic mission, but really there because she had grown fed up with her husband, Isabella made common cause with the energetic, forceful Mortimer. In no time the two were lovers, planning to take the kingdom from her husband.

Invading England in A.D. 1326 at the head of an army of Flemish mercenaries, the two were joined by locals, including the people of London and the earl of Lancaster. After a couple of minor battles, the deposed King Edward fled to the west, wandering in Wales before eventually surrendering to the two in return for his life being spared.

It turned out he got a bad deal.

De facto ruler of England for three years ( A.D. 1327–1330), Mortimer had honors heaped upon him, swaggered around, pissing off the wrong people, and alienating the young king Edward III, for whom he was ostensibly regent. It couldn’t last.

In A.D. 1330 , Edward seized power. While his own mother could expect mercy at his hands, Mortimer received none. He was hanged at Tyburn Hill that same year for treason and exercising royal power without authority.

Gruesome Bastard

It is widely believed to have been Roger Mortimer’s idea to kill Edward II by shoving a red-hot poker up his ass, thereby leaving no mark on his body to indicate foul play, while also making sly reference to the deposed king’s “buggery” with his favorites.

The Nickname Says It All

( A.D. 1334–1369)

We must add likewise that this Don Pedro, king of Castile, who at present is driven out of his realm, is a man of great pride, very cruel, and full of bad dispositions. The kingdom of Castile has suffered many grievances at his hands: many valiant men have been beheaded and murdered, without justice or reason, so that these wicked actions, which he ordered or consented to, he owes the loss of his kingdom.
—Medieval chronicler Jean Froissart, Chronicles

A bigamous, vicious monster, Pedro of Castile was king from A.D. 1350 to 1369. He probably wouldn’t have lasted that long had he not been propped up late in his reign by one of the great military minds of his age, his son-in-law, John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster.

Neither much of a leader nor much of a soldier, the best that could be said of Pedro was that he wasn’t as anti-Semitic as the rest of the rulers of the Iberian Peninsula. In fact, his most consistent supporters during his years as king were the Jews of such large cities as Seville.

But Pedro was also capricious, destructive, and completely indifferent to human suffering. Even his generosity came at a price.

Pedro was very grateful to his son-in-law Edward the Black (prince of England) for working so hard to help him hold on to his crown. He showed his gratitude in many ways, including the bestowing of large gifts on his son-in-law. Among these was a huge jewel that eventually found its way into the crown of current English monarch Elizabeth II. He got the jewel from a guest in his palace the Alcazar—a guest he killed in order to steal it.

This wasn’t Pedro the Cruel’s last murder. Far from it. Once while walking the streets of Seville, he killed a man he didn’t even know simply because he didn’t like the way the man looked at him. When the time came for Pedro to pay for these murders (because hey, even the king isn’t above the law), he had an effigy of himself made in stone, then put it on trial before him, and then he (the king) passed sentence on himself (in effigy) and had himself (in effigy) beheaded, with the head (again, of the effigy) to be placed at the spot where the murder had taken place. It can be seen there to this day.

Fancying himself quite the womanizer, Pedro made molesting women something of a hobby. One woman who rejected him was burned alive on his orders for the transgression of saying no to a king. He even had his own wife murdered—by arrow shot. One woman burned her face with acid so that the rutting king wouldn’t find her so attractive.

Unlike other vicious bastards in this book, Pedro’s story doesn’t end with him dying of old age, unpunished for his many crimes. Instead, it ends with him being captured in battle by the forces of his rival, Henry of Trastamara. He was beheaded on the spot. Truly a fitting end for a deserving bastard!.

Bigamous Bastard

Pedro secretly married a noblewoman named Maria de Padilla in A.D. 1353. This became a problem when his family arranged for him to wed Blanche of Bourbon later that same year. When confronted with accusations that he had already married Padilla, Pedro did what any bastard would do: He lied. After three days, he abandoned his second wife and gave up all pretense of not being involved with Padilla. The couple eventually had four children together. As for the unfortunate Blanche, she was murdered by crossbow bolt (on Pedro’s command).