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If you are not fluent in 11th century English puns, the name of Aethelred the Unready sounds rather endearing. The Angle-Saxon English king might seem a vacillating, knee-knocking fumbler, the role model of Senator Harry Reid. In fact, Aethelred was an assertive, bold catastrophe. Whatever his royal ancestors had built and achieved over 150 years, Aethelred sabotaged and destroyed. Had he anticipated his great-great grandson, Alfred the Great would have had a vasectomy. Alfred had saved a ravaged England from the Vikings, and created the foundation of a prosperous kingdom; Aethelred did exactly the opposite.

Names do have meaning; no one thought of Aethelred for its lilting sound. In Olde Anglische, Aethelred means “well-counselled” , prudent or wise. So, as any medieval Englishman could tell you, “unready” means uncounselled or reckless. Adding the epithet of Unready to Athelred was an editorial pun. (It also demonstrates why English humor is best left to the Irish.)

Aethelred ascended the English throne in 978 at the age of ten, over the body of his half-brother. Aethelred’s mother had arranged that assassination; after all, he was only a stepson. (In posthumous compensation, the late king received a complimentary sainthood; the evil queen mother was also a generous benefactor to the Church, so presumably everyone benefited from the regicide.)

At the time, England was a prosperous country. The same could not be said of Denmark. Its King, Sweyn Forkbeard, had to pay tribute to the Holy Roman Emperor. Sweyn’s father, Harald Bluetooth, was unique among Viking raiders in that he actually lost battles. After some disastrous campaigns in Germany, Bluetooth could save his skin only by converting to Christianity and coughing up annual compensation to the Kaiser. Sweyn may have inherited better teeth but he was stuck with his father’s debts. So to pay the German tribute, Sweyn decided to extort tribute to England.

Beginning in 980 what would become an annual tradition, the Danish fleet would arrive in England, brushing aside the always inadequate defense, and rampaging until a satisfactory ransom was paid. Young Aethelred was no military prodigy; his attempts at battles were invariably defeats. He found it easier to amass tax collectors than an army. Gouging England to pay the Vikings’ tribute did not endear Aethelred to his subjects. So he took the precaution of hiring Danish bodyguards. (Of course, that required even more taxes.)

In 1002, however, Aethelred finally decided to free his kingdom from this Danish subjugation. On November 13th–St. Brice’s Day—he undertook this liberation by ordering the massacre of every Dane in England. The Vikings fleet had already returned home, so the Danes remaining in England were just merchants, artisans and tourists. At least Aethelred found Danes whom he could defeat. Hundreds were slaughtered. This certainly was Aethelred’s greatest victory, but was it really that decisive?

To put it in a modern context, imagine if the United States decided to solve our trade imbalance with China by ordering an attack on every P.F. Chang’s. Would the prospect of hundreds of dead waiters really force China to capitulate? Aethelred’s strategy actually did make an impression on Sweyn Forkbeard. One of the massacred Danes happened to be his sister. Sweyn now was determined to overthrow Aethelred.

It took 11 years but the next king of England was named Knut, a nice Danish name. Knut–alias Canute–was Sweyn’s son. As for Aethelred, he was spending his exile with in-laws in Normandy, a family connection that would assert itself in 1066. Any English resistance was left to his son, Edmund Ironside. Aethelred died of natural causes in 1016; his son managed to regain the English throne for a few months while Knut was busy in Denmark seizing that throne. Of course, upon Knut’s return, so did the English habit of losing. Edmund soon died; and very few think that it was from a natural cause. (One prurient theory postures that he was killed in a privy; apparently, his ironside did not extend all the way down.)

And for the happy ending, Canute proved an excellent king.

I marvel at the popularity of rap music with suburban youth. This generation is not the first to make a fashion of self-loathing. In the sixth century Byzantine youth adopted the clothes and hairstyles of the Huns. Of course, their admiration for barbarian chic did not extend to living in tents and eating horse meat.

I have been reading some of the rap artists of an earlier generation. What a pity that there were not Grammys in 1918. I would have nominated Siegfried “Sephardic Slim” Sassoon, Robert “Klassics Kewl” Graves and Wilfred “Bonz” Owen. They were gangstas from the hoods of Oxford and Cambridge who expressed a certain resentment about being annihilated. Mind you, I wouldn’t dare to compare a week on the Somme with the horrors of a lifetime in suburbia, but let’s consider the two rap genres.

Here’s Bonz Owen:

What passing bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns
Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.

Here’s Eminem:

Starin’ at my jeans, watchin’
my genitals bulgin’ (Ooh!)
That’s my motherf***in’
balls, you’d better let go of ’em.

Perhaps we could popularize Owen by translating him into contemporary verse.

Kaiser despiser
try to outrun the Hun machine gun.
Britannia rules is jive just for fools.
I ain’t your bitchin’ her
Lord Kitchener.
Not Eton you sh*t
Pimp Minister Asquith.
Verdun We’re done.
Ergo Somme, heirs left none.

Wilfred Owen stopped rapping on November 4, 1918, one week before the Armistice.

No one in 9th century France was literate enough to write a birth announcement, but if you were in proximity to a town crier you would have heard of the birth of a heir to the throne. History would remember the birthday boy as Charles the Simple. Of course, a town crier–the medieval version of a press secretary–would have insisted that the epithet of “Simple” referred to Charles’ straight-forward manner.

However, then that town crier would have to explain the rest of the family’s nicknames. Charles’ father was “Louis the Stammerer”, his uncle “Charles the Fat, and his grandfather “Charles the Bald.” In fact, the Carolingian dynasty was plagued by its epithets. The royal line began with Pepin the Short and ended with Louis the Sluggard. Charlemagne (Charles the Great) was the happy exception among the miserable monikers. Even Charlemagne’s son had the nickname curse. He was known as Louis the Pious, which suggests that he was better at prayers than statecraft. (And his prayers couldn’t have been very efficient because they did not protect France from either his feuding sons or the Vikings.)

At least, Charles the Simple solved the Viking attacks. He simply surrendered. In 911 he ceded northwest France to the Norsemen. The region is still known as Normandy.

Henri II deserves to be more popular. The French king (1519-1559) may have been stupid (he never demonstrated any evidence to the contrary) and he certainly was bigoted (ask any Huguenot who survived him), but his form of adultery should earn him considerable admiration. Henri left his wife for an older woman!

And I do mean older. His mistress Diane de Poitiers was 20 years his senior. Freud might have had something to say about that, although it would have only incited Henri to start persecuting Jews. Diane (1499-1566) was a woman of great charm and beauty; that could not be said about Henri’s wife: Catherine de Medici. (Catherine was quite intelligent, but Henri would have resented that.) Unfortunately, in his enthusiasm for Diane, Henri was continually affronting his wife. Guess who received court precedence or the pick of the best chateaux? Henri must have thought that his wife was good-natured. Did I mention that he was stupid?

In 1559, Henri apparently confused jousting with soccer, and attempted to catch a lance with his eye. It was not good for his health, or for Diane’s career. The new king of France was 15 years old and not in the market for a 60 year-old mistress. Besides, the real ruler of France–the Queen Mother–had a definite grudge against Diane. The unemployed courtesan did survive, but it was not a pleasant retirement. From a deluxe suite at the Louvre and a Loire estate at Chenonceau, Diane now found herself in the equivalent of a studio apartment frigidly far from anywhere of interest. She did seem to die of natural causes. Either Catherine did not live up to her murderous reputation or for once really got away with a crime.

Finally, by the standards of the 16th century, Diane had a very eccentric habit. She bathed daily. Of course, we now surmise that was the basis of her allure.

Octavian (or at least his tougher friend Agrippa) won the naval battle of Actium, triumphing over a drunk and a trollop. (Tony and Cleo would have had a better chance in a barroom brawl.)

Mr. and Mrs. Antony had prepared for this showdown with that annoying Caesar boy by constructing a fleet of massive battleships. Just the name quinquereme suggests that they were twice the size of your standard trireme. The bows were stoutly built to withstand ramming and further protected with brass plating; you’d think that these naval fortresses might still be afloat. Of course, fortresses are not terribly mobile, and neither was the Antonys’ fleet. The ships were too massive, and the fleet’s oarsmen could barely move the deadnoughts. Yes, the quinqueremes would have crushed anything directly in their path, but Octavian’s fleet was not that obliging. The young Caesar’s ships kept moving and shooting, riddling the paralyzed behemoths until they literally were dead in the water.

Not feeling particularly suicidal that day, Cleopatra fled the battle and sailed home to Egypt. Seeing her flight, Antony abandoned his flagship and hitched a ride on Cleopatra’s galley. The rest of his fleet did not have that option, and either incinerated or surrendered. Watching the debacle from the Greek shore was Antony’s army. Without the support of the navy or the presence of their commander, Antony’s 19 legions soon surrendered to Octavian.

Marc Antony once had possessed such respect and charisma that, after losing a battle, he persuaded the victorious army to defect to him. Now, for the decadent sot, the opposite was true. He commanded neither respect nor even a viable army. His forces in Egypt either deserted or defected. Puny, reptilian Octavian had won. In any case, you have seen the movie. The drunk with the beautiful speaking voice stabbed himself, and the beauty with the annoying speaking voice snaked herself.

And that brings us to the first episode of “I, Claudius.”

Russians don’t need an excuse to drink: their government, their climate and Dostoyevsky more than justify self-pity. However, they don’t have much of a chance to celebrate: just chess tournaments and sacking Berlin. But today the Russians can drink both for commiseration and celebration: it is the birthday of Ivan the Terrible.

For a murderous tyrant, Ivan the Terrible (the IV on his business cards) is far luckier than Richard III. First, Ivan was actually guilty, so he couldn’t be slandered. And his crimes apparently had an upside. He evidently was killing the right people. Even his critics acknowledged that he made a very effective tsar, expanding the Moscovite principality into the Russian state.

The Soviets made him into a hero, dismissing his victims as reactionaries and traitors. When Stalin commissioned Sergei Eisenstein to make a biographic series on the Tsar, it was intended to be a paean (as well as a thinly veiled tribute to the reigning Soviet tsar.) Eisenstein completed two of the three projected films. In the first film the young heroic Tsar must defend himself against the treacherous nobility. In the sequel, the now middle-aged Tsar is showing maniacal streaks in his wars and purges. If Stalin could see himself in the first film’s Ivan, everyone could see Stalin in the second film’s Ivan. There never was a third film. Eisenstein was denounced and apparently died of a heart attack soon after.

A third film would have shown Ivan killing his oldest son and heir. Like Ben Cartwright, Ivan had three sons. (Considering that the sire had eight wives, he was not an impressive sire.) In a fit of rage (Ivan’s normal temper), the Tsar smashed the skull of his oldest son Ivan(played by Pernell Roberts). After Prince Ivan’s death, the succession passed to Prince Feodor, who was retarded. (Dan Blocker obviously)

Now, however, our story has the Russian equivalent to Richard III: Boris Godunov. (Yes, he is the inspiration for Boris Badenov.) He was the son-in-law of Ivan the Terrible and chosen to be regent after Ivan’s death. Upon his father’s death, Feodor became Tsar but the country was governed by his brother-in-law Boris, who proved very competent and certainly enjoyed ruling. The third and youngest son of Ivan IV was Dmitri. (Michael Landon) He would have been the successor of his brother, but the youngster apparently died of an accident while playing with a knife. With Dmitri conveniently out of the way, Boris then became the heir apparent to Feodor. Upon Feodor’s death (a natural one), Boris ascended the throne.

However, Boris’ reign (1598-1605) was turbulent. His rule was undermined by plots and rebellions. An imposter claimed to be Prince Dmitri and Boris’ enemies rallied around the fraud. The false Dmitri–as he is known in history–received substantial financial and military support from Poland and the Jesuits. Boris died while the rebellion was gathering strength. His son and successor Feodor II was murdered soon after, and the false Dmitri took the throne–although he couldn’t hold it for long.

After eight years of chaos and civil war, some more in-laws of Ivan the Terrible (his serial marriages creates a lot of in-laws) seized and actually held the throne. Their name was Romanov. (And they would give the Russians even more reason to drink.)

Yevgeny

In A.D. 79 Mt. Vesuvius erupted. The last press release from the Pompeii Chamber of Commerce is considered a masterpiece of public relations. Among its now classic evasions and euphemisms are “property values have never been a better bargain” and “Mt. Vesuvius uses all-natural ingredients.”

In 410 the Visigoths took Rome. Roman military resistance was theoretical and lasted a day. However the civilian population showed fanatical resistance by consistently overcharging the Visigoths at restaurants and for cab rides. The Visigoths had to sack the city just to break even.

In 1572 the Huguenots discovered that the Church does permit one type of birth control. A press spokesman for Catherine de Medici justified the St. Bartholomew’s Massacre, explaining that Calvinism was a definite threat to the French fashion industry. “The idea of wearing black in Spring really is much worse than genocide.”

Today is the anniversary of the battle of Bosworth Field. In tribute to the fallen and vilified Richard III, please hunch your shoulder.

History indeed is written by the victors, and the usurping Tudors had some extraordinary flacks in their service. The first “official” biography of Richard III was written in 1518 by an ambitious lawyer named Thomas More. More’s history could have been a Wes Craven screenplay; Richard is depicted as a physical monster. In this portrait, a hunchback may be Richard’s most attractive feature. More grafts upon Richard a withered arm and a limp; furthermore, More’s caricature was born with a full–and threatening– set of teeth. The real Richard had none of these disabilities and distortions, and actually was more attractive than Henry VII–who looked like a constipated actuary.

In 1592 a young playwright named Shakespeare was eager to ingratiate himself to the public and rich patrons, so he wrote a gushingly Pro-Tudor dramatization of the War of the Roses. The four plays, the Henry VI trilogy and Richard III, are a slapdash concoction of convoluted history and overripe melodrama. In “Henry VI, part III”, Richard is depicted as gleefully waging war when, in fact, he was only three years old.  However inaccurate the plays, the audience loved them.  (Indeed, Richard III is still popular–and today is considered much funnier than Shakespeare’s intentional comedies.) Shakespeare would have been gratified–if amazed–to know that his melodrama has become the common perception of King Richard.

Of course, Richard has his defenders. A number of historians and novelists have attempted heroic exonerations of the vilified king; but it remains an uneven match: their facts against St. More’s reputation and Shakespeare’s talent.   You may number me among the vicarious Yorkists. Let’s deal with the most notorious charge against Richard: the killing of the Little Princes.

I think that Richard is innocent of killing his nephews. They certainly were an inconvenience to him (don’t we all have nephews like that!) but he could have found better ways to remove them than an unexplained disappearance. He could even have blamed the Lancastrian/Tudor partisans for the princes’ deaths. In fact, he should have if they really were dead. However, their disposal was not urgent or even necessary. Parliament had already declared them illegitimate; and there was little political support for them. Their mother’s family, the Woodvilles, was hated by the old nobility.

However Henry VII would have had to kill them. His claims to royal lineage were tenuous and illegitimate. (The Lancastrians had proved obligingly sterile, allowing Tudor–a half-second cousin, once removed, from Wales–to represent the dynasty.) Any Yorkist prince or princess was a threat to him. Other than the Yorkist princess he coerced into marriage, Henry had his in-laws executed, imprisoned or cloistered.

Perhaps Richard had already done him the favor of killing the Princes. But Henry’s behavior was suspicious and incriminating.

It is interesting to note that when Henry VII ascended to the throne, he had Parliament issue a list of Richard’s crimes. The murder of the Princes was not cited, a rather surprising omission. Since Henry married their sister, you think that he have noticed their absence when they didn’t respond to the wedding invitations.

Didn’t anyone notice that the Princes were missing? Perhaps the Queen Mother did. For some reason, she was suddenly imprisoned in 1487 for being a supporter of Richard III. Would she really have supported the man who had murdered her sons? That may have been Henry’s reason for imprisoning her.

In fact, it wasn’t until 1495 and the attempted coup by Perkins Warbeck, a charlatan claiming to be one of the Little Princes, that Henry finally announced the deaths of his brothers-in-law. He also ordered the execution of Richard’s henchman Sir James Tyrrell. The one incongruity with that revelation was that Tyrrell had been a favorite of Henry’s and had enjoyed promotions under the Tudors.

Furthermore, although Henry seemed to know the details of the murders, he didn’t make any effort to exhume the bodies and give them a Christian burial. That gesture of decency didn’t occur until the reign of Charles II.

I am inclined to one theory that would explain Richard’s silence and Henry’s reticence. The crime might have been committed by the Duke of Buckingham, a proclaimed Yorkist partisan and a covert Tudor conspirator. The Duke was in charge of the Tower and had the opportunity to kill the princes. He could have committed the crime and then assured both sides he had done it as a favor to them. He may have been expecting rewards from both sides. However, Richard seemed anything but grateful. The King rebuffed his old ally, driving the Duke to rebellion. The Duke lost the battle and his head. However Richard may have felt too incriminated by his past association to announce the murder of the Princes.

Of course, this is just speculation.

Ironically, while I defend Richard’s innocence, I must admit that Henry VII was one of England’s greatest kings and the founder of a brilliant dynasty.

May 27, 1541:  Margaret Pole Almost Revives the Olympics

Margaret Pole, Countess of Salisbury.   Born in 1473, the poor woman had a miserable sense of timing from the start.  By the time she was four, she had been declared a traitor by her uncle King Edward IV–who executed his own brother and stripped the ensuing orphans of their property.  Her nicer uncle was Richard III, who restored young Margaret’s and her brother’s legitimacy and estates.   Margaret’s luck lasted two years–the same length as Richard’s reign.  Being a Yorkist heiress and a legitimate Plantagenet did not improve her prospects with the new king  Henry VII–who was not a legitimate anything.  Her brother Edward would spend the rest of his short life in prison; although mentally-retarded, that was a minor handicap for royalty and his pedigree made him a threat to the Tudors.  Edward was executed in 1499 at the age of 24.  Margaret was kept under a more comfortable confinement until Henry decided her fate–specifically which of his lackeys deserved a rich, young wife.

The lucky–and unctuously loyal–groom was Henry’s cousin Richard Pole.  Pole married Margaret in 1494, and apparently he did not mind at all.  There were five children within ten years, and I would like to tell you that the Poole family lived happily ever after.  Well, Richard did; he had the prudence to die in 1505.  But Margaret and her children did not.  They  lived on into the reign of Henry VIII.

He was Margaret’s first cousin, once removed, and he took the removal quite seriously.  The Poles were staunch Catholics, and they would be providing executioners with steady work for the next two generations.  Margaret was never implicated in any plots, but her decapitation in 1541 was Henry’s way of congratulating her son Reginald for becoming a Cardinal.

In Tudor England beheading was considered a privilege. It was performed before a select audience in a upper class setting. In return, the victims were expected to behave with stoic dignity. Most did.  The Countess of Salisbury definitely was the exception. The frail 67 year-old woman did not want to be executed and would not cooperate. She had to be dragged to the scaffold and would not passively place her head on the block. The executioner required assistance to hold down the struggling lady. She writhed and wiggled so effectively that the axeman missed her neck, slashing instead her shoulder. In the confusion, the Countess tried to make a run for it. She only managed to dodge around the scaffold and she was just one wounded old lady against an armed killer and his staff. The outcome was inevitable but she gave an unprecedented resistance.

The Church beatified her in 1886.  Given her surprising dexterity, you’d think that a Catholic school would have named a gym for her.

Julius Valerius Majorian was the last capable Roman emperor, at a time when it no longer mattered. By 457, Rome had already been sacked twice, and the Vandals had left nothing to steal (unless you work for the Getty Museum–and don’t mind some scuffed statues). The western half of the Empire was disintegrating; the patrician classes of Iberia and Gallia were now paying homage to whichever Germanic chieftain was in the neighborhood. If the Empire was not completely defenseless, it was hostage to the dubious loyalty of its army. The Roman army was no longer Roman; the Empire was reduced to hiring barbarians to fight barbarians. Even the generals were now barbarians, and one of them was the de facto ruler of the Remnant Empire. His name was Ricimer. It never occurred to him to seize the throne–he was a barbarian with etiquette–but he was content to select malleable Patricians to reign for him. From 456 to 472, Ricimer picked, deposed and replaced five Emperors.

In most cases, Ricimer had a discerning judgment in hapless mediocrities. Ironically, his first puppet proved to be anything but. Majorian was a conscientious administrator and an excellent general in his own right. Ricimer might have forgiven or ignored Majorian’s domestic reforms and but not an independent foreign policy or military initiatives. It was one thing for Majorian to defeat the Visigoths; Ricimer did not like them. However, Majorian now threatened the Vandals, and they had a good working relationship with Ricimer. Majorian’s expedition against the Vandals was sabotaged; for some reason, the Roman fleet was left unguarded and the Vandals somehow had been informed of that. Then, someone stirred up the troops to mutiny; and Majorian four-year reign ended brutally on this day in 461.

Majorian at least earned the highest regard of Edward Gibbon. The great curmudgeon generally disapproved of everyone, but he respected Majorian: “the welcome discovery of a great and heroic character, such as sometimes arise, in a degenerate age, to vindicate the honour of the human species.”

Ricimer died of natural causes in 472. None of Ricimer’s puppet emperors did.