The Book of Ancient Bastards (26 page)

Red-Headed Bachelor Bastard

(CA. A.D. 1056–1100)

Through the counsels of evil men, who were always grateful to him, and through his own greed, he was always tormenting this nation with an army and with unjust taxes. . . . He was hateful to almost all his people, and odious to God, as his end made clear.
—The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Nicknamed “Rufus” (Latin for “red”) either because of his red hair or ruddy complexion, William was the third son and chosen successor (as king of England) of William the Conqueror. A confirmed bachelor in an age where royal families married their kids off early and often, a religious skeptic in an age of faith, and quite possibly a gay man in that most closeted of times, the Middle Ages, William Rufus was also a rapacious and innovative taxer of his subjects, especially the clergy.

Indifferent to the church throughout much of his reign, William Rufus seems to have looked on it largely as many in his family did—as a source of revenue. When a bishop, abbot, or other high church official died, the king was supposed to select a successor. But because the monarch was also expected to maintain and care for the properties of the office in question while seeking out a worthy successor, he was also allowed to collect the rents, taxes, and other revenues due the abbey/monastery/other sort of church property in question in the interim.

William Rufus exploited this loophole as a source of enormous revenue by simply not bothering to fill vacant church offices within his kingdom.

Like his father before him, William needed a lot of money because he was constantly fighting in France, and war was expensive. He dreamed of reuniting his father’s realms of England and Normandy by deposing his brother Robert. He got his wish in A.D. 1096, when Robert pawned his duchy to William in return for a large amount of cash to fund his going on the First Crusade.

Whether because of the way he squeezed them for revenues or because of his debauched lifestyle, the contemporary church chroniclers weren’t very kind to William Rufus, alleging darkly that the king’s court was rampant with all-night drinking parties, frequented by loose women (and men), a haven of lawless, godless knights committed only to a king who promised them easy living, lots of hunting, and enough fighting to enrich themselves at the expense of conquered foes. In other words, pretty much like most other royal courts at the time!

In A.D. 1100, Rufus was out hunting with a bunch of his knights, including his youngest brother, Henry (who’d gotten nothing but money from daddy). In what was later termed a hunting accident, one of his companions killed him with an arrow shot to the chest.

Seizing the initiative, Henry made his way to Winchester, took possession of the royal treasury, had himself crowned king, and buried William at the abbey there.

Right place, right time, huh?

Capable Bastard

William the Conqueror had quarreled with his incompetent older son Robert for years before he died. Thus it was little surprise to anyone when he left his third son William the throne of England, and forced Robert to settle for the Duchy of Normandy. The Conqueror’s last surviving son Henry didn’t get any land, just a large cash settlement with which he was directed in the dead king’s will to go out and buy some property!

The Man Who Hijacked the Fourth Crusade

( A.D. 1107?–1205)

We cannot be sure of his age when, on 1 January 1193, he was raised to the ducal throne. . . . But even if he was in only his middle seventies, he would still have been, at the time of the Fourth Crusade, an octogenarian of several years’ standing. A dedicated, almost fanatical patriot, he had spent much of his life in the service of Venice.
—John Julius Norwich, Byzantium: The Apogee

In A.D. 1202, tens of thousands of French and German crusaders camped outside the powerful maritime city-state of Venice. Out of money and with no means to proceed further on their own, they turned to the Venetians and their leader (or “doge”) for help.

The doge was a formidable character named Enrico Dandolo. A diplomat of many years’ service to the Serene Republic (as the Venetians called it), Dandolo was of advanced age, blind as justice, and cunning beyond expression.

By the time he had died of old age three years later, the octogenarian had manipulated the crusaders into serving as mercenaries for the Venetians in return for passage to their destination, and rerouting their crusade away from the Holy Land to the Christian city of Constantinople.

He even succeeded in gulling the crusade’s leaders into thinking it was their own idea!

Why did Dandolo, in this age of faith, wish to attack co-religionists in Constantinople? The answer is simple and illustrative. In Dandolo’s view, it seems, the interests of commerce and power politics trumped those of faith. Turns out the Venetians had just signed a lucrative trading treaty with the rulers of Egypt, and had no interest in destabilizing the current regime there. With Constantinople in crusader hands, the Venetians, with their large and powerful fleet, would be unrivaled for control (both political and commercial) of the entire eastern Mediterranean.

Dandolo’s scheme turned out better than even he could have foreseen. In A.D. 1204, the knights of the Fourth Crusade did something no one had been able to do in the nine hundred years of Constantinople’s existence: they breached the city’s huge walls and captured it.

You can guess what happened next: thousands killed, looting on a massive scale, the crusaders squabbling among themselves over their captured booty. And Venice ascendant in the eastern Mediterranean for centuries to come.

And Dandolo? He never returned to Venice. When he died in the city he had helped conquer in A.D. 1205, his countrymen buried him in a corner of the church of Hagia Sophia—a final honor for him, and a final insult to the residents of the city of Constantine.

Manipulative Bastard

Blind as he was, Dandolo still knew how to put on a show and make the most of an impressive stage. Having convinced the leaders of the Fourth Crusade that it was the decision of the Venetian citizens as to whether to help them, he packed the gorgeous and imposing church of St. Mark with thousands of Venetian citizens for Sunday Mass. As historian Steven Runciman later reported it: “Then the Doge and people raised their hands and cried aloud with a single voice, ‘We grant it! We grant it!’ And so great was the noise and tumult that the very earth seemed to tremble underfoot.”

Putting the “Devil” Into “Devil’s Brood”

( A.D. 1133–1189)

May God let me live until I can have my revenge on you.
—Henry II’s last words to his son and successor Richard I

Imagine a medieval French noble actually wealthier and more powerful than his feudal overlord, the king of France. Now imagine that this noble, already owning more than half of France as his birthright, also won the crown of England, then in turn stole the French king’s queen.

Further imagine that this monarch fathered a nest of vipers so disloyal to him, and so contentious with one another, that they were eventually dubbed “the Devil’s Brood.” Lastly, picture a man so committed to marital gamesmanship that he took a much younger French princess intended as a bride for one of his sons as his own mistress.

Imagine no further. This guy actually lived.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Henry II: king of England; duke of Aquitaine, Gascony, and Normandy; count of Anjou, Maine, and Nantes; lord of Ireland; husband of the celebrated Eleanor of Aquitaine; and father of both Richard the Lion-Hearted and John I of England.

In A.D. 1173, all four of Henry’s sons, egged on by his wife Eleanor of Aquitaine, rebelled against him, allying themselves with the French king Louis VII, who sought the return of his daughter (now Henry’s mistress), Princess Alys of France, engaged but never married to Henry’s son Richard.

Henry masterfully played his sons off against each other, forcing the most capable of them, then-sixteen-year-old Richard, to do obeisance in order to keep his power base in southern France. Outwitted and outmaneuvered (not for the first or the last time) by his vassal, Louis gave up the fight and sued for peace. For her deeds, Henry kept Eleanor prisoner for the next sixteen years until his own death in A.D. 1189.

Predeceased by two of his sons (Henry the Young King and Duke Geoffrey II of Brittany), betrayed in the end by the one he most favored (John, who has his own chapter in this book), toward the end of his reign, Henry also faced the bitter reality of being beaten at his own conniving game by Louis VII’s wily son Philip Augustus. At last outmanned and outmaneuvered, Henry swallowed his pride and acknowledged his third son, Eleanor’s favorite, Richard, as his heir and successor. It was at this meeting that the old king quietly spoke the words quoted above even as he made a show of making peace with his son. Even then he was suffering from the fever (likely dysentery) that killed him two days later.

Henry II, royal bastard to the bitter end.

Attention Deficit Bastard

If Henry Plantagenet lived today, his doctors would likely have prescribed him Ritalin for Attention Deficit Disorder. As king he was famously restless, and would pack up and move the court at a whim, wandering ceaselessly among his many holdings both on the Continent and in England. This applied in diplomatic and military matters as well. With vast holdings in England and France, Henry had difficulty leaving well enough alone, and literally couldn’t keep himself from stirring the pot, whether it was picking fights with neighbors or underlings (including his own sons) or needlessly alienating allies. In other words, the man made much of his own trouble.