The Good, the Bad and the Unready (15 page)

Contemporary historians William of Malmesbury and Orderic Vitalis agree that Robert was small and rotund, and that his father, William the
CONQUEROR
, once derisively called him ‘Brevis ocrea’, literally ‘short-boot’, a term which developed into the nickname ‘Curthose’. Orderic Vitalis gleefully adds that Robert was also nicknamed ‘Gambaron’, which, based on the Italian word for lobster, possibly refers to the duke’s possessing some crustacean-like characteristic.

On his deathbed William expressed his conviction that, under
his son Robert, Normandy would be wretchedly governed… and wretchedly governed it was. As a ruler Robert proved magnificently inept, following the line of least resistance and allowing barons to do as they pleased. Captured by his brother Henry
BEAUCLERC
(see
NOBLE PROFESSIONS
) in 1106, Robert spent nearly thirty years of his life a prisoner in various castles in England and Wales. His last few years were in Cardiff Castle, where he appears to have employed his considerable free time in learning Welsh, since a pathetic little poem in that language is attributed to his authorship. The line ‘Woe to him that is not old enough to die’ is a miserable reflection on the life of a man better known for the size of his footwear than the size of his character.

Henry
Curtmantle

Henry II, king of England, 1133–89

The extravagances of courtly dress held no charms for Henry, and one of the first innovations he made when king was to introduce the utilitarian knee-length cloak – the ‘curt mantle’ –of Anjou, as opposed to the ankle-length variety of his predecessors. Troubadours and tournaments he found dreary, preferring instead simpler entertainments such as those provided by a jester called ‘Roland the Farter’ to whom Henry gave thirty acres in Suffolk, for which, records state, ‘he used to leap, whistle and fart before the king.’

Walter Map, one of Henry’s courtiers, described him as ‘resplendent with many virtues’ but also ‘darkened by some vices’. When annoyed by one of his court attendants, for instance, the furious king ‘threw the cap from his head, untied his belt, hurled his mantle and other garments from him, removed the silk coverlet from the bed with his own hand and began to chew the straw of the bedding’.

Walter Map was in fact one of a paltry few who could find any good qualities in a king who otherwise garnered nothing but contempt: it seems that the weather-beaten, bow-legged, barrel-chested huntsman of a king had an innate ability to offend. According to the chronicler William FitzStephen, Henry once
took immense delight in forcing his chancellor to hand over his magnificent, brand-new grey and red cape to a pauper who just happened be passing. Certainly Henry was not on the Christmas-card list of St Bernard of Clairvaux, who is reported as saying, ‘From the Devil he came and to the Devil he shall return.’

Peter
of the Dagger
see
Peter the CEREMONIOUS

Abdul the
Damned

Abdul Hamid II, sultan of the Ottoman Empire, 1842–1918

No Ottoman sultan was more loathed than Abdul Hamid. Some condemned him as ‘Abdul the Damned’, a man destined for hell for such acts of callous cruelty as instigating a campaign of terror resulting in the execution of some 25,000 Armenian villagers, and having the head of his imprisoned grand vizier sent to him in a box labelled ‘Japanese Ivories’.

Others despised ‘Bloody Abdul’ for his cowardice. Paranoid about assassination, he rarely ventured out of his palace-cum-fortress, which he kitted out with trapdoors, observation posts and powerful telescopes, and he never slept more than one night in the same room. Dour, doleful and universally despised, Abdul Hamid died not from an assassin’s bullet but in exile, deposed by a people that found such an abject and venomous ruler quite intolerable.

 
James the
Dead Man Who Won a Fight

James Douglas, second earl of Douglas, c.1358–88

During the reign of Robert the
STEWARD
(see
NOBLE PROFESSIONS
) there were several border clashes between the Douglases of Scotland and the Percy family of Northumberland. One confrontation in 1388, known as the battle of Otterburn, which was otherwise entirely forgettable, inspired a ballad in which James Douglas, who won the battle but lost his life, is made to say:

Doggerel drivel has thus bestowed celebrity status upon an episode and an earl of little consequence.

Edmund the
Deed-Doer
see
Edmund the
MAGNIFICENT

Aud the
Deep-Minded

Aud, Norse queen,
fl
. 850s

When her son Thorstein the
RED
(
see
COLOURFUL CHARACTERS
) was killed while fighting in Scotland, the thoughtful Aud set sail for Iceland to start a new life there, with a mission to marry off her many grandchildren. In this she was wholly successful, with two of them finding partners en route – one on the Orkneys and the other on the Faroe Islands. Once in Iceland Aud searched for a place to settle, and a number of places on the island are named after little things she did there –‘ Kambsnes’ or ‘Comb Headland’, for example, where she lost her comb, and ‘Dogurdarnes’ or ‘Breakfast Headland’ where presumably she ate, rather than lost, her breakfast.

Soon all her granddaughters had found husbands. Her youngest grandson, Olaf, however, had yet to meet a suitable partner and so the ever-considerate Aud held a party – a singles night with a difference. At the gathering Aud announced that she was leaving her inheritance entirely to Olaf, and then she encouraged her startled guests to drink up and have a great time since the festivities were also her funeral feast. With that, she took herself to bed. The next morning she was found leaning against her pillows, as dead as a doornail.

Henry the
Defender of the Faith
see
BLUFF KING HAL