The Good, the Bad and the Unready (18 page)

 
Robert the
English Achilles
see
ENGLISH EPITHETS

Henry the
English Alexander
see
ENGLISH EPITHETS

Edward the
English Justinian
see
Edward the
HAMMER OF THE SCOTS

Henry the
English Solomon
see
ENGLISH EPITHETS

George
Est-Il-Possible?

George, prince of Denmark, 1653–1703

‘James the Popish Duke’
(see
the
POPISH AND PROTESTANT DUKES
) noticed a peculiar trait in his son-in-law. Every time the consort of
BRANDY NAN
was relayed a piece of bad news, he would invariably shake his head and sigh,
‘Est-il possible
?’ This occasional mannerism became something of a daily occurrence during the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when the prince heard report upon report of military mismanagement or desertion.

Erik
Evergood

Erik I, king of Denmark, 1056–1103

While England was decidedly a Christian nation in the eleventh century, the Church had yet to establish a firm footing in Denmark, and the task of embedding the faith in the nation’s culture fell to Erik ‘Ejegod’. As his nickname suggests, Eric was a pious
monarch – so pious in fact that he is noted as the first European king ever to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Pilgrimages usually involve a return journey, but not for the good Erik, who never again set foot in his kingdom, ending his days instead on the island of Cyprus.

Charles the
Fair
see
GALLIC PRACTICE

Edwy the
Fair

Edwy, king of the English, c.941–59

Edwy came to the throne when a precocious teenager and almost immediately fell out of favour with all his senior advisers. Dunstan, the abbot of Glastonbury, was notably and understandably irked when, during Edwy’s coronation ceremony, he discovered his royal charge ‘consorting’ with a young lady. By 959 most of the elders had had enough of Edwy and put their support behind a Northumbrian and Mercian conspiracy to replace him with his far more genial brother Edgar the
PEACEABLE
.

When Edwy died, in unknown circumstances, his obituaries were universally disparaging – with the exception of that of Athelweard the Chronicler, his unctuous brother-in-law, who dubbed him ‘the Fair’, alluding not only to his complexion but also to the overblown assertion that he was rather pleasant company.

Philip the
Fair

Philip IV, king of France, 1268–1314

Philip’s good looks elicited both praise and his nickname, but his deeds evoked disapproval from a number of quarters. Some of the criticism was comparatively mild. The bishop of Poitiers, for instance, wrote that Philip was ‘an owl, the most beautiful of
birds but worth nothing’. Others, however, who saw his generosity to the Church as motivated entirely by politics rather than piety, were more forthcoming in their damnation of Philip ‘le Bel’. Dante, for example, did not hold back. In his
Purgatorio
he describes him as ‘a malignant plant which overshadows all the Christian world’, and elsewhere in the poem compares him, in his persecution of the Order of the Knights Templar, with Pontius Pilate.

In this business Philip’s behaviour truly was abhorrent. The Master of the Knights Templar, Jacques DeMolay, demanded that Philip make public his private allegations that the Order was teeming with thieves, heretics and homosexuals. Testily, Philip did so and then embarked upon a barbarous crusade upon the crusaders. He reserved his most heinous act of cruelty for DeMolay himself, whom he dragged to an island on the Seine and slow-roasted to death over a smokeless fire.

Joan the
Fair Maid of Kent

Joan, countess of Kent, 1328–85

One of the most beautiful, though perhaps not the most virtuous, wives and mothers to grace history’s pages, Joan married her cousin Edward the
BLACK PRINCE
and soon gave birth to Richard the
COXCOMB
. Her subjects dubbed her ‘the Fair Maid of Kent’ because she was considered ‘the fairest lady in all the kingdom’. It was public knowledge, however, that she was also one of ‘the most amorous’, having produced five children with her first husband, Sir Thomas Holland, and then contracted a bigamous marriage with the earl of Salisbury, William Montague, prior to any union with Edward.