The Good, the Bad and the Unready (45 page)

Other nicknames conferred upon Charles alluded to his appearance and political status. Charles’s natural complexion was so dark that his mother jokingly wrote in a letter that she had given birth to a black baby. Later the soubriquets ‘the Blackbird’ and ‘the Black Boy’ were used to describe him, and in England today there are still a few pubs named after him. Parliamentarians, meanwhile, who had dubbed his father Charles the
LAST MAN
, persevered in their attack on the monarchy by styling Charles ‘the Son of the Last Man’.

The poet John Wilmot, second earl of Rochester, had earlier characterized his good friend the king as a ‘merry monarch, scandalous and poor’. In ‘The King’s Epitaph’ Rochester continued with his gentle mockery, writing:

David the
Merry Monarch

David Kalakaua, king of Hawaii, 1836–91

Fortified beforehand with milk and bowlfuls of the island speciality of poi, King David could consume vast quantities of his favourite tipple of rum without it showing. In this happy state he would then play cards and invariably win, even when the odds
seemed stacked against him. Once, for example, he was playing poker against a sugar baron. The baron placed his four aces on the table and claimed the large pot of money. David, however, who held four kings, insisted that four kings plus his own royal person made five kings, thus beating the baron’s hand.

Considerable quantities of food and drink were never far from the king on his 1881 royal circumnavigation of the world, during which he visited, among other places, the United States, Japan, China, Egypt and the great capitals of Europe. A man of a naturally convivial disposition, David was feted every step of the way and was never merrier.

Things were less jolly for him in 1887, however, when a bloodless coup relegated him to the role of figurehead and eventually led to his retirement in a boathouse among some duck ponds in Waikiki. When he died during a second trip to California, the press aptly dubbed him ‘the Last King of Paradise’.

Sigurd the
Mighty

Sigurd I, earl of Orkney, d.892

Norse sagas agree that Sigurd and the Hebridean Viking ruler Thorstein the
RED
(
see
COLOURFUL CHARACTERS
) were the mightiest warriors of their day. Together they attacked any ships that happened to pass by and made furious raids on the Scottish mainland. Mighty he may have been in war, but the manner of Sigurd’s death would have been the last any warrior would have wished. We are told that he cut off the head of an earl called Maelbrigte whom he suspected of treachery, and strapped it to his saddle as a trophy. But as he cantered around, triumphantly showing off his prize, a tooth of the noble Maelbrigte scratched him on the leg and Sigurd died soon thereafter from blood poisoning.

 
Christina the
Miracle of Nature

Christina, queen of Sweden, 1626–89

Neither of her parents thought there was anything miraculous in Christina. Having been promised by soothsayers that she was going to give birth to a boy, Queen Maria Eleanora of Brandenburg refused to have anything to do with her daughter, and left her in the care of her father, King Gustav ‘the Lion of the North’. The nonplussed Gustav treated her like a boy, taking her on military expeditions and introducing her, at close range, to the sound of cannon fire. When Christina was six, Gustav was killed in battle, and his widow confined herself to her bedroom, reportedly with the king’s heart in a golden container. Christina’s education then began in earnest.

She studied twelve hours a day, becoming fluent in five languages, an expert in horsemanship and an accomplished historian, reading Thucydides and Polybius in the original Greek. She studied astronomy, music and literature and oversaw the creation of the nation’s first newspaper. Her passion for philosophy resulted in her inviting Rene Descartes to Stockholm, summoning him at five o’clock in the morning for learned conversations. Many of her adoring subjects deemed such intellectual brilliance as nothing short of miraculous.

Indifferent to the love of her people or notions of patriotic duty, however, Christina stepped down after ten years of rule, sending shockwaves coursing through a bewildered nation. Publicly Christina claimed that she was simply not strong enough to be queen, but privately the real reasons were her aversion to
marriage (on the grounds that it was a form of slavery) and her secret conversion from Lutheranism to Roman Catholicism. On the very day of her abdication she disguised herself as a man and left Sweden for Rome, never to return. The pope initially welcomed her but over time distanced himself from a scandalously independent woman who spent more time at the opera than at church, and who openly laughed at his cardinals.

Catherine the
Modern Messalina
see
Catherine the
GREAT

Alfonso the
Monk
see
NOBLE PROFESSIONS

Ramiro the
Monk

Ramiro II, king of Aragon, d.1154

When ‘Alfonso the Battler’ died in 1134, the kingdom of Aragon fell into a panic. The Battler’s will stated that his entire kingdom should go to the military Orders of the Holy Land, but the Aragonese nobles were having none of this and elected his brother Ramiro as king. Ramiro, who happened to be a Benedictine monk, accepted the crown, stating that he did so ‘not out of any desire for honour or ambition or arrogance but only because of the needs of the people and the tranquility of the church’.

Ramiro the Monk then proceeded to marry Agnes of Poitiers, daughter of Duke William IX of Aquitaine. The next year Agnes gave birth to a girl, Petronila, whose hand Ramiro immediately offered to Ramon Berenguer IV, count of Barcelona. With the dynasty secured after his three-year secular adventure, Ramiro returned to his monastery, where he died in 1154.

 
Monsieur Veto
see
the
BAKER AND THE BAKER’S WIFE