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Subject: Excerpt Of History
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2004 18:30:57 EDT
Royal Pains...............
"The Christmas carol about Good King Wenceslas wasn't to accurate.
The real Wenceslas was King of Bohemia and the Holy Roman Emperor in the
latter part of the 14th century. He was a tyrant who prowled the street with his
cronies at night, breaking into houses, molesting his female subjects, and
generally venting his feelings in a riot of cruelty.
He did love his hunting dogs, though, he even slept with them, over the
objections of his wife, Johanna. Even after one of the dogs attacked and killed her
while she slept."
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"There really was a Scottish King named MacBeth, he ruled from 1040-1057.
But, although little is known about him, there is no evidence that he was the
henpecked social climber portrayed by Shakespeare. In fact, he was a good and
strong enough ruler to survive on the throne for 17 years, which is more than 25
other occupants of that precarious hot spot can claim. Lady MacBeth,
granddaughter of King Kenneth III, was known in her time as a patron of the church, not
as the Shakespearean royal bitch."
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"Richard the Lionhearted is remembered as a righteous hero. But, he was in
reality an absentee monarch who spent no more than ten months of a ten year
reign in England, left the country to the vagaries of his brother John and failed
to produce an heir or even, it is said, consummate his marriage."
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