I am fond of the plays written by Shakespeare, and by extension, those written by his near contemporary (and alleged ghostwriter) Kit Marlowe. The audiences at the time enjoyed a bit of gore, for instance, and so Titus Andronicus (Shakespeare’s equivalent of a Road Runner cartoon), with its rapes, dismemberments, murders, and cannibalism, is particularly amusing.
So too are some of the purported histories Shakespeare and Marlowe wrote. Richard III, for instance, features the king’s brother being drowned in a tub of malmsey (a type of cheap alcoholic drink) whilst imprisoned in the Tower of London. Marlowe’s Edward The Second features the killing of the deposed king by having his bowels burned out with a red hot poker, a scene which would have probably delighted contemporary audiences.
But for all the gore of Elizabethan drama, the reality was not much cleaner. There have been many executions of relatives of kings in actual history. Two of Henry VIII’s queens, most famously Anne Boleyn, but also the hapless Catherine Howard, were beheaded in the Tower of London. This was, given the times, much cleaner and easier than divorce, given how much trouble Henry had with that earlier on in his love life. Lady Jane Grey, who was the figurehead of an attempted coup d’teat, also was beheaded after her reign failed to eventuate.
So too Mary Queen of Scots, someone too dangerous to allow to live, despite being cousins of the Queen Regnant and mother of Elizabeth’s eventual successor.
The lesson that we can take away from history is that if you were a royal, and you were an embarrassment to the sovereign, the cleanest and easiest way to end the embarrassment was with a headsman and a sharp axe.
Doing so inside the Tower kept it discreet. After all, a royal was not a common criminal, and to treat them as such would diminish the status and place of the Sovereign himself.
Which brings us to the arrest a couple of days ago of the Andrew Formerly Known As Prince, for questioning relating to allegedly corrupt practices relating to his former role as a trade envoy for the United Kingdom.
He is the brother of the King and the favourite son of our Late Beloved Queen. He is also a living and breathing embarrassment, who could very well face extradition to the USA to face child sex related charges if it were not that most of the American political establishment, including President Trump, is closely implicated in the entire Epstein scandal. It is not in the interests of the American establishment to extradite him and have him answer for those allegations in open court.
But his alleged misconduct in enriching himself in a public office in the UK as a trade envoy is another matter. The evidence appears prima facie strong enough that the police feel obliged to detain and question him, bringing forth the prospect that he could face public trial and imprisonment, despite his former status as a prince and a senior member of the Royal Family.
In the golden days, which our King might now be nostalgically harkening back to, a beheading was a quick and clean way of ridding oneself of such embarrassments. So too would the Prince of Wales be thinking this way, given that in his early childhood, he did tell a kindergarten teacher when having a tantrum that, when he was king, he would get his knights to cut off her head.
Of course ordering ‘Off WIth His Head’ as one of the Queens in Alice In Wonderland is not realistic in this day and age. But is it too late to arrange a car accident in Paris?
Lost For Words! 