Posted on 11/29/2021 9:48:55 AM PST by CheshireTheCat
On this date in 1330, Roger Mortimer’s three-year run as de facto ruler of England ended with a rope at Tyburn.
Mortimer was a key figure in the Despenser War — a revolt of nobles against King Edward II and the king’s hated-by-nobles right hand Hugh Despenser.
That war failed and landed Mortimer in the Tower. Then, things really got interesting.
Mortimer escaped his cell in 1323 and fled to France. There he took up with King Edward’s own wife, Queen Isabella, when the latter came to court on some state business.
This was, needless to say, quite a scandalous arrangement — but hey, Isabella had seen royal cuckolding right in her own family before.
So the adulterous lovebirds settled in to canoodle and set about planning some serious homewrecking.
Both Isabella and Mortimer are by every appearance among the most outstanding personalities of their day, and they had ambition to match their considerable personal gifts.
In the autumn of 1326, they invaded England and won a swift victory as those disaffected nobles from the recent wars declared for the usurpers. This time, Hugh Despenser was put to death.
Edward didn’t fare that much better. By the next January, he had been forced to abdicate in favor of his 14-year-old son, which in reality meant ceding power to his ex and her lover. And you thought your divorce settlement was bad.
In the long tradition of rival heads of state being disposed of, Edward II was, well, disposed of: strangled in captivity later that same year (allegedly! there is some doubt as to whether he really died in 1327), and given a state funeral that put Roger Mortimer into a bogus public display of mourning...
(Excerpt) Read more at executedtoday.com ...
bookmark
Edward II was a flaming homosexual.
And his lover was defenestrated....................
I heard they killed Edward with a red-hot poker up the rectum, so the cause of death wouldn’t be obvious.
Real life Game of Thrones stuff minus the dragons.
Those wacky inbred British aristocrats.
People were crazy back in those days.
For that reason some suspect that Mortimer was the actual father of the warrior king Edward III.
I am a very distant relative of Edward III. They could use me as a DNA test if they wanted.
His son, Thomas, was the ancestor whose line we’re from, and, as he was murdered by Richard II, the line isn’t very famous.
:)
His relationship with Piers Gaveston was very odd, though.
The (very historically inaccurate) movie Braveheart depicts Edward II as a flaming homosexual, and purports to show him being cuckolded by Wallace, who then informs his father (Edward I "Longshanks") on his deathbed that he (Wallace) is the real father of Longshanks' heir.
That whole subplot is ridiculous, since Isabella was a nine-year-old girl living in France when Wallace was executed.
Edward III was ten years old when his mother and Mortimer became lovers.
Thanks. Most blockbuster historical movies are indeed inaccurate.
Gloucester is famous to those who know their Shakespeare.. his wife Eleonore has an entire scene with John of Gaunt in Richard II. The murder of Gloucester is also famous in that it was the cause of the suspended duel between Mowbray and Bolinbgbroke that led to the sequence of events that set off the usurpation of Bolingbroke.
Yes... it is most likely Edward II was the father... the contention is made for obvious reasons. It’s not even known surely that Edward II was homosexual.. he was very attached to Galveston however.
>>> Gaveston
I saw the director of the movie interviewed about all those inaccuracies... the most glaring, the ridiculous idea that Edward III was the son of Wallace. He seemed to have no problem with any of it, it was the anti English angle that mattered and that was all.
I read somewhere that Gibson’s anti-English slant is probably due to the old church Catholicism he inherited from his father. He never misses an opportunity to slight the Brits...
(And in The Patriot, almost everyone on both sides is Protestant.)
Mel Gibson has a whole lot of Irish and Scottish heritage on both his mother's and father's sides. That may explain some of the anti-English animus.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.