second died aged only eight, and his daughter died in childbirth. Finally, while galloping back from a council meeting in Edinburgh, his horse slipped and hurtled off a cliff with him still in the saddle. Alexander and his horse plunged to their deaths; Scotland plunged into a period of bleak and bloody ignominy.
Athelstan the Glorious
Athelstan, king of the English, 895–939
Son of Edward the ELDER (and, scandal-mongers would have us believe, of a humble shepherd’s daughter to whom Edward had taken a fancy) Athelstan was the first Saxon king of all England. He was tall and handsome, a courageous soldier and an avid collector of art and religious relics who was generous both to his subjects and to the Church. His greatest legacy, however, has to be his judicial reforms. Extant law codes tell of his drive to reduce the punishments meted out to young offenders and also suggest the existence of a corps of skilled scribes – perhaps the beginning of a civil service. His nickname possibly stems from a eulogy by an anonymous German cleric who compares him favourably to the Frankish Charles the GREAT : ‘King Athelstan lives,’ he writes, ‘glorious through his deeds!’
Philip the Godless Regent
Philip II, duke of Orleans, 1674–1723
When Philip became regent to the five-year-old Louis the WELL-BELOVED , so began one of the most liberal, irreligious and debauched decades in French history. The stifling hypocrisy of the court of Philip’s uncle Louis the SUN KING was replaced with a rich mixture of scandal and candour. Banned books were reprinted, the Royal Library was opened to all and tuition fees at the Sorbonne were scrapped.
Philip was a Renaissance man, a talented painter who enjoyed acting in plays by Molière and composing music for opera. As for his ‘godlessness’, there is no doubt. A professed atheist, he celebrated religious feast days by holding orgies at Versailles, and when forced to attend Mass, would read the works of Rabelais hidden inside a Bible. New Orleans, a city not known for its prudishness, was named in his honour.
Albert the Good
Albert, prince consort of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, 1819–61
In late November 1861, after a miserably wet day inspecting the buildings for the new military academy at Sandhurst, Albert, the prince consort of Queen Victoria, returned home with a bit of a cold. A few days later, following a visit to Cambridge to admonish his wayward son Edward the CARESSER , the cold had developed into something of a severe chill. Within a fortnight he was dead of typhoid fever.
Two years before Albert’s death, the Poet Laureate Alfred Lord Tennyson had dedicated his work Idylls of the King to the prince with the lines:
Beyond all titles, and a household name,
Hereafter, thro’ all times, Albert the Good.
And Victoria the WIDOW OF WINDSOR was now determined that her late husband should be known as ‘the Good’ because of his modest, gentle devotion, both to his wife and to his adopted country. She accordingly arranged for a number of his speeches to be published, commissioned an immense biography to be written, and impressed Tennyson to join in the hagiographical chorus.
Albert the Good
Sadly for Victoria, England simply did not see Albert in the same light as she did. Yes, he had earned much popularity at the time of the Great Exhibition of 1851, but in general his subjects simply could not forgive him for being a foreigner, a German with disconcerting un-English manners and tastes. Some scoffed at his continental dress while others castigated him as the tool of the Russian tsar.
Be that as it may, Albert clearly did possess a genuine tenderness that brought out the best in many people. Even Napoleon III, ‘the Man of December’, was compelled to write favourably about the prince after walking with him in the garden at Osborne House. ‘One goes away from him,’ he acknowledged, ‘more disposed to do good.’
Haakon the Good
Haakon I, king of
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