ANST - Musing on June 26th, Oh Ricky, You're So Fine! (part I)

j'lynn yeates jyeates at realtime.net
Tue Jun 27 15:49:35 PDT 2000


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todays installement from Sir B.  ... convoluted medieaval royal
politics and a opinion that will probably irk more than a few ...
care to guess which one (g)

'wolf


Dear Folk,

On June 26, 1483, Richard Duke of Gloucester took the English throne
as
Richard III. He became the last Plantaganet and arguably the last
medieval king of England.

Now some of you out there are saying “Whoopie-turtle, another
stinking
king!” Okay, you might be right. Ricky III is interesting, though.
The
play that Shakespeare (or somebody) wrote of that title is one great
slam-dunk of a king. In the play, we find Ricky engineering the
deaths
of two little kids, his brother George, and few others. Kills one
enemy
and tricks that dead guy’s wife into marrying him. Tragically-cool
king
stuff.

Ricky came to power finally within the last two years of the War of
Roses (1455-85), thirty years of civil war which had just wasted
England. A guy by the name of Dick York, you may remember him from
"Bewitched," thought that Hank VI was not very smurfy and also did
not
have as much right to the throne as he did.  Dick was directly
descended from Eddie III (remember poor Eddie II? Well, Eddie III was
his son.). Dick York and his second son Edmund were killed by Hank
VI’s
wife Margaret (actually her forces but Maggie of Anjou was no slouch
when it came to hammering on) in 1460. Hank was pretty mellow. Some
say
a little dotty. That is the rep you get when you just don’t like
killing.

Hank VI was a Lancaster (sort of the Hatfields of the drama)
descended
from Hank Bolingbroke who murdered Dick II, grandson of Eddie III
back
in 1399. The McCoys were the Yorks.  With Dick York out of the way,
it
looked like the next one to pick up the banner was Dick York’s eldest
son, Eddie IV. Eddie lost no time in running Maggie back to France
and
locking up good, but spacey Hank VI (for his own safety).

Eddie kept the peace, his peace but a peace ne’ertheless, until 1469.
How it got broken is interesting.

Poor Eddie IV, he screwed things up when he went and fell for a
commoner. The whole War of the Roses thing was about whom was more
kingly. Nothing like diluting the claim to the throne. Okay, Lizzie
Woodville was rich and a babe but had some really tacky relations --
not as bad as some of our presidents, but close. Eddie and Lizzie got
together just as Warwick was off trying to arrange a marriage of
Eddie
IV to the sister of the French king.

Warwick, who was Eddie’s cousin, had raised George and Ricky as
children. Warwick had two daughters and no sons and was kind of
looking
to cement his royal way of life. George (Eddie's bro.) even married
the
eldest daughter Isabel without Eddie’s knowledge or consent. Eddie
hit
the roof. Then he had to go embarrass Warwick again in front to the
French.

What have we gotten from this so far? Although we may be very kingly,
there are always folks who fancy themselves our betters? When you
marry
a lady, you tend to marry her whole family? I think I find that no
matter how nice you tend to be and how loyal, someone in power can
forget your feelings entirely.

This is getting long. How about I continue this later? Say “yes.”
(Part II  tomorrow)

Getting ready to watch "Looking for Richard," again,
Ells


=====
"That proves you are unusual," returned the Scarecrow; "and I am
convinced that the only people worthy of consideration in this world
are the unusual ones. For the common folks are like the leaves of a
tree, and live and die unnoticed." -- L. Frank Baum in _The Land of
Oz_.

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