The Good, the Bad, and the Unready: The Remarkable Truth Behind History's Strangest Nicknames

by Robert Easton

The Lancastrian victory at the battle of Bosworth Field brought the Wars of the Roses to an end and Henry to the throne. With admirable Solomon-like diplomacy Henry succeeded in uniting the houses of Lancaster and York by marrying Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward the ROBBER.

  Edward the Josiah of England

  Edward VI, king of England, 1537–53

  In the Second Book of Kings in the Bible one reads of the young King Josiah ordering the demolition of pagan temples and instigating a comprehensive set of religious reforms. Similarly, in histories of the Tudor period one reads of King Edward ordering the destruction of all shrines and images of saints as he continued the reforms of his father, BLUFF KING HAL.

  Robert the English Achilles see ENGLISH EPITHETS

  Henry the English Alexander see ENGLISH EPITHETS

  Edward the English Justinian see Edward the HAMMER OF THE SCOTS

  Henry the English Solomon see ENGLISH EPITHETS

  George Est-Il-Possible?

  George, prince of Denmark, 1653–1703

  ‘James the Popish Duke’ (see the POPISH AND PROTESTANT DUKES) noticed a peculiar trait in his son-in-law. Every time the consort of BRANDY NAN was relayed a piece of bad news, he would invariably shake his head and sigh, ‘Est-il possible?’ This occasional mannerism became something of a daily occurrence during the Glorious Revolution of 1688 when the prince heard report upon report of military mismanagement or desertion.

  Erik Evergood

  Erik I, king of Denmark, 1056–1103

  While England was decidedly a Christian nation in the eleventh century, the Church had yet to establish a firm footing in Denmark, and the task of embedding the faith in the nation’s culture fell to Erik ‘Ejegod’. As his nickname suggests, Eric was a pious monarch – so pious in fact that he is noted as the first European king ever to go on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Pilgrimages usually involve a return journey, but not for the good Erik, who never again set foot in his kingdom, ending his days instead on the island of Cyprus.

  [F]

  Charles the Fair see GALLIC PRACTICE

  Edwy the Fair

  Edwy, king of the English, c.941–59

  Edwy came to the throne when a precocious teenager and almost immediately fell out of favour with all his senior advisers. Dunstan, the abbot of Glastonbury, was notably and understandably irked when, during Edwy’s coronation ceremony, he discovered his royal charge ‘consorting’ with a young lady. By 959 most of the elders had had enough of Edwy and put their support behind a Northumbrian and Mercian conspiracy to replace him with his far more genial brother Edgar the PEACEABLE.

  When Edwy died, in unknown circumstances, his obituaries were universally disparaging – with the exception of that of Athelweard the Chronicler, his unctuous brother-in-law, who dubbed him ‘the Fair’, alluding not only to his complexion but also to the overblown assertion that he was rather pleasant company.

  Philip the Fair

  Philip IV, king of France, 1268–1314

  Philip’s good looks elicited both praise and his nickname, but his deeds evoked disapproval from a number of quarters. Some of the criticism was comparatively mild. The bishop of Poitiers, for instance, wrote that Philip was ‘an owl, the most beautiful of birds but worth nothing’. Others, however, who saw his generosity to the Church as motivated entirely by politics rather than piety, were more forthcoming in their damnation of Philip ‘le Bel’. Dante, for example, did not hold back. In his Purgatorio he describes him as ‘a malignant plant which overshadows all the Christian world’, and elsewhere in the poem compares him, in his persecution of the Order of the Knights Templar, with Pontius Pilate.

  In this business Philip’s behaviour truly was abhorrent. The Master of the Knights Templar, Jacques DeMolay, demanded that Philip make public his private allegations that the Order was teeming with thieves, heretics and homosexuals. Testily, Philip did so and then embarked upon a barbarous crusade upon the crusaders. He reserved his most heinous act of cruelty for DeMolay himself, whom he dragged to an island on the Seine and slow-roasted to death over a smokeless fire.

  Joan the Fair Maid of Kent

  Joan, countess of Kent, 1328–85

  One of the most beautiful, though perhaps not the most virtuous, wives and mothers to grace history’s pages, Joan married her cousin Edward the BLACK PRINCE and soon gave birth to Richard the COXCOMB. Her subjects dubbed her ‘the Fair Maid of Kent’ because she was considered ‘the fairest lady in all the kingdom’. It was public knowledge, however, that she was also one of ‘the most amorous’, having produced five children with her first husband, Sir Thomas Holland, and then contracted a bigamous marriage with the earl of Salisbury, William Montague, prior to any union with Edward.

  Fair Rosamund

  Rosamund Clifford, mistress of King Henry II of England, c.1140–c.1176

  Legend tells us that Henry CURTMANTLE was besotted with the ravishing Rosamund and kept her prisoner in a maze in Woodstock near Oxford. Legend similarly states that Eleanor of Aquitaine, Henry’s wife, was beside herself with jealousy and that she mastered the maze and offered Rosamund two equally unappealing options: death by dagger or death by poison. This is codswallop. As the historian Giraldus Cambrensis, among others, makes clear, Henry lived openly with the beautiful Rosamund, while the dumped Eleanor lived under a form of house arrest.

  Fair Rosamund

  Harold Fairhair

  Harold, king of Norway, c.860–c.940

  Stung by the rejection of the princess of a neighbouring country to his romantic advances, Harold vowed not even to comb, let alone cut, his hair until he became the sole ruler of Norway. For ten long years Harold battled against other local, petty kings for national supremacy, and for ten long years his hairstyle alarmed all and sundry. But then, in 872, Harold won a famous victory at Hafrs Fjord and seized control of the entire nation. After what must have been a dramatic wash and set, the new-look Harold so delighted his subjects with his clean flowing locks that they instantly changed their nickname for him from ‘Shockhead’ to ‘Fairhair’.

  Denis the Farmer see NOBLE PROFESSIONS

  Farmer George

  George III, king of England, 1738–1820

  An avid interest in botany and agriculture earned George his nickname but also the disapproval of many of his senior officials, who grumbled that he preferred country pursuits to politics. Certainly George did not like city life, preferring cricket and flying kites to court functions and the theatre. He was in fact one of the first London commuters, regularly galloping twenty miles back to rural Windsor after eating a hasty supper at St James’s Palace. There he would pen articles for the scholarly periodical Annals of Agriculture and prepare parliamentary speeches on diseases among horned cattle.

  In his later years George used a lathe to make a set of ivory buttons, for which some dubbed him ‘the Button-Maker’, but most people today remember him for the last years of his life when he was intermittently mad. Anecdotes from this period abound. In a particularly popular story, he was said to have got out of his coach in Windsor Great Park and – in a notable lapse of botanical know-how – shook hands with an oak tree because he was under the impression it was Frederick the GREAT.

  Charles the Fat

  Charles III, Frankish king and Holy Roman Emperor, 839–88

  Incongruously, the vastly overweight Charles was known during his own lifetime as ‘Karoleto’ or ‘Little Charles’ to distinguish him from Charles the BALD. It was not until some four centuries later that he received his more common epithet of ‘the Fat’. Obesity, however, was not his most pressing medical condition.

  Charles suffered from a debilitating illness that exhibited itself in regular savage headaches and the occasional spectacular seizure. His condition made it virtually impossible for him to rule, and so in early 887 the emperor underwent a surgical skull incision – a trepanation – in the hope that this might bring relief. If it did, it was temporary. Charles died the following year while in exile in Swabi
a.

  Henry the Fat

  Henry I, king of Navarre, c.1210–74

  After a four-year reign, marked, it is said, by dignity and diplomacy, ‘Enrique el Gordo’, or ‘Henri le Gros’, died. According to most of the received accounts, this youngest son of Theobald the TROUBADOUR (see NOBLE PROFESSIONS) suffocated on his own fat.

  Louis the Fat

  Louis VI, king of France, 1081–1137

  Philip the AMOROUS, Louis’s father, was so overweight that he was forced to hand over the day-to-day administration of the kingdom to his comparatively trim son. But Louis was no slouch in the obesity stakes either. Predisposed to both gluttony and corpulence, he was so fat that after the age of forty-six any horse that he sat on simply buckled.

  In his account of the deeds of Louis, the abbot and historian Suger wrote that in 1126 his body was so ‘weighed down by burdensome folds of flesh’ that ‘no-one, not even a beggar, would have wanted or been able to ride a horse when hampered by such a dangerously large body’ Presumably the horse would have had similar objections.

  Sancho the Fat

  Sancho I, king of Castile and Leon, d.967

  When Sancho came to the throne in 956 he was so fat that he could hardly walk, let alone ride a horse. As such, he could only sit and, with difficulty, raise a finger in protest as rebels under his cousin Ordono stormed the palace and forced him into exile. A few years of dieting later, however, and Sancho was back. The new, improved and slender Sancho marched on León with a large Muslim army and successfully recovered his kingdom.

  George the Fat Adonis at Fifty see George the BEAU OF PRINCES

  George the Fat Adonis at Forty see George the BEAU OF PRINCES

  Edward the Father of English Commerce see Edward the BANKRUPT

  Frederick the Father of His Country seeBARBAROSSA

  Christian the Father of His People

  Christian III, king of Denmark, 1503–59

  When Christian assumed control of the kingdom in 1536, the predominantly Catholic Danish state council was understandably rather cagey about having an ardent Lutheran as their king. Their fears were well founded. Within two weeks of his accession he had every bishop arrested and thrown into prison, their offices abolished and their lands permanently confiscated. The Roman Catholic Church in Denmark was no more.

  The official Church in Denmark was now the Lutheran State Church, in which priests were elected and allowed to marry, and congregations were encouraged to read the Bible in their own language. Such events ushered in the last phase of the Danish Reformation and gave rise to Christian’s nickname – although this epithet was not used within Catholic circles, which considered his actions decidedly lacking in fatherly concern.

  Francis the Father of Letters

  Francis I, king of France, 1494–1547

  Francis was given this nickname as well as that of ‘the Maecenas of France’ because, like the first-century BC Roman statesman who supported such luminaries as Virgil and Horace, he was a munificent patron of the arts and learning. One of the court painters was Leonardo da Vinci, who brought his Mona Lisa and The Virgin and Child with St Anne along with him. Works by Raphael and Michelangelo graced the halls of his palace at Versailles and various chateaux, and his private library of nearly 3,000 volumes became the basis of the Bibliothèque Nationale.

  A generous patron maybe, but Francis had many, many faults. One of these was his shameless unfaithfulness to his charming wife, Claude the HANDSOME QUEEN. Although he was extremely ugly and, according to Victor Hugo, possessed ‘the largest nose in France, except for his jester, Triboulet’, Francis had a multitude of mistresses. A Venetian visiting the court wrote of his daily routine as follows: ‘He rises at eleven o’clock, hears Mass, dines, spends two or three hours with his mother, then goes whoring or hunting…’

  William the Father of the Fatherland see William the SILENT

  Abu Bakr the Father of the Maiden see Abu Bakr the UPRIGHT

  Edward the Father of the Mother of Parliaments see Edward the HAMMER OF THE SCOTS

  Louis the Father of the People Louis XII, king of France, 1462–1515

  In comparison with his ludicrously prodigal predecessor Charles the AFFABLE, Louis was thrifty bordering on penny-pinching. In response to a friend’s warning that he was gaining a reputation in court for being parsimonious, Louis is reported to have replied, ‘Far better my courtiers should laugh at my parsimony than that my people should mourn for my extravagance.’

  His prudent expenditure of the public purse – there was no direct increase of taxation during his reign – coupled with his reform of the courts and tax laws, won him approval among the masses and a nickname suggesting paternal affection.

  Fatso see PTOLEMAIC KINGS

  John the Fearless

  John, duke of Burgundy, 1371–1419

  John received his epithet from his exploits at the battle of Nicopolis against the Ottoman Turks. A cursory examination of his actions there, however, might lead one to think that he should have been dubbed not ‘the Fearless’ but ‘the Stupid’.

  In 1396 European powers were laying siege to the main Turkish stronghold on the Danube. Sigismund the LIGHT OF THE WORLD, the organizer of the crusade, urged prudence, but the knights ignored this sage advice and, with John at the vanguard, charged up the steep hill to the fortified town. Although they scattered the first line of Turkish cavalry and infantry, they were no match for the second wave of defence and, exhausted from the climb, most of the knights were cut down. John somehow survived to fight another day.

  John the Fearless

  The son of Philip the BOLD, John was a little man with a big head and eyes like a frog. According to chronicler Olivier de la Marche, he was ‘very courageous’ but trusted no one and ‘always wore armour under his robe’. Indeed, this man who regularly used assassination as a political tool lived in absolute fear of his own murder, making his nickname ‘Sans Peur’ a mockery of reality.

  And murdered he was. In 1419 he and some Burgundian delegates met on a bridge at Montereau near Paris to sign a peace treaty with counterparts from Armagnac. John walked into a covered enclosure, where his armour could not withstand a torrent of blows from battleaxes.

  Alfonso the Fierce

  Alfonso IV, king of Portugal, 1291–1357

  Alfonso may have been fierce and brave (several chroniclers refer to him as ‘Afonso o Bravo’), but his reign was marked by austerity rather than ferocity. The son of Denis the FARMER (see NOBLE PROFESSIONS), Alfonso continued where his father had left off in strengthening royal authority and promoting justice, but numerous internal revolts and the devastating impact of the Black Death, which claimed at least a third of Portugal’s population, left a country weakened and politically unstable. Alfonso deemed it necessary to use severe methods to quash domestic dissent, and it is from these actions that he probably earned his nickname.

  Another origin of the name could be the manner in which he treated Ines de Castro, the mistress of Peter the CRUEL, his son and heir. Ines was a Galician and, concerned that her brothers would direct the affairs of Portugal rather than his son, Alfonso went to her estate in early 1355 to talk to her and assess the situation. After a seemingly amicable interview he rode nonchalantly away, while a couple of his hired hands stayed behind and murdered her.

  James the Fiery Face

  James II, king of Scotland, 1430–60

  As his nickname implies, the most obvious thing about James was his disfigurement, and in Francois Villon’s Ballade the left half of his face is described as ‘the colour of an amethyst from the forehead to the chin’. No poetic licence was in operation here: a contemporary drawing provides visual evidence to support the French lyric poet’s claim.

  James was fiery in appearance and fiery by nature. An uneasy truce with the powerful Douglas family ended when James stabbed William, the eighth earl, to death and demolished the clan’s castles. Then, with Scotland mostly under his sway, he turned his attention to England, but die
d while laying siege to Roxburgh Castle.

  Ptolemy the Flute Player see PTOLEMAIC KINGS

  Lulach the Fool Lulach, king of Scotland, c.1031–58

  When Macbeth was cut down by the forces of Malcolm BIGHEAD, Lulach, Macbeth’s stepson, found himself king. By styling him ‘the Fool’ or ‘the Simpleton’ chroniclers suggest that he was not up to the task at all. His entire sorry reign was spent battling with Malcolm BIGHEAD, and he was killed in an ambush in Strathbogie some four months after his coronation.

  Louis the Foreigner

  Louis IV, king of France, 921–54

  When his father ‘Charles the Simple’ was deposed from the French throne, Louis’s mother Eadgifu whisked Louis off to England where he grew up in the court of Athelstan the GLORIOUS. After thirteen quiet years away from France, for which he was dubbed ‘the Foreigner’ or ‘d’Outremer’, Louis returned home to a torrid battle for supremacy, not least with the forces of such luminaries as ‘Otto the Great’ and ‘Hugh the Great’ (see GREAT… BUT NOT THAT GREAT).

  Sven Forkbeard

  Sven I, king of Denmark and England, c.960–1014

  With an imposing hairstyle to match his imposing North Sea empire, Sven, the son of Harald BLUETOOTH, instigated a mass of incursions against England. The onslaught then intensified when Ethelred the UNREADY ordered the killing of every Dane living in England, in what has come to be known as the St Brice’s Day Massacre of 1002. Some scholars think that Sven’s sister Gunhilda was one of the victims.

  Battered by successive punitive expeditions and ineptly governed, England was ripe for conquest, and on Christmas Day 1013 Sven was pronounced her king. He didn’t live long to wallow in royal glory, however. Just six weeks later the great Viking warrior toppled from his horse and died.

  Manuel the Fortunate

  Manuel I, king of Portugal, 1469–1521

  As the ninth child of Fernando, the brother of ‘Alfonso the African’, Manuel was fortunate to have reigned at all, but due to some marriages and murders of convenience Manuel found himself succeeding John II as king of Portugal in 1495. It was Manuel’s predecessor who had planned an expedition in search of a sea route to India and had appointed Vasco da Gama to lead it, but fortunately for Manuel, it was under his reign that the expedition actually took place. It was fortunate, too, that Vasco da Gama’s friend Peter Alvarez Cabral was put in charge of a fleet destined for India, and that he veered so far west that he landed in Brazil.