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Lazarus and the Gimp
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Whale-raping abomination
Aug 2000
time: 05:20
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Historical filth- The case against hereditary monarchy.
There's a certain crude logic to accepting the origins of monarchy. Take the biggest, most vicious, most ruthless, and most plain lucky person in the land and accept him as the boss after he's slaughtered his way to the top. With any luck he's got all the qualities required to be a great leader.
Therefore (so the theory goes) he'll pass on his superspunky ubermenschen genes, and with a spot of handy dynastic marriage we're left with a race of titans wielding hereditary power. A class apart, ideally suited to rule a nation, and undoubtedly the very best people for the noble job. It's blindingly obvious when you think about it, isn't it?
Regular "Historical filth" readers will probably have a fair idea where this is heading. The case studies below have been chosen to highlight just why this theory is, in practice, a load of old bollocks. Here goes...
Commodus 161- 192 AD. Rome.
The Romans, to their credit, weren't that sold on the idea of strict hereditary monarchy. For long periods Emperors were chosen on merit rather than through accident of birth, such as the 80 years preceding the accession of Commodus. Those 80 years saw some rather good Emperors as a result.
Commodus changed all that. He was groomed to succeed his father from infancy, but his reign resulted in him being used as the bad guy in the film "Gladiator". He was one of the very worst- mad, cruel, arbitrary and vicious.
The edited lowlights of Commodus' reign are as follows. He kept a harem of 300 women and girls and 300 boys (a sizeable proportion of them kidnap victims) for his immense orgies. He also sold public offices to the highest bidder, appointing 25 consuls in a single year.
However he's best known for his gladiatorial exploits. Commodus' own claim was that he had slain 12,000 men in combat. This figure is explained by the fact that his opponents in the ring were provided with light wooden "swords", or were tied up or hamstrung before meeting the armed-to-the-teeth emperor. In one day he killed 100 bears- all of which were firmly tied up, the crowd struggling to suppress their laughter at the deranged emperor's firm belief in his own heroics.
He was jealous of these exploits too. On hearing that a gladiator named Julius Alexander had killed a raging lion with a single javelin, he had him executed. The public really started to lose patience with him when he demanded one million sesterces from the gladiatorial fund for every appearance. Finally he pushed his luck too far and was strangled by a wrestler.
James V (reigned 1513- 1542) Scotland . Became King aged 17 months, he is described as a "cruel man" (and that's by the standards of 16th century royalty who were, nearly to a man, murderous butchers). Had Janet, Lady Glamis (ancestor of the late Queen Mother) tortured burned at stake for witchcraft because he was feuding with her husband.James V, even by the standards of the Scottish kings, was a really warped and vicious man. His grudge against the Douglas family stems from the fact the he really didn't see eye-to-eye with his stepfather, Archibald Douglas. This may have something to do with the fact that Douglas kept James a virtual prisoner and effectively ruled Scotland, and this could leave anyone a bit twitchy and dysfunctional, but let's not get too sympathetic to the murderous little ****, shall we?
The unfortunate Janet was Archibald Douglas's sister. As soon as Lord Glamis popped his clogs, James seized Glamis Castle and had Janet and little John locked in a cell. By 1537 the incarceration in darkness had left Janet nearly blind, but the incredibly venomous James hadn't finished yet. He accused Janet and John of witchcraft, obtaining confessions by torturing them both, along with all of their servants. He made of point of torturing Janet in front of her son. In 1537, Janet was burned alive at the stake.
John too was sentenced to death, but the sentence was not carried out, probably because James was quite clearly going insane. He then kicked off a reign of terror in Scotland, but made the classic mistake that many other Scottish Kings made- he attempted to invade England. His army was routed by Henry VIII's forces at Solway Moss, and James promptly went insane, and died shortly after at the age of 30.
Carlos II 1661- 1700 Spain.
Ah, yes. The Habsburgs. Their genetic legacy polluted just about all of the European aristocracy at some point, and that's why Euro royals tend to look the way they do. In short- a right old bunch of munters. You've only got to sneak a glance at Prince Michael of Kent to spot a distinct hint of Habsburg throwback.
The Habsburgs built their power through some well-chosen dynastic marriages. Having gained control of the Holy Roman Empire and Spain, they then had a brainwave. Further dynastic marriages could provide an advantage to rival noble houses, just as they had to the Habsburgs, but what if they started keeping the weddings "in-house", so to speak? A handy niece here, a first cousin there, a maiden aunt somewhere else....
Carlos II was the crowning glory of this rampant inbreeding. His "Habsburg jaw" was so deformed that he could barely eat. His tongue was so large that he could barely speak. His body resembled that of an invalid child, he could barely walk and he had a huge and mis-shapen head. To top it all, he was retarded. Worse still for the Habsburgs, he was both chronically impotent and a sufferer of spontaneous premature ejaculation, and the efforts of teams of physicians and two wives were unsuccessful in getting Carlos to play "hide the sausage" successfully. The male line of the Spanish Habsburgs ended there. Closely followed by strife, war, misery, etc.....
Cheng-Te 1491- 1521. China.
The Chinese emperors were so wonderfully decadent. All that absolute power over countless millions tended to go to their heads in truly spectacular fashion. Cheng-te is an old favourite of mine. Now Cheng-te took one look at the whole business of running a country and decided that he really couldn't be arsed with it, so he handed over power to his court eunuchs, lock stock and barrel. Anyone recalling the Historical filth article "Eunuchs with balls" will know that massive corruption and reigns of terror resulted.
Meanwhile, Cheng-te got himself a hobby. He would travel around China in disguise and strike up conversations with people, trying to lure them into saying something vaguely critical about the emperor. If they did, he'd have the entire village crucified, burned or buried alive. He like his pleasure boats too, and all of China breathed a sigh of relief when he ended up at the bottom of the sea in one.
Ibrahim 1616- 1648. The Ottoman Empire
Background info- when an Ottoman Emperor succeeded, he tended to either kill all his brothers or lock them up in a palatial prison called "Kafes". Here they would be left with just a large selection of concubines who practised strict birth control under pain of death. This was considered to be the humane alternative to being killed, but the drawback was that if they subsequently became Emperor they tended to be fairly ill-equipped to deal with anything that wasn't actually lying in front of them with legs spread.
Ibrahim is the classic example. Making up for the fact that he's spent his first 23 years locked up he went on a bender of mammoth proportions, but started to suffer from impotence with accessible women and could only be aroused by unavailable women, such as the wives and daughters of powerful muftis. He tended to solve this problem by kidnapping and raping them.
Ibrahim had a son, Mehmed, but didn't like him much and preferred other people's sons. He made an unsuccessful attempt to drown Mehmed when his son was just a baby, and while Mehmed was still a little boy Ibrahim stabbed him in the face with a dagger for making a poor joke. Amazingly Mehmed survived to succeed his father.
Faced with his increasingly frequent impotence, Ibrahim started looking for new pleasure. He became so enraptured with the appearance of a wild cow's genitals that he had them cast in gold and conducted a massive search for a woman possessing similar "lady bits". On finding her (the 150 kilo Sechir Para) he took her as his favourite. It was at Sechir Para's urging that he had his 280 harem women drowned in the Bosphorus.
Ibrahim was finally deposed by a Grand Mufti who objected to the fact that Ibrahim had raped his daughter. He was imprisoned, and strangled shortly after.
Don Carlos 1545- 1568. Spain.
Let's talk about great-grandparents, shall we? Normal people have eight great-grandparents. Don Carlos, however, didn't. Don Carlos only had four great-grandparents. Two of whom were sisters. That's serious inbreeding, the like of which is rarely seen outside of the Appalachians, or Norfolk.
If that's not bad enough one of Don Carlos' great-grandmothers was Juana "The mad" of Castile, an heir of the Portuguese royals who specialised in their own distinctive brand of hereditary insanity. Yup- you guessed it. Don Carlos was another Habsburg.
Of course, that means young Don Carlos already had to contend with insanity, facial deformity and low intelligence- like so many other Habsburg nobles. However he also had much more up his sleeve. He was a hunchback, pigeon-breasted and had one leg shorter than the other. Worse still was the fact that he had a violent temper and a seriously sadistic nature. This became obvious from an early age, because he loved torturing animals, children and servants- he was particularly fond of genital mutilation. This reached a head when he broke into the royal stables and maimed the horses so badly that 20 died.
He showed little interest in conventional sexual relations with women, but in keeping with his trend for sadism he loved beating them. This pretty much ruled out any chance of him continuing the line. Don Carlos never became king- he was suspected of plotting against his father Philip II, who had his nutter son locked up. The vicious little git died shortly after, and in keeping with Habsburg tradition Philip II commemorated the occasion by marrying his niece. There's nothing sweeter than a family that sticks together.
I'd say that's "guilty as charged". Next time you see a royal, just remind yourself about genetics.
The Historical Filth team- sniffing through history's underwear drawer for the sake of the children.
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Dr Strangelove
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By the beginning of the 3 rd century most Roman emporers were being chosen by the knife. There were long periods of time when the average emporer lasted no more than one or two years. The empire was frequently wracked by civil wars as generals and patricians fought for the throne. I think that this is why the west eventually settled for hereditary monarchy. Having an occasional idiot on the throne is nothing compared to being in a constant state of civil war.
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Albert Speer
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Puerile Polemic
Mar 1999
time: 00:20
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The Habsburg dynasty was fairly diverse actually... Until Maximian, it was a purely south German (Austrian) dynasty, but merged with Burgundians, Dutch, and Spanish (the houses of which were also diverse with French, Italians, Portuguese, English, etc. blood). The Habsburgs were somewhat inbred but there was relative genetic diversity.
thanks
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Dr Strangelove
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quote:
Originally posted by SnowFire
Occassional?
Give me an emperor who cruelly worked his way to the top and is cunning enough to survive any day. That's at least some merit.
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Yes, but the qualities that enable a person to gather a group of conspirators around himself are not necessarily the ones needed to run an empire.
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06-07-2002 03:00
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