Free The Good, the Bad and the Unready by Robert Easton Page B

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 ofbirds 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