I can’t help but feel bad for everyone from History; they’re dead, to start with, and then after their deaths the rest of us just sit around in our warm, cozy, alive bodies criticizing them. And it’s quite easy to criticize them! They are, after all, merely dead, while I am forever and gloriously Alive. Were our positions reversed, I have no doubt they would gladly stuff me with cholera and watch me die in childbirth, so I will feel no compunction about gently mocking the avoidably drowned.
Were you aware that England was once rocked by a crisis of succession due to the fact that pretty much the entire royal family drowned off the coast of Normandy? Embarrassingly close to the coast of Normandy? (The rock that hit the ship is visible from the shore at Barfleur, that’s how embarrassingly close they were to shore.)
I don’t wish to mock someone simply for having the bad fortune to die in the Middle Ages, because they are more to be pitied than censured, but there’s something particularly insulting about drowning in someone’s commute. It’s embarrassing to have drowned in the Channel, unless you were at Dunkirk or are one of those amazingly resilient old ladies who fling themselves across it every spring. There’s a train there now!
An aside — there are a handful of people, Victoria Chandler chief amongst them, who have suggested that the sinking of the White Ship was an act of deliberate sabotage and murder. I do not truck with these folk; I find their evidence to be fairly thin (also, the idea that someone would try to sabotage a ship’s passage by getting everyone drunk and hoping for the best seems like sloppy assassination best practices). But I thought you should know about it.
Anyhow! The Middle Ages! Europe! Drowned noblemen! The big problem, of course, is that pretty much no one in Europe during the Middle Ages knew how to swim (THIS IS AN ARGUABLE POINT, please go argue about it here). Where were you going to learn to swim? The Thames? That’s where the trash goes. So boats, yes, swimming, probably not, which almost certainly has a lot to do with why sailors were so superstitious, because the ocean might as well have been full of poison.
So King Henry, returning to England after some successful warring in France, is offered the use of the White Ship across the Channel by Thomas FitzStephen. King Henry already has a ship; King Henry declines but suggests that his son and heir William use it.
Which is actually fairly smart, keeping the prince and the king on separate ships so they can’t drown together! But oh God, do you know who else went on the White Ship? Everybody. Think of a person England needed, and they were on that ship. A partial list:
- William Adelin, heir to the English throne
- his half-brother Richard FitzRoy of Lincoln
- his half-sister Matilda FitzHenry, Countess of Perche (sometimes called Marie de Mortagne)
- Richard d’Avranches, second Earl of Chester
- his brother Otheur or Othuel d’Avranches, governor of the King’s sons
- the Countess of Chester, Mathilda or Lucia-Mahaut of Blois, the King’s neice
- Geoffrey Ridel, Royal Justice, Son-in-law of Hugh, Earl of Chester
- William Bigod, Steward of the household of King Henry
- Ivo II de Grandmesnil
- William Grandmesnil (a brother of Ivo II de Grandmesnil)
- William of Rhuddlan (son of Robert)
- Hugh of Moulins
- Walter of Everci
- Geoffrey, archdeacon of Hereford
- Thomas FitzStephen FitzAirard (captain)
- Geoffrey de l’Aigle
- Engenulf de l’Aigle
- Ralph le Roux, Lord of Pont Echanfre (many believe him to be an illegitimate son of Robert de Lacy)
- Gilbert de l’Aigle, Vicomte of Exmes
- Dietrich (Theodoric), the nephew of the German emperor (probably a son of Henry V.’s sister Agnes by Frederic Duke of Suabia)
- Gisulf, the King’s secretary
- William – Son of the Bishop of Coutances
- Richard Anskill – Son and heir of a Berkshire landowner
- William Pirou – Steward to the king
- Robert Mauconduit – Nobleman
“How sad!” you might say. “But accidents happen, particularly at sea, and it’s a bit cruel to mock the dead, even if it has been a thousand years–”
NO. YOU ARE WRONG. A of all, it’s fine to make fun of things that happened a thousand years ago, and B of all, they drowned for the worst reason ever. The White Ship was ready to go first thing in the morning; the king’s son and his friends stayed on board all day getting drunk and didn’t set sail until sunset.
Which is a notoriously inauspicious time for setting sail!
At length he gave the signal to put to sea. Then the rowers made haste to take up their oars and, in high spirits because they knew nothing of what lay ahead, put the rest of the equipment ready and made the ship lean forward and race through the sea. As the drunken oarsmen were rowing with all their might, and the luckless helmsman paid scant attention to steering the ship though he sea, the port side of the White Ship struck violently against a huge rock, which was uncovered each day as the tide ebbed and covered once more at high tide. Two planks were shattered and, terrible to relate, the ship capsized without warning. Everyone cried out at once in their great peril, but the water pouring into the boat soon drowned their cries and all alike perished.
Do you know what would be a better idea than getting drunk on a boat in France? Sailing home safely, disembarking, and getting drunk at home. (I have never understood the concept of party boats. It seems like a recipe for barf. You can drink on the land! The land doesn’t move!)
“According to chronicler Orderic Vitalis, the crew asked William Adelin for wine and he supplied it to them in great abundance. By the time the ship was ready to leave there were about 300 people on board although some had disembarked before the ship sailed due to the excessive drinking.”
If you get so drunk that people DISEMBARK FROM AN ENTIRE SHIP TO GET AWAY FROM YOU, you need to cut back, prince or no prince.
The communists among you will be glad to know that there was one survivor from the wreck, who was found by fishermen the next day clinging to a rock. His name was Berould, he was a common butcher, and he was only on board to collect the debts owed him by various profligate noblemen. ONLY THE STRONG SURVIVE.
In addition to causing the death of the king’s entire retinue and half of his secret family members, William’s antics led to a forty-year period of anarchy known helpfully as the Anarchy, which some historians are currently trying to recast as “not really all that anarchic” but don’t you believe them, there was anarchy everywhere, and not the good kind where you get to carve the circle-A into your desk during detention, either.
William, by the way, was apparently allergic to surviving, because some of his attendants were able to bundle him off onto a life boat, but he insisted they turn back when he heard his half-sister crying for help on the wreck. (Yeah, man! Of course she was crying! She was drowning! So was everybody!) The boat was, of course, instantly swamped by dozens of other people who also did not want to drown, and William drowned with them.
If you are the only legitimate heir to the king of a country that has only been conquered within the last hundred years, it is your responsibility to not die from being too drunk on a boat. If you die of fever or in battle or even falling off a parapet, that is one thing. But getting a bunch of sailors too wasted to sail — then refusing to escape when you get the chance — well, you’re going to get made fun of in a thousand years by a woman who almost finished a history minor on a moderately popular women’s blog.
This attitude may seem cold. It is. I would 100% have been one of those rich old bitches on the Titanic lifeboats who refused to go back and pick up survivors even though we had a bunch of empty seats. And you know what? I would have lived.
That’s pretty embarrassing, but surely it’s not the most embarrassing crisis of succession? I guess it could be; European aristocracy is pretty ludicrous, though.
literally everyone in the English royal family drowned because they got too drunk to sail on time
name a more embarrassing crisis if you can think of one and i will write about it
I have been trying to think of one since I wrote that comment, and nope! That one is it!
Also, I guess I should qualify this by saying that I posted that first comment a week ago, when I saw this post and it was just basically that first paragraph (I assume because it went to print too soon, since it was immediately taken down).
Anyway, I spent a long tme thinking about it!
what about the time the spanish hapsburgs died out because they spent like five generations marrying their neices
You know what, that was dumb, but it was less dirtbaggy and immediate fuckwittery.
+1 The Spanish Habsburgs are MUCH more embarrassing. The Habsburg chin on Charles II was so hideously disfiguring that he could not chew or speak intelligibly, let alone propagate an heir.
At least the White Ship disaster led to awesome ladies like Empress Maud and Eleanor of Aquitaine tromping all over the English countryside, bossing people about.
Anyhow, given William’s propensity for poor decision-making, perhaps it was for the best that he died, even with the 40 years of civil war. Stephen wasn’t all that bad, and then you get Henry II, who was a pretty smart and capable king. For that matter, without the White Ship disaster, there would be no Canterbury Tales, because no Henry II=no martyrdom of Thomas a Becket=no place for the pilgrims to go to.
Ok I didn’t realise The Chin was an actual impediment, I thought it was just Royal Ugliness to the max.
sidebar, just saw this: a scion of the Habsburgs owns a winery about five minutes from my house; she’s awesome, and REALLY looks like her family. http://thepeerage.com/p10433.htm#i104322
Charles II’s parents had more ancestors in common than “regular” first cousins. http://www.musitek.com/Public/Charles_II_Inbreedi…
To be fair, maybe if Henry had not remarried Matilda off to like the biggest douche in the area, he might have managed to pull off that mess.
I dunno … she’d been an Empress! Treat her like an Empress, dammit! Show some respect! Ahem, what I mean is that it sounds like she was enough to piss a lot of the nobility off all by herself.
Of course, if Henry had spent a little more time with his wife and a little less time begetting 24+ kids with other women, he might have had a backup male heir at a time when it matterd.
Preach.
Can I suggest the recent Japanese succession crisis, like the one from a couple years ago? Where no one wanted to amend the constitution to let a girl inherit the throne because COOTIES but there were only princesses and the crown princess was getting all sorts of guff for not giving birth to a male heir?
And finally some other royal announced she was pregnant with a son and Japan was just like “whew, that was uncomfortable, glad we got through this.”
While I wouldn’t say it’s more embarrassing, the Warming Pan incident of 1688 comes to mind as being pretty ridiculous. But, that was really more the public being ridiculous, and less the Royal Family themselves opting for drunken boating, so…. yeah. I got nothing.
That one crisis where banks lent a lot of people a lot of houses so carelessly that it caused a recession might be embarrassing someday to someone.
Does it really count as a succession crisis when the same people kept running everything with no interruption, though?
in the midst of a procession crisis.
The end of the Capetian line was a pretty hot mess. They’d been around for three hundred years, seating just eleven kings in that time–and then they burned through their last four direct heirs in only fourteen years. The Capets had never bothered to set up a consistent legal framework for succession through female descent, which meant that Edward III, king of England and nephew of the last Capet, figured that he had as good a claim to the throne as Philip VI of Valois, nephew to the fifth-to-last Capet. Took a while to settle that one.
Well, I think the Polish succession method where the noblemen elected kings, but each noble had veto rights was a bit on the ridiculous side.
Well, they’re all at least a LITTLE ridiculous, but I guess I was thinking that there was probably some German or Austrian succession that got screwed up because of butts and farting or some such.
The Anarchy was 1135-1154. Not 40 years.
twenty years, forty years, what are you gonna do
I’ve wanted someone to make a movie about this for agessss. I only drink on trains.
Drinking on trains might explain some of the antics in Snowpiercer.
At least Tilda Swinton’s. But I assume that she is always drunk, for if she were actually proven to be mostly sober, the world would tremble at her glory.
This comment is peak Toast.
Trains, trains carrying us to the seaaaaaaaaaaaa.
“A of all, it’s fine to make fun of things that happened a thousand years ago”
I’m so glad to receive official sanction for this position.
People dying? Poke fun all you want. The burning of The Library of Alexandria, however, will never be funny.
On the first day of class in my MIS program, we were going around the room introducing ourselves, and one of my classmates said she used to work at the Library of Alexandria, and I came so close to blurting out, “Whaaaaaat? are you immortal or something?”
The only reason I knew about this is that I have the Brother Cadfael series practically memorized. Stephen of Blois and the Empress Matilda were both pretty much jerks, but Steve was at least a charming jerk instead of an annoying jerk. THANKS, WILLIAM ADELIN.
It was also an inciting event in The Pillars of the Earth. I think Ken Follett comes down on the “Murder!” side of things rather than the drunky side.
WHICH IS A RIDICULOUS THING TO BELIEVE
“Surely, this large a collection of rich and powerful people would not have been so foolish as to drink for an entire day, and also get the people responsible for the ship mind-bogglingly drunk! Why, surely one of the aristocracy would have stopped their drunken revels to say, ‘wait, hang on, let’s refrain from drinking for a few hours, until we are in a safe place.’ At which point, the rest of the aristocrats would, of course, agree that this plan was very sensible, and put away their wine until a sensible moment.”
Yes, but would they, though?
Oh, surely not.
I’m still waiting to see this story committed to screen as part of the miniseries that someone should definitely produce about The Plantagenets. (There would have been no Plantagenets on the throne of England if not for this shipwreck.)
People escape from palaces on snowy evenings while wearing ermine furs. Why has no one made this yet?
All fantasy novels are basically about the late Platagenets, though. Awesome older son who gets disenfranchised from the throne? Weak middle son who is getting outplotted by the youngest son who is rich and hardcore? Edward III’s sons.
True. But I’d love to see the early/mid stuff.
This is 100% true holy crap.
Robin Hobb, check!
“history is the trade secret of SF writers”
DID you watch the adaptation of The White Queen? It had mixed reviews but I really enjoyed it.
I liked it a lot! Amanda Hale as Margaret Beaufort is my patronus. Her complete and utter disdain for every dimwitted impious fool she has the misfortune to come into contact with sustains me on cold nights.
YES! I saw someone complaining that they’d reduced her to an ‘uptight anorexic’ and I was like ‘what, she is a passionate, determined woman and the only reason she looks humourless is because everyone around her is too stupid to joke with and she has got shit to do.’
Dan Jones’ work on the Plantagenets is being developed right now, and he starts off with the White Ship.
I cannot adequately express how excited I am to see this. It is currently up there with Benedict Cumberbatch as Richard III.
YAAAAASSSS!!!!!!!
I flew threw his book on them. So EXCITED!
The second one was just published in the US! I was going to buy it yesterday but it is $36. 🙁 Library, don’t fail me now.
This might be my next payday present to myself.
Also I definitely need a book club for history books. Like immediately.
Ditto, on both counts.
It’s checked out of the library, but I’m consoling myself with the thought that I actually have a lot on my current reading plate so there really isn’t any rush because there’s no way I could get to it in the next month or so.
So did Berould get his money, or…?
I REALLY HOPE he managed to wrest a few rubies off of some dying noblemen before their bodies were consigned to the waves
Alternately, being so close to shore, perhaps some of their filthy lucre would have washed up or been uncovered at low tide, and he could get his money back.
“Berould! What happened!”
“It’s all right, eveyrthing’s fine. Fine!”
“You mean there are other survivors?”
“What? No. But I did manage to snag the archdeacon’s jewel-encrusted hat before he sank.”
“…”
“He owed me money for three pork butts!”
Berould survived, in part because he was the only one dressed for the occasion. The nobles were Dressed to Impress. Berould had a wool fleece coat. Which fashion will improve your life expectancy when clinging to a broken-off spar in hypothermic conditions?
Top notch historical analysis. Making fun of historical figures is completely acceptable.
Though my mom made fun of a mummy in a museum yesterday, and I’m not so sure if that is.
It’s fine as long as she doesn’t mind getting cursed withe leprosy or something.
I err on the side of being nice to dead brown people who ended up in white conqueror’s museums. *whistles innocently*
She also referred to the museum as a thief’s den, so I think she’s okay if that’s the rationale.
—
Sent from Mailbox
Yes! Women & children first, dude. Back the hell off my lifeboat. Have you no shame? Go drown by that iceberg, I’ve got places to be.
Yeah I thought that’s what oars were for, beating off the survivors you *don’t* want (the men)
Charles the Cursed — succession crisis because they inbred themselves into puddles of drool, and more embarrassing because rather than fifty years of “The Anarchy,” you get a continent-spanning war over it. Talking about it is meaner, though, because poor Charles.
Was it a crisis, or was it MURDER???
IT WAS DEFINITELY NOT MURDER
Manslaughter? By reasons of stupidity?
It can only have been MURDER?? if that question is asked by Alan Cuming as he introduces a Masterpiece Mystery to us.
Never assign to malice what can be explained by sheer fuckwittery.
THE WHITE SHIP
YES
YES EVERYTHING IS YES
I feel like someone needs to get Kate Beaton on this stat.
OR, better yet, someone needs to set up a Kickstarter to fund Kate Beaton as The Toast’s Official Historical Illustrator in Residence who sees to all of the site’s historical illustration needs.
This will also contribute to the general streamlining of the internet by consolidating all the truly kickass people in one convenient spot.
Can one of the perks be that Kate Beaton draws the backer eating a piece of toast in the historical and/or fictional setting of the backer’s choice.
Uh I think my only objection to that is I would go broke contributing at that level multiple times just so I could have a whole set of them. Me eating toast with Eleanor of Aquitaine, me eating toast at the Defenestration of Prague, me, Tycho Brahe, and his moose all eating toast together and, I dunno, maybe Hermione is there too…
Getting increasingly upset that this is not the world I live in.
I could read about this kind of stuff all day.
Speaking of incomprehensible maritime disasters – just yesterday our afternoon walk took us past the historic plaque commemorating the sinking of the Victoria in London Ontario. Standing beside the Thames, (the dam is gone and the river lower now) – it’s hard to almost 200 people drowning in the shallows.
http://images.maritimehistoryofthegreatlakes.ca/5…
Talking of embarrassing succession crises, the debacle that launched the Scottish Wars of Independence deserves a mention. The crisis was prompted when King Alexander III drunkenly rode over a cliff on the way to visit his new wife, after leaving a party to celebrate the marriage. The only heir was the poor 3-year old Margaret of Norway, who died on the way over to Scotland, leaving things open for Edward I of England to start rampaging all over the place.
If history teaches us anything, it’s that it’s always a bad idea to drunk-dial significant others on a night out.
HE RODE OVER A CLIFF
I dunno I mean he didn’t manage to kill anyone else as well but that actually seems stupider than drowning because of wine?
That’s someone who needs to have a post-death chagrin party with Whats’shisname Tyrell.
The poor horse, it probably would have gotten him home safe if he’d just let it.
He’s the 13th-century Matthew Crawley! “Everything’s going so great for me & my fami- OOPS I’M DEAD NOW”
The YA novel “Quest for a Maid” involves this story and also witch sisters and trade routes. If you’re joesning for something Hild-lite, it’s the way to go.
Drinking is the only way you can get me on a boat. I would have been the best superstitious sailor because the sea is totally terrifying and mysterious to me. I would also totally get myself drowned trying to save everyone. Good thing I’m not sole heir to a throne.
I’m getting the sense of a theme in today’s Toast articles.
Also, the English Channel is not that wide. Yes, it’s a longer journey when people are rowing, but it’s not that long a time to have to put off your drinking party. Or, hey, let the sailors do their job, set sail across the Channel, and start drinking en route! You can still drink for 8-10 hours, but you’re making progress on getting home during that time.
Of course, then they could all fall off in a drunken stupor upon disembarking. So spending the voyage playing quoits or napping or something probably would have been a better plan.
I shall heretofore spend all voyages I undertake playing quoits.
I support and affirm your lifestyle choice.
I got a whole Master’s degree in history specifically to widen the field of 1000-years-dead people to laugh at.
I feel like the punchline to a lot of those jokes must just be, “The frickin’ PLAGUE. Ahahaha Whadda bunch of chumps.”
EDIT: To clarify, jokes about the middle ages, not Alcibiades. I can think of zero Alcibiades related plague-humor.
It’s okay. You get extra props for the reference to Tycho and his moose.
I’m particularly fond of the warship Vasa (http://www.vasamuseet.se/en/). Built to be the biggest, baddest battleship of the 1600s, it left the pier, sailed into the middle of Stockholm Harbor, and promptly flipped over and sank. The builders had misjudged the proportions, never having built anything that big before. Oops.
I learned from the Outlander books that one often got drunk on a boat so they’d pass out instead of being sick everywhere. I believe it.
Related: semantic differences between drowning because of wine and drowning in wine, and subsequent succession issues: discuss. In particular, George (Clarence) and his children and Henry VII and VIII.
Half empty lifeboats and hypothermia would not a swamping of Titanic lifeboats make.
Hapsburgs got nothing on this, not even with their chins and habits of incestuous marriage.
How many dadjokes do you think people made back in ye olden tymes about half their men being named William? A lot, I bet.
Back when I was still an early modernist, I came across a 16th-century family who had 5 sons, all of whom were named “Thomas.” You never know when one might die and thus fail to carry on the name of the patriarch…
She also referred to the museum as a thief's den, so I think she's okay if that's the rationale. —Sent from Mailbox
I would be big into reading something about the history of learning to swim. I mean it wasn’t across the board unheard of in antiquity, otherwise The Odyssey would have been all ‘sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy. Um. Then I guess he drowned. Wow, Muse, short song.’
Embarrassing succession crisis the second: when Princess Charlotte dies in childbirth and all of George III’s middle aged, profligate boys (minus the Prince of Whales and that whole pesky already being married thing) start scrambling to actually have legitimate babies. Never forget that the only reason for Victoria’s existence is that a far more awesome lady had to die first.
"history is the trade secret of SF writers"