10 Kings who died in a gruesome way

Photo by Roma Kaiuk🇺🇦 on Unsplash

10 Kings who died in a gruesome way

Being on the throne was no small business. Many would covet being a king. It meant utmost wealth and power. The life of a king was like a rose plant. It was both rosy and thorny. Kings faced numerous attempts in their lives. Most kings ended up dying in a gruesome manner.

The king was supposed to protect and lead his people. That meant he was supposed to go and fight in wars. Wars were brutal. To defeat the enemy, the target was always the king. The assumption when the king was dead, the kingdom would follow.

Poisoning, beheading, and stabbing were some of the ways kings would meet their death. They were not only painful deaths but also demeaning. They sought to demoralize the subjects into submission to their enemies.

This list intends to look into the kings who died in a not-so-wonderful way.

1. Richard III

Photo King Richard III by anonymous-Wikimedia

died in the Battle of Bosworth Field in Leicestershire in 1485, aged 32.

His remains found in 2012 where he was buried, revealed the full extent of his injuries. The discovery showed that he was most likely killed by one heavy blow to the base of the skull, after he lost his helmet, from a weapon that may have been a halberd.

He had been injured 11 times. This indicated that he was attacked on all sides by several assailants. The injuries included a bone-shaving blow to the top of the skull and a small blow that pierced a hole in the top of his skull. An act of humiliation saw a thrust from a sword through his right buttock, piercing the inside of his pelvis.

2. Harold II

Harold II was the last Anglo-Saxon ruler of England. His death is one of the most famous, slightly exaggerated kingly deaths.

He was engaged in the Battle of Hastings in 1066 against William the Conqueror. The English historian Henry of Huntingdon reports shows that a shower of Norman arrows fell around Harold and one struck him in the eye. Events that followed after this are less documented.

Tales have it that Norman soldiers hacked at the prostrate king. They cut off his limbs and head and left him almost unidentifiable.

3. William the Conqueror

William, the first Norman king of England, died in bizarre circumstances. He fell against the pommel of his horse saddle during the Battle of Mantes in France in 1087, damaging his intestines.

He lost the of England crown to Henry Tudor Ahead of Richard III’s reburial.

At his funeral, things went from bad to worse for him. His body was too big to fit into his tomb. It was unceremoniously squashed in, only for his remains to burst open, letting out his insides and a foul smell into the church.

4. Henry I

King Henry I, by unknown artist-Wikimedia

Things didn’t work out great for William’s two sons, who took the throne. Henry, I died in 1135 from a bout of food poisoning after eating too many lamprey eels. Perhaps he got just what he deserved.  He had hastily positioned himself as king 35 years earlier, after his brother, William II,  was killed in a hunting accident in the New Forest.

5. Edmund Ironside

Great name, not so great death, albeit a disputed one. English king Edmund II met his demise in 1016, according to one chronicler, while sitting on the toilet. It was reported that an assassin hid among the feces below with a dagger or a spear, patiently waiting for the royal bottom to appear above.

6. Richard I

Photo King Richard I statue ( Richard Coeur de Lion / Richard the Lionheart –Wikimedia

The Lionheart loved a good scrap, and even he saw the irony in his demise when he was struck by an arrow in the shoulder while surveying the lay of the land during a siege at Château de Chalus-Chabrol in France in 1199.

The wound turned gangrenous and Richard was a goner. Sensing this, he called for the person behind the fatal crossbow shot to be brought before him. It turned out to be a young boy who claimed Richard had killed his father and two brothers.

As a final act of kindness, the king spared the boy’s life. However, one of the French mercenaries in his charge had the young assailant flayed and hanged once Richard was dead.

7. Edward II

Photo king Edward II by Thomas Pennant-Wikimedia

Easily the most ghoulish of royal deaths, probably because it’s a load of bunkum. But never let historical fact get in the way of a good tale, eh? Just ask Richard III.

Edward II was reportedly murdered at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire in 1327, where he was held captive after relinquishing his crown. There, he was killed by having a red hot poker inserted into his anus. ‘His screams could be heard for miles around,’ wrote one chronicler.

It makes for a great gruesome story, but several historians have since debunked it as a mere myth, and likely smearing of Edward II because of his homosexuality.

8. James I

Death by tennis. Not the usual way to spill royal blood, is it? But this is how the Scottish king met his end in 1437 when a gang of Scottish nobles stabbed him to death in a sewer drain after tracking him down to a monastery in Perth.

James had jumped in there through the floorboards in his bathroom, and could probably have made his way out the other end had he not ordered it to be sealed just a few days earlier because he kept losing his tennis balls in there. Game, set, and match.

9. James-II

Photo King James II by an unknown artist-Wikimedia

The son of tennis-loving James I didn’t have any better luck. He died during a siege at Roxburgh Castle in 1460 when one of his cannons, nicknamed ‘The Lion’, exploded and took him with it.

One report had it: As the King stood near a piece of artillery, his thigh bone was dug in two with a piece of wrongly framed gun that broke in a shooting. He was stricken to the ground and died hastily.

10. Edward V

King Edward V, by unknown artist-Wikimedia

12-year-old Edward V was king for just 86 days in 1483 after the death of his father, Edward IV. He was never crowned, mainly due to the machinations of his uncle Richard, the Duke of Gloucester. The Duke had been charged as Lord Protector after his brother’s death.

He protected his interests, taking the throne for himself after Edward V and his younger brother Richard, 9, were deemed to be illegitimate children.

The two brothers were put in the Tower of London, and then… they disappeared, sparking a 500-year-old murder mystery that still hasn’t been solved. Whatever happened to them, their not-so-cuddly-after-all uncle Richard made sure they didn’t get in the way of him becoming king.