Status Updates From A Child's History of Englan...

Richard I apparently offed his rival-claimant nephew the same way his namesake would later dispose of the Princes in the Tower. That's just odd.

'[William 'Rufus' the Red] directed a goldsmith to ornament his father's tomb profusely with gold and silver. It would have been more dutiful in him to have attended the sick Conqueror when he was dying; but England itself, like this Red King who once governed it, has sometimes made expensive tombs for dead men whom it treated shabbily when they were alive.'

'We know of only one Norman who plainly told his master, the King, that he had come with him to England to do his duty as a faithful servant, and that property taken by force from other men had no charms for him. His name was Guilbert. We should not forget his name, for it is good to remember and to honour honest men.'

'As to the wretched Prince Alfred, he was stripped naked, tied to a horse, and sent away into the Isle of Ely, where his eyes were torn out of his head, and where in a few days he miserably died.' My mind for some reason made this into a fairytale punishment - cast the Isle of Ely as a terribly dense and brambly wilderness where Alfred, 'Rapunzel'-like, is blinded by thorns. Nope.

'...At twelve years old [King Alfred] had not been taught to read; although, of the four sons of King Ethelwulf, he, the youngest, was the favourite. But he had — as most men who grow up to be great and good are generally found to have had — an excellent mother; and, one day, this lady, whose name was Osburgha, happened, as she was sitting among her sons, to read a book of Saxon poetry.'