Lore 273: A Royal Pain

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The discovery was completely unexpected.

In 1708, a construction crew began renovations on an old English manor known as Minster Lovell Hull.

As they worked, the men discovered something strange.

It was a secret panel in one of the walls, which, when opened, revealed a hidden vault.

And not just any vault, but a cell.

What was the giveaway, you ask?

Well, that would be the human skeleton sitting upright at a small table with the remains of a dog lying at its feet.

The grisly scene remained only for a moment.

As soon as the remains were exposed to fresh air, they disintegrated into dust.

Now, a sight like that would be terrifying enough on its own, but what made it all the more chilling was the house's history.

You see, it had once belonged to Lord Francis Lovell, one of the most politically powerful men in England.

At least, he had been, until the year 1487 when, following a defeat on the battlefield, he vanished without a trace.

Naturally, as soon as word of the skeleton got out, rumors began to circulate.

There were whispers that Francis Lovell had, after his disappearance, returned to Minster Lovell Hall to hide in the secret room.

But when the servant feeding him him perished, the disgraced lord was left to die a slow and agonizing death of starvation, trapped within his own walls.

And to be fair, historians aren't so sure about that last one.

Most say that following the battle, he more than likely fled to Scotland or drowned while trying to cross the River Trent.

The truth is, we'll never know exactly what happened to the lost lord.

The bones in the vault were never identified, and no other trace of Lovell has ever been found.

But when a man as high high on the political ladder as Lord Francis Lovell mysteriously disappears, it's bound to garner a few tall tales-tales that grow and twist and take on lives of their own.

Lovell wasn't the first powerful man to be rewritten by folklore, and he wouldn't be the last.

But if a lord can give rise to such a legend, then what about a king?

I'm Aaron Mankey, and this is lore.

In 2014, the late great sci-fi writer Ursula Kayla Gwynn delivered a now famous speech at the National Book Awards.

We live in capitalism, she said.

Its power seems inescapable.

So did the divine rights of kings.

Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.

It's an inspiring reminder that the systems dictating our lives may be more changeable than we think.

On the other hand, if you're a ruler desperate to stay in power, that's not so much inspiring as it is threatening.

Threatening enough, in fact, that for thousands of years, those in charge have learned a very specific bit of mythology, that the power wielded by kings, emperors, and pharaohs is not a human power at all.

It began way back at the start of human civilization when early hunter-gatherer societies were led by shamans.

And these shamans, well, they just so happened to be the only qualified intermediaries between physical and spiritual realms.

In other words, being the head honcho meant connection to the divine.

This idea that political power is linked to the gods took off like wildfire.

And it's easy to understand why.

After all, if you can convince your subjects that your rule is divinely ordained, then to challenge your leadership is nothing short of insulting the gods themselves.

Pretty convenient way to avoid political opposition, right?

Now, this belief took different forms in different cultures.

In some, they claimed that their rulers literally were gods.

In ancient Egypt, for example, the pharaohs were believed to be gods in human form, often associated with the falcon-headed god Horus.

In the ancient Iranian Zoroastrian religion, the king was believed to be a direct descendant of the sky god Ahura Mazda.

And in the Greco-Roman period, rulers were often high priests while alive and became deified after death.

In other cultures, the kings weren't considered gods themselves per se, but rather formally vouched for by the gods.

Think of it like a presidential endorsement from the Great Beyond.

Everywhere from Malaysia to the Philippines to South India and to ancient Jewish Israelites had some version of this idea.

If you were a king, it meant the gods had specifically chosen you to be an agent of their will.

A perfect example of this type of godly cheerleading can be found in an ancient Chinese concept called the mandate of heaven.

In this case, heaven itself would bless the emperor's authority, which is not to say that he could do whatever he wanted.

No, if the emperor were to behave poorly or fail to maintain order, heaven would be just as fast to yank that blessing away.

Emperors in Japan also followed a mandate of heaven, but theirs was a little more hardcore.

The right to rule in Japan was said to come from Amaterasu, the Shinto sun goddess, and unlike in China, the power she granted was absolute.

That's right, no punishment for misbehaving this time.

Anything the emperor said or did was considered divine law.

It sounds a little dodgy, in a dictator kind of way, right?

Well, luckily, Japanese emperors were a bit like the British royal family today.

That is, they were more mascots than political powers.

Regents, high-ranking ministers, and sometimes even retired emperors were the ones who are really calling the shots.

And the Roman Catholics had their own version of divine mandate called the two swords, in which sword number one was the pope and sword number two was royalty, the former to rule in matters of the spirit and the latter in matters of the earth.

But all of that changed during the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century.

Now, get ready, because a hot new way to be king just dropped, and it's called the divine right of kings.

You may have heard of it.

In fact, I know you have because I just mentioned mentioned it in that Ursula K.

Le Guin quote just a couple of minutes ago.

And the divine right of kings flipped everything on its head.

Suddenly, instead of a ruler rising to power and then the gods deciding to click the donate now button, kings were priest-selected before they were even born.

But not by God.

No, humans selected a baby that would be king.

And then it was God's job to sort of plop a divine ruler's spirit into that random baby's body.

So say that you were King Charles I of England and your wife Henrietta was pregnant.

You knew that child would be king, and God knew it too.

So he'd come and place a king's soul inside the infant in preparation.

Then when little Charles II is born, he arrives already pre-approved by God and as such isn't subject to any earthly authority, not the will of the people, the aristocracy, the church, or any other realm.

With this handy little arrangement, anyone who attempts to dethrone the king or restrict the monarchy's power isn't just rising against the state.

Oh no, in the eyes of the law, they would be rising against God himself.

From the very beginning of time, royals have preyed upon superstition and faith to maintain their control.

They've invented elaborate initiation rituals, developed intricate rules around who could and could not inherit the throne.

Countless stories, all invented to grip tightly to one tenuous resource, power.

And if the legends are to be believed, sometimes they refuse to relinquish that power, even

in death.

The young couple was sick of central London's grime, sick of the dampness, sick of the constant smell of smoke that clung perpetually to their clothes and hair.

And so, when they saw that a small suburban villa was available to purchase near Kensington Gardens, they jumped at the opportunity.

The sprawling meadows and verdant treetops encircling Nottingham House, as the property was called, was like something out of a dream.

And so in the year 1689, they bought it and began renovating it to their needs.

I can't help but wonder if they still would have moved in had they known the truth, that their new home would one day become one of the most haunted houses in the world and that they would be the ones who haunt it.

Okay, I admit this isn't just any young couple.

Their names were William III and Mary II and earlier that same year they had been crowned king and queen of England, ruling the nation side by side.

And so when they began to renovate the villa, we aren't just talking about a mere screened-in porch renovation.

No, Mary and William began transforming the humble property into a sprawling marvel they called Kensington Palace.

Now, just because William and Mary shared the same throne didn't mean their marriage was perfect.

Far from it.

William was famously irritable and difficult, while Mary had spent the last decade mourning two lost pregnancies.

In a heartbreaking letter to a friend who had also lost a baby, Mary wrote, If one could hinder oneself setting one's heart too much upon those we love, we should be the readier to die.

But ready or not, Mary sadly wouldn't be left with a choice because in 1694, at only 32 years old, the queen perished of smallpox right there in her bedchamber at Kensington Palace.

She never did produce an heir.

William was left alone and bereft.

But if the stories are true, the widower king may have been less alone than he thought.

You see, the ghost of Queen Mary II is said to still haunt the queen's apartments at Kensington Palace where she died, weeping through the cavernous halls for the children she never had and for her short, brutal life.

The years went on.

New royals moved into the palace and lived and loved and ruled and eventually died.

With each new generation, the house shape shifted to accommodate the ever-changing family.

It became more and more lavish under each new inhabitant.

The property gardens, for example, were designed for Queen Caroline.

Queen Victoria spent her childhood there.

When Victoria left to live in Buckingham Palace, Kensington was transformed into a home for minor royals, including Victoria's daughter Princess Louise, and in more modern times Princess Diana and even the Prince and Princess of Wales, William and Kate.

But despite the constantly changing residence, it seems that the house never forgot a single one.

Because while Queen Mary II's ghost may have been the first, it would be far from the last.

Royals, it seems, just don't know how to step down.

Take the haunting of George II.

He took the throne in June of 1727 upon the death of his father King George I, a father whose funeral he flat out refused to attend, mind you.

Both Georges were born in Hanover, Germany, you see, and in an attempt to win over England's trust as a true Englishman, George II abstained from attending his predecessor's German funeral.

And apparently, it worked.

Coupled with his ability to speak English, something that his father had never fully learned, George II immediately won the loyalty and respect of the English people.

But you know what they say?

You can take the king out of Hanover, but you can't take Hanover out of the king.

In 1760, George II was sitting by the window at Kensington Palace, awaiting news from his native Hanover.

As he gazed forlornly out at the grounds, he asked why news had not come.

But before receiving an answer, the king suffered an acute aortic dissection and died on the spot.

To this day, King George II's phantom-like face has been seen hovering at that very same window.

Some witnesses even report hearing the voice of King George II asking in his German accent, why don't they come?

For ghost number three, we have Princess Sophia, born in 1777, the 12th out of 15 children born from King George III and Queen Charlotte.

And if you're a Bridgerton fan, yes, that George and Charlotte.

Now, you'd think that being one of 15 kids would have left Sophia sorely lacking for a lone time, but in reality, the princess lived an incredibly sheltered life.

A king and queen were overly protective of their daughters, you see, and so refused to let Sophia and her sisters marry or even see suitors when they came of age.

The princess lived out her life sequestered with her family, her only moment of escaping being a secret affair with a general that resulted in an illegitimate child taken from her at birth.

As Sophia got older, she began to lose her eyesight, first in her right eye and then in her left.

By 1838, she was only able to see lights when she was outdoors.

And it may sound like a sad life, but by all accounts, Sophia was still a cheerful woman.

She loved to spend many happy hours behind her spinning wheel, although even that she had to give up when she went fully blind.

At least for a while.

After her death in 1848, people at Kensington Palace began to hear a strange sound.

It hummed through the dark, the unmistakable music of a bobbin whirring, a treadle pedaling up and down, a spoked wheel turning on its creaking axle.

Yes, there was no mistaking it.

These were the sounds of a spinning wheel at work.

Except for one small problem.

There was no longer a spinning wheel anywhere at the palace.

Whether spinning yarn, gazing out a window, or softly weeping in their bedchambers, the ghosts of Kensington Palace seemed gentle enough.

Maybe it's the serene nature of the country house that keeps them so docile, that very trait that had drawn Mary and William to it in the first place, all those generations ago.

But not all royal ghosts are quite so friendly.

In fact, some of them are downright murderous.

With a name like Forkbeard, the man might sound like a bloodthirsty villain from a fairy tale.

But this was no mere fairy tale.

It was Denmark in the year 987, and Sven Haraldsson, more commonly known as Sven Forkbeard due to his distinctive long cleft beard, would have made any fairytale villain seem about as threatening as a rubber ducky.

This guy was a violent warlord, with no pity for the lives he crushed beneath his feet.

To start, Forkbeard made his grand debut by overthrowing his own father to steal the Danish throne.

But Denmark wouldn't be enough for him.

Soon he teamed up with Norway to invade England too, only backing off when the English king Æthelred II bribed him with £16,000.

At first, the bribe worked, but then Forkbeard attacked England again, and once more King Æthelred paid the Vikings to leave, this time increasing the bribe to £24,000.

Now, if you've ever trained a dog or a cat, you'll know the quickest way to solidify a habit is to pair it with a tasty little treat.

And if you want that pet to stop a bad behavior, well, you probably don't want to give them a heaping pound of cash every time they do it.

Suffice to say, the Vikings only doubled down.

As a result, King Ethelred believed the only way to get rid of them would be to casually massacre every single Danish person in England, men, women, and children alike.

The incident, which took place on November 13th of 1002, became known as the St.

Bryce's Day Massacre, and one of the victims unfortunately happened to be Sven Forkbeard's sister, Gunnhilde.

Up until this point, the Viking campaigns against the English had mostly been raids, but now Forkbeard was thirsty for revenge.

It was time to make England pay for his sister's death.

His attacks quickly developed into a full-scale military operation with the objective of seizing power from King Æthelred II once and for all.

The Vikings pillaged and plundered without mercy on a scale that history had never seen before.

Oh, and by the way, King Ethelred had botched things so badly that he would officially go down in history as, and I quote, Ethelred the Unready.

Seriously, William the Conqueror, Peter the Great, Ivan the Terrible, and then you have Ethelred the Unready?

It's pretty embarrassing, right?

Anyway, on Christmas Day of 1013, Æthelred fled into exile, and the English earls declared Sven Forkbeard the first Danish king of England.

Little did he know, only 40 days later, on February 3rd of 1014, he would be dead.

Not in battle, mind you, nor at the hands of a political rival.

No, the great King Forkbeard would die in his sleep.

The official explanation was that the king had perished from injuries he'd received after a recent fall from his horse.

Alternatively, some historians believe that he may have died of a stroke or apoplexy.

But there is another explanation for his death.

Some insist that the king was murdered by a ghost.

And as it turns out, this ghost had a pretty solid motive.

You see, in his bloody campaign for power, Forkbeard made one vital mistake.

He threatened to burn the township of Boderixworth, known today as Bury St.

Edmunds, if they didn't pay their taxes to their new Danish king.

Not only would he set fire to the buildings, but Forkbeard swore to kill all of the town's priests as well.

According to legend, one individual had a teensy problem with that plan, and that person was none other other than Saint Edmund himself, a former English king who also just so happened to be dead.

145 years prior to Forkbeard's death, Saint Edmund had been bound to a tree, shot full of arrows, and beheaded, all for refusing to renounce his faith.

And who was behind this horrific deed?

Why, the Vikings, of course.

Between his grisly end, his country being overtaken by the very people who tortured and killed him, and Forkbeard's latest threats, it's no wonder that St.

Edmund wasn't exactly resting in peace.

Which brings us back to the night of February the 3rd.

As the story goes, St.

Edmund's spirit visited a monk named Aylwyn and delivered a very clear message.

If Forkbeard didn't withdraw his threats, he would be met with divine vengeance.

Aylwin hastened to the court to deliver the news, only to be ignored and tossed out.

It was time to celebrate Candlemas, after all.

This was a time for partying, not for politics.

Like any good Viking king, Forkbeard spent the evening reveling and drinking until finally he stumbled back to his bedchambers to retire.

But as he arrived at his bed, his face suddenly filled with terror and he cried out, Help me, my soldiers, help me.

Behold, Saint Edmund comes to kill me.

No matter how the Vikings tried, they couldn't see the ghost.

The king continued crying for help, but it was no use.

St.

Edmund ran the horrified man through with a phantom spear, leaving Forkbeard writhing in pain until twilight arrived.

And with it, the king's death.

Forkbeard's life makes quite a tale.

A bloody rise to power.

War and rivalry, and of course, a hubristic downfall right when our tragic protagonist reaches the top.

Toss a vengeful spirit into the mix, and you've got yourself a pretty incredible story for your next cocktail party.

And that may be all that it is.

A story.

Not Forkbeard's life, mind you.

All of that is true.

But the idea that he was murdered by a ghost?

Yeah, I think it's safe to say that that's a fanciful bit of fiction.

But the burning question is, why?

Why pretend that the king was killed by a spectral assassin?

And why St.

Edmund specifically?

Well, some historians believe that the ghost story had very little to do with Forkbeard at all, and more to do with Saint Edmund.

You see, by creating a tale in which the martyred king defeats a terrible villain like Forkbeard, it instantly venerates him as a hero worthy of sainthood, a classic myth of good vanquishing over evil.

But there's another more sinister explanation as well, because you know what else a ghost murderer can be?

The perfect alibi.

That's right, other historians have suggested that the story of Aywin the Monk's warning provided the perfect cover for a very real murder to take place.

Most point the finger at Forkbeard's daughter-in-law, who he had recently accused of treason, but honestly, I'm sure this charmer had no shortage of enemies.

Whoever the culprit was, Aylwin's vision provided the perfect opportunity.

Now, whatever happened to the king could be blamed on the ghost of Saint Edmund.

Whether as a tool to venerate a saint or acquit a sinner, it just goes to show that a story is a powerful thing.

Almost as powerful as a ghost with a spear.

But hey, maybe that's why they call them spirits.

Even death itself, it seems, can't give orders to a king.

From royal revenants to Princess Poltergeists, there is certainly no shortage of undead English monarchs.

And with so many generations inhabiting the same castles, it's no wonder these places fill up with ghosts like a cursed family reunion.

Lucky for you, we've saved the busiest royal haunt for last.

Stick around through this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.

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Name a castle, any castle.

Now, sure, you may have thought of Edinburgh Castle or the Winter Palace, but I'm willing to bet that most of you found a single name leaped to mind before all the rest.

A little place called Windsor Castle, the most famous and arguably the most haunted of them all.

Windsor Castle boasts the distinction of being the largest and oldest continuously inhabited castle in the entire world.

Located in Windsor, England, just south of the River Thames, royals have been calling those stone walls home since the not-so-recent year of 1070.

Over nearly a thousand years, Windsor Castle has housed 39 kings and queens of England, not to mention their sprawling courts, families, staff, and advisors.

But Windsor isn't only a house, it's also a tomb.

Eleven British monarchs are buried right in the castle's own chapel, and some of them, it seems, refuse to stay put.

We all remember King Henry VIII of Six Wives fame, right?

You know, divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.

Yeah, that charmer.

What you might not know is that according to some historians, Henry's transformation into a tyrannical temperamental monarch may have been caused by a jousting accident, an accident that, if the legends are true, continued to torment him even after death.

The dangerous sport, in which two mounted horsemen run full speed at each other with lances, was not for the faint of heart, but none of that would stop Henry, who absolutely loved to joust.

On January 24th of 1536, Henry was competing against Sir Norris, a close friend of Anne Boleyn's, when the unthinkable occurred.

Henry charged Norris Norris but missed his target, hitting Norris's saddle instead.

The force of the impact flung Henry from his mount and then his horse toppled, crushing the king beneath its full incredible weight.

It's thought that Henry suffered a traumatic brain injury that day, explaining his erratic behavior to come.

Not only that, but the accident re-injured an old leg wound from a previous jousting accident.

The wound then became infected, causing ulcers which oozed pus and blood, along with a foul smell that repulsed everyone around him.

It left him writhing in pain for the final decade of his life, and maybe, if the stories are true, even longer.

Henry VIII died in 1547 at the age of 55, but many witnesses have reported seeing his ghost wafting through the stone corridors of Windsor Castle.

He seems despondent and agitated, pacing furiously and shouting.

But the most chilling apparition of all may not be a sight, but a sound.

The shuddering noise of Henry's ghost wheezing in pain as he drags his horrid, festering leg behind him.

And it seems that hauntings must run in the family, because King Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn's daughter has a habit of appearing spectrally throughout the castle.

Born in 1533, Elizabeth ascended to the throne in 1558 at the age of 25 and ruled until her death in 1603.

Elizabeth was much more than a politician.

She was highly educated and intelligent, plus a multilinguist, a master calligrapher, and a talented musician.

She even patronized artists such as William Shakespeare himself.

Given Elizabeth's love of the arts, it's no surprise that her ghost has frequently been spotted in the royal library, where she spent so much time as queen.

Palace guards have reported seeing Elizabeth's ghost perusing the bookshelves or reclining in the chairs, reading, of course.

Others have heard the echo of her high heels clicking on the library floors.

In one story that took place in 1897, a lieutenant of the Grenadier Guards spotted a woman dressed in black pass him and turn a corner in the library.

Now, he'd seen plenty of royal portraits and couldn't help but notice how much this mysterious lady resembled the late Elizabeth I.

Naturally, he followed her, but she was nowhere to be found.

Stranger still, the corner she had turned down didn't lead to any door that the woman would have used to leave the library.

And when he asked a nearby attendant, the lieutenant was told that he'd been the only one to enter the library all that afternoon.

Honestly, as a book nerd, this kind of sounds like an ideal afterlife.

If death equals endless library time, please count me in.

Now, it hasn't just been soldiers and palace visitors to see Elizabeth's ghost.

Bonafide members of the royal family themselves have spotted her too.

At the start of World War II, King George VI reportedly glimpsed her multiple nights in a row.

Both King George III and King Edward VII saw a woman they believed to be Elizabeth dressed in, you guessed it, a black gown.

In fact, King George III supposedly even spoke to her, a rather noble conversation in which she declared herself to be, and I quote, married to England.

To be fair though, George III may not have been the most reliable witness.

Now, Bridgerton fans will know this, but for the rest of you, King George famously suffered from debilitating mental illness throughout his entire life, earning him the cruel nickname the Mad King.

And by the way, yes, this is the same King George George notorious for losing the colonies during the American Revolution.

And of course, for singing an epic banger of a comedic number in Act 1 of Hamilton.

A busy guy, I know.

George III became King of England in 1760, and his life was rife with physical and mental suffering alike.

Most notorious were the king's bouts of mania, in which he would babble uncontrollably for hours until hoarse or foaming at the mouth.

His illness also caused him to behave wildly and inappropriately, sometimes to the point of violence.

Despite seeking medical care, George's illness was never cured or fully diagnosed, and so he spent the final 10 years of his life isolated in his room at Windsor Castle.

And yes, I'm sure you can guess where this is going.

He has haunted that room ever since.

According to one tale, the hauntings began soon after the king died.

While his body lay in state, the palace guards were passing the king's chamber window when the commanding officer spotted the king himself standing as he always did, awaiting his afternoon salute.

Operating on instinct, this had been a daily routine after all, the officer gave the order, eyes right.

His soldiers obeyed, turning to look, and all watched in awe as the phantom figure accepted and then returned their salute.

To this day, King George's ghost is still seen haunting the apartment in which he was restrained, where, when alive, he passed countless hours alone, playing the harp and hoping for reprieve from the prison of his own mind.

Perhaps the ill King George, the brilliant Queen Elizabeth, and the injured Henry VIII have all found some solidarity and friendship in one another's company.

At least, I hope so.

After all, forever is an awfully long time to be stuck with the same set of roommates.

This episode of Lore was produced by me, Aaron Mankey, with writing by Jenna Rose Nethercott, research by Jamie Vargas, and music by Chad Lawson.

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Just search for Lore Podcast, all one word, and then click that follow button.

And when you do, say hi.

I like it when people say hi.

And as always,

thanks for listening.

Take advantage of the EV lease incentive and leave the ordinary behind with an epic lineup of electric and hybrid vehicles at the ready.

And right now, qualified lessees of Dodge Charger Daytona, Jeep Grand Cherokee 4xE, and Wrangler 4xE may be eligible for a 7,500 EV lease incentive through Stellantis Financial Services to be factored into their lease calculation.

When leased through Stellantis Financial Services, Services, not all lessees will qualify.

This incentive is offered by a third party as a cap cost reduction and is subject to change without notice.

Lessee cannot claim ETH incentive on personal tax return.

Consult a tax professional for details and eligibility requirements.

Restrictions apply.

Contact your dealer for details.

Offer ends 930.