Philaretos the Merciful
Philaretos, Byzantine nobleman, 702–92
The life of Philaretos was written by his grandson, the monk Niketas of Amneia, as a Byzantine version of the biblical story of Job. Philaretos comes across as a mild-mannered and temperate person who shared food and money with the poor, even when he was down on his luck. His generous distribution of his possessions caused many people, including his wife and three children, to consider him a complete and utter fool.
Mary the Mermaid
Mary, queen of Scotland, 1542–87
After the death of her first husband, Francis II of France, Mary was dubbed ‘the White Queen’ because, as prescribed by French custom, she wore only white for six weeks. A longer-lasting epithet, however, was that of ‘the Mermaid’ –a nickname that, in the sixteenth century, enjoyed an intriguing double meaning.
With her oval face, pale complexion and hazel eyes, Mary was an attractive teenager – so attractive that the courtier Pierre de Brantome wrote that ‘Her beauty shone like the light at mid-day’ As she grew older, she grew more handsome, and the tall, elegant, auburn-haired queen who could dance with such grace was so admired by all for her looks that she was deemed as beautiful and seductive as a mermaid. However, it was not long before some were using the name ‘Mermaid’ as a term of contempt rather than approval.
Mary married her second cousin, Henry Stewart, Lord Darn-ley, pronouncing him the ‘lustiest and best proportionit lang man that sche had seen’. Darnley’s attributes were many – he was tall, slender and an accomplished musician; but so too were his vices – he was arrogant and addicted to sex and the bottle. Mary, looking for solace, met and fell in love with James Hepburn, the fourth earl of Bothwell.
Whether the two were directly involved with the death of Darnley, who was found smothered on the lawn outside his lodgings, has never been proved. There were many, however, who were sure of their guilt and placards soon appeared on Edinburgh’s streets, depicting the hare – Bothwell’s crest – surrounded by daggers, and Mary as a mermaid. Here the image of the mermaid was being used not in reference to beauty but in its other capacity as a common symbolic representation of a prostitute.
Charles the Merry Monarch
Charles II, king of England, 1630–85
Although decidedly melancholic during his period of exile and susceptible to bouts of pessimism in his later life, Charles was renowned for his vivacious lifestyle and good humour, and his enjoyment of active pursuits borders on the legendary. He went for early morning swims, played tennis well into his fifties, enjoyed croquet and bowls in the park, loved hunting and adored going to the races. But his real passion, the thing that made him almost constantly merry, was women.
Barbara Palmer (later the duchess of Cleveland), Moll Davies, Winifred Wells (who we are told had the ‘carriage of a goddess and the physiognomy of a dreamy sheep’), Elizabeth Farley, Mary Knight, Mrs Jane Roberts (daughter of a clergyman), Hortense Mancini, Louise de Querouaille (whom he found it impossible to restrain himself from fondling in public) and the irrepressible Eleanor the WITTY were just some of those who helped to satisfy the king’s immense sexual appetite. His fourteen acknowledged illegitimate children and at least thirteen mistresses were fodder for the wits of the day, including the dukes of Rochester and Buckingham – the former dubbing him a ‘mutton-eating king’, the latter referring to him as a man who could ‘sail a yacht, trim a barge and loved ducks, tarts and buttered buns’. Charles similarly became known as ‘Old Rowley’ after a stallion of that name in the royal stud noted for its many offspring.
Other nicknames conferred upon Charles alluded to his appearance and political status. Charles’s natural complexion was so dark that his mother jokingly wrote in a letter that she had given birth to a black baby. Later the soubriquets ‘the Blackbird’ and ‘the Black Boy’ were used to describe him, and in England today there are still a few pubs named after him. Parliamentarians, meanwhile, who had dubbed his father Charles the LAST MAN, persevered in their attack on the monarchy by styling Charles ‘the Son of the Last Man’.
The poet John Wilmot, second earl of Rochester, had earlier characterized his good friend the king as a ‘merry monarch, scandalous and poor’. In ‘The King’s Epitaph’ Rochester continued with his gentle mockery, writing:
Here lies a great and mighty king
Whose promise none relies on;
He never said a foolish thing
Nor ever did a wise one.
David the Merry Monarch
David Kalakaua, king of Hawaii, 1836–91
Fortified beforehand with milk and bowlfuls of the island speciality of poi, King David could consume vast quantities of his favourite tipple of rum without it showing. In this happy state he would then play cards and invariably win, even when the odds seemed stacked against him. Once, for example, he was playing poker against a sugar baron. The baron placed his four aces on the table and claimed the large pot of money. David, however, who held four kings, insisted that four kings plus his own royal person made five kings, thus beating the baron’s hand.
Considerable quantities of food and drink were never far from the king on his 1881 royal circumnavigation of the world, during which he visited, among other places, the United States, Japan, China, Egypt and the great capitals of Europe. A man of a naturally convivial disposition, David was feted every step of the way and was never merrier.
Things were less jolly for him in 1887, however, when a bloodless coup relegated him to the role of figurehead and eventually led to his retirement in a boathouse among some duck ponds in Waikiki. When he died during a second trip to California, the press aptly dubbed him ‘the Last King of Paradise’.
Sigurd the Mighty
Sigurd I, earl of Orkney, d.892
Norse sagas agree that Sigurd and the Hebridean Viking ruler Thorstein the RED (see COLOURFUL CHARACTERS) were the mightiest warriors of their day. Together they attacked any ships that happened to pass by and made furious raids on the Scottish mainland. Mighty he may have been in war, but the manner of Sigurd’s death would have been the last any warrior would have wished. We are told that he cut off the head of an earl called Maelbrigte whom he suspected of treachery, and strapped it to his saddle as a trophy. But as he cantered around, triumphantly showing off his prize, a tooth of the noble Maelbrigte scratched him on the leg and Sigurd died soon thereafter from blood poisoning.
Christina the Miracle of Nature
Christina, queen of Sweden, 1626–89
Neither of her parents thought there was anything miraculous in Christina. Having been promised by soothsayers that she was going to give birth to a boy, Queen Maria Eleanora of Brandenburg refused to have anything to do with her daughter, and left her in the care of her father, King Gustav ‘the Lion of the North’. The nonplussed Gustav treated her like a boy, taking her on military expeditions and introducing her, at close range, to the sound of cannon fire. When Christina was six, Gustav was killed in battle, and his widow confined herself to her bedroom, reportedly with the king’s heart in a golden container. Christina’s education then began in earnest.
Christina the Miracle of Nature
She studied twelve hours a day, becoming fluent in five languages, an expert in horsemanship and an accomplished historian, reading Thucydides and Polybius in the original Greek. She studied astronomy, music and literature and oversaw the creation of the nation’s first newspaper. Her passion for philosophy resulted in her inviting Rene Descartes to Stockholm, summoning him at five o’clock in the morning for learned conversations. Many of her adoring subjects deemed such intellectual brilliance as nothing short of miraculous.
Indifferent to the love of her people or notions of patriotic duty, however, Christina stepped down after ten years of rule, sending shockwaves coursing through a bewildered nation. Publicly Christina claimed that she was simply not strong enough to be queen, but privately the real reasons were her aversion to marriage (on the grounds that it was
a form of slavery) and her secret conversion from Lutheranism to Roman Catholicism. On the very day of her abdication she disguised herself as a man and left Sweden for Rome, never to return. The pope initially welcomed her but over time distanced himself from a scandalously independent woman who spent more time at the opera than at church, and who openly laughed at his cardinals.
Catherine the Modern Messalina see Catherine the GREAT
Alfonso the Monk see NOBLE PROFESSIONS
Ramiro the Monk
Ramiro II, king of Aragon, d.1154
When ‘Alfonso the Battler’ died in 1134, the kingdom of Aragon fell into a panic. The Battler’s will stated that his entire kingdom should go to the military Orders of the Holy Land, but the Aragonese nobles were having none of this and elected his brother Ramiro as king. Ramiro, who happened to be a Benedictine monk, accepted the crown, stating that he did so ‘not out of any desire for honour or ambition or arrogance but only because of the needs of the people and the tranquility of the church’.
Ramiro the Monk then proceeded to marry Agnes of Poitiers, daughter of Duke William IX of Aquitaine. The next year Agnes gave birth to a girl, Petronila, whose hand Ramiro immediately offered to Ramon Berenguer IV, count of Barcelona. With the dynasty secured after his three-year secular adventure, Ramiro returned to his monastery, where he died in 1154.
Monsieur Veto see the BAKER AND THE BAKER’S WIFE
Charles the Most Christian King see Charles the BALD
Maria the Mother of Her Country
Maria Theresa, archduchess of Austria and queen of Hungary and Bohemia, 1717–80
When she came to the Austrian throne in 1740, Maria Theresa found the national coffers nearly empty, the army savagely depleted, and her own knowledge of state affairs limited at best. Most of the first fifteen years of her reign, therefore, were spent learning statecraft, implementing tax reforms and doubling the size of a military that saw considerable action against her main adversary, Frederick the GREAT. In 1763 Maria Theresa signed a treaty that ended all hostilities and recognized Prussian possession of Silesia.
Two years later, however, the sudden death of her husband, Francis Stephen – a man whom she truly loved – turned her life upside down. From then on, Maria Theresa was alone. And so, relying on her maternal instincts, she treated her nation as an only child.
First, she arranged marriages for her real children in the best interests of Austria; a major coup was the union between her teenage daughter Marie and Louis XVI (see the BAKER AND THE BAKER’S WIFE). Next, she bolstered the nation’s cultural programmes by becoming a visible as well as a vocal patron of Austria’s arts and sciences. Third, she reformed what she deemed to be a nation in moral delinquency, abolishing the gaming laws as well as the right of sanctuary. Meanwhile, her notorious ‘Sittenkommission, sometimes referred to as the ‘chastity police’, made strict demands on her people: a woman baring an ankle could end up in jail, and a woman walking unescorted through the streets of Vienna at night risked being sent to a rehabilitation camp for prostitutes.
Absolute and authoritarian she may have been, but Maria Theresa was a generous and loving mother figure to her country and provided a solid platform for the continuation of the Habsburg Dynasty into the modern age.
Mrs Brown see Victoria the WIDOW OF WINDSOR
Mrs Freeman see QUEEN SARAH
Mrs Morley see QUEEN SARAH
[N]
Kamehameha the Napoleon of the Pacific see Kamehameha the GREAT
Henry the Navigator
Henry, prince of Portugal, 1394–1460
Henry’s nickname of ‘the Navigator’ was first given general currency in the nineteenth century. In a work of 1842 the German geographical statistician J. E. Wappaus describes the prince as ‘Heinrich der Seefahrer’. It is a misnomer. Henry was actually something of a landlubber, orchestrating the maritime expeditions of others rather than taking to the seas himself.
Henry, the fourth son of ‘John the Bastard’, was a pious man. He took a vow of celibacy, often wore a hair shirt and became governor of the military Order of Christ, a sort of Portuguese successor to the Knights Templar. He was also a rich man, controlling the nation’s tuna-fishing and soap-production industries. In the 1440s he used his wealth to sponsor a number of expeditions along the west coast of Africa in the hope that something might be discovered – perhaps even a new source of gold – that would make him even richer. To further his ambitions, he expanded his home in Sagres on the south-west tip of Portugal to include a shipbuilding yard and a centre devoted to cartography, navigation and exploration.
In 1441 his ship literally came in when a Portuguese vessel returned from sub-Saharan Africa with a small amount of gold. By 1452 African trade was flourishing and enough gold had been shipped back to fund several major journeys of exploration and bring about Portugal’s transformation from a small European country into a significant colonial empire.
Noble Professions
In addition to such luminaries as Albert the ASTROLOGER and FARMER GEORGE, several royals appear in the history books with a professional soubriquet. This appears to be an exclusively male preserve: for an act of domestic policy and for his hobby, for example, Louis XVI of France is known by the two nicknames ‘the Baker’ and ‘the Locksmith King’; Marie Antoinette, on the other hand, is popularly labelled, not for her actions or interests, but for her affiliation to her husband (see the BAKER AND THE BAKER’S WIFE). As can be seen by the sample below, not all nicknames are to be taken at face value.
Henry Beauclerc
Henry I, king of England, 1069–1135
As the youngest son of William the CONQUEROR, Henry was singled out for a life in the Church and accordingly was given an excellent education, leading to his nickname of ‘Beauclerc’, meaning ‘fine scholar’. With the convenient death of William RUFUS, and the absence abroad of his brother Robert CURTHOSE, the scholar exchanged the confines of his study for the court.
David the Builder
David, king of Georgia, 1073–1125
In 1121 David liberated the city of Tblisi after more than four centuries of Arab rule and, by means of a massive reconstruction policy, rapidly transformed it into a cosmopolitan metropolis at the centre of a trade route linking Europe with Asia.
Leo the Butcher
Leo II, Roman emperor of the East, c.401–74
Leo was a butcher of people rather than of meat for the table. This lifelong soldier showed his violent streak soon after his coronation by killing anyone who opposed his replacement of the patriarch called ‘Timothy the Cat’ with one disarmingly called ‘Timothy Wobble-Hat’. Later, he was not above butchering his own son Patricius to maintain power.
Michael the Caulker
Michael V, Byzantine emperor, d.c.1042
As far as we know, Michael never caulked in his life – not even once – since in an odd transplant of nomenclature he was nicknamed after his father’s profession, that of sealing ships’ hulls to ensure that they stayed watertight.
Denis the Farmer
Denis, king of Portugal, 1261–1325
The sheer energy of Denis’s agricultural reforms impressed his subjects into giving him the epithet ‘o Lavrador’. His greatest legacy was the planting of the ‘Pinhal de Leiria’, a pine forest protecting fields of crops from advancing coastal sands.
Alfonso the Monk
Alfonso IV, king of Asturias and Leon, d.933
Called to the monastic life, Alfonso abdicated the throne in favour of his brother Ramiro. Within a few years, however, secular temptations proved too great, and when Ramiro was away on a raiding expedition, Alfonso slung his habit to one side and tried to seize the throne. The attempted coup failed, and Alfonso was blinded.
Sancho the Settler
Sancho I, king of Portugal, 1154–1211
Wars with the Moors had left much of twelfth-century Portugal a wasteland. Sancho ‘o Povoador’ spent much time and effort in restoring and repopulating the country, especia
lly in the Algarve.
Robert the Steward
Robert II, king of Scotland, 1316–90
In the same vein as Michael the CAULKER (see above), Robert’s epithet alludes to his father’s profession rather than to his own. Robert was the son of Walter, the sixth high steward of Scotland, and of Margery, the daughter of Robert the BRUCE. His red eyes and feeble appearance gave rise to his other nickname, Auld Blearie’.
Theobald the Troubadour
Theobald, king of Navarre, 1201–53
Gertrude, Agnes and Margaret, Theobald’s three successive wives, all had their charms, but his one and only true love was Blanche of Castile, the wife of Louis the LION. Theobald ‘le Chansonnier’ composed dozens of songs in her honour, including one in which he writes of the values of platonic versus physical love by referring to an old hag’s crotch and his own pot belly.
Christian the Nero of the North see Christian the TYRANT
Ptolemy the New Lover of His Father see PTOLEMAIS KINGS
Napoleon the Nightmare of Europe see Napoleon the LITTLE CORPORAL
Jane the Nine Days’ Queen
Lady Jane Grey, queen of England, 1537–54
Just a few weeks before his own death Edward the JOSIAH OF ENGLAND (see ENGLISH EPITHETS) amended the will of his father BLUFF KING HAL, dismissing the claim of BLOODY MARY as the rightful heir to the English throne and nominating the fifteen-year-old Jane instead. The codicil proved to be the death warrant for the well-educated, well-mannered Protestant girl from Leicestershire.
On 10 July 1553 she was proclaimed queen. Genoese merchant Baptista Spinola happened to be in London on that day and saw England’s new monarch pass by. ‘She is very short and thin,’ he wrote, ‘but prettily shaped and graceful… She is now called Queen but is not popular, for the hearts of the people are with Mary, the Spanish Queen’s daughter… This lady is very heretical, and has never heard Mass.’ Nine days later and ‘Jane the Quene’ was deposed and became ‘Jana non Regina’. The following February she was executed for high treason.
The Good, the Bad, and the Unready: The Remarkable Truth Behind History's Strangest Nicknames Page 16