As if the stories aren’t awesome enough, the presence of footnotes are sending me into paroxysms of joy. Can’t wait for #1.
I’m not sure that I’m seeing many of these as Villains. Vseslav of Polotsk seems to be guilty of little more than having a scary sounding name and being a thorn in his brothers’ sides. Marozia di Roma didn’t do much but sleep around a lot. Emperor Basil killed his lover in a jealous rage – which isn’t terribly nice, but hardly the peak of villainy.
I’m not complaining, mind. They’re each interesting, I’m just wondering if there’s some villainy that you forgot to mention or if you mistitled the thread, where you should have said “Six unfairly obscure medieval scalawags”.
Sage Rat, I must respectfully disagree. Of the three you mentioned, Vseslav was the least villainous, but like all Rurikid princes he spent most of his career leading armed insurrections, cleaving faces open with axes, and sacking cities. Him reputedly being a dark sorcerer is just the cherry atop that crazy sundae.
As for Marozia, let’s recap, shall we?
– Seduced one pope and bore a son by him
– Two seperate attempts to depose another pope, one successful, resulting in that pope’s murder
– Rigged elections for the next couples of popes
– Installed her own son as pope
– Became queen of Italy for like an hour and a half before being captured and imprisoned by her own son
And Basil killed his gay lover over shoes. Okay, okay, he was understandeably jealous, and probably worried that Michael was planning to replace him with Basiliskianos. But still, it takes some nerve to straight-up murder your lover, who also happens to be the emperor of Byzantium, ursurp his throne, bang his mistress AND his sister, and replace his dynasty with your own. Not to mention that Basil was about thisclose to having his son Leo put to death before his convenient death. I mean, if he’s a scalawag I’d hate to know what it takes to be a villain.
Are we still anticipating villain number one?
Well, you did kind of include the most salacious and tendentious details from pretty unreliable sources while leaving out the things we actually know about with confidence: Basil’s successful wars, his revival of Roman law, and for awhile, he even recovered Cyprus. It’s not for nothing that he began the dynasty frequently considered to be the golden age of Byzantium. Even the reign of Michael has been looking pretty good lately: once you do a little source criticism on the pro-Basil propaganda, you can see that he really was a pretty good ruler. Most of the telenovela stuff is, sadly, probably fiction.
Do you have the latest treatment by Tobias?
It is sad, isn’t it? I was reminded of this the other day reading about the HRE Henry IV. As noted in his wiki page, Henry’s great opponent ( well, one of several ) Rudolf of Rheinfelden was accused of kidnapping the emperor’s sister and basically extorting his way into the the title of Duke of Swabia. Except that the majority view these days is that was very likely Henrician propaganda and that whole episode never happened. Rudolf just appears to have been particularly well-qualified to be granted that post, which appears to have included taking in hand the occasionally turbulent Kingdom of Burgundy ( Rudolf had allodial lands straddling the border ).
It’s unfortunate that at least some of the fun stuff seems to be inventive fiction by folks with axes to grind. For example the story of Edward II taking a hot poker up the rear might be true ( it is mentioned in 5 of 25 or more sources ), but it also might be derived from later propaganda designed to blacken his name ( via its implication of anal rape and linking that with charges of sodomy ). Far to often it is simply impossible to tell.
Still, I think many of these sort of stories are too good not to repeat :).
My favorite is the one about how Cathrine the great died, the one involving the horse … definitely not true, but boy does it get repeated. 
The problem with much of this stuff is that it originates from folks with axes to grind of course - but it may be the best source on that person. An example of this is the Secret History of Procopius, which is an obvious hatchet job by someone with a deep loathing for the emperor Justinian - but the author is also the primary source for the same Justinian …
This is only true if you limit yourself to historiography that has been translated into English. The reign of Justinian is staggeringly well-attested. We have archaeology, an entire jurisprudential corpus, bureaucratic documents (including the de magistratibus of John the Lydian), the lost but often-quoted Syriac history of John of Ephesus, and the works of several other Greek historians typically not translated into English.
The Wars of Justinian is in most respects a much better source than the Secret History, even as far as Procopius goes.
I’m saying Procopius the author is the best source, which I don’t think is really questionable - not (lord forbid!) the Secret History. He was a direct eyewitness to Justinian’s reign, was secretary to Belisarius, and wrote extensively about it - including the Wars of Justinian you cite, among other works.
Sure, there are other sources, but none were so highly placed.
Okay, Maeglin, first of all, this is meant for entertainment, not to do a thorough and in-depth biography of each and every person. Hell, I tried to go more in-depth in other threads and no one cared. I’m doing this for the lulz, not for a dissertation. I’m a Doper, not a History Bitch.
Secondly, I never said anything about him being a terrible ruler. Please be re-reading my post. The most I said was that he rose from pretty much being a country bumpkin to being one of the most powerful men on Earth. You could do terrible things and still be a decent ruler (and in fact, some of the most gentle rulers were too weak to protect their people).
Thirdly, my sources include Luitprand of Cremona, Theophanes Continuatus, and Genesios. Fricking take it up with them, okay?
Highly placed, sure, but also full of lies and misrepresentations. We don’t presume that Procopius was the best source just because he was there, but because we can confirm much of what he says from other sources.
From your remark, it sounded like you were talking about a particular piece of historiography, not a person. You said that “stuff” originates from folks with axes to grind, but it may be the best source material, for example, the Secret History. Please forgive my confusion.
No prob - I guess my point is this: we know (assuming that Procopius is indeed the author of the Secret History) that he hated Justinian with a passion. He’s as biased as they come, capable of outrageous distortions. And fun!
Yet in his other works, he’s the best possible source for the reign - he was highly placed, an eyewitness, secretary to Belisarius, and a professional historian.
If even someone as (on paper) ‘good’ as Procopius could ‘be bad’, we have no idea how ‘bad’ any of the other sources are … about whom we know even less.
I agree that the truth can only be arrived at by rigourous consultation of all sources - but for some persons, the sources lack. You can believe the few commentators who exist, or not.
Good grief, no one is asking for a dissertation. I like entertainment, too. But at least that’s usually clearly labeled “historical fiction.” If you want to pass on great stories by people who wrote a century after the events they describe, power to you. But it might be nice to say so, especially among Dopers who may care about such things. If someone were writing a funny series about some scientific topic, for example, I think we’d at least expect the poster to get the science right or be pretty up-front about where the simplification occurs.
I never said you did. I’m not trying to rehabilitate Basil’s character. I just care about what we know with some certainty versus what was written substantially later by tendentious people who didn’t know anything. That’s all.
Sadly, they’re dead.
Look, whatever. If you know better, you write it.
I work hard on these to make them entertaining because I know there’s a couple of posters who really like these threads, and from the hope that it will spark some interest about these historical figures, and what I get is “OMG you didn’t mention X, Y, or Z!” What, should I devote a paragraph to Basil’s fiscal policies? No one cares! I do the best I can with the sources I have available; I don’t have a university library, or access to journals.
Gosh Maeglin you’re really smart too…
Okay now can we get back the wonderful thread Mississippienne was writing.
What you are getting is “OMG you are passing off what is certainly false for something true.” That’s the issue. This fiscal policy stuff is a bit of a red herring.
I don’t see why this is any different than writing about science or contemporary history. It’s great to write an accessible story that will stimulate peoples’ interest, but it should at least more or less be true. If I were writing a biography of some recent figure, say JFK, and I cherry-picked stuff from sources written by conspiracy theorists, I think readers would have every right, especially on a forum like this, to point that out.
If you do find a journal article that you’d like, I, um, might be able to help you out with that. Educational purposes and such.
Very well said.
Or to put it another way: I’m here for entertaining scurrilous historical stories. Historical rigor is not necessary, and frankly the sort of vetting of sources that Maeglin is talking about far exceeds any real interest I’d have in these topics. I don’t expect a thousand or two thousand word essay to fulfill the standards I’d bring to historical research. As long as I’m convinced that Mississippienne is being generally faithful to known sources, I’m not going to worry about what dissenting sources a rigorous search may bring up.
We’re not trying to rehabilitate Richard III, or damn him, either. If I want the more exact details, I’ll go hunting. For this, simply being pointed to some of the more interesting stories from history is all I’m hoping for from this thread. Which desire is being most entertainingly supplied by our OP.
Yeah, look, if you want to start a thread about historiography practices or Basil’s rule, great. Don’t be farting up this thread with nitpicking at someone who has taken a great deal of time to make a fun and engaging thread.
Mississipienne, please continue with your kickass stories.
Any idea what he did to the shepherd boy? And was this the Fulk of Angou who married Melusine the Devil’s Daughter? If so, he had really bad luck with women.
Basil II was no shlump himself- he gouged out the eyes of hundreds (by some accounts as many as 9000) Bulgarian p.o.w.s, sparing one eye for every tenth man. The one-eyed soldiers led their comrades the thousand miles or so home. His niece Zoe I’ve written about several times on board- she was kept a cloistered virgin until she became empress at 47 or thereabouts, then married an old man she hated who became emperor through his marriage to her, and when she didn’t liek that she made her teenaged toyboy emperor and let his brother, the eunuch John the Orphan-master, rule while they played. The problems came when his other eunuch brothers were just as corrupt as John but nowhere near as capable, played Lucy Ricardo (“I wanna rule the Eastern Empire toooooooo!!!”) and advanced a nephew, all while her toyboy husband Michael IV learned he was dying and got religion.
Seconded. As long as the stories Miss tells aren’t complete fiction, I can let my imagination run wild about the bad old days and enjoy them.