Goethe und Schiller würden sich im Grabe drehen, wenn sie das lesen müssten !

BING TRANSLATION:
Sorry, but what is it for a German?

Goethe and Schiller would turn in his grave if they need to read this!

The last English king was Harold and all we hear about him is the defeat at Hastings.
Did history begin in 1066? I don't think so.

What about Alfred? The only ruler in England ever to be called 'The Great'.
What about Aethelstan? United England and booted out the Danes.

The Welsh make me laugh. I wonder, do they realise that Wales is Saxon word for 'Foreign'?

I read the above waffle about Edward. There was no mention of his kicking the Jews out of England and no mention of Andrew Murray either. Why is it that William bloody Wallace gets such a mention? Before that stupid film, nobody had ever heard of him.

As for Edward II being gay…. Possibly, or was it a rumour spread by his wife so she could be with her lover?

Anyway, no matter who the monarch is, the same thing always obtains:

England, tiny country but kicks everyone's arse.

The article tasks of Llewelyn's arrogance. Wales was a separate country and Llewelyn was legitimate Prince of Wales – prince not in the English feudal meaning of the word but in the Romano British meaning 'Principle leader'- the Roman empire in the west ended not in the 5th century but in 1282 with the death of Llewelyn. The prince of wales was agreed as leader of wales from the 3 separate princedoms of Deheubarth, Powys and Gwynedd- the triparpite agreement. Llewelyn had no cause to bow to Edward. The Welsh despised the English as they had disposessed the British(welsh) and Llewelyn was the last in the line of Cunedda- a dynasty that had reigned as the high Kings of the British for a millenia. Not just did Edward destroy Wales as sovereign state but he killed the royal family and dismantled the history of Wales by destroying and stealing the offices and regalia of state. Another Anglocentric view of history.

Try reading the letters of Garth Celyn if you want to get a more balanced histrorical account. I sure the Irish and scots would tell a similar story.

The same goes for Edward II whose relationship with Piers Gaveston was never referred to as anything but overtly familiar and as a love for a brother to a brother or a father to a son. He treated and often called Piers his brother. Relationships can be complicated. It is not so simple as pigion-holing someone into a homosexual or heterosexual box. And our modern views were certainly not the same as medieval views. My opinion is that he loved Piers above all others as a brother and that his love and devotion to him blinded him to everything else. He may have even been in love with him but I don't believe there was a sexual relationship. I do not believe and there is no evidence that he had a relationship with Hugh le Despenser, his other great favorite. While I think it is highly unlikely, it is possible he was bisexual but certainly not homosexual.

As for Richard I, there is absolutely no evidence of homosexuality, and quite a bit more of heterosexuality, including a number of illegitimate children and a reputation for sleeping with women while on campaign. The accusations of Richard's homosexuality stem mostly from a graduate thesis written by an Oxford historian in the 1950s, which sparked quite a bit of controversy and subsequently caught the attention of any number of authors and artists just as the sexual revolution was beginning to dawn and the view of traditional sexual roles were being challenged.

People need to stop getting their history from the movies.

Finally, though the Crusades were a humiliating calamity for European armies (only the First Crusade achieved any notable success; the others were largely failures), they must be viewed in context of the religio-militarism of the late Dark Ages and early Medieval Period, and specifically as a reaction to the Islamic Crusades that conquered Spain and very nearly conquered Europe three centuries previously.