Resumo de Book Of Facts - Reader's Digest

KINGS AND QUEENS

THE EMPEROR WHO COULDN?T WRITE

Though Charlemagne (about 742-814), the creator of the Holy Roman Emperor, was a great patron of learning, he never learn to write properly. He kept writing materials under his pillow, so that he could practice penmanship in his spare time. But because he tried to learn late in life, his efforts were of little avail. The few surviving examples of his handwriting show a childish unformed scrawl.

PRETENDER?S PORTRAIT

In London?s National Portrait Gallery hangs a painting believed to be James Scott (also called Fitzroy and Crofts), Duke of Monmouth and supposed son of Charles II. He was beheaded in 1685 for trying to seize the throne by force of arms, his claim being that Charles had married his mother, Lucy Walter, when exited in Holland. If these claims were true, then Monmouth and not James II ?Charles?s younger brother- was the rightful king of England.
In 1685, when Charles II died Monmouth attempted to seize the throne: but his rising was a disaster. His pitiful army of West Country farmboys was annihilated at Sedgemoor, and he himself was captured after being found hiding in a ditch. Since he had declared himself king, he could hope for no mercy.
There was no trial- an Act of Attainder had been passed against Monmouth that in effect sentenced him to death without judicial proceedings. The execution was carried out two days after he was brought back to taken for burial, it was remembered that no portrait of him existed, a state of affairs that could not be permitted for a member of the royal family, however misguided. The head was therefore hastily stitched back into place, the body propped in chair, and the portrait painted.

THE BAVARAIN STUART

One of the descendants of the Stuart kings of Britain was a general who fought on the German side during the First World War. After the direct Stuart line failed with the death of Bonnie Prince Charlie on 1788 and his brother Henry in 1807, the mantle of possible successor passed to the descendants of Princess Henrietta, the sister of Charles II and James II. A series of dynastic marriages brought the Stuart claim to Mary Theresa of East who married King Louis III of Bavaria in 1868. The German general was their son, Crown Prince Rupprecht (Rupert) of Bavaria.

UNFAITHFUL DEFENDER

Britain?s protestant kings and queens- who are forbidden by laws from becoming Roman Catholics, or even marrying them- still bear a title given to them by the Catholic Church. The title is Defender of the Faith- meaning the Catholic faith. It appears on British coins as the abbreviations F.D. or Fid. Def. (standing for the Latin phrase Fidel defender). Pope Leo X gave the title to Henry VIII in 1521, for writing a treatise against Martin Luther. Just 13 years before the king- angered by Rome?s opposition to his divorce from Catherine of Aragon ? broke away from the papacy and made himself head of the new Church of England. Although the pope granted the honorary title only for Henry?s lifetime. British sovereigns hung on to it even after 1701, when the Act of settlement made it illegal for a monarch to adopt the Catholic faith and after 1772, when the Royal Marriages Act made it illegal for monarch to marry a Catholic. They have kept it ever since

POISON- PROOF

King Mithridates VI of Pontus in Asia Minor made himself so immune to poison that he was unable to poison himself when he wanted to. The king spent his life taking small doses of poison in order to build up a resistance to it because he was frightened of being assassinated. He was so successful that, when he tried to commit suicide in 63 BC in order to avoid his imminent capture by the Romans, the poison he took had no effect. In the end he gave up and ordered a slave to kill him with a sword.

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