Kings and Queens

1. William I
A heckler interrupted the funeral of William I in 1087, shouting from the back of the church that it had been built on his father’s land without his family being compensated. Just when his royal send-off couldn’t get any worse, William’s sarcophagus was found to have been built too small to accommodate his body and after an attempt was made to squeeze the body into it—in the words of the English chronicler Orderic Vitalis, “the swollen bowels burst, and an intolerable stench assailed the nostrils of the by-standers and the whole crowd.”

2. William II
William II died under questionable circumstances while out hunting in the New Forest in 1100; some have claimed that he was assassinated to secure his younger brother Henry’s claim to the throne. Oddly, he wasn’t the only member of the family to succumb to that fate: William’s elder brother, Richard, also died in a hunting accident in the New Forest around the 1070s, while his nephew, another Richard, died in a hunting accident in the New Forest in 1099.

3. Henry I
When Henry I died in 1135, his entrails were removed and buried in Rouen in northwest France. The rest of his body was buried in England.

4. Stephen
Stephen, son of one of William the Conqueror’s daughters, could credit a bout of diarrhea with saving his life. On November 25, 1120, a vessel called the White Ship was chartered to carry the present king Henry I and much of his family and court (Stephen among them) across the English Channel from France to England. Henry, however, had made other arrangements for himself, leaving the rest of his court to travel on the White Ship as planned.

The overcrowded ship sank off the coast of Normandy. Of the 300 or so people on board, only one or two survived; among those who died was the king’s only surviving legitimate son, William. Henry I decided to name his daughter Matilda as the successor, but when Henry died she was an unpopular choice, allowing Stephen to claim the throne in a period of civil crisis known as the Anarchy. He had reportedly left the White Ship before it departed due to a sudden bout of diarrhea.

5. Henry II
Henry II died in Chinon, France. He had wanted to be buried at Grandmont Abbey, in the southern part of the country, after he died. But the weather was too hot to transport his co**se that far, so he was instead interred at an abbey closer to his place of death.

6. Richard I
Richard I was shot through the shoulder with a crossbow outside of Chalus Castle in France in March 1199. The injury was serious, but survivable—but the infection that followed it was not. He died two weeks later on April 6. His heart was buried separately from the rest of his body.

As for the arrow that brought down Richard the Lionheart? It was a lucky shot over the side of the castle from a young boy. It became immortalized as “the lion by the ant was slain.”

7. King John
King John was reportedly the first English monarch—and perhaps even the first medieval king in Europe—to own what Latin wardrobe records refer to as a “supertunicam domini Regis ad surgendum de nocte,” or a “king’s over-shirt for rising in the night.” In other words, John owned a dressing gown.

8. Henry III
Henry III was given a white bear (thought to be a polar bear) by King Haakon IV of Norway in 1252. He kept it in the Tower of London, and had it taken down to the River Thames each morning to swim and catch fish.

9. Edward I
In his campaign against Scotland, Edward I more than earned his nickname “The Hammer of the Scots.” During the Siege of Stirling Castle in 1304, Edward commissioned the construction of a gigantic trebuchet (perhaps the largest in history) that became known as the Warwolf. The sight of the enormous catapult being constructed outside the castle walls was enough to compel those inside to offer an unconditional surrender—but Edward had none of it, and did not accept the surrender until after he had tried the Warwolf out.

10. Edward II
In 1313, Edward II enacted a statute forbidding the wearing of armor in Parliament. It remains enforceable to this day.

Queen Elizabeth II is the longest-reigning monarch in British history. She has four children, eight grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.

Her husband, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, died on 9 April 2021, aged 99. The prince married Princess Elizabeth in 1947, five years before she became Queen.
Born in 1926, Princess Elizabeth became queen on the death of her father, King George VI, in 1952. She married Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, in 1947 and the couple had four children: Charles, Anne, Andrew and Edward. A former prince of Denmark and Greece, Prince Philip was born in 1921 and served in the British Royal Navy in World War Two. He was the longest-serving consort of any British monarch, and retired from royal duties in 2017 having completed more than 22,000 solo engagements.