Killers of the King: The Men Who Dared to Execute Charles I

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The Slow Regard of Silent Things (2014, ISBN 978-0756410438), a novella focusing on a secondary character that appears in The Kingkiller Chronicle 's main plot. On August 18, 1648, with no relief from the siege in sight, the royalist garrison holding Colchester Castle surrendered and Oliver Cromwell's army firmly ended the rule of Charles I of England. To send a clear message to the fallen monarch, the rebels executed four of the senior officers captured at the castle. Yet still, the king refused to accept he had lost the war. As France and other allies mobilized in support of Charles, a tribunal was hastily gathered and a death sentence was passed. On January 30, 1649, the King of England was executed. This is the account of the fifty-nine regicides, the men who signed Charles I's death warrant. While much has been written about the reign and downfall of Charles I, the rise of Oliver Cromwell in his wake, and the ultimate restoration of the monarchy via Charles II, there’s been much less attention directed toward the men who conspired to put the king to death. In his 2014 book, Killers of the King: The Men Who Dared to Execute Charles I, Charles Spencer, the ninth Earl Spencer, historian, and brother of the late Princess Diana, seeks to follow the subsequent trails of these regicides. Painting them in a highly sympathetic light, Spencer tells the stories of what happened to those 80-some regicides as they fled for their lives from the revenge-bent Charles II in the wake of his restoration to the English monarchy. Rather than face trial or execution for treason, some of the regicides managed to escape, either by dying conveniently before the long arm of royal authority could get to them, or by fleeing far away. One lived out his days as a gardener in the Netherlands. But even those who went into exile were not necessarily safe: some were forced to move restlessly from place to place, pursued by informers and assassins for whom a regicide’s scalp was a sought-after prize. The sleepy Swiss hamlet of Vevey harboured several of these refugees, protecting them from multiple attempts on their lives. One of their number chose unwisely to venture further afield, only to die riddled with bullets in a Lausanne churchyard, while others kept running as far as New England, only to find that the new king’s revenge followed them there. The series has received critical acclaim. George R. R. Martin called The Wise Man's Fear his favourite fantasy novel of 2011, and said he wished he had written it. [46] Authors such as Brandon Sanderson, [47] Ursula K. Le Guin, Robin Hobb, Tad Williams, Anne McCaffrey, [48] and Michael Chabon [49] have expressed their admiration for the series. Lin-Manuel Miranda credited the books for inspiring a song in his show Hamilton, as well as a story beat in the Walt Disney film Moana. [50]

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However, one of the more glaring issues from a historian’s perspective is the issue of sources, and just which sources are used to build a particular historical narrative. While I must plead that I was rather ignorant of the historical execution of Charles I before reading this work, I couldn’t quite shake the feeling that the narrative, which pits the heroic, brave regicides against a villainous, bloodthirsty monarchy, might be a bit too simplistic. Accordingly, I have since done a bit of research into these events, comparing Spencer’s notes and bibliography to contemporary scholarship. Rethinking Your Thoughts About Writing", Renovating Your Writing, Routledge, pp.17–22, 2015-09-25, doi: 10.4324/9781315662879-8, ISBN 978-1-315-66287-9 , retrieved 2022-04-13 Sanderson, Brandon (2011-03-01). "Review of THE WISE MAN'S FEAR". Brandon Sanderson . Retrieved 2021-07-31. The series centers on a man named Kvothe, an infamous adventurer and musician telling his life story to a scribe. The book is told in a " story-within-a-story" format: a frame narrative relates the present day in which Kvothe runs an inn under an assumed name and is told in omniscient third person. The main plot, making up the majority of the books and concerning the actual details of Kvothe's life, is told in the first person. The series also contains metafictional stories within stories from varying perspectives that tie to the main plot in various ways. The metafictional strategic board game Tak: A Beautiful Game was released by Rothfuss and Cheapass Games in 2016 and designed by James Ernest. [42] In 2019, Cheapass Games, including Tak, was sold to Greater Than Games. [43] In March 2021, Greater Than Games re-released Tak: A Beautiful Game (2nd Edition) under its own brand, with new box art and board designs co-created with Rothfuss. [44] There are no differences in the rules between the original and second edition. [45] Reception [ edit ]

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For all Spencer’s attempts at objectivity – he is relatively clear-eyed about parliamentarian atrocities, and avoids painting Charles as a monster – this is still a story about heroes and villains. Following John Milton, who wrote that the killing of Charles had been “an action so distinguished, so worthy of heroic ages”, Spencer sees the regicides as “courageous men who dared to kill a king in the hope of bringing peace to their traumatised land”. Even if Charles’s execution was a good day’s work, it need not mean that the men behind it were any less bigoted or controversial than the king they chopped down.

Killers of the King: The Men Who Dared To Charles Spencer. Killers of the King: The Men Who Dared To

When the dead king's son, Charles II, was restored to the throne, he set about enacting a deadly wave of retribution against all those – the lawyers, the judges, the officers on the scaffold – responsible for his father's death. The Lightning Tree, a novella, was published in Rogues (2014), edited by George R. R. Martin& Gardner Dozois. The Lightning Tree takes place in the frame setting of The Kingkiller Chronicle, and includes characters from the trilogy.

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Lin-Manuel Miranda's 'Kingkiller Chronicle' Not Moving Forward At Showtime, Being Shopped By Lionsgate TV". Deadline . Retrieved 23 October 2019. Those regicides – or tyrannicides, if you prefer – who had survived the interregnum were firmly in the new regime’s sights. A judge’s instructions to the jury in a trial of 1660 left little room for clemency. He reminded them that “you are now to enquire of Blood, of Royal Blood, of Sacred Blood ... This Blood cries for Vengeance, and it will not be appeased without a Bloody Sacrifice”. Spencer’s attention to the gruesome sights and smells of hanging, drawing and quartering is cinematic: throughout, he shows an eye for the details, gory or intimate.

Killers of the King: The Men Who Dared to Execute Charles I Killers of the King: The Men Who Dared to Execute Charles I

Christopher Paolini Interviews Pat Rothfuss, archived from the original on 2021-12-20 , retrieved 2021-07-31 Lin-Manuel Miranda's 'Kingkiller Chronicles' Series Set At Showtime". Deadline . Retrieved 27 October 2017.

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Furthermore, his attention towards the horrific sights, smells, and sounds of hanging, drawing, and quartering is quite intimate and explicit. While some of his descriptions may overwhelm those with particularly weak stomachs, his representations are indeed accurate and paint the regicides in a rather heroic light. While these scenes are often repeated several times through the subsequent arrests, trials, and executions of more and more regicides, reach one still remains unique in their capacity to fascinate and perturb. In 2021, Rothfuss apologized for the long delay in releasing The Doors of Stone, citing issues in his personal life and his mental health as reasons. [21] [22] [23] The books [ edit ]