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

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McNally, Victoria (July 19, 2013). "Rothfuss Fans, Your Time Has Come: The Kingkiller Chronicle Optioned for TV Series". Geekosystem.

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

Sanderson, Brandon (2011-03-01). "Review of THE WISE MAN'S FEAR". Brandon Sanderson . Retrieved 2021-07-31.

Parliamentarians resolved to do the unthinkable, to disregard the Divine Right of Kings and hold Charles I to account for the appalling suffering and slaughter endured by his people. On an icy winter's day on a scaffold outside Whitehall, the King of England was executed. verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ The remaining bulk of the book then traces the movements and eventual fates (most of them bloody) of the regicides, those men who made the decision to execute their king. Although Charles II had promised a pardon to those who recognized his rule, such measures of grace did not extend to those who had a hand in beheading his dear father. What follows is a bloody and chaotic manhunt for the regicides. Spencer details the internal politics as some figures within the new government scrambled to prove their loyalty to the new king, while others fled to the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the colonies in North America. We read accounts of regicides hunted down and brutally assassinated by bounty hunters as the long arm of the new monarchy stretched across nations. We see Cromwell’s body exhumed and posthumously executed on the twelfth anniversary of the king’s death. Spencer likewise details many of the gory ends that several regicides endured, as they were hung, drawn, and quartered. This is described in vivid detail, which reads much like Foucault’s infamous introduction to Discipline and Punish. As these retributive executions went on, however, Spencer argues that they became less effective tools for the Royalists, and the regicides began to be shaped into the image of martyrs.

Killers of the King (Hardback) - Charles Spencer Killers of the King (Hardback) - Charles Spencer

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. 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. 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. 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. 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 ]Kroll, Justin (2018-01-29). "Sam Raimi to Direct 'Kingkiller Chronicle' for Lionsgate and Lin-Manuel Miranda (EXCLUSIVE)". Variety . Retrieved 2018-01-31. Christopher Paolini Interviews Pat Rothfuss, archived from the original on 2021-12-20 , retrieved 2021-07-31 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 ] Kingkiller Chronicle" editor believes author hasn't written anything for years". Newsweek. 2020-07-27 . Retrieved 2021-07-31. 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]

Book Review: ‘Killers of the King’ by Charles Spencer - WSJ

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. Lindsey Beer was hired to write the screenplay for the film in 2016, [39] while Sam Raimi was announced as the director in 2018, [40] one of several who reportedly sought the role. [41] Games [ edit ] Nearly three years earlier, Cromwell had been interred with stately pomp. During the English Civil War he had commanded the victorious armies of Parliament against King Charles I. He had engineered the king’s public trial for treason and then his execution in 1649, eventually ruling all of Britain as Lord Protector. But this revolution did not survive his death, and in 1660 the monarchy was restored by the king’s eldest son, Charles II. Oliver Cromwell, once lionized by John Milton himself as “our chief of men,” was now the hated ringleader of the regicides. Spencer has a gift for set-pieces such as the killing of Isaac Dorislaus, a Dutch lawyer who had taken part in the king’s trial and helped to send a number of royalists to their deaths. Sent as a diplomat to the Hague by the new regime, he took rooms at an inn with only a few bodyguards attending him. At the same time, a rumour was circulating that he had been one of the two masked men seen on the scaffold with Charles: one had swung the axe and the other had shown the king’s head to the crowd. Hearing that Dorislaus was nearby, a royalist colonel assembled a gang, stormed the inn and butchered the lawyer as he cowered underneath the chimney. High-octane sequences like these are where this book is at his best. Elsewhere, the difficulty of following a group of 80 very different individuals to their various fates is evident. The stories – even if they are of bloody ends and narrow escapes – can become repetitive. Rothfuss began writing the series in 1994, [5] under the working title The Song of Flame and Thunder; the name was changed because he disliked it, as well as to avoid confusion with the George R. R. Martin series A Song of Ice and Fire. [6] The first draft of the trilogy was completed in 2000, [7] a draft he described as "a hot mess". [5]The series is framed as the transcription of his three-day-long oral autobiography, where he "trouped, traveled, loved, lost, trusted and was betrayed". Present-day "interludes" concern his life as an innkeeper, with each present day depicted in a separate book. In 2012, Rothfuss sold three other books to his publisher, DAW. [26] He has discussed a standalone novel, centered on a legendary figure in the world, with the working title The Tale of Laniel Young-Again. [27] The project was two-thirds complete when it was shelved to focus on The Doors of Stone. [28] [29] In other media [ edit ] Film and television [ edit ] Kain, Erik. " 'The Name Of The Wind' Could Be The Next 'Game Of Thrones' With New Movie, TV And Video Game Deal". Forbes.

Killers of the King by Charles Spencer - book review: A

As such, this book serves as an intertwined biography of the many men who had a hand in killing King Charles I, and it is strangely fascinating to read about their various paths that led them either to freedom or death. Along the way, we are able to learn a few details about their multifaceted (and sometimes divergent) motivations, and what prompted them to make their decision to execute their sovereign. In this end, Spencer’s work gives a fairly good historical narrative of the events that led to the death of the king and what eventually happened to his killers. Yet, in some of the finer historical details of this account, Spencer’s work falls a bit short. 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. r/KingkillerChronicle - Pat on how much he cares about finishing Book 3: "If I didn't care about the book, you would have it by now". , retrieved 2021-07-31 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.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. 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 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.