This Day in History: King Edward II was murdered on this day in 1327. He is said to have been murdered, after being deposed and imprisoned by his wife Isabella and her lover Roger Mortimer, by having a horn pushed into his anus through which a red-hot iron was inserted, burning out his internal organs without marking his body. This account of his death was propagated and possibly linked to his rumored homosexuality.
There are other theories however.
One theory is that Edward escaped Berkeley Castle in 1327 with the help of a servant and ultimately retired to become a hermit in the Holy Roman Empire. The body buried at Gloucester Cathedral was said to be that of the porter of Berkeley Castle, killed by the assassins and presented by them to Isabella as Edward's corpse to avoid punishment.
Another theory is that Mortimer and Isabella had Edward secretly released, and then faked his death, a fiction later maintained by Edward III when he came to power.
Was that the worst death of a monarch?
King Aelle had executed the legendary Viking Ragnar Lothbrok by having him thrown into a pit of snakes. In 866, Ragnar’s son, Ivar the Boneless, invaded Northumbria to exact revenge against his father’s killer.
The Great Viking army invaded Northumbria in mid-866, and had managed to take York by year’s end. Like his contemporary Alfred the Great, the defeated Aelle fled to the countryside and in 867 raised a new army to retake the city. Unfortunately, Aelle was not as successful as Alfred in his return, and while some accounts have him merely falling in battle, Norse accounts record that he was captured and subsequently executed by blood eagle, described thus:
"They caused the bloody eagle to be carved on the back of Aelle, and they cut away all of the ribs from the spine, and then they ripped out his lungs.:
Thank God the History Channel was there to film the execution:
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