Michael Hone

Edward II Michael Hone

Few kings have received a worse press than Edward II, yet he was strong, handsome and intelligent, a man forced into the role of kingship when the music he marched to was, quite simply, in other domains. He was far from the first English king to prefer men sexually, but he was the first to openly show it, dancing with, and kissing, the love of his life, Piers Gaveston, during festivities in honor of Edward's marriage, and this to the cursed disapproval of the bride's father, Philippe IV, the most powerful king in Christendom, the man who destroyed the Templars because of their ungodly homosexual practices. Through Edward's recklessness hundreds would die, including Edward himself, a red-hot poker thrust through his fundament, as the ancients modestly put it. Historian Ranulph Higden put the problem in a nutshell when he wrote, ''Edward was passionately devoted to Gaveston, whom he loved above all, showered with gifts and always put first; he could not bear separation from him, and honored him more than anyone else. As a result, the beloved was loathed and the lover entangled himself in hatred and disaster.'' Intrigues, murder, poisonings, eviscerations, and a wife, Edward's, who overthrew her husband in favor of her son, aided by her lover, a woman who perhaps even had a hand in the choice of his death, reprisal for his long list of boy lovers and the heinous acts they committed together. In sum, Edward and his court had no reason to envy the later Borgia in Machiavellian conspiracies. This is their story, and the history of Medieval homosexuality.