A treacherous brother, a heroic earl, and a tragic duchess

I feel as if I am trapped in that Groundhog Day film, for every day I wake up and start fending off the Deadline Dragon….sigh. But before the duel starts again, here are a few October 21st occurrences. In 1449, George of Clarence was born. What can we say about Brother George? I don’t know that he was the worst king’s brother in English history. I think that was John, for he not only attempted to steal Richard’s crown, he did his best to make sure that Richard ended up in a French dungeon, where death would have been a mercy. But George certainly made an unholy pest of himself and gave so much grief to his family and others in his 28 years that it may have been a blessing if he’d been one of those babies who did not survive the perils of a medieval childhood.

On October 21, 1204, Robert Beaumont, the fourth Earl of Leicester died. He was one of the heroes of the Third Crusade, a character in Lionheart and Ransom, who was very loyal to Richard and seems to have been well regarded by all but the French king. His marriage was childless, though, and upon his death, his earldom passed to his sisters, opening the door for a young French adventurer named de Montfort to stake a claim to it twenty-some years later.

October 21, 1221 was the day that Alix de Thouars, the Duchess of Brittany, died in childbirth. The daughter of Constance of Brittany and her third husband, Guy de Thouars, Alix was only twenty or twenty-one at the time of her death, there being some confusion about her birth date. The birthing chamber was as dangerous for medieval women as the battlefield was for their men.