He was guilty, she was not, at least not of adultery

Sorry for the disappearing act. I could blame it on the Deadline Dragon, which is my usual MO. For all I know, he had a hand—or claw—in the spread of the Black Death, the San Francisco earthquake, and even the constant failure over the years of the brilliant, subversive series, Buffy and the Vampire Slayer, never to receive a single Emmy nomination. But he is actually innocent for once, or as innocent as dragons ever are. I was AWOL for a more mundane reason—I wasn’t feeling well this week.
I hope to get back to Outremer today, where Baldwin has been much sicker than me, stricken with pneumonia. You’d think having to cope with leprosy would be more than enough for the lad, but that disease also compromised the immune systems of lepers, making Baldwin vulnerable to other ailments, too.
Before I disappear back into the 12th century, May 2nd was an interesting day on the historical calendar. On May 2nd, 1230, William de Braose, grandson of Maude de Braose, who’d been starved to death in one of King John’s dungeons, was publicly hanged by Llywelyn Fawr, having been caught in the bedchamber of Llywelyn’s beloved wife, Joanna. I say “beloved” because there is no other explanation for what he did---he forgave her and eventually restored her to favor, even though doing so was a great political risk. In the MA, cuckolded husbands were figures of fun, especially older men married to younger women, as was the case with Llywelyn and Joanna. His risk was compounded by the fact that Joanna’s lover was, like her, Norman-French, so Llywelyn’s Welsh subjects were even more outraged by her behavior. If the skeptics need additional proof that Llywelyn loved his wife, upon her death, he established a Franciscan friary in her honor, a gesture right up there with Edward I’s Eleanor crosses for his deceased queen.