The Stuarts aren’t our period of course, but this link is interesting and worth a read. The opening line reads as follows: “….Beautiful, charismatic and cunning, George Villiers caught the eye of one king, was the favourite of another, and soared to heights of power and wealth in 17th-century England – only to come to a violent end….”
Well, the Stuarts aren’t my particular bag, but I first came across George Villiers when I was younger and couldn’t get enough of Jean Plaidy’s many wonderful historical novels. More recently, of course, George has featured in various films based around Alexandre Dumas’ Three Musketeers, so even if people today know little about him, they may at least have seen his fictional self on screen.
The real George appears to have been a dazzling comet, streaking across England’s Stuart skies and then disappearing in a final rather inglorious glimmer when he was stabbed “while sitting in the Greyhound Inn in Portsmouth”. A sad conclusion to an astonishing life soaring among kings. Well, beautiful he may have been, but he was also a bungling military commander. His killer was a vengeful soldier out to make him pay for his incompetence at Cádiz. The people of England fêted the murderer!
If you read the above article you will find out much more about him. Whether or not any man (or woman) could really have been quite that beautiful, irresistible and desirable is up for debate. But George Villiers, 1st Duke of Buckingham, KG, certainly seems to have come close.
murreyandblue 