Even the most rabid of monarchists would have to admit that not everyone who's ever been born to (or indeed called upon) to fill a throne has been universally good at all aspects of reigning all the time; even in days of yore, when Kings were seen as living gods, it was accepted that some kings made war better than peace, for instance, or that most of them preferred the company of wenches to their queen.
The point is, allowances were made for these quirks in their personality, benefits of the doubt offered; no such allowances were made for the man who became Edward II, though. Even as a child, his interests were more yeomanly than royal. Fond of animals, possessed of the common touch, Edward would have just as soon shod a horse or thatched a roof as entered into a joust.
That the son of
Edward I (whose nickname was Longshanks) had no interest in the arts of war was the scandal of the age; to remedy the situation, the King procured for his son a young Gascon named
Piers Gaveston, whose reputation for prowess with weaponry of all kinds was then still unburdened by the bevy of allegations that would later be attached to him. In lieu of a royal bride, it was Gaveston who was by his side when Edward was invested as the first
Prince of Wales in
February 1301.
Gaveston likewise took pride of place at the January 1308 marriage of Edward (then King) to
Isabella of France, the beautiful and conniving daughter of
Philip IV; during Edward's coronation in
February 1308 - which Gaveston was called upon to organize - he barely made it out of
Westminster Abbey alive, owing as much to the fiasco of his own organization as it was to the royal status the King had seemingly bestowed upon him - allowing him to wear purple in defiance of
sumptuary laws, for one. Yet Edward II did fulfil his principle duty as King - to secure the succession with the birth of an heir; the boy who would become
Edward III is universally recognized as one of England's greater kings, in sharp contrast to the negative opinion earned by his father and passed down as received wisdom over the next seven centuries.
Edward II's twenty year reign ended with his forced abdication, imprisonment, and eventual murder*; even the means of death - by legend a red-hot poker was inserted into his anus - points to the savage bigotry of the times. Whether Edward and Gaveston were lovers will never be proven, at least not directly; indirectly, though, the evidence is incontrovertible.
Henry VIII and
Charles Brandon were as close friends as King and noble could be, yet no ignominy clung to either of them for it. Somehow, though, nothing Edward II ever did earned so much as a molecule of praise during his lifetime, surely a text book example of homophobia in action if ever there was one.
In the
centuries since he's gone from a reviled monster to a fascinating anomaly to a gay icon thanks almost entirely to pop culture;
Christopher Marlowe's play
Edward II was not only the first portrayal of the unfortunate King but is one of the earliest plays in English as well, having been performed since at least 1592. The most sensational recent work about Edward II is
Derek Jarman's fanciful
1992 film Edward II, in which the King was portrayed by
Steven Waddington and Gaveston by
Andrew Tiernan; Isabella, better known to us now as the She-Wolf of France, was played to stunning effect by
Tilda Swinton.
*As with most high-profile murders, conspiracy theories abound.
*
The holiday gained in popularity very quickly... Its first observation could be said to have taken place on April 30th of that year, when word of the fighting (and its terrible casualties*) first reached Australia; a half-day holiday was then declared, which was again observed the following year on April 5th. New Zealand was the first country to make the day an official holiday when it passed the Anzac Day Act in 1920. Throughout the 1920s the holiday was observed in Australia to varying degrees (depending on the state) but by 1927 was uniformly marked, with its date set on April 25th.