October 18, 1991: The film Edward II premieres, based on the play The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward the Second, King of England, with the Tragical Fall of Proud Mortimer. It was first staged in 1594 -- after the death of its author, Christopher Marlowe.
The film is very loosely based on that play. Director Derek Jarman wanted to do a similar story in a modern setting, and mixed in modern clothes, machines and devices into a story that takes place in the early 14th Century. He was gay, a gay rights activist, and, as it turned out, HIV-positive, and went on to die from the effects of AIDS in 1994.
Steven Waddington plays Edward, of the House of Plantagenet. He becomes King of England upon the death of his father, Edward I, on July 7, 1307. Andrew Tiernan plays Piers Gaveston, 1st Earl of Cornwall, whom history shows to have been Edward's best friend, and surviving evidence suggests they were a homosexual couple.
Edward and his wife, Isabella, daughter of France's King Philip IV and brother of Kings Louis X, Philip V and Charles IV, did manage to have 4 children: Edward, the eventual King Edward III; John of Eltham, who died at age 20 with no wife and no heirs; Eleanor of Woodstock, who married a Dutch duke and had 2 sons; and Joan of the Tower, who married King David II of Scotland but had no children. Isabella is played in this film by Tilda Swinton. With some irony, She identifies as queer, while Waddington is straight.
The English nobles finally had enough of Gaveston, and assassinated him on July 19, 1312. But Edward still rejects Isabella's advances, and turns to a new boyfriend, Hugh Despenser the Younger, son of the Earl of Winchester. Father and son have stolen lands from the nobles, and Hugh the Elder has no problem with his son's affair with a man, since it's the King and it gives him access to royal favors.
Edward was losing wars with both Scotland and France, and the Battle of Bannockburn, on June 24, 1314, with Edward personally leading troops that were defeated by King Robert I of Scotland, a.k.a. Robert the Bruce, was devastating. People also revolted against high taxes. One such revolt was led by a man named Robert Hood (pronounced "hoad"), and he is regarded as one of the men on whom the character of Robin Hood is based, though that legend is set in the time of Edward's great-grandfather, John, and his brother, Richard I.
A portrait said to be of King Edward II of England
In 1322, Isabella fled to France with pretty much only the clothes on her back, but also with the ultimate bargaining chip, the Prince of Wales, King Edward's heir. She turned to her brother, Charles IV, for help. There, she meets Roger Mortimer, 1st Earl of March, played by Nigel Terry (the eventual King John in The Lion in Winter, and King Arthur in Excalibur). Mortimer had been imprisoned in the Tower of London for leading an army against the Despensers, which was seen as tantamount to opposing the King himself. But he escaped, and made his way to France.
He having long been separated from his wife, and she having gone without for so long, Roger and Isabella began an affair. Charles couldn't been seen in England as having committed French troops to an invasion of England, so he and Roger set up a combined Dutch-German fleet that invaded England. The Despensers were captured and executed, the Elder on October 27, 1326; the Young on November 24.
On January 20, 1327, having been captured himself, Edward II bowed to the inevitable, and abdicated in favor of his 14-year-old son. The film follows the legend that the deposed King's death, on September 21, 1327, at the age of 43, at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, was "poetic justice," being sodomized by a red-hot poker.
So Edward III was officially King, but Isabella was his Regent, and Roger Mortimer was operationally the dictator of England. They ended the Scottish War of Independence with the Treaty of Northampton. This turned the English people against the dictatorial couple, and Isabella became known as "The She-Wolf of France."
The play and film end with Edward III imprisoning them; the film ends with him wearing his mother's earrings and lipstick, listening to classical music on his Sony Walkman, and walking atop a cage holding them -- obviously, director Jarman taking a lot of poetic license.
In reality, Edward III did not copy his father's effeminiate ways. He was already engaged to Philippa of Hainault, daughter of a Dutch ally of his mother and her boyfriend, and married her in 1328, and seems to have truly loved her, despite eventually taking mistresses.
On March 19, 1330, Mortimer executed the King's uncle, Edmund of Woodstock, 1st Earl of Kent. That was the last straw. Having turned 18 on November 13, Edward asserted his majority, and had Mortimer arrested at Nottingham Castle on November 19, and he was executed on November 29, 1330.
Edward showed mercy on his mother: All the hardships of his father's time were blamed on Mortimer, and his mother's affair with him was not publicly mentioned. Nevertheless, he refused her pleas to show Mortimer mercy. He imprisoned her for 2 years, then let her live at Castle Rising in Norfolk, where she was permitted to live in luxury, and to have her grandchildren visit, until her death in 1358.
Edward III reigned for 50 years, including a modernization of England and military victories over Scotland and France, dying in 1377. Unfortunately, his eldest son, Edward, a great general known as the Black Prince, died a year before him, leaving the Black Prince's son to become King Richard II. And things got to be every bit as bad as they were under his great-grandfather, Edward II.
Christopher Marlowe became famous for his play Tamburlaine, and was England's top playwright before William Shakespeare. He was murdered on May 30, 1593, possibly for reasons relating to his homosexual relationships. Or maybe it had nothing to do with it: Like Edward II, and Richard II, and Oscar Wilde, and Joe Orton, he was a gay Englishman who was murdered because he simply angered the wrong people.
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October 18, 1991 was a Friday. Future New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani and actor Tyler Posey were born.
Baseball's World Series began the next day. The Minnesota Twins went on to beat the Atlanta Braves in 7 games. The NBA season started 14 days later.
There were 2 games in the NHL. The New Jersey Devils lost to the Washington Capitals, 6-5 at the Capital Centre in the Washington suburb of Landover, Maryland. And the Buffalo Sabres beat the Montreal Canadiens, 3-1 at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.
