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Generally, I shy away from writing about matters of fact.
Not because I think – with Ronald Reagan – that
facts
are stupid things. Rather, it is because opinions are much easier to
produce, being essentially incontrovertible. Even if all the premises are
wrong, no one can say
for definite
that the conclusion is when it’s just a matter of opinion.
Furthermore, you may have noticed that ODHSNM house style directs that if a fact is to be stated, it will
be phrased thus:
“So anyway, there was this...”
Thereby implicitly casting myself as an unreliable narrator
(in the particular vein of a pub bore). In this way, I assume an ambiguously
ironic stance to all statements of fact, getting myself off the hook for having
to prove the veracity of anything I say. Does he mean it? Or not?
I am, in a sense, simply inviting you to consider (from the
aesthetic point of view) the consequences of “what if” these things were true.
It saves me a hell of a lot of time, which I would otherwise have to spend
making sure that I’m not talking bollocks.
So anyway, there was this time called the Middle Ages with
knights and dragons and shit.
We often think – isn’t it? – that the Middle Ages were a
barbaric time, when life was nasty, brutish and short. To the extent that we
think about it at all.
After the Romans, most people’s grasp of British history is
basically (i) Saxons, (ii) some Vikings, (iii) 1066, (iv) “beard and crown” kings,
(v) “bob and beret” kings until (vi)
Henry
VIII.
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| Beard kings |
And 1066 was “The Norman Conquest”. The Norman era lasted
until the 1940s, whereupon the world’s parents decided never to name another
child Norman again. FACT.
It may therefore surprise you to discover that the Normans’
story was not exhausted by the Battle of Hastings, keeping Robin Hood down and eventually
becoming the English upper class. Oh no.
 |
| Bob kings |
Turns out, there was this whole other arm of the family
which did some rather more exciting stuff than building squat little round
castles and churches and logging the contents of Britain in the Domesday Book. Not least in Sicily.
I have no fucking idea what happened in Britain in the 12
th
century. Monasteries, or something? But from 1130 to 1154, there was this
AWESOME Norman king ruling southern Italy, Sicily and a chunk of North Africa.
And he was called
Roger
II.
A viscount, for foreign readers, is a kind of lord here in
the UK. Here is a full rundown of the British orders of nobility along with a
handy system for remembering it:
6. Baron = Villain
5. Viscount = Biscuit
3=. Count = Vampire
3=. Earl = Hillbilly
2. Marquess = Tent
1. Duke = Alsatian
Anyway, this book is a history of the Mediterranean. I
picked it up in an airport a few years ago. And a right rollicking good read it
is too.
And in it – meriting about 3 pages, which is a lot by Lord
Biscuit’s standards (ancient Egypt gets about the same) – is this Roger II of
Sicily.
He built up a giant kingdom (which I’d never heard of), faced
down the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor and had the good sense never to go on
a Crusade. More than that, he actually made his kingdom function properly and –
to quote the Wikipedia article:
The king welcomed the
learned, and he practiced toleration towards the several creeds, races and
languages of his realm.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I took him on as my
namesake. At a time when stupidity, thuggery and intolerance reigned here was a
ruler who celebrated the life of the mind and didn’t care about the petty
differences that divide people.
 |
| Showing you the life of the mind |
So, at a time when stupidity, thuggery and intolerance reign,
I think Roger II of Sicily is a ruler worth remembering.
If your car does not have a properly functioning horn, it will fail its MOT.