Animal Plantagenet

Everyone, I know, has a favorite aristocrat - king, queen, prince, princess, lord a-leapin' or lady dancin'. There are so damn many of them it's a wonder that, like fans of boring pop stars, a majority of you go for the same three or four nobles. Too many of you like Ethelred The Unready, if only because you can never get your shit together. Too many of you like modern kings & queens, & I am especially contemptuous of you sycophants who spend too much time worshipping at the moldy altar of the Dutch Queen Beatrix. What, do you think she will share her stash with you? Dude, I'd stick with the hookah pipe of Prince Ahmed bin Abdul Aziz. That crazy bastard knows how to party like it's 1499! (In the year of the Hijra, of course.)

As I was saying, people show little imagination in what I like to call "aristophilia." (I just double-checked to see if I coined the word. Of course I didn't. But that article suggests that it's mainly a love affair with the rich. I mean it exclusively for those with royal blood, & also true obsessives fantasize about having sex with them, too. Even if they're dead. A good aristophile is a good necrophile. Am I right?) With so many inbred blue bloods to choose from - & you don't have to stick with modern ones (though the modern ones are particularly stupid & therefore particularly hilarious). Crack a history book. Watch one of those history channels. Watch every other British movie ever made. You'll find there's royalty aplenty for you to mock, dream about fornicating with, adding to your own lame family crest, & more.

Here's my favorite (of the moment) (I mean, who can have just one favorite regal dumbass?) (Not me!): His name is Fulk I of Anjou. Yeah, where the pears come from. He didn't do much, he wasn't all that important, & like most humans that have ever existed he never once enjoyed the extreme luxury of indoor plumbing, but his name was Fulk. FULK! I know a guy who just had a kid & I pleaded with him, please please please name the kid Fulk!

Fulk loved his name so much he gave it to his kid. His kid, while apparently noted as a poet & an artist, decided not to carry on with the name (which means the selfish shit deprived the French of the possibility of having a King Fulk!) & named his kid Geoffrey Greymantle. As utterly dorky as that name is (I will name my next D&D character just that), I have to give props to Goofball Greymantle because he named one of his sons - Fulk III! Fulk yeah!

That Fulker only had a daughter, but there was later a Fulk IV (his grandson who married like five times!) & a Fulk V (number four's son, whose wife left him to marry the King of France, but who also got to be King of Jerusalem - oh yeah, the Holy Land got a King Fulk!), not to mention a bunch of other slightly noble & non-noble Fulks. But I'm old school. I mean, I like that Fulk III was a "...plunderer, murderer, robber, & swearer of false oaths, a truly terrifying character of fiendish cruelty... filled with unbridled passion, a temper directed to extremes. Whenever he had the slightest difference with a neighbor he rushed upon his lands, ravaging, pillaging, raping, & killing; nothing could stop him, least of all the commandments of God..." - that's awesome! & I like that Fulk IV fought with his brother & twice put him in jail - my childhood would have been sweet if my brothers had been incarcerated - I think I prefer the original Fulk to them all. Otherwise where would they be? They'd be fulked, that's what.

See what fun having favorite counts & dukes & earls & pukes can be? & you're still slightly sad over Princess Di. Shame on you!